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feathersandblue · 3 years

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Dean Winchester, Character Death, and Frodo’s Return to the Shire

This will be a LOOONG post that has been stuck in my head for a while in bits and pieces - about Dean’s death, what it was and what it wasn’t, and incidentally, the Lord of the Rings has found its way in here too.

It’s pretty clear that Dabb always meant for Dean to die.

And while I strongly disagree with that, on so many levels, I think it might have been more palatable if framed in a different way, and so I’ve been trying to figure out what the ending might have looked like in a world that wasn’t quite as shitty as ours. Still shitty, but marginally less so.

Dean is notoriously bad at letting bad things happen if he can prevent them. I find it difficult to believe that Dean would ever quit hunting entirely, and for as long as he kept hunting, the danger of dying would always be present. It’s not unrealistic at all for him to die on a routine hunt. Life is unpredictable; life as a hunter, even more so. I understand that the writers might want to make that point. And it might have been valid if – and that’s the real problem – Dean’s death hadn’t otherwise been devoid of meaning.

The thing about character death – any sort of character death – is that it needs to have purpose.

And there are different ways that it can have purpose, but it depends on what sort of character we’re talking about.

Minor, often unnamed characters – the redshirts in every narrative – die to illustrate injustice or to highlight evil. Their death is a catalyst or a consequence of the events as they unfold, part of the conflict the heros have to solve. An army led into battle by a tyrant. Refugees in a camp dying of malnutrition. Murder victims of a serial killer. In all these cases, death fuels the plot but has little meaning beyond that.

There are minor characters whose death both fuels the plot and gives the hero a more personal motive to act. Supernatural is full of these. Mary and Jessica burning at the ceiling; Charlie dumped in a bathtub. Minor characters can have their own arcs, but ultimately their deaths are only important for the impact they have on the main characters.

The death of a protagonist is markedly different. Protagonists need to have agency even in death to maintain their status.

Their death has to be the reflection of their character development up to that point but it also has to tell us something about them that we did not already know – show us how they make a final decision or draw a final conclusion that marks the end of an inner conflict – which is what all storytelling is about. Character death has to serve a purpose to have meaning, and for a protagonist, the purpose must be personal.

And If it fails to do that, then that’s either a sign that we’re no longer dealing with a protagonist, or that something weng very, very wrong in the writers’ room. There is no inherent value in tragedy. In storytelling, tragedy is justified when it achieves something, otherwise, it’s just capriciousness.

Buffy’s death at the end of season 5 of BTVS is a classic example for the death of a protagonist. Harry’s decision to go and face Voldemort in the forbidden forest, even though it doesn’t ultimately kill him, is another. When Sam jumps into the abyss in Swan Song, that is his heroic sacrifice, but if he’d permanently died in season 2, that would have been bizarre and nonsensical because it was entirely beyond his control – it did not reflect his decisions, gave him no agency, and reduced him from a protagonist to a side character. In that moment, his death was something that happened to Dean. It worked because his death didn’t stick – he regained his agency after resurrection. But as an ending to his hero’s journey, it would have been singularly unsatisfying.

Dean is our protagonist, and he has been for 15 seasons. What does his death tell us about him that we didn’t know – what decisions did he make, what inner struggle got resolved, what meaning did his death have for him, personally, and then, in extension, for us?

The problem is that the finale, as is so often the case in Supernatural, tells two stories at once.

Whe the episode starts, it appears that Dean moves on with his life just fine, a well-adjusted model citizen. He’s ready to get a job, seems to be moderately happy. He even has dog. The decision to keep hunting is his, and death just accidentally happens, which of course is not unrealistic in his line of work. On the forefront, his death is brought about by the fact that he exercises free will. It tells us that he is a hunter and will always be one, that he keeps protecting people because that’s just who he is.

None of that, however, is new. It is just more of the same. All of Dean’s decisions in the finale tell us nothing about him that we did not already know. He’s trying to move on from the death of the people closest to him, as he’s always done. He chooses the hamster wheel, as he has always done. He follows in his father’s footsteps, as he has always done.

As he gets impaled, he has no choices left to make. There is no agency in his death, no inner struggle. His death furthers neither his character development nor the plot. That Dean simply accepts his death is as unsurprising as the fact that his final moments are spent reassuring Sam and telling him that he has to keep fighting.

The conclusion? Dean ceases to be a protagonist.

He dies not as the hero of his story. His death just happens to him.

After Sam and Dean had presumably freed themselves from the constraints of Chuck’s narrative, the final episode should have emphasized their agency, their freedom of choice, through change. But in the end, it only led them both to making the same choices as always, the unsurprising ones. And even the choices that did indicate a change (like Dean’s job application) were not shown to bear fruits.

What meaning does free will have when it doesn’t change the outcome? All the finale does is tell a bleak story about humanity and how we are incapable of making meaningful, consequential changes in our lives.

It’s almost like Lucifer is talking to us all the way from the Endverse of 5.04: “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up – here.”

Devastating as that is, there is another interpretation of the finale that is arguably worse, a different reading strongly suggested by both text and subtext.

Dean, as mentioned before, is trying to move on with his life but ultimately fails. The situation is different from the way he behaved when he lost Cas and Mary in season 13 where he was outright suicidal – his desperation is more quiet but also more profound. He seems determined to honor Cas’ and Jack’s sacrifice. But determination is not enough. Dean only goes through the motions, and it shows. He clings to the dog in the morning; the dog sticks to him closely throughout the day as dogs tend to do when they feel that their owner is in distress, almost like a therapy dog. His room looks messy, he makes an attempt to fix it but then abandons it as it requires too muh effort. Ultimately, he can’t be bothered. There are alcohol bottles standing around, a sign that he’s drinking, though not as heavily as in the past. All the while, he sems very laid-back, presumably relaxed and at peace and coping well with the loss but also weirdly detached.

When Sam mentions Cas and Jack at the pie festival, he says, “Yeah, I’m thinking about them too. You know that pain’s not going to go away. Right? But if we don’t keep living, then all that … sacrifice is gonna be for nothing.”

He feels an obligation. And he’s trying. It’s just not working very well.

He barely reacts when Sams pies him in the face.

When impaled on the rebar, Dean actively prevents Sam from calling for help. He tells Sam not to bring him back. And in the end, he asks Sam to tell him it’s okay to go. Which isn’t something he would do if he was simply dying – it strongly indicates that he wants to be allowed to die.

Prompting the conclusion that Dean is giving up on life the first opportunity he gets, not even knowing whether he’ll end up in heaven.

In this reading, Dean does have a little bit of agency. He makes a decision, sort of. His death marks the resolution of an inner struggle: He gives up.

He dies as a protagonist.

In the worst way possible.

In all honesty, I can’t decide which interpretation I hate more.

But what could the writers have done differently, if Dean was meant to die all along?

Back when the SPN finale had freshly aired, I was describing it like this:

Imagine that the One Ring is destroyed. But Merry died in the battle and Pippin went missing and was never found again. Frodo and Sam return to the Shire; Pippin and Merry are mentioned once in passing. Upon their arrival, Frodo is attacked by Wormtongue and slowly bleeds out over the span of thirty pages. Sam marries someone else than Rosie; Rosie is never mentioned again. Somehow, both Frodo and Sam are teleported to Valinor, where we are told that the real fun begins.

At the time, I only used this as an example to illustrate what a mess the finale had been. But in the weeks that have passed since, then, I’ve started thinking about the LOTR comparison some more, and it got me thinking about Dean’s death in a different way.

And it has everything to do with the difference between running from and walking toward.

As mentioned before, it’s not unrealistic that Dean would die on a random hunt. Would the Dean Winchester we know ever stop hunting? Maybe. We might want him to. Then again, would be still be Dean Winchester if he did? We know that Dean can’t help but feel responsible. He is someone who is incapable of staying hands-off.

Dean, as we see him in the finale, is trying to honor Cas’s and Jack’s memory by living, although he’s not very good at it – not outright suicidal but worn-out. Exhausted. And still he makes the decisions to keep hunting because he can do nothing else.

When Frodo and Sam returned to the Shire in LOTR, they had earned their happy ending. But Frodo, who had carried such a heavy burden that he was permanently altered by it, could no longer find happiness in Middleearth, and ultimately decided to depart for Valinor along with Gandalf and Bilbo with the promise of later being reunited with Sam. The journey had changed both of them, but it had changed Frodo to a greater degree, his responsibility had been greater, the weight on his shoulders heavier.

And I started to wonder whether the intention had initially been to show Dean in much the same state – and to frame his death as a decision to move on, the same way that LOTR has Frodo move on to the West.

Imagine the following: Cas is pulled into the Empty. His happiness and love change the Empty; he merges with it or otherwise changes it so that it’s now a more demon-friendly environment. Everyone there is at peace. Cas, in whatever form, moves on to Heaven – or maybe his soul does as it’s now mostly human.

Dean goes on a hunt and dies. Jack, or some other entity, shows up where you would expect the curiously absent reaper in order to give him a choice. Learning that Cas is in Heaven, and knowing that he will never be able to stop hunting if he remains on earth, Dean makes the conscious decision to move on. For the first time, Dean prioritizes his own happiness over his perceived duty. His death is no longer suicide by proxy, and neither is its sole purpose to illustrate the inherent meaningless of free will by turning him into a hamster-by-choice. Instead, it becomes a decision because he’s given back agency. He resolves an inner conflict and there’s even a final bit of character development as he breaks the chain of mutual co-dependency that ties him to Sam and allows himself to be with Cas. He remains a protagonist throughout the end.

And because he acknowledges his love for Cas and decides to be with him, he no longer just runs from, he walks toward.

The parallels to The Lord of the Rings get even more obvious when you take Sam into the equation because much like Samwise, Sam remains on earth in order to have a life that, for him, still holds meaning and the chance of happiness – whereas Dean can no longer be happy on earth as long as Cas isn’t there.

To be completely clear: I’d still think that such an ending would suck because it puts too much emphasis on an afterlife, and it would still send the message that characters like Dean could only find peace in death, and unless some adjustments were made to Sam’s arc as well, the ending would still suck for him.

But seeing as SPN plays in a universe where an afterlife exists, I could probably learn to live with Dean’s death if it had any sort of meaning, for him, besides dying and waiting for Sam to arrive, if it allowed for that final bit of character development. If he got to choose.

While I’ll never be able to see the finale that we actually got as anything but a complete atrocity.

#spn #supernatural #meta #dean winchester #destiel

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deeryloo · 3 years

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this was supposed to be a more general post that looks at the similarities between xxxholic and supernatural overall, and while I still want to do that, honestly the only thing I can focus on today is the overlap between watanuki and dean, so that’s what we’re getting instead.

i wanna talk about how the tragedy of dean winchester is that he spends 15 years stretching, like a rubber band, closer and closer to a realized sense of self, to then be repeatedly snapped back to his shitty self-esteem by the exterior forces on the show telling him (directly or otherwise) that he doesn’t deserve better. and that even after dean breaks completely free of his binds and starts to envision a life for solely just himself, he is left to die on a rusty nail and ultimately does not get to experience anything of that dream life of his own.

and i wanna talk too about how watanuki spends the first half of his journey learning to see his own value, to respect the ways he impacts others, and to actually begin forming meaningful relationships with the people who care about him, only to ultimately sequester himself into a shop he can’t leave for the rest of eternity while the people he loves grow up and leave or die or marry each other so they can keep having kids for the specific purpose of giving watanuki company, so he, too, gets to experience nothing of a life of his own.

like, it’s their shared endings that do me in. maybe they don’t seem the same on the surface (dean dies and goes to heaven, watanuki lives forever in a multidimensional shop he can’t leave), but i feel like narratively the consequences are the same. the damage to viewers looking for a cathartic release is the same. because dean dying and going to a place where nothing changes, he owns nothing, he works for nothing, means the growth he’s allowed as a character has ended. dean died never knowing what it meant to live for himself. he died never knowing how sweet true freedom--from john, from michael, from amara, from chuck, whoever--could be. and, honestly, i think you could say the same for watanuki.

i really feel like yuuko wanted something else for watanuki. yuuko does everything she can to help him understand that his life has meaning and value beyond his own understanding of himself. she tries to get it through his head that acting like he doesn’t matter, sacrificing himself willy nilly--that hurts people. his actions don’t affect just himself. and despite yuuko (and others! the joro gumo, doumeki, SYAORAN to name a few) spending so much time on this with watanuki, watanuki just doesn’t get it. or he does, but decides not to accept it. and because watanuki is stopped in time, trapped in that shop by the series’ end, the growth he’s allowed as a character ends, too. he literally stops living for himself, instead living only for the faint wish yuuko might come back. and it’s terrible.

there’s just this sense of lessons not really learned for both of them. dean dances for over a decade with the idea that he deserves to die, even if his deepest wish is to live. he toys with the idea of change, the idea of growth. and of course, he gets it to an extent. but the story never lets him really go for it. he’s given moments that indicate he’s ready for something more than hunting, something more than bloody death, but in the end he dies in a random accident and insisting this was always it for him. so what was dean’s true takeaway as a character? for audiences? did he ever really think he deserved something more?

and for watanuki, I ask the same. so much of watanuki’s arc is about learning the power of kindness and love when offered to those who otherwise don’t receive it, including HIMSELF. he is told over and over again, and seems to believe himself, that he can no longer make choices for other people on their behalf, nor can he try and undo what others do on his behalf. but I really feel the hope is that in teaching this to watanuki, in teaching the power of his own actions for better and worse, that he will make the kind of choices that aren’t needlessly self-sacrificial, because the damage of those self-sacrificial choices is almost always greater than the benefit. so what are we to make of watanuki’s final choice to stay in the shop? “don’t vanish!” says syaoran, but watanuki does exactly that. he literally removes himself from the world, takes on yuuko’s mannerisms and dress, and quits engaging with anyone who isn’t doumeki and kohane. what is our takeaway then? what does watanuki learn about loving himself when he so easily denies himself a future for the sake a dead woman who is never, canon suggests, coming back?

there’s just such a gut wrenching softness to dean and watanuki. such a sense of perseverance in the face of loss and misfortune that drives me up the wall. and there’s such a clear love for each of them from the people around them, too. we’re all a little in love with Dean Winchester. we’re all a little in love with watanuki kimihiro. I keep thinking of Castiel’s words to dean in “despair.” about how he does everything for love, everyone knows it. and I see in my mind doumeki telling kohane about his secret promise to never let watanuki die alone, like that kitten he held by the river in the rain. just as cas and sam and garth and crowley and so many others are dedicated to dean, so are kohane and himawari and yuuko and doumeki dedicated to watanuki. the loyalty both these men inspire from us readers as well as other characters, because of the goodness of their hearts...it kills me that neither of them get to really see it for themselves. how loved they really are. they catch glimpses, but neither gets a life in which that love can really be lived in. it’s just another layer of tragedy they both carry. dean deserved better. watanuki deserved better.

I could talk about a lot more, and maybe I will later, idk. the wider themes between the two texts, the parallels between castiel and doumeki, the ideas of hitsuzen and fate. but for now I guess I'll stop here. just looking at dean and watanuki is enough pain for one evening, I'd say.

#I hope this made sense #supernatural #xxxholic #dean winchester #watanuki kimihiro #my thoughts

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kaediisarchive · 3 years

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Final thoughts on the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie.

LOTS of spoilers under the cut! Do not look at this post if you don’t want to see spoilers!

And remember, this is all just my opinion. It’s not like an actual in-depth review because I’m not a film student; this is just my perspective on what I saw as a fan of this franchise.

POSITIVE

Sub-Zero and Scorpion were great. Opening fight was great.

“Eddy Tobias” namedrop lmao

I love the snow preceding Sub-Zero’s attack. Very foreboding.

Score is AWESOME. My favorite soundtrack is probably the one that plays when Sub-Zero is attacking them in the city towards the beginning.

Sonya rigging her house with a secret bunker and trap doors is smart and fits her character.

I like that the dragon logo has an integral meaning to the story.

Loved Jax vs Sub-Zero. Not mad about the origin change of Jax’s arms. I like that he had to work through his feelings of inadequacy and failure; people don’t just immediately bounce back after something that traumatic. I also like that his arcana manifests to protect Sonya rather than in the heat of battle. It shows his emotional priorities and what separates him from people like Kano who manifest their arcana in a fit of rage.

Sonya “Throw Hands on Sight” Blade lmfao. They nailed her fighting style too and I am happy.

Kano is the best thing about this movie. No competition.

Kotal reference!

Nightwolf reference!

Shang Tsung’s soul magic being black and wispy and foreshadowing Noob Saibot.

KANO DID THE HEART RIP

CHEKOV’S GNOME I’M SCREAAAAAAMMMMIIIIIINNNNGGGGGG

I love Liu Kang in this. He is 1000000% a Wholesome Boi. I like that he’s younger and unhardened and not the fully realized champion version of his character yet. Let him grow into it so it feels earned later on. I like that he’s the underdog, and I like what they’ve set up for him in the future. Also, the casting for him was perfect and they nailed his fighting style, too.

That little “the FUCK” that the Kano actor improvised(?) in the middle of Liu Kang’s lines made me laugh more than it should have. I don’t know why that moment got to me so much but it did.

I love Kung Lao. And they nailed his fighting style, too! Great to see variation that represents the characters (though there were less shining examples, which I’ll touch on later).

LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP!

Egg roll scene is best scene.

Kabal! I love his dry humor. And his voice reminds me of Duke Nukem, which I’m not mad about. It complemented his dialogue well.

Not mad about Kung Lao’s death because it was meaningful. His fatality on Nitara was sick, too.

Liu Kang taking the ribbon from Kung Lao’s hat and wearing it in his honor, giving an origin for his signature headband is FANTASTIC.

THE PIT!

FLYING BICYCLE KICKS!

LIU KANG’S DRAGON FATALITY!

SONYA’S ENERGY RINGS!

Sub-Zero was a GREAT final boss. They really built him up appropriately to make him feel like it.

Scorpion’s fatality! And his skull face!

NEUTRAL

Not sure how I feel about Sub-Zero being wholly evil and there being no involvement from Quan Chi. It’s more straight forward for sure. It makes him an interesting (and badass) character, and I’m really behind this portrayal in that he is one of the most believable characters in the movie, but I’m not sure if I like the implications for later films in how this has simplified the dynamic in the entire Shirai Ryu vs Lin Kuei plotline. Having Quan Chi be the Machiavelli was always one of my favorite MK twists. And how do we eventually end the feud now? If Bi-Han / the Lin Kuei were wholly responsible, why should Hanzo EVER make peace with Kuai Liang down the line? The complexity feels like it’s been stripped down a bit, but I do love this iteration of Sub-Zero. I truly do. That’s why this is in the neutral category and not the negative XD.

Why didn’t Jax tell Cole when he saw the mark? Why wait until his family gets attacked? Maybe he didn’t want to do it in front of his family to keep them out of it, but that ends up endangering them more. Not a gripe, just a curiosity.

Sound editing was a bit too intense at times for my taste. I have tinnitus, so...big boomy bass with very mild voices is a chore for my ears to switch between. My ears were ringing within the first twelve minutes.

Torn between “fuck you Reiko” and “Reiko deserved better”. He deserved just a little bit better, but Skarlet says “get fucked” anyway.

I don’t like the “shaky cam” used in the fight scenes. Not my cup of tea. Very hard to visually process at times.

Whatever cosmic force is picking the champions for Earthrealm is doing a shitty job at it.

Why did they change the location of the Sky Temple to a desert? Again, not a gripe, a curiosity.

“We will not see another full moon before the tournament begins” THEN WHERE IS THE TOURNAMENT BUDDY???

Not sure how I feel about the “arcana” concept. It’s an okay plot device but kinda hammy.

Kitana’s fan! But why? Why is it there? I could understand the Kotal and Nightwolf references because Sonya has been researching, but why is Kitana’s fan randomly in an Earthrealm temple? Purely cheap fanservice.

Nitara was really cool. Shame she had to die, but her death was cool and there have to be some characters that get killed off. Wish she had more screentime though; feels like another instance of fanservice just having her show up basically as a namedrop and a quick kill.

The phrase “Are you okay?” was said WAY too much in this film. So much that I actually notices how often it was said, and I usually don’t pick up on these things.

Pretty sure a camera operator fell at one point in a Sonya scene because the camera jerked around violently all of the sudden then stabilized. Whoops.

How did Sub-Zero know to take Cole’s family to the gym? WHY did he take them there?

NEGATIVE

Opening scene was awesome, but it’s emotional impact felt stunted. I feel like the order of events should have been twisted a bit. Hanzo find his wife and son should have been the big emotional climax of the scene, but it felt like a passing moment and gave him no time to mourn and no time for the impact to truly set in with me. It was an “oh no they died” moment instead of an “ OH MY GOD THEY DIED THIS IS SO FUCKED FUCK YOU SUB-ZERO” moment. I dare say that the Legacy web series did it better in spite of their lower budget and overall quality; the series of events had better pacing and gave more emotional impact because of it. I said what I fucking said don’t @ me.

Wish we got more Scorpion. I love Sanada, I love him as Scorpion, but they didn’t give us the time we needed with his character to truly get a grasp of him.

Cole Young is like white bread in a parade of decorative cakes.

Raiden, a normally passionate and protective character whose fatal flaw is that he involves himself too much in events because he cares about the people in his realm and ends up fucking things up because of it, now seems to not care in the slightest. He feels completely uninvolved save for an occasional pop in to give a nod of disapproval. I don’t like this unemotional take on one of the most emotional characters in Mortal Kombat.

Small complaint from my perspective as a martial artist but uh...”Throw your uppercut!” was a bullshit line in a bullshit scene. If you’re locked up with someone like that and the guy has his arms around your neck, you physically cannot uppercut. You cannot fit your arms between his arms because they are cinched tightly around your shoulders/neck. YOUR HEAD is between your fist + bicep and HIS HEAD. In that situation, the guy has also left his body completely unguarded, so the most logical thing to do since you CANNOT reach his head is to go for BODY BLOWS. Beat him until he lets go to protect himself, catch his floating rib with double strikes, or punch the dude in his fucking liver as hard as you can to DROP HIM. Cole is supposed to be an experienced fighter, yet he makes one of the most rookie mistakes a fighter could ever make. Normally I wouldn’t care to point out mistakes in fight choreography or whatever because it’s MK and I expect ridiculousness, but this is the WRONG kind of ridiculous. It’s just NONSENSE.

I have SO MANY issues with Mileena. I’ll make this as short as I can. I don’t like the design of her mouth. I don’t like her weird stacked voice. She shows NO personality, not in her acting or even her fighting style, just an evil minion that got angry because she almost got her ass kicked. The turned one of the principle characters of the entire franchise and a fan favorite into a GRUNT. There is NO mention of Kitana outside of literal “fan”-service. Not even a reference to one of the most important plotlines in all of Mortal Kombat. And then they KILL HER OFF!!! When they do inevitably bring in Kitana WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO DO SINCE THEY KILLED OFF MILEENA???? I’m heated and biased and they did my girl dirty.

Speaking of doing characters dirty, poor Reptile. They turned him into an actual animal. What a waste.

Why are they so mean to Sonya if she doesn’t have a mark? She wouldn’t be as much of a “liability” if they would take the time to prepare her and teach her how to defend against fighters that have unlocked their arcana. Mind-numbingly stupid logic.

This movie relies A LOT on prerequisite knowledge to work. It’s like they want fans to fill in the blanks for them. But not everyone watching is already a fan; this isn’t an obscure release, this is a blockbuster movie released worldwide. These gaps in lore and prior knowledge don’t make sense for such a broad audience.

Cole Young literally could have just been Johnny Cage.

Where was Raiden when his temple was being assaulted?

Cole’s arcana is LITERAL PLOT ARMOR IM FUCKING DONE

No but for real that’s the most boring decision they just ripped off Jax’s MK11 heater effect and Baraka’s blades (I know they’re tonfa and they aren’t attached and I DON’T CARE). Also, now he’s suddenly good at fighting again? After being dog shit this entire movie??? And tanks Goro?????

If Raiden is an Elder God in this continuity, why is he allowed to help Earthrealm AT ALL? It seems like favoritism and bends the rules that the Elder Gods are supposedly bound by way too much. They really just shouldn’t have made him an Elder God; I honestly think they just said it to introduce the concept without a fuck given towards the actual lore of the Elder Gods.

WHY DID RAIDEN TELEPORT KANO TO SONYA’S HOUSE AFTER HE BETRAYED THEM I HAD TO REWATCH THAT SEVERAL TIMES TO MAKE SURE I JUST SAW WHAT I SAW WHAT THE ACTUAL NONSENSICAL FUCK

Cole REALLY should not have been involved in that last fight. Especially not after Scorpion shows up. It should have been Scorpion vs Sub-Zero ONLY for the final fight. Cole tag-teaming Sub-Zero with Scorpion cheapens Scorpion’s revenge.

Camera work in the final fight was not good, especially in the first portion. At one point Cole gets thrown into a fence, but it cuts to an awkward inverse angle that makes him look like he’s bouncing off of a trampoline. This continues to happen and ruins several shots for me.

Honestly Scorpion should have just possessed Cole. Permanently. No switching back and forth. No more Cole, only Scorpion.

PREDICTIONS

Lots of dead characters come back as revenants and / or with upgrades.

Kano comes back with cyber eye.

Mileena comes back with full teeth.

Liu Kang becomes MK champion, wins tournament, and kills Shang Tsung. As it should be.

Cole Young helps Liu Kang become champion somehow idk maybe he sacrifices himself or something just please don’t make Cole the champion I will start a riot.

Next movie will start IMMEDIATELY at the tournament since there was supposedly less than a month until the tournament starts in this movie.

New characters coming in will be Kitana, Shao Kahn, Jade, Quan Chi, Kuai Liang, Noob Saibot, Ermac, and Johnny Cage.

OVERALL

This movie was good, bloody fun! It’s not an A++ Oscar-winner, but if you expected that going into it, you played yourself. It was Mortal Kombat; it was stupid, it was gory, and I had a blast watching it. Kano and Liu Kang were the best parts of the movie for me, with Scorpion and Sub-Zero tied for third. Also I popped a lot for the cheap nostalgia hits. I’m overall satisfied with what we got in spite of my complaints, and I only complain so in-depth about the things I love lmao so trust me when I say I’m not actually mad, just nitpicky. I’ve watched it twice now, and I would watch it again. It’s like a 6.8/10 for me.

#mortal kombat spoilers #mk movie spoilers #spoilers tw #[ooc]

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reachexceedinggrasp · 3 years

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So the majority of the shows I’ve seen lately can be charitably described as ‘light entertainment’, including the ones with dark elements or more weighty, ponderous plots. They might be entertaining or interesting, they just... don’t stand up to scrutiny. Turn your brain off because this isn’t that carefully or skilfully made and you’ll only be annoyed if you start thinking about it as a whole. Including the last couple 'tragic’ historical dramas I’ve watched, which were not effective tragedy for that very reason. If you’re going to kill off the main cast, you have to earn it, and overwhelmingly writers don’t. Anyway, I’ve been getting despondent about whether stories which actually hang together and form a coherent narrative unit with consistent themes are the exception rather than the rule.

(And I feel like that should be a pretty low standard to meet, it’s sort of Step 1 of ‘being a story’: be about something! Communicate something, no matter how basic it is. Dead simple stories with rock basic messages can be revelatory! Just do it well!)

I’ve seen very little genuinely focussed or meaningful storytelling in my ventures for what feels like a long time. Basically, I can kind of count on one hand the number of films or dramas or whathaveyou I’ve seen from the last few years where it felt like the filmmakers were in complete control of their story and everything in it was purposeful and intentional. Most things have felt slapdash or shallow or fleeting. Story elements and character choices come out of nowhere just to derail already concluded arcs and fill screen time with empty repetitious drama, not to serve a meaningful narrative purpose. I would be watching with zero confidence anything in particular was going anywhere or that the writers knew where that should be. It’s just throwing shit at the wall, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type writing all the time and it fucking shows.

But then I watched Money Flower.

Money Flower is different. Money Flower is towering head and shoulders above every modern drama I’ve ever seen. Titanically good writing which rises above its genre and makes conventions seem radically new and fresh not by reinventing them or deconstructing them, but by playing them straight, taking them seriously, and committing 1000%. This is all your familiar rich family tropes but with masterpiece execution, infused with consequence and meaning because they’re all driven by the psychology of complex three-dimensional characters. So many moving pieces and none of them are random or unmotivated. Just... GOOD WRITING. And I want to make the point that it is this wherein art lives. The difference between a rank Lifetime movie and Romeo and Juliet is not novelty or tropes or plot twists- it’s execution.

This show is such a perfect example that it is not ‘mere events’ (aka plot) or novelty or shock value or cool ideas which separates something brilliant and timeless from forgettable schlock; it is solely and entirely execution. It’s writing itself, if you know what I mean. You can describe many of Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays as soap opera plots. What makes Macbeth a deathless masterwork and Death Wish Hollywood wank isn’t a fundamental difference in subject or genre. It’s Shakespeare’s characterisation and purposeful storytelling. It’s the poetry of the dialogue. It’s the craft of writing. Most of Shakespeare’s plots are based on existing stories or on historical events and that has never mattered because novelty is not an inherent good or of any inherent artistic value.

Like, this is the problem with storytelling right now blah blah GOT, shitty endings everywhere etc. because power over the audience (can’t let anyone guess the plot, looking ‘clever’ with meaningless callbacks) and novelty are valued over narrative structure or things making sense or emotional verisimilitude. We have so many writers thinking being ‘shocking’ is all it takes to be a genius. It’s easy to be shocking if your story makes no goddamn sense because things that don’t make sense are literally unpredictable. Not in a good way, though. A great twist or sudden swerve needs to be unexpected but inevitable in hindsight or it does not work. I should be able to rewatch your thing and think ‘oh, of course! you can see it was [x] all along!’

We have so many popular writers now who are so shallow they don’t think anything needs to make sense on a character or emotional level. They don’t think their story has to be about anything. Substance is irrelevant as long as the surface is flashy enough. That has no staying power, you can only watch it once and you will forget about it quickly.

However, if you have ever wanted to experience the constant heightened stakes and High Drama of a soap opera without being annoyed at how ridiculous it all is and while actually giving a shit about the characters because they feel like real human beings, if you’ve wanted to feel repercussions when characters make choices, and get the emotional payoff that is the entire point of drama- now you can. Watch Money Flower. And let me tell you, it is fucking riveting. This show is mostly made up of people sitting in rooms talking and yet it is heart-pounding excitement nearly every episode. It is profoundly traditional and by the book while being totally fresh. It’s the most engrossing and satisfying artistic experience I’ve had in a long time.

Like, THE TENSION, THE DRAMA, THE REVEALS!!! You can, in fact, spend most of 24+ hours on the edge of your seat about family problems and business mergers. It seems unlikely, but that is the power of this series, it creates insanely high stakes and mesmerising suspense out of the most commonplace ingredients. Familiar plot elements become brand new and surprising under the deftness and tightness of this narrative. The plot itself is certainly 100% melodrama but it never feels like a soap opera and is never ever soapy in in a pejorative sense because it handles its classic tropes with such maturity and nuance that it's like you've never seen them before. The writing is incredible.

It is on an entirely different level than the vast majority of dramas, with a total self-assurance that keeps the pacing relentless yet unhurried- taking its time to let the impact of events be felt, the narrative always knowing exactly where it’s going and how to get there. The characters are all multi-faceted and unpredictable without ever being incoherent, their motives and goals always being gradually uncovered in more detail that only makes the storytelling and characterisation even tighter, even richer. The twists and cliffhangers are always mind-blowing but always earned, never cheap or nonsensical, and I can't remember ever thinking that about another show. (There’s literally one exception towards the very end where something a bit random happens for reasons of pure symbolism- it’s a misstep imo but it’s minor in the scheme of things)

Every time I started to doubt the writing, started to think ‘oh no, they’re going off the rails’, they showed me I was wrong and they were in total control. The only 'problem' with the show is that the drama is also profoundly painful to watch unfold, particularly in the beginning, because it's a story where everyone makes terrible life choices and moral corruption is everywhere. It's hypnotic though, like a car crash. If you can handle something dark, insidious, cerebral, and character-driven there is nothing I've seen in the same vein that can approach its brilliance. It’s like The Magnificent Ambersons as a slick modern revenge drama. There is also (PRECIOUSLY!!) a core of stunning romanticism around which all the horrors revolve and that saves it from becoming hideous or cynical. There is a chance for redemption and a new beginning after all, in spite of all appearances.

The ending has apparently been controversial, and it is definitely not quite as climatic as you would have expected given how powerfully climatic almost every regular episode is, but it's a good ending. There isn't full closure, they don't provide final resolution in a bow, but to me it's an ending about hope. It suggests optimism for our characters and I was satisfied with that. It's extremely rare for a 'revenge story’ to allow this kind of room for healing and it can do that because, imo, we discover in the end that it wasn't ultimately vengeance in Pil Joo’s heart. He has not become a tragic hero who will be consumed by the cannibalistic darkness of revenge, his quest was for justice. He teeters on the edge of the abyss but he avoided falling in; he didn't sell his soul, at least not irrevocably.

He is nonetheless a very tragic figure and an anti-hero, but despite having dedicated his life to bringing down the Jang cabal, it’s not that he’ll stop at nothing. He will make any personal sacrifice no matter how desolate, he lives as a mere husk of a man, and he facilitates enormous emotional harm to others in service of his goals, but he has ethical hard lines he never considers crossing. His sense of decency and compassion is never extinguished; he does care about the collateral damage he is causing even when making justifications for it. It’s important to him to give people as much agency as possible in their choices, to mitigate the damage done by his schemes as much as he can. To try to prevent harm coming to undeserving bystanders. Not that this makes it okay that he uses people, which he does, but the point is he never completely surrenders his moral compass to avarice. He’s never okay with burning down the world or ruining innocent lives just to get to his target.

Pil Joo is less a vigilante and more an avenging angel, he wants justice more than retribution. He wants fairness and a better, safer world where what has happened to his family won’t happen again. The reason this story never becomes Sweeney Todd (aka: a full on tragedy where we see the inevitable outcome of lust for revenge) and the reason he can survive twenty years spent pursuing someone’s downfall is exactly that principle. Searching for retribution would have destroyed him, he would have become the very thing he hated, but instead he goes as far as necessary to publicly expose the Jangs for what they are and then willingly submits to penance for his complicity in their crimes and tries to atone with the people he hurt along the way. Purged, he’s symbolically reborn and takes back his real name to maybe finally have a chance at the life he should have had. He moves on, content, a positive force. He’s capable of healing from the ordeal because he realises he doesn’t need retaliation, just seeing them stopped and facing consequences for their actions is enough.

The love story is a superbly poignant part of this. Their love is the ‘victim’ of his revenge and it will forever be impacted by it, but it’s not something that can be killed, so there’s still hope. Mo Hyeon’s bookending rescues of Pil Joo from death mean first that he has a purpose he must fulfil and then the second time that he has freedom to finally live as himself, for himself. There’s a future. And maybe they can be together there. I’m emo about it.

Anyway, if there was the slightest doubt about me becoming a long-term Jang Hyuk fangirl, it’s been put to rest. This performance is easily one of the best I’ve ever seen, period. No contest it’s the best I’ve seen in a tv drama. It’s also the most subtle and masterful turn he's delivered in his whole career. He's so restrained, but he is giving absolutely everything; he has total control over every microexpression, every gesture, every molecule in his body. There is so much simmering under his surface, so much going on in his eyes; the layers and depths are endless. The intensity and sharp intellectual focus he brings to the character is breathtaking. Everyone else is doing amazing work too, but he is almost constantly on screen and has this spectacular command of such a sprawling story, such a complex character, and he makes it look effortless. All artifice has melted away. The fact that being so tightly contained is in stark contrast to the bombastic element in many of his other roles renders its delicate precision even more startlingly impressive. I thought he was a great actor before, but I didn’t fully appreciate what he was capable of until Pil Joo.

#money flower #kdrama #writing #jang hyuk #long post #I've written a bit before about revenge and how it will inevitably lead to tragedy #so I wouldn't without explanation even call MF a 'revenge drama' because it turns out it's a complicated yet beautiful 'hope' drama lmao #it's actually a 'romance' in the Shakespearean sense #like the Winter's Tale #I guess we just call that 'tragicomedy' now but I don't find that word very helpful or descriptive #I don't think anyone actually know what you mean when you say that #anyway the first writing that is every bit as good as the production/acting side I've seen in what feels like forever #I just feel like everything is great characters in a mess of a story or brilliant performances elevating a bad script or good start-bad end #like no one knows what they're doing any more or why #but this show is incredible #it's only not perfect because the last four episodes are not up to what you'd expect for the rest but they are still really good #just not perfect #the last episode has problems but they're not with the concept of the ending at all- the concept IS perfect #and apparently I'm the only one who thinks that lol #apparently a lot of people did not understand what was happening and some misread it as a dream sequence #(this is an insane take to me- it's really not confusing or ambiguous at all)#(bc God forbid the main character not die and have a chance to heal after his absolutely miserable life?)#but yeah it's the only time anything feels rushed or not quite smooth #and one major character's fate isn't as satisfying as it could be #but I felt like I was never going to see something as engrossing as this again for a while there #anyway anyway NEW OTP #I didn't even get into it because no one cares about my giant rant here but it's SO traditional while being VERY different idk #the romanticism was so unexpected in a show that seems like it's going to be intensely cynical- it's handled with such gravitas #romance with gravitas is PRICELESS to me #the best swerve ever is for a show to NOT be cynical when it seemed so dark- that's a plot twist I can get behind

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gffa · 4 years

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@ap-trash-compactor replied:

1/7 I wanna preface this by saying I agree with everything you’re saying here but I think there’s another layer to how Raffa’s story functions both textually and meta-textually, and to what it illustrates about how many people in the Galaxy /might/ perceive the Jedi, which I personally haven’t seen addressed yet. Sorry in advance if this is something you’ve heard/read/discussed ten million times already, but... 2/7 If you took Raffa’s story out of Star Wars and put it into a contemporary drama, changed the word “Jedi” to the word “police,” and made the particulars about a high-speed car chase? I think it would sound pretty believable. And I think this illustrates something Palpatine does through the mechanism of the Clone Wars to make the position of the Jedi especially vulnerable or precarious wrt to public opinion. 3/7 Even if every single Jedi engages w the power and authority of their military or police role only in the best intentioned, most good-faith way imaginable (which the Umbara arc tells us doesn’t always happen), any time you are in a role where you, even have without wanting or intending to, exercise the power of life and death other lives, you will cause pain and be a target for resentment. Someone will lose someone, and be angry. 4/7 No matter how good or how well-intentioned or how compassionate they are, during the Clone Wars the Jedi are forced into the role of a state authority exercising the power of life and death. They are not only a cultural minority during the Clone Wars. They are also a branch of the state, and in that role they sometimes either kill people, or are involved in events where people die and where, no matter their intentions, they are the face of the state and the voice of authority. 5/7 Many of the military and police actions shown in different episodes of this series leave destruction in their wake. The Jedi’s participation is barely by choice and almost never by preference— but if you are one of the Raffas of the galaxy and your parents just died, the distinction probably does not matter much. I think this is a corner Palpatine absolutely wanted to paint the Jedi into, because it absolutely serves his goals. 6/7 There are not many Jedi during the Clone Wars. Certainly there are not many compared to the problems they are trying to fix. I have no doubt Luminara tried her best, wanted a different outcome, and gave Raffa all the comfort she had the time and the opportunity to give... But if you are one of the Raffas of the galaxy and your only direct experience of the Jedi is like the one Raffa describes? You’re probably primed to consume all of Palpatine’s worst lies. 7/7 If you’re Palpatine, making the Jedi rush from violent crisis to violent crisis doesn’t just distract them from the fact that you’re a Sith Lord — it also makes the Jedi into the face of a lot of negative, hurtful interactions with the state, which is going to impact the way people see them.

I think you and I are very much on the same page! I have discussed this before (the public’s turning on the Jedi), but I’m always down for discussing it again! Especially when I love pretty much allllll of this. If you’re Palpatine, making the Jedi rush from violent crisis to violent crisis doesn’t just distract them from the fact that you’re a Sith Lord — it also makes the Jedi into the face of a lot of negative, hurtful interactions with the state, which is going to impact the way people see them. You are spot on with your summation, to the point it’s almost hard for me to respond with anything because I feel like all I can do is bang my fist on the table and go, “Yes! This is what I’ve been talking about!” Though, of course, there is a lot going on here that’s making it complicated. This post that you’re responding to is focused more specifically on the theme of unreliable narrators + the close associations this season has had with Revenge of the Sith (the moments that make us sit up and go, “Oh, that’s foreshadowing for stuff in ROTS!” like Padme’s pregnancy, Anakin’s advice to Rex, etc.), but there’s also what you’re talking about here--that it’s been a long-running theme in the GFFA that public sentiment turned against the Jedi and that the causes of that are fascinating. I said a bunch of times that Rafa’s hurt in this episode is valid, that there’s room for both the Jedi acting with honorable intentions and that people don’t trust them, don’t draw comfort from them, that these things are not mutually exclusive and you’re hitting on exactly why--because they were put into a situation where, if they’re not 100% perfect, then they’re going to fall off the pedestal they’ve been put onto. That any flaw they have will then get magnified a hundred times. Luminara seems to have made a point to go back and try to talk to Rafa, to tell her a phrase that is narratively meaningful within Star Wars on a meta level, like, that says to me that she has really good intentions! But that Rafa doesn’t draw any comfort from it, as a non-Force sensitive and someone who probably is left to the Republic’s shitty welfare services (which isn’t the Jedi’s jurisdiction, they’re not social workers and we can’t expect them to be), doesn’t undercut Luminara’s presumed good intentions, just as Luminara’s presumed good intentions don’t undercut Rafa’s hurt. And that it’s understandable--because, as the Maul arc in season 5 says, the Jedi aren’t doing the things that they used to do, that crime is flourishing because they’re being so busy with this war they’ve been drafted into. Even Star Wars: Propaganda makes it clear that public sentiment turned against the Jedi because of a cultural absence, rather than anything they actively did. This is all by design from Palpatine, that he’s keeping them so busy putting out tire fires on Ryloth (who were being slaughtered by the Separatists), on Mon Calamari (who were being enslaved by the Separatists), on Kiros (who were being kidnapped and taken into the resumed Zygerrian slave empire), that they don’t have time to do the things they used to, like take care of a lot of the criminal elements or the outreach programs that we see hinted at in the supplementary material. The Jedi had to make a choice between fighting in a war where entire worlds were being enslaved, that there were only so many of them and they were dying, that they died in droves on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones and they’re dying every day in the war, that they were literally one out of six billion in the galaxy at their height, and that they had a million expectations placed on them. They have very little political capital/power, yet they’re expected to solve all the problems in ways that will last. They’re expected to police the Underworld, but also not police the Underworld because then they’re restricting people. They’re expected to be social workers. They’re expected to fight and die in a war that the public itself refuses to stand up in. And when they don’t live up to those impossible perfections, they’re torn down. This is not to set aside that of course there are instances of people like Trace and Rafa, where the destruction wreaked by chasing down someone like Ziro is going to sometimes cause people to get hurt and, honestly, I don’t feel like Rafa really blamed Luminara for that, given the acknowledgement of the crowded platform she was trying to avoid. But if she had? That, too, would have been reasonable and understandable! That it doesn’t matter if the Jedi were doing literally everything they could, that doesn’t mean there’s not also room for Rafa’s hurt. And that, even if I think there was absolutely nothing that Luminara could say that would have given Rafa comfort, that doesn’t make Rafa’s hurt/viewpoint any less empathizable. My blog tends to focus on the Jedi side of things because those are the characters I’m interested in, not because they’re the only element that matters. In the meta we’re responding to, a lot of the focus is on Luminara and the Jedi because that’s my jam, that’s the part I thrive on, but we’re definitely in agreement that Rafa’s feelings are not wrong and it’s not hard to see where they come from! I do take issue with the idea of--whether it’s true or not, we can all argue about it all day long, but it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not--that if the Jedi are remote and distant from the galaxy, that that narratively is approved of how they then “kind of brought their downfall (aka, violent genocide) on themselves”. That’s something I’ve seen skirted around in commentary from the creators and I’m wary of it leaking into the narrative in a more substantial way. But that’s an entirely separate issue from the fact that anti-Jedi sentiments exist in the narrative and that they led to the Jedi Purge/Jedi genocide. As part of the propaganda and manipulations Palpatine did, yes, absolutely, that is one of the most fascinating things! And that doesn’t mean that there’s not validity to those feelings, even if they’re rooted in propaganda and manipulation! But that, just as there’s room for Rafa’s hurt despite Luminara’s intentions, there’s room for the Jedi’s good intentions despite the public’s hurt and/or mistrust. My thing is that I tend to look at why the Jedi act the way they do and I usually come away with empathy for how they got into the situations they did. Like, take their alignment with the Republic, which was an organization with corruption down to the roots by the time of the Twilight of the Republic, that that association absolutely led to their downfall/genocide. But what else could they do? Being part of the Republic in that way allowed them to actually help people, to have negotiating power, to form treaties that would be honored even when they were no longer on a given planet. If they weren’t under the jurisdiction of the Senate, they could not have helped as many people as they did, especially because how would they even be able to afford starship fuel or housing costs? Would they charge people for their services? That’s a disaster waiting to happen! There’s room for both “the best option for the Jedi was to be part of the Republic and try to improve the system from the inside, which is what they did” AND “the being part of the Republic is what ultimately fucked them”, those things are both true! but if you are one of the Raffas of the galaxy and your parents just died, the distinction probably does not matter much. I think this is a corner Palpatine absolutely wanted to paint the Jedi into, because it absolutely serves his goals. Spot on! I have fun looking at what Luminara’s intentions likely were and what the context of the structure of the show entails, that Rafa’s character doesn’t have to be a reliable narrator to be valuable (and I say this as someone who actually really loves the unreliable narrators of SW, which honestly is almost literally every single character, very few are ones you can take at face value without seeing the circumstances for yourself), but to Rafa it doesn’t really matter what Luminara did or didn’t say, because that’s not what she was looking for or what she got out of that conversation. I can’t say I would act differently in her position! And that’s exactly what Palpatine did. He pulled the Jedi in so many different directions, made them responsible for things that literally no group could possibly have survived with public sentiment intact, and even if the Jedi had been literally perfect (which they weren’t), it wouldn’t have mattered, given that the entire point of the prequels is that you gotta choose between Shitty Option A and Shitty Option B. It’s the galaxy’s worst ever version of, “Which would you rather?” except its real and you have to play the game, because not playing gets you fucked over even faster, like it did with Mandalore.

#rafa martez #jedi order #meta #tcw spoilers #long post

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archivistsammy · 3 years

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i’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a character tragic. what makes their story sad. like, supremely, miserably, bone-achingly sad. and, okay, when i say i’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a character tragic, what i really mean is i’ve been thinking a lot about dean winchester and watanuki kimihiro. im rewatching supernatural with one friend, and im rereading xxxholic with another, and the experience is wild because all my wires are crossing in my brain, because dean and watanuki punch me in the gut in the exact same offensively upsetting way, and i really wanna talk about it. this was supposed to be a more general post that looks at the similarities between xxxholic and supernatural overall, and while I still want to do that, honestly the only thing I can focus on today is the overlap between watanuki and dean, so that’s what we’re getting instead.

it’s their shared endings that do me in. maybe they don’t seem the same on the surface (dean dies and goes to heaven, watanuki lives forever in a multidimensional shop he can’t leave), but i feel like narratively the consequences are the same. the damage to viewers looking for a cathartic release is the same. because dean dying and going to a place where nothing changes means the growth he’s allowed as a character has ended. dean died never knowing what it meant to live for himself. he died never knowing how sweet true freedom–from john, from michael, from amara, from chuck, whoever–could be. and, honestly, i think you could say the same for watanuki.

i really feel like yuuko wanted something else for watanuki. yuuko does everything she can to help him understand that his life has meaning and value beyond his own understanding of himself. she tries to get it through his head that acting like he doesn’t matter, sacrificing himself willy nilly–that hurts people. his actions don’t affect just himself. and of course he can make his own choices, but he can’t do so pretending those choices won’t have consequences for others, too. and despite yuuko (and others! the joro gumo, doumeki, SYAORAN to name a few) spending so much time on this with watanuki, watanuki just doesn’t get it. or he does, but decides not to accept it. and because watanuki is stopped in time, trapped in that shop by the series’ end, the growth he’s allowed as a character ends, too. he literally stops living for himself, instead living only for the faint wish yuuko might come back. and it’s terrible.

and for watanuki, I ask the same. so much of watanuki’s arc is about learning the power of love when offered to those who otherwise don’t receive it, including HIMSELF. he is told over and over again, and seems to believe himself, that he can no longer make choices for other people on their behalf, nor can he try and undo what others do on his behalf. but I really feel the hope is that in teaching this to watanuki, in teaching the power of his own actions for better and worse, that he will make the kind of choices that aren’t needlessly self-sacrificial, because the damage of those self-sacrificial choices is almost always greater than the benefit.

so what are we to make of watanuki’s final choice to stay in the shop? “don’t vanish!” says syaoran, but watanuki does exactly that. he literally removes himself from the world, takes on yuuko’s mannerisms and dress, and quits engaging with anyone who isn’t doumeki and kohane. what is our takeaway then? what does watanuki learn about loving himself when he so easily denies himself a future for the sake a dead woman who is never, canon suggests, coming back?

there’s just such a gut wrenching softness to dean and watanuki. such a sense of perseverance in the face of loss and misfortune that drives me up the wall. and there’s such a clear love for each of them from the people around them, too. we’re all a little in love with dean winchester. we’re all a little in love with watanuki kimihiro. I keep thinking of castiel’s words to dean in “despair.” about how he does everything for love, everyone knows it. and I see in my mind doumeki telling kohane about his quiet commitment to never let watanuki die alone, like that kitten he held by the river in the rain. just as cas and sam and garth and crowley and so many others are dedicated to dean, so are kohane and himawari and yuuko and doumeki dedicated to watanuki. the loyalty both these men inspire from us readers as well as other characters, because of the goodness of their hearts…it kills me that neither of them get to really see it for themselves. how loved they really are. they catch glimpses, but neither gets a life in which that love can really be lived in. it’s just another layer of tragedy they both carry. dean deserved better. watanuki deserved better.

I could talk about a lot more, and maybe I will later, idk. the wider themes between the two texts, the parallels between castiel and doumeki, the ideas of hitsuzen and fate. but for now I guess I’ll stop here. just looking at dean and watanuki is enough pain for one evening, I’d say.

#supernatural #xxxholic #dean winchester #watanuki kimihiro #holicnatural #our meta #this is SO NICHE but its like where i (amina) live so we all have to deal with it

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misterbitches · 3 years

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Hello! @flootweed replying to the post from before. the long format was killing me. why does tumblr look like this...

I haven’t watched episode 8 yet...or have I? If it’s the most recent one. No.

Is the hornbill a bird? It probably is but I have a terrible memory and I’m dumb so. I skipped the last few weeks because I’m scawwed. How are you liking it? I did see someone say that the hornbill makes sense (without knowing what it is...at all) bc heart transplant patients only live like 5-15 years after but someone in those comments pointed out that he was so young when he got his and that’s pretty rare so he has a higher likelihood of survival. Frankly, this is the only way I will proceed. Since when did shows ever care about the heart transplant health? Never and it needs to stay that way!

What did we think of ep 6? LMAO. I need opinions! And omg it makes me feel special when I can point things out to people because I so...rarely get to LOL. Editing is like one of my favorite things ever so I can be super particular about it but I try to do the thing you do when you’re supposed to see if it works within its context. I’d like to go in with scissors and glue but alas.

THe mic covering....the rustling....it’s like guys...please. Ironically the audio today wasn’t great. I don’t know why. IDK if you watch c-dramas but I am not even sure what’s worse between them because they dub their dramas. But actually no it’s best to have the dubbing because even tho it is painful they have to put a lot of effort into it. LOL.

Right? @ Aey! It’s just weird if they would show us more about what he’s done instead of saying he’s done sth bad and not even explaining that....like you could even do some shitty exposition. I think if he is to be a true villain then we really need to be privvy. All the warnings make it seem like he’s a fuckin’ serial killer so when we get the scene of him at home it’s like....actually this is really serious? Maybe his pain is like...for a reason. Althought you won’t even TELL US WHAT HE’S DONE WRONG BESIDES BE JUST FUCKING WEIRD AND ANNOYING! So from what we have it’s just a realllllllll fucked up sad person lol. god i forgot about the dinner! and i totally agree. he really needs them to succeed. i like your theory because it would make the scene where he like blocks the twitter user make more sense. he also says they dont really know each other etc so it’s realllllyyyyy probable that he just sees it as a way out. if not then we shall pretend u wrote it :)

god yea i wouldnt say it is art but i also guess we technically have to since it is technically. in the way that technically performance artists are artists but mostly i uh technically ignore them. Also one of my fav BLs is called the best twins. If you do not know what it is I will not elaborate further.t

i want to know more abt poli sci majors lmao but they sound DRAMATIC/ hopefully most ppl in ur cohort arent losers!

hahahha i understand. there was just a thing on twitter about DSA and then the day before about reading discourse. the same thiings. over. and over. and over. and over. we are our own worst enemies but also our own best friends? but i hate tankies and that wont change. but hasan’s a decent guy. he said sth abt black ppl during biden’s primaries in GA or whatever and i was like chill. but he’s insecure and has adhd which means ur more open to being wrong and changing otherwise u will suffocate and die.

and totally about hiding fuck ups. i’ve tried really hard bc of organizing IRL to like...be honest, question, etc but also like...approach it naturally? because if you’re trying to be perfect and so worried you’ll fuck up you don’t realize that puts more stress on you, makes you seem like a robot, and could potentially not make you realize the mistkaes you made. also if we’re privileged in certain spaces there is just no possible way we won’t get something wrong. im light and i know that honestly any way to speak up on colorism is going to be difficult and that’s a space where i have power so i just have to figure it out. we should be uncomfortable because we have to sit with unpleasant feelings and sort through our own whatever. that just makes the next time even better and people can trust u more. i think some people sweat it sooo much or maybe they think their personal life and what theyve been through is more the norm? on the other hand people can be sf reactionary in the worst way and idk what their issue is. there was also a user who said sth very inch arresting about tankies which i thoroughly enjoyed (how like violent lefitsts or tankies / ppl who are like ooh a gun whatever just want to be violent in another space so they have shit tendencies from jump and nothing of substance which i think i agree with tbh fo ra lottttt of ppl. like their anger is actually like “no im about to beat that ass” instead of what we actually want to get done)

sort of in the same vein re: taking it easy...we coudl all be more understanding too. to slow it down like you mentioned about not being privvy to fucking eveyrthing and saying anything on our mind. i saw this person talk about y2k which was a huge deal while happening bc it was the turn of the millenium (bruh were u even alive?) but this twitter user grew up in a super super SUPER religious household and was like why do ppl make jokes about Y2K it was insanely traumatizing? though my first instinct was confused ive tried hard to like look more before i judge especially thanks to a friend of mine. turns out that with the further reading the more we found out he was just really traumatized; it was very common in religious households to be afraid of 2000. so we could have come at him with no understanding and he could have thought that everyone had the same experience with that year that he did. his feelings sit precedent though but i think it was just very hard for him to fathom.

i didnt reply bc he didnt need that and what could i have said? he’ll see what the truth is with exposure and unfortunately this was something he really did go through.

and that’s what makes most people think others could be over the top. because it sounded ridiculous but then it was this huge traumatic thing that we could have never known about. so maybe when someone sounds like actually crazy they have an explanation? of course some ppl are just batshit or annoying but that’s anywhere not just leftists it’ just means more i guess when a ~~librul is annoyed~ but it can be easy to want to make fun of ppl too. lmao. basically what i am saying is the internet? especially twitter? for leftists? in this economy? bitch it’s the wild west out here.

i am 29! idk if i said it or not. i am OLD u probably werent even born in the year i was talking about wah. i know not old-old or old at all but compared to you i’m due for a colonoscopy.

omg i hope u can get vaxxed soon! are you wfh rn? i hope ur also not in a bad state as in state state not state as in ur being :| bleh what a fucking time. it sucks that you have to fucking do work. well unless u like school. which i hope u do. i just assume everyone hates it cos i did lmao

was it the lindsay ellis drama? that bitch is dumb. if there was other drama oh wait the drama i was referring to it all happened on the same day. idk book twitter that well but i saw something from someone who was abt that shit and wowie! the american people are not that.....intelligent to put it lightly.

i’ll get better. ppl tell me they miss me and im like aw. i have insanellllyyy bad insomnia and a lot of stuff happened this year HOWEVER I SLEPT FOR TWO DAYS FOR 8 HOURS AT A REASONABLE TIME. im a new woman. anyways you too! i hope ur not too burnt out with school. we just dont know when the burnout is or we just dont know we are burnt out until we are. the panaramiciccici hit and all the things i was ignoring kind of just fell on me and sooo much happened at once. and frankly it’s hard to take care of ourselves. lord.

Like if you aren’t interested in expanding on the issue in a way that hasn’t been done before all you gotta do it like… spread resources and donate if you can. I dont see the point in having to say something about every issue especially if you (not at you specifically just in general) aren’t immediately impacted by the issue. Like is the 14 yr old white marxist named sarah on twitter really gonna have meaningful insight on anti-asian violence ?

this is part of why i cannot telecommunicate. i dont want to do shit on the internet. i am able bodied so i know that this time has been of such ease for other people. but mentally i just can’t. i don’t have a comment on hand like that and i hvae no desire to engage with ppl that way. i am a super super super solitary person but thats bc it’s MY time so when it’s like all this effort with other people i dont ever want to be alone. it’s the same with the way i approach filmmaking. it isnt a sole thing so i hate it not together. that’s part of how u can get so sucked in and repeat doom scrolling. i was in this webinar last may after [redacted] and this black woman prof said “read with a community and talk” because otherwise she said we are torturing ourselves. you can’t carry that weight all on your own. unfortunately i hate zoom, discord, slack, signal, whatsapp, facetime. you name it this panera has made it evi.. L

you make a really excellent point. i think the young young gen zers are really really just interesting because it’s like this whole new world for them with leftist politics and they just can’t grasp the horrors of the world and the kind of freedom being a leftist can bring. and so many people don’t grow out of it. those people so happen to be the “least productive” in terms of how much time they spend IRL withe these issues. naturally, younger kids are gonna have a harder time. they are not as mobile as well so the internet becomes this place. but then it’s this echo chamber. and many times just things posted without sources. and social media NEEDS that to exist.

i think of the irony of leftist kids on tik tok and while i am happy it’s reaching them it’s just....different. very different. the growth of social media is so good but also so fucking sad, it’s too much! i think the point about not writing everything is major. even i have to do this which is part of the disappearing.y ou need to detach and make sure your head is on straight again. but when you think eveyrone has to be privvy to every thought and you can’t just sit back....which twitter and social media doesn’t encourage. you have to join in. that’s often why when i have something to say it is dense because i don’t feel like repeating it. ever. lmao ust ever. i cant pay attn. social media is a fucking minefield for my brain u can get so lost in it and absorb it but once u start talking you may not be able to stop.

i think a big part of that is it not being a leisurely thing but sort of just in our lives always. this sounds like a grandpa rant but ykwim. We dont have to see the same thing over and over again. And eventually it gets sincerely diluted or its diluted bc of capitalism or whatever. Or if theyre very young or maybe they don’t have like the greatest way of sharing the knowledge? then it can be butchered. I hope this is making sense...i’m talking beyoond the boring surface-level milquetoast shit. i see really ahistorical stuff on there from leftists (like this thing about NK + africa and it being a beneficial rship as opposed to a um not beneficial one. and it isn’t. beneficial but this young black girl was talking abt it and noname rtd and i was like it’s just too complex. there’s no good/bad here just bc it’s not america. dont get me started on this.)

but Lol that was kinda off topic but I think what I meant in my last reply about not turning off the voice in my head is about when I consume media, not necessarily when I’m online talking about. Even if I have criticism for something, I’m usually pretty chill when consuming fandom content bc I think being serious online all the time is kinda boring. Like sometimes I’m analyzing theme and shit but really most of the time im memeing.

exactly.........gotta laugh. thats why sometimes im like i cant think lmao. unfrotunately i have been ARGUING with ppl on the internet for rly no reason when i could have replied to ur very nice fun wholesome message. i love torture. i miss memes.

“ i think the people who get the least enjoyment out of that are those so obsessed with getting upset with anyone thinking outside of their lines as if it equates to them “ EXACTLYYYYY

kekekekeke im glad u got it. it’s like with conservatives throwing around snowflake. now im beginning to question who the real complainers are.

LMAO exactlyyyy. i posted a screenshot of this writer from twitter saying that exact thing. Like first of all, I’m...an adult? and if you are as well uh? i’m sorry for you but are we 12? But how is it affecting u this viscerally? And if it does why dont u...do...research? pihgofuaipoajghou but honestly everything u said. we’re trained to go into it with nothing. i was only around ur age when i started to get more serious about this stuff but you’re like lightyears ahead of where i was at 21. did i say this but i’m in iww and literally i can tell u in 2016 i did not think 2019 me would be in a union bc i told my friend in a train station that we don’t need unions. i was 23...but the thing is i didnt know what i was talking about. at all. and i knew i didnt know and she knew i didnt know and now i am the clown.

also yes at critical engagement. i had to learn so much through experience and this is tuff that i coudlnt be shielded from. there’s an empathy you kinda have to develop and this understanding that you move through the world as this person who is “nowhere and everywhere; nothing and everything” so i’ve always had to think about things differently just to survive. that’s also what can drag a lot of people towards it like theres so many black kpop fans bc i think a lot of the pain in SK can be mirrored (sort of) through our history. and theres currently a history now but it had to be forged. uh what was my point oh yea however i wouldnt have been able to move further if i didnt have my background to go off of bc i knew something was off when i started getting into all these things (ill give u a hint) but if i had no prior knowledge and didnt have to think about it then the critical approach is either stale or stupid.

i had to research but i dont understand how ppl are so bold with little to no research and understanding? thhey just inherently know with also like ZERO experience in what they need experience in. engaging critically means “how i see the world” with dashes of trying to be open adn understanding or whatever. actually that’s another thing like being afraid of criticizing things bc theyre foreign to you so u give it a pass (like we discussed) but it doesnt hAVE TO BEEEE JUST REAAAAAD and then take all the info ur teensy brain and apply it. be a normal human being and dont be fucking rude and racist. thats it! u can complain abt literally anything without being a dick.

as we start with LW and end with LW.....what do we think (i asked this already) omg please share wbl thoughts i THINK i know what ur talking about. well it could be two things; their rship when they came back and the physicality and then pei shou yi. i almost dont even want to use my brain to fucking look at that. i think wbl can get away with more bc of visual~*~*~* reasons (like literally, the look of the show. there’s more space to get lost in the frames. many thai dramas are a lot more literal? this isn’t the right word but it’s very heavily character focused particularly bc of $ i think) though good production also underscores flaws so i am also wrong. but like do u know what i mean? u have to kinda focus on it? or maybe it’s just cos like.....ur so used to it in thai bl idek. i’ve seen tw bl ofc.

look i swear i will justify this forever bc there are some things we miss right but if u feel like someone’s a bad actor....theyre bad. it’s about tone movement etc etc etc and since most thai bl productions have 0 interest in that....well. they take these newbies and put them in these situations. we dont understand thai but if we see them and we’re like “wow this is really bad” then they’re bad lmao. IDC i will never be like cos idk what theyre saying NO WHY HE LOOK LIKE A ROBOT???????? DOES HE EMOTE? why is he CRYING WITH NO TEARS? and it’s not even a total requisite to cry with tears(i mean for me it is) but it’s just like what is happening on ur face right now young man????????

painful.

the inflection stuff is very valid ooh good point tho but that’s only a part of the piece. plus we get used to the way they communicate. like the ppl from sotus were prtty bad. i dont like that show but thats an ex of ppl liing the actors and the person i thought was better other ppl dont think that? well apparently hes a shitty guy but. um. so when theres decent acting its so glaring.

although i must say even tho i dont care for 2gether anymore and would never like to be reminded about its existence (only bc i just cringe lol) i honestly....didnt think bright was a bad actor? but people keep saying he is and i am much more inclined to believe them than myself. though i am not often dickmatized that could have been it. until he opened his mouth and ruined it and then i stopped paying attn.

although honestly i’m so much more critical than i could be positive. i have ben stumped for the last day about how i wasnt mad at his acting in the show. is it me? is it him? who’s......the wrong one.....(me)

oh shit they have been denied? i haven’t been paying attn to whats been going on recently. i just got into it on MDL because of snowdrop. sometimes i literally cannot engage bc ill just be like alright well im black so this power button in my head is going off when ppl talk abt that shit. back in the day when kpop jawns were saying some real outta pocket anti black shit (now everyone is slick with it) it’d always be THEY DONT HAVE GOOGLE THEYVE NEVER SEEN A BLACK PERSON but really it’s like no...maybe they are just racist? that’s ok too.

also the past 2 weeks have been um atrocious bc how fucking easily people fell into the pit of white supremacy and started to turn their ire towards black people and making a competition between our groups just like they wanted. it’s not about the women who are dead anymore, who were sex workers, their womanhood, being asian, being poor anymore. it’s about how much black people get attention and why people only pay attn to us. i am not feeling very generous this week for ppl to excuse that hsit.

on a lighter note, ppl say that abt the whole husband and wife thing. i dont know how to explain how angry that shit makes me but maybe it’s because i do not want to think of my body in relation to a fucking penis at all hours of the day. if bls could kindly not do that it would be nice lmao

yes there are a lot of those. who are only there to gawk lmao. and just idk worship bc of the cult of personality thing bc of how weird and open they have to be as actors. some of the others are people who /think/ theyre really smart (i think im asmart but i also think i am very dumb and i have adhd to prove that MEDICALLY!!!) but are actually not? or their observations arent great? or idk if they are they arent interesting? but i think well..........we have more refined palettes :P

jk also theres just different personalities. you and i mesh more bc we have a lot of the same beliefs and are coming from the same place. that makes it easier to understand as well. i really try to remember that but some people are really weird so. again just...the perception of certain things even down to acting skills. but i also dont like.......believe this genre can really do anything at all. on one hand i want them to do it right bc it’s a piece of work so they should. be proud of it. cos most things arent advancing us bc representation and culturalism are a lie bla bla. it’s just that when the depictions are negative or not done well it adds to the problem as opposed to the things that are well done are fairly benign and can’t really pull us back (perf example is the black panther film. i woudl definitely not say it was transgressive as a literal work but visually it’s just stunning. and it’s sad that it’s stunning and surprising but still with basically an all black cast of mostly dark people abd like what it means in the zeitgeist yes. it’s also just a good movie. but it’s still imperialist prop and unfortunately and this is fucking pathetic to say it “opened eyes” in other countries where they hate black ppl and ignore their own racialized minorities HENNYWAYSSSS a better ex is moonlight except moonlight isnt mainstream and is indie tho...still thru a funnel of capital bc a24 but who cares bleed the fuckers dry is my motto. my point is moonlight is both a great work and doesnt bring any failures to the table and its existence helps in ways outside of art but they arent the defining things giving us material advancement sooooo i mean it’s complex (this is my conclusion to everything um guys it’s complex)

er i had one more point in conjunction to above. oh yea so i like dont need all these extra things to make it progressive. like people really want more women in the show and i am honestly like i really dont. i dont want them to actively do this. if they cant do it naturally then let someone else do it. i am not asking for more bc i dont want it from them. when something comes along i embrace it but i do not see why women should be represented when the genre RELIES on patriarchy. there is no complete satisfying existence for the women in these series. i dont want it. i dont ask people to show us~*~* or respect~* like fuck no the people who make it make it and hopefully more will make it in the future but i will not beg bc THEY DONT WANT TO DO IT SO WOULD FORCING IT MAKE IT BETTER? just fucking leave them out entirely. that’s the answer if theyre gonna make nasty female characters then those bitches can geaux. we have other plcaes to be. booked. and. BUSY!

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ramblian · 4 years

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Jericho Thoughts

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okay so. i’m rewatching jericho. i first watched it sometime around 8th-9th grade, I think maybe somewhere in the first half of 2014. I basically remembered this: the main character was the black sheep of the family, he came back to town, and atomic bombs destroyed most of the US, and the show was about the town dealing with the aftermath. the guy from continuum and one ep of flashpoint played a character i liked named dale (eric knudsen) who liked a popular girl who ended up befriending him, and the asking-for-flowers flashpoint ep guy was the responsible brother. Someone used to be a teacher. The main character looked like Skeet Ulrich, but i didn’t know who that was, just the name.

turns out the main character WAS Skeet Ulrich, and 2 characters (heather and emily) used to be teachers, and i apparently forgot almost all of the major characters. I’ve been rewatching it with the knowledge of which characters die, so that’s good. the show is really good, and it’s really intense. I’m almost done, and it’s tough to keep watching both because it’s so intense and because i know a character i like is about to die tragically.

watching this show makes me so TENSE. i think it really got bad when goetz showed up and i knew bonnie’s death was coming up. i’ve been watching the same episode for like an hour and i started 6 minutes in from another viewing. i don’t know why i’m so stressed. well actually i do it’s because things in this show are AWFUL but i know that no one dies after bonnie.

i also really like that the plot is very much what drives the show. romantic relationships somewhat matter (eric/april/mary, dale/skylar, and stanley/mimi in particular get screentime, while jake’s relationships with emily and heather are there and meaningful but not something that drives the story or gets a lot of attention. dale and eric’s relationships have also been less important in season 2) but they are regularly sidelined while the character deal with the latest crisis. characters have backstories that aren’t always super expanded on, like johnston’s chaotic neutral dad or stanley and bonnie’s parents, because they don’t have a meaningful impact on the plot- how mimi grew up isn’t going to change how the Greens deal with food shortages.

also, i love that it’s a post-apocalyptic show where there’s a lot of fighting and lawlessness and not once have they used rape as a plot device. the closest it ever came to being mentioned was when maggie, a survivor pretending to be military to get towns’ supplies, said that ‘out there, men only want women for one thing’ and that’s IT. i respect that so much. way too many shows and books and movies are like ‘things are bad... and we can only express that through rape’ but this show never does

also the grey morality is very well done in season 1 (the bad guys are clearer in season 2). characters fight and do shitty things because everyone is just trying to survive. Constantino was wrong to start a war with Jericho, but i also understand where he was coming from. Ravenwood ransacked New Bern and left them with almost nothing, and Jericho never bothered to warn them. There were some people considering not honoring the deal to repay the windmills in food. New Bern was on the brink of destruction and Constantino tried to get the resources for survival where he could, by force. The thing with the refugees too. There isn’t really enough food for everyone, and it’s true that Jericho’s been getting a lot of refugees when it’s barely managing to sustain its own population. Some of the refugees have been stealing from them, and sometimes you have to make tricky decisions to survive. But the refugees are also probably going to die if they get sent away, and understandably they cannot accept that. they’ve been stealing food to prepare for this possibility, and they are willing to be violent to secure their place because jericho is much better off than just about anywhere else and they don’t want to die. Roger gets in a fight with Gray and accidentally shoots him, but then actively chooses to hold him at gunpoint and refuse him medical help unless he guarantees the safety of the other refugees. That’s obviously awful- but he’s also trying to protect the lives of the 50 innocent people he brought here. In the end, the refugees get to stay because some Jericho residents volunteer to share their rations, but Roger does not because he obviously committed a terrible crime. He’s not a bad person, but of course he can’t just be forgiven and integrated back into Jericho like nothing happened, and he accepts that and leaves with only a gun from Jake to protect himself because at least the others and emily will be safe.

also that emily and roger’s relationship wasn’t made meaningless in order to further her relationship with jake even despite their history as high school sweethearts.

oh god i just watched the scene where stanley’s talking to bonnie in the morgue and it’s so well done and i’m just in bed crying- not sobbing or anything, but plenty of tears. i don’t know what the last show to make me cry like this was; i’ve been watching so much youtube that i haven’t been watching a lot of hard hitting shows lately i guess. Barry was extremely Fucked Up, that might have made me cry, but it might not have- it had me fucked up for weeks, but i don’t know if i cried.

anyway the scene with stanley and bonnie in the morgue is so good. Stanley talking to her like she’s still alive the way they always did for their parents, and talking to her sign language bc that’s her language. Telling her to say hi to their parents. Letting her know that mimi is still alive, that she succeeded in protecting her, and thanking her for it. Still joking around a little even though he’s obviously heartbroken and just being so genuine with her. Neither of them deserved this.

wow can’t believe heather is a fuckin bootlicker, knowing that the government is extremely corrupt and that she and beck are destroying new bern and choosing to continue to work for that government.

oh beck just has to be some sort of a stupid son of a bitch. absolute goddamn buffoon. siding with the govt, arresting jake in the shadiest way possible in the middle of a crowd, choosing to torture jake (which if he knew a goddamn thing like hawkins did he would know was ineffective), and then thinking that after everything this town and those rangers have done to protect themselves and their loved ones that it was just going to work out for him like the others aren’t going to come for jake immediately and efficiently. i liked beck well enough before but any fondness or respect for him is fucking absolutely gone.

at least eric is really getting to show off his leadership skills now. johnston’s dead, jake’s been arrested/kidnapped, hawkins is busy with other shit. eric’s always one of the second-in-commands but this is one of the few times he’s just plain in command.

“your friends have escalated this to a level i will not tolerate” right but you dragging jake to a fuckin blacksite to torture him was fine???? YOU ESCALATED THIS YOU DUMB STUPID SON OF A BITCH. you have really been given so many chances this season to not serve an evil government and try to protect these people and you’ve failed almost every time, huh? he’d also have to be some sort of an idiot to think that a clearly faked note with jake’s signature saying ‘this bad’ would stop anyone. god i haven’t escalated to hating someone this much so quickly in a long fuckin time.

love how beck is leveraging the entire town of jericho and choosing to oppress them in order to get the rangers to turn themselves in <3 i love punishing innocent people to use them against others just like goetz did last episode <3 what a good guy

i dont know why there are so many beck fics on ao3 because this man fucking sucks. like, can you imagine refusing a whole town food, power, and lights as a bargaining chip, blaming someone else (”don’t forget, you caused this”) and then still thinking you have the moral high ground? incredible mental gymnastics when will beck be in the olympics

heather: your actions are so blatantly terrible that i am just now beginning to consider not defending you to everyone. take responsibility for what you do

beck: hmm. no. my choices are jake’s fault

i know beck is probably going to ‘redeem’ himself by the end of the episode but i don’t fuckin care. too late for him now he can’t just say ‘oops’ and pretend he hasn’t done all of this shit. wild how his actions are now literally being compared to those of nazis during wwii and people still like this guy.

hey do you think beck is an idiot asshole or just pretending to be one for fun

commanding officer: go ahead and destroy everything in the area

beck: 🤔 is killing all those people wrong?

oof rip eric sure is rough when you have to ally with the guy who tortured you and killed your dad to protect ur city but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. also where the hell has dale been? i’ll let it go bc the show isn’t consistent on when he shows up and is a major part of town but in universe it sure is fuckin weird, and you know beck would have dragged him in for questioning too

oh wow beck finally decided to actually try thinking critically and addressing the obvious evidence about cheyenne’s corruption. that makes up for everything and i can stan now /s

‘i’m no longer taking orders from the cheyenne government. i believe it’s corrupt at its core. its actions are criminal’ oh so like everyone’s been telling you this whole time? the actions like the ones you’ve taken, not even at anyone’s command? idiot.

lmao i’m not as opposed to constantino’s methods as the show thinks i’m supposed to be. a revolution against a corrupt, oppressive government is not peaceful. it cannot be. the only good fascist is a dead one.

#jericho #jericho spoilers #in case this shows up in the tags and someone sees it or smthn

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sights-on-the-scifi · 5 years

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Thoughts on sexuality in MASS EFFECT.

General warning.

This post discusses things like sex, sexual predators, sexism and other possible NSFW topics. Reader and viewer discretion is advised.

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MASS EFFECT has had a very complicated relationship with sex, it is intertwined in it’s universe in more ways than one. Ranging from charming, to meaningful or immature and sometimes just downright cringe inducing for it’s occasionally very awkward execution. Because you know... More butts more better Right? Heh...

Females in the universe have been the most affected by this direction, specifically as it relates to the character proportions, design of clothing and sometimes portrayal of stereotypical gendered behaviour. In terms of clothing one outfit for EDI’s pointlessly “sexy” robot body gives her a pronounced camel toe for assumed straight male players to probably enjoy staring at. In general these women and their bodies have been used in the more cynically motivated marketing strategies for the series, a reminder of the flawed media landscape and state of gender portrayal during the time of these game’s releases.

Sometimes the outfit design and cinematography employed on these female characters can do such a huge disservice to the writing and tank the emotional impact for scenes. Such as when Miranda is worrying about her sister only for you to be greeted with an unwelcome and contextually out of place butt shot.

Entertaining and endearing inclusions of sexuality in MASS EFFECT.

On the more charming and innocent side of sexuality included within MASS EFFECT, there are the moments of comedic relief with the ever popular Mordin Solus sex advice dialogue scenes in ME2 and 3. Which also results in a hilarious moment where the character rejects your character’s assumed interest in him.

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Cluing you into the weird and wonderful expressive sexuality of the universe, which includes Mordin’s possible asexuality as a character. A positive representational edition!

Garrus, Tali and the other memorable consensual trilogy spanning relationships are great inclusions that add fantastic emotional and science fiction depth to the universe! Garrus and Tali are incredibly popular options, and for good reason! As you get to learn about how these kind of interspecies relationships could work in an entertaining way with strong characters.

Garrus is especially popular with the ladies for example, and so too Tali for the men. Though a missed opportunity does still exist as a result of the cut bisexual romance options for these two, that would could of allowed more people to enjoy them playing their preferred gender.

The very awkward material.

The Asari are unfortunately one of the many additions to the universe that represent some of the more awkward and silly aspects of these inclusions. In MASS EFFECT 2 you learn that the Asari have a rare and brutal genetic disorder that basically gifts a few with enhancements to their existing mind melding abilities, which in turn also transforms their reproductive abilities into sharpened weapons to enact predatory sexual behaviour on unsuspecting victims... With lethal effect.

It is both questionable and comically cheesy at the same time. It is good to deal with heavy topics like this, but at the same time you can still do it badly and it will always be noticeable.

The consort Sha’ira in a side quest, can task Shepard with finding and convincing a Turian general to stop spreading misinformation and lies about her because of rejection. If you are successful and return to her with the news she will be grateful and offer you the gift of words and the trinket that will be the key to unlock a mysterious prothean secret on a far away world.

OR! In an ironic twist you can then guilt her for your dissatisfaction in this perfectly reasonable reward, into having sex with you without her being able to object... :( Both male and female Shepard have the option to do this so I guess that is equality to be shitty? Heh.

Jacob’s loyalty mission involves finding his long lost father, who’s ship is discovered to have crash landed on an uncharted world. This results in uncovering revelations of the parent’s gross misuse of emergency powers to create a juvenile harem fantasy for himself. Using the planet’s plant based neural decay as the catalyst for manipulating the female crew members into these submissive roles in false hope of returning home... The men suffer similarly and are used to serve as guards or hunters who defend his unquestioned authority, until the day they finally rebelled.

Stumbling onto these rebels you are forced to kill them as they confuse Jacob for his father.

Topics relating to how different genders behave are brought up in a very awkward manner, and the father’s excuses border on the creepily deranged. The player gets to decide whether or not they agree with the actions taken and cast their own judgement. Jacob can also convince his father to kill himself if you suggest he is to be shot on sight for what he did.

In the above video you saw a scene where it is possible for Javik and Female Shepard to have drunken sex with eachother. This happens when Fshep has no romantic partners throughout the trilogy, the assumed hilarity of this joke suggests that it is funny to be drunkingly porked by a 50,000 year old Prothean... That is if, in this case you happen to be a women with no interest in romance.

So yeah... There you have it, MASS EFFECT’s crazy and weird relationship with sexuality and my thoughts on it. Tell me what you think in the comments below or reblog this post with a response to topics of interest.

#Mass Effect #Sexuality #romance #sexism #Gender portrayal

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Six (31.57% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Entertaining, but overrated.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Though Nebula and Gamora trade a couple of lines on a few occasions, they invariably speak about either Thanos, or Ronan.

Female characters:

Meredith Quill.

Bereet.

Nebula.

Gamora.

Carina.

Nova Prime.

Male characters:

Mr Quill.

Peter Quill.

Yondu Udonta.

Ronan.

Korath.

Rocket.

Groot.

The Broker.

Drax.

Thanos.

The Collector.

Denarian Saal.

Denarian Dey.

OTHER NOTES:

Seatbelts on spaceships should really be mandatory.

Aahahahaha Peter has a woman on his ship whose name he can’t remember and whom he forgot was even there! Oh, it’s so funny and charming! What a classic misogynistic cliche intro! Garbage.

Rocket chastises Groot to ‘learn genders’, and I don’t think the irony of a raccoon (a species with almost no visually-evident sexual dimorphism) saying that to a tree-person (whose species - if sexually dimorphic at all - certainly has no reason to adhere to the humanoid/mammalian model) is deliberate. The other alien higher-life-forms they encounter in the film are pretty uniformly human in appearance (not much effort going on in the ‘alien’ department besides just painting people in bright colours), but lack of imagination from the creative team doesn’t mean that the binary gender system we’re accustomed to on Earth has any broad bearing on the galaxy at large.

Aaahh, and now Peter is explaining his scars to Drax, with lovely stories of women he cheated on in the past because he’s ~such a stud~.

Thanos tells Ronan off for his dull political raging and whiny behaviour, but he’s sitting on a shiny floating throne himself, so I’m not sure he’s earned the right to criticise what other people have got going on.

Rocket suggests that Gamora trade sexual favours to get things from other prisoners, because we’re being Like That with this movie.

The Collector keeps female slave ‘assistants’, whom he evidently treats so nicely that Carina commits suicide by infinity stone at the first opportunity in order to escape him. We’re just doing so well for the ladies in this film.

As a great comedic beat, Drax calls Gamora a “green whore”. It’s both a shitty line, and nonsensical, since Drax isn’t supposed to comprehend metaphors and he has no reason to believe Gamora is a literal ‘whore’ (nor is he likely to use such a colloquial term, considering the calibre of his standard vocabulary). Basically, it’s a rubbish line from every angle, and all in service of a misogynistic joke.

This film is a terrible waste of Djimon Hounsou.

Ronan is very theatrically over-the-top in his pronouncements, but Lee Pace does his damnedest to make it work on delivery.

Why does Ronan’s flashy purple infinity stone weapon not kill people when he shoots them with its energy blast? Obviously it would be terribly inconvenient to the story if he just casually killed all the good guys, but honestly. It doesn’t make much sense. They coulda at least pretended there was a reason.

The part of me that is susceptible to acts of heroism is affected by the guardians all joining hands to share the stone’s power. Not enough to feel that the film or the character relationships actually connected on an emotional level, but enough that this ending doesn’t feel totally unearned.

Drax patting Rocket’s head while he’s crying over Groot is a lovely touch. THAT is the strongest character interaction of the film.

So. I’ll be honest: I don’t like this movie. I don’t think it works. I think it’s essentially just a string of gimmicks, loosely attached, entertaining enough on the surface but with no meaningful depth to hold in the mind or keep the audience engaged once the credits kick in (it’s also much heavier on the sexist tropes than any other MCU film previous). I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t give me anything that I value in a viewing experience, it just happens and then ends and that’s it. And the reason it doesn’t work is, frankly, the writing is lazy as shit. It makes a sub-par effort at establishing character and thus relies heavily on cliches, it rarely bothers to incorporate relevant plot and motivations and such into the story at early points in order to generate narrative pay-off, and the world-building is hazy at best and, like the characterisation, trades predominantly on expectation of stereotypes rather than actually creating anything original.

Let’s start in the obvious place: with our lead character. I’m tempted to just say ‘Peter Quill is garbage’ and then move on, because it’s true and also, he’s just not complex or interesting at all, which is ridiculous because he’s got that whole ‘alien abduction’ origin story and there should be like, literally any layers at all to his story instead of him just being an obnoxious Lothario who makes pop culture references like that counts as having a personality. But, here we are. I’m not familiar with the comics so I don’t know if this is a common complaint from fans who can’t believe their boy got all his nuances deleted in favour of such an inane cliche, but if this is exactly what Quill is like in the comics too? That’s no excuse. Part of the magic of adaptation is the opportunity to improve upon things the source material did wrongly or badly. The Quill we’ve got here in this movie is such a bland template he’s almost functionally useless; he barely impacts the story at all, especially in any way that is relevant to his personality or skills and necessitates his presence (the dance-off distraction is the only good Quill moment, and it’s also one of the few inspired choices in the whole film). At the end of the day, Quill exists so that the story has a Main Guy, being a straight white American male (and making sure we all, excessively, know about it), because God forbid we be expected to identify with anyone else. I have heard people sing the praises of the film for ‘subverting cliche’ by not having Quill and Gamora actively hook up by the end, as if that somehow makes it better that every single other aspect of that tedious forced romance plot is still squarely in place and set to play out in future films (pro tip: if the main guy still ‘gets the girl’, only it doesn’t happen in the first film, that’s not subversive. That’s still playing the trope dead-straight). Quill not immediately being shown to be rewarded with sex is not some incredible feat of original storytelling, and it certainly doesn’t absolve him of being a dime-a-dozen pig of a character. If that’s the most ‘unexpected’ character element you can cite, you’re in dire straits.

Now, I’m not gonna talk about every character individually, because in most cases there’s not much to talk about; Drax is the big warrior guy with the Fridged Family backstory we’ve seen so many times before it elicits zero (0) emotions now; Groot - though an interesting idea on paper - is basically just a Deus Ex Machina of whatever ability is most useful at any given moment, too ill-defined to have boundaries to his powers and conveniently not using his full potential whenever it would allow the characters to win too easily; and Rocket, well, Rocket is actually the only one of the leads who manages any meaningful nuance, which is unfortunate because most of the time he’s just used for sarcastic comic relief. The other character I am going to talk about is Gamora, and it’s because she’s a prime example of how this movie fails to establish things so that they feel like they actually matter or the character’s motivations are understandable, etc. We are introduced to Gamora when she overrides Ronan’s order for Nebula to retrieve the orb from Xandar; as it turns out, Gamora’s introductory moment (literally the first time we see her or hear her speak) is also her act of rebellion when she puts into action her plan to escape Thanos’ clutches and go her own way. The problem, obviously, is this is her introduction. We’ve never seen this character before, we’ve only just met Ronan and Nebula as well, Thanos is barely more than a concept, as is the planet Xandar and the politics around it. Nothing has been established yet about the life that Gamora occupies, so her ploy to escape it? Meaningless. We don’t even find out that Gamora was not planning to retrieve the orb for Ronan until she tells us so after she’s been arrested, and we have literally no reason to believe her because we don’t know her yet because her character has not been established at all. The traditional way to do this would be to show her in her old life, doing as she’s told and/or witnessing terrible things being done by her compatriots, and showing the audience that she has clear misgivings so that when she turns, we understand the context and can believe that’s a logical character decision based on established personality and morals (think of Finn’s introduction in The Force Awakens for a textbook example). Because no time or effort is ever invested in establishing who or how Gamora is, everything we know is delivered to us directly in dialogue, all tell, no show, and what could easily have been the film’s most dynamic character is instead hampered by having her development choked off to avoid spending time on letting her origins matter (despite the fact that those origins are essential to the plot).

On which note, lets talk bad guys. Thanos first, because there’s not much to say, and that’s not a good thing: Thanos is actually pointless to this film, the only reason he’s there is so that the MCU can use him to actual purpose in later films and his relation to Gamora and Nebula and the hunt for the Infinity Stones needs to be established first, but as with everything else this movie is terrible at establishing things effectively. Consequently, Thanos...just floats around on a chair, and then Ronan tells him to piss off and we don’t see or hear from him again in the rest of the film, and there’s no real effort made to integrate Thanos into the story so that he seems like anything other than a dead-end subplot cluttering up the movie for no reason. The closest Thanos gets to anything notable is when he chides Ronan for his boring politics, but even that is symptomatic of the wider problem with this movie’s lazy writing: Ronan’s whole character is essentially just another dull archetype - in this case, the extremist villain - and a solid nothing at all is done to establish his politics or what they mean, other than death for the people we’re told are the innocents. This is a problem with the world-building of the film as a whole, because none of the galaxy’s politics is fleshed out, there’s no context to why the Kree have a problem with Xandar or why we should care, and Xandar kinda gets treated like the centre of the universe but it also seems that’s just for convenience sake so that the plot can return to a previous location for the final act. Hell, I haven’t the faintest fucking idea where Earth is supposed to fit in to all of this, other characters talk about it so it’s clearly a known quantity to the rest of the galaxy, and yet no one knows any details about it and Quill never bothered to go back there for reasons which really SHOULD be explored and yet are not even mentioned (that would seem like some of that characterisation he doesn’t have), so I don’t know what we’re supposed to interpret from that. I’m not confident that the creative powers bothered to think about it, considering how much they didn’t think about anything else. This is a movie where ‘human, but painted’ passes for ‘alien’ and society apparently functions exactly like Earth, tedious misogyny and all, despite the absence of cultural sharing to explain the Earthlike similarities (and boy oh boy do I HATE the laziness of science fiction where everything being identical to Western culture on Earth is treated like it’s ‘just the natural order’ that should be expected to develop in any sentient species, instead of a complex system shaped by unique and varied influences over thousands of years and dependent upon environment, religion, philosophy, and a myriad of other factors not replicated in these poorly-drawn ‘alien’ cultures. I get that you’ve gotta employ at least some shorthand in order to get on and tell your story within time constraints, but come on. If you’re not gonna think about world-building at all, don’t set the story on an alien planet). Above all else, we know that Ronan is the villain because he’s painted (literally) as one; he’s the bad guy through visually-indicated othering, because we all know good guys don’t look like that (whereas most of Ronan’s enemies on Xandar are just regular-looking white folks. Curious...). Sure, Ronan is also introduced spouting rhetoric and then smashing a dude with a hammer, and that seems like villain behaviour, but that only reinforces the point: Ronan’s role is made unmistakable through age-old tropes, and it’s never explored or subverted or made dynamic from there. Like Quill as the ‘hero’, Ronan is a dime-a-dozen cliche.

So anyway. Lets talk plot. This one goes like so: Quill collects the orb from Morag, where he coincidentally runs into Korath and company who just-so-happen to be after the orb at the same time (how it is that multiple interested parties only just found out that one of the most powerful destructive forces in the universe is just chillin’ on this abandoned planet, they don’t bother to explain). Quill runs into both Gamora, and Rocket and Groot, the other parties happening to be after him for different reasons and coincidentally converging on Xandar at the same point. Everyone gets arrested and sent to prison, where they meet Drax and promptly escape and fly to Knowhere so that The Collector can exposition-dump about Infinity Stones. Drax calls Ronan up, just literally straight-up calls the bad guy to come and find them because I guess figuring out a normal plot reason for the villain to catch up with the good guys was too hard, so we had to go for extreme stupidity instead. Ronan gets the orb and goes back to Xandar to destroy it, and our main characters figure they should stop that, so they do. Roll credits. Now, you can make pretty much any story sound basic and stupid by breaking it down into its component pieces, but the important thing to note about this layout is how many convenient or just plain stupid aspects there are. There are almost no character meetings or story developments that come about logically through the sensible development of plot driven by character’s motivations springing from established narrative, etc, and part of that problem is absolutely because there’s so little established character/world-building to begin with, but it’s also because whatever there is tends to apparate when it is needed without any sign of existing beforehand; that is, very little of the story is seeded early on so that it can come to fruition later in a narratively satisfying fashion. The Nova Corps sentence the characters to the Kyln prison as if it’s a big scary concept, but we’ve never heard of it before so we have no reason to consider it trouble. Drax appears and other characters literally tell us why we should pay attention to him, instead of him being, say, pre-established (SUCH AS by having his family tragedy shown on screen as a dual-establishing event for him and Ronan, or something to which Gamora was privy in some way in order to intro her misgivings as discussed above, or even just having someone reference the legend of Drax the Destroyer BEFORE getting to the Kyln (you could also, y’know, establish the Kyln itself in talking about how Drax was sent there. Just saying)). Intro the idea of Knowhere and/or The Collector BEFORE heading there so that it’s less convenient for Gamora to just-happen to have a buyer already set up for the item we didn’t even know she had planned to steal as part of the escape plot we didn’t know she was hatching. For the love of everything, establish some actual REASON for Ronan to follow our characters to Knowhere, instead of just ‘Drax got drunk and called him’. Link the pieces of your story together with concepts and developments that build upon each other in a narrative progression. That’s the difference between having a plot, and having a string of chronological set pieces (some of which - like Morag and the Kyln - don’t even have a purpose anyway beyond providing some action-scene opportunities).

Before I close this out, I just want to run through a little exercise to demonstrate something that you never, ever want to happen in a story. You never want to have a lead character who can be deleted from the plot without leaving a hole too big to be easily filled by the rest of the cast. But what happens if Peter Quill is removed from this story? Well, pretty much all of the misogyny disappears, so that’s a plus. Someone else is gonna have to retrieve the orb from Morag, but we could easily send Rocket and Groot to do that. Gamora can still fight with them on Xandar exactly as it happens in the actual movie, only this time it’s not just pure coincidence that they conflict. We saved vital time that the film spent on Quill’s inconsequential childhood abduction (and we could save more on trimming the pointless action on Morag), which is time that could be better spent on all that other establishing crap I was talking about earlier, tightening up the narrative. Quill doesn’t serve any important purpose in the Kyln, so we can remove him from that no problem, nor does he matter on Knowhere other than a frankly stupid and ultimately pointless moment when he saves Gamora (definitely unnecessary when we’re removing the romantic subplot bullshit along with Quill). And then what? The characters agree that not letting Ronan destroy the galaxy is probably a good call (not Quill-relevant), they head back to Xandar, fight some bad guys, hold hands, win the day. We lose Quill’s only good moment in the form of the dance-off, but it’s an acceptable loss in order to strengthen the entire rest of the film by deleting the most meaningless character: the lead. We also arguably lose the Ravagers in the process, but as much fun as Yondu is, the plot can also survive completely intact without him (the only time the Ravagers matter is for the previously-identified useless damsel contrivance with Quill saving Gamora, and then they do help out on Xandar in the end, but they aren’t necessary for that - the Nova Corps could have been expanded just a smidge and taken care of everything). On the other hand, if you remove Gamora, you lose the connection to Ronan/Thanos as well as the moral compass of the Guardians; some other character would have to be significantly altered to fill the gap. You lose major Deus Ex Machina skills without Groot, and without Rocket someone else’s narrative has to change in order for Groot to have a buddy (plus you need a new mastermind for various plans, though that’s an easier hole to fill). You skip Drax and you do lose a major plot development in the form of him drunk-dialling Ronan, but admittedly that’s one of the worst things in this whole dumb waste of a movie, so maybe it’s not such a loss. You could ditch Drax. But, that’s not important, because Drax isn’t packaged as the leading man: Quill is. If you delete Drax, you don’t really streamline or improve the story (you could fix the one big flaw in his character very easily, he doesn’t have to disappear for that). You delete Quill...I know, comic book adaptation, dropping the main character is not considered an acceptable alteration when you’re improving the story for the screen. But come on. The least they could do is make him actually matter, not just be a perfunctory inclusion for the sake of sticking this ‘weird sci-fi’ as firmly in the centre of over-done cliche as a lazy gimmick story ever could be. There are a few chuckles to be had with this film, and it’s not entirely boring, but it’s not half as endearing nor even an eighth as inspired as it thinks it is. I’m not impressed by any of it.

#Guardians of the Galaxy #Bechdel Test #female representation #Marvel Cinematic Universe #MCU

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years

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OUAT 2X09 - Queen of Hearts

Ooh! After how great that last episode was, I’ve got my HEART set on this review!

And you can experience what I’ve got to say right under the cut!

Press Release Cora and Hook face off with Mary Margaret and Emma in a race to secure the compass, which will point its holder to the portal into Storybrooke. But back on the other side, Regina and Mr. Gold, desperate to keep Cora out, put a plan into action that would kill anyone entering the portal - placing Mary Margaret’s and Emma’s lives in danger as well. Meanwhile, back in the fairytale land that was, Captain Hook travels to Wonderland and meets up with a vengeful Queen of Hearts. General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Past I don’t really feel like there’s a lot to say about this segment. Apart from re-establishing personality traits of both Killian and Cora, this segment serves only the purpose of giving exposition for why Killian and Cora weren’t cursed and how they started working together. While it’s really well done exposition and it’s great to see Killian and Cora bounce off one another, exposition doesn’t leave a lot to discuss and what I do have to say is in other segments. Storybrooke The segment provides the ultimate test of Regina’s character thus far in the series: Rumple offers Regina a path of temptation and she has to choose whether or not to take it. This was fantastically done because not only has it been well built, but the conflict itself resonates with Regina’s character so well. Her biggest fears and dreams are pit against her, escalating the impact of the choice and making part of the fallout (Where she loses having Henry to herself) come off as effectively tragic and giving the resolution all the more bittersweet. Enchanted Forest I actually forgot that Emma had a story of her own in this episode as she deals with what being the Savior actually means. And I loved the direction they took with it. Emma’s intimidated by the prospect, as Emma would be, but she also is willing to accept the responsibility and that fear is channeled into the question of how much control she has over her destiny and what is to come of it now that her initial purpose (As far as she knows) is fulfilled. That’s a really good question to ask, and what makes this conflict so good is how Emma continues to give it her all, and it’s a combination of her history as the savior as well as her sacrifice for Snow that makes her heart unrippable and proving herself to be something unique: Magic. And her conversation with Rumple sums all of this up in a way that enforces Emma’s value and gives hints as to where her character will go next like a neat bow on top of a package. All Encompassing “Love is weakness.” There’s a contrast here between Emma and Cora. When the line was stated to Cora, it was from Regina who (As far as she knew) sacrificed her mother’s life for herself (For as justified as it was). As it’s being said to Emma, Emma sacrificed herself for her mother, and that selflessness between the later mother/daughter duo, partnered with her lineage, is what allows Emma to reject the notion for “love is strength.” Insights - Stream of Consciousness -Given his backstory, how much you want to bet that that “slave” comment from Faceless Guard 1 took Killian from competent fighter to competent fighter with a vengeance? XD -I just noticed, but Belle has a roomy as fuck cell. I mean look at that thing! My bedroom is smaller than this! Put a desk and a mini fridge in here, give me some WiFi, and make my bed not suck and I’d live here. -”A friend.” Not yet, Killian, but give it a few more seasons. -Killian can be the freakin’ best liar. Look a how well he delivers that fib to Belle! Like, if I wasn’t aware of what he was doing, I’d believe him. -”Do I look like I’m playing a game of chess?” Once again, not yet, Killian, but give it a few more seasons. -”Until.” I like how Rumple’s subtly comments on the change in Regina’s outlook on life, a subtle show of her redemption. -Emma’s reaction to Snow’s news about being told beforehand that she was going to be the Savior was so sad! Look at how shake up she is and just compare that to how she was when August told her as much in “The Stranger.” She now realizes that like it or not, this is her life and she needs to be the beacon for everyone. As someone who recently felt that pressure for all of two days, I can’t imagine how it must feel like to have to live with that mindset. -I know I’m supposed to be freaking out about Emma’s name being written so many times, but all I can think is “damn, Rumple has pretty penmanship.” -The Regal Believer development is just beautiful here. It blossomed so well from the last episode and now Henry’s showing more overt pride in Regina’s progress. It makes the fact that Regina’s lying to him so sad. -”No one mourn her [The dead fairy].” Rumple, dude, why would you say that? She was a nice fairy! Get your fairy vendetta out of your ass! -I feel like Regina has waaaaaay too much faith in Killian. Like, there are WAY too many holes in this plan, ranging fro Cora’s sheer power to the fact that someone can sneak through while Killian’s getting the job done. -So here’s my question: Why did Cora end up sticking with the Wonderland crazy aesthetic of masks and whatnot? I feel like that’s just not her style. -Look at Killian’s reaction when he discovers that the organ is missing! He can HEARTLY believe his eyes! XD -Yay! Aurora’s heart looks normal again! A touch too pale, but normal! -”Actually, no.” While I do like how the legitimacy of this line is retroactively made better later on in this episode, I feel like as it stood at the second it was said, it was rather weak. I love Killian, but up until this point, for as much as he’s talked about honor, we haven’t been shown it as much. While yes, in “Tallahassee” iself, Killian didn’t lie to Emma, that act was done more passively. What I want (And again, get later on in this episode) is a more active show of that honor, for not only did it poorly affect the present events of “Tallahassee,” but this scene in its entirety too, including the hurt that’s supposed to be behind Killian’s speech about the bean. -I love Emma and Snow’s discussion about Emma’s role as the savior. The way that it builds is fantastic and the tragedy of the circumstances that Emma brings up (That she doesn’t know of her work as the savior was finished when the curse was complete or not) as well as Jennifer Morrison’s acting is just fantastic. It sells her unsureness and frustration concerning the fact that her saviorhood was created not from who she was as a person, but as a product of her lineage and a prophecy. -Cora sure CORRODED that dirt away! XD -”Honor? For the pirate that snuck into my palace and attempted to assassinate me?” She’s got a point there, Killian. -Okay, so I want to give a rebuttal, if you will to what is considered a plot hole. In the flashback to “Dark Waters,” the events are implied to happen between the casting of the first curse and when Killian pretends to be a blacksmith. The plot hole that’s brought up is that that’s not possible because Cora froze them for the curse. My point of contention for this plot hole theory is that people in the shattered Enchanted forest are shown to be awake. Mulan notes that Killian’s been in their town for a month and that the town needed time to be constructed. Therefore, I pose that the time spell broke when Emma arrived and Cora’s words were more in reference to her interest in traveling between the realms and that it would come to pass after the curse was broken because that’s when Regina would have lost everything. -I really wish they’d still call Mary Margaret “Snow” when she came home. It’s so annoying to write her long ass name. -Snow is the ultimate archer! Like, what the fuck?! She’s so freakin’ good! Who can shoot a freakin’ compass like that?! -”Normally, I’d prefer to do other more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back…” I know this line gets a tough break (And I have something to say about Killian’s more...unavoidably shitty thing down below), but I genuinely don’t think this line means what many antis say it is. The line is about sex and as it comes right after Killian saves a woman’s heart and gives it back to someone who will ensure Aurora’s autonomy, the framing of that line as crossing a line just doesn’t add up to me. While these are my thoughts on the line, I just want to make it clear that I understand sensitivity, and if something like this line hit close to home for a situation for you, I neither could nor would ever want to tell you you’re wrong. Killian’s manner of speaking in Season 2 was definitely problematic and I’m glad that the writers decided to stop going so close to the edge of discomfort going forward. -”With my life on the line.” I don’t think this line was only talking about his own mortality. As we’ve seen (And will see in just a couple of episodes), Killian cares fuck all about his mortality. His “life?” His revenge. It’s so pathetic to see that that’s what Killian’s measuring his life as and it makes his redemption at the end of the season much more meaningful. -I love the actiony nature of the climax. -Rumple, was probably not a great idea to knock out Belle’s bestie like that. -Something to point out, when Regina’s holding Henry back, she’s physically holding him back, either consciously or subconsciously holding herself back from using magic like she promised (Also, Rumple is the one who has used magic throughout this set of present events. -*Totally choking up at the Snow Swan Believer hug* -”Just remember never to bet against you in the future.” Emma, make sure you do that because if not, he will forget HARD! -Rumple and Emma’s conversation towards the end of the episode sells Emma’s dilemma over her nature as the savior. Rumple says it best: He made the curse, but he didn’t make her. He took advantage of the person she was, the person she built for herself to accomplish what he wanted, but she as a person was the one who came through and accomplished things. -”Dinner at Granny’s? On me.” Ruby, did you steal Gold’s wallet or something after the assumed verbal thrashing you gave him following you waking up? Because otherwise, that’s gonna cost a ton! There are at least twelve people in this room and those dwarves eat a LOT! -The lighting for Hook’s ship is AMAZING, darkened by the clouds and fog, but unmistakably The Jolly Roger. Arcs - How are These Storylines Progressing? The Journey Home (May as well combine the Emma and Snow/Storybrooke stuff since they’re one and the same) - And here we come to the close of this arc. Overall, this story was so well done. It accomplished the task of opening and closing so many stories and arcs, all the while involving almost the entire main and supporting of the series. Additionally, it went on for as long as it needed, never feeling too long or short. Most every episode was satisfying and contributed to the solving of this duo-realm conundrum. Rumple’s Redemption - Rumple, of course, took a bit of a step back here, but I like it. Not only is he early in his redemption, but Cora’s a threat the likes of which he hasn’t been threatened to face since he started his attempts to better himself. It’s also given an added bout of weight due to the circumstances that Regina laid out in the last episode (Cora could hurt Belle) and that he brings up in this episode (The entire town as a whole is in danger). Regina’s Redemption - I misspoke last episode by calling it the culmination of Regina’s redemption arc in this partial season, because in hindsight, it’s more of a two-parter. While we got payoff the last time in regards to the improvement in hers and Henry’s relationship, this is the challenge portion. It’s one thing to work towards repairing relations with your son who you unashamedly love, but to help not only those who you hate, but to also risk a powerful and abusive enemy crossing your path in the process is something else entirely, and that was such an important distinction to make and present. Killian’s Redemption - *sighs* So I can’t help but feel like the missteps I pointed out in my “Tallahassee” review really did this particular arc dirty. Like, I feel like had the interactions between Emma and Kiilian been a little bit stronger in terms of setting up a dynamic where trust was being built but cut down just as it was on the precipice of really coming out, the moments here where Killian shows such vitriol over being betrayed would have been so much more powerful and to see them not work because of that is just so frustrating. HOWEVER, I feel I should say, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing good to be said about Killian’s redemption here, because a VERY good decision was made that for my money, essentially revitalized Killian’s arc. I am so glad that it was Killian who caught Aurora’s heart. As I said before, that’s the kind of show of honor that reinforces that there is goodness in Killian and that said goodness can be worth growing. It helps to solidify Killian’s ability to be sympathetic in a half season that characterized his more villainous attributes well, but needed a touch more balancing when it came to the more heroic ones. This one action showed Killian as both the pirate with the snarky one liners as well as a man who can be saved, and that was imperative to see before we went back to Storybrooke. Favorite Dynamic Rumple and Regina - Rumple is one half of the fork in the road for Regina’s conflict throughout the episode, but what I really appreciate is that it’s not just left at that. Look at the following line: ”You won’t be able to be a better anything if Cora comes through.” Rumple knows Regina so well, acting as the devil on her shoulder, but also a guardian at the same time. He knows not only what Cora can do to him and the town, but Regina too, just on a personal level. While he doesn’t say this outright, choosing to focus on the more overt danger that Cora poses, the way that Robert Carlyle delivers that line and the history that Rumple and Regina have together convinces me that it’s true. In this episode, Rumple’s motivations are selfish, but not entirely, and I found that so nuanced that I couldn’t let it go unappreciated. Writer Adam and Eddy were in charge here, and of course they are: The run the ends of every major arc! And I think that’s what they do best. If and when they communicate correctly and are paying attention to what the other writers are doing, they’re good at providing finales that come full circle from where they started. This is very much one of those cases. I feel like Adam and Eddy were really paying attention to what their writers were going for and wrote this episode accordingly. Also, I genuinely like their writing. What they put into this episode works, with natural dialogue and a good use of story elements all around. In this episode especially, we get so many from Rumple’s stolen wand to the scroll in the jail cell to Jefferson’s hat and even the well! Darker Aspects (TW: Mentions of assault and abuse) Watching Killian smack Belle is incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I get that we needed a way to see Killian turn on Belle after she showed herself to be useless and magic’s not really his thing, but maybe he could’ve stolen some sleep powder. It would be more in character given that he’s a pirate and wouldn’t push a character who was designed with redeemability and sympathy in mind to a place that’s so screwed up. And I get that villains have done worse. Hell, this isn’t even Killian’s worst deed (Not by far), but modern sensibilities are what they are for a reason and something so personal as hitting a woman in such a real way simply strikes a lot harder of a note than a murder which for most audiences has a level of distance (Especially given the more fantastical methods of death in this show such as being gut by swords and having one’s heart ripped out and crushed), and this was the case when the episode aired too. Do I personally go on to like Killian after this? Yes, I think that’s pretty obvious from everything to my icon to my reblogs to the fact that I’m both participating in and creating a project partially dedicated to the guy, but just as with Regina and Graham, it’s a dark spot on a record that I refuse to forget, even as I move on from it. “I’m sorry, Mother. Without you, I’d never have become the person that I am now.” Given how abusive Cora was to Regina and how that abuse framed Regina’s mindset for such a long time, that line is so messed up, though better written for the fact that it was correctly framed for the complicated relationship that Cora and Regina have. Rating 9/10. What a fun episode! So much of the personalities of our mains come out as we close out the first major arc of the season! The entire episode was filled with great character moments and an earnest feeling of closure. It’s intense, heartwarming, romantic, and just a fun ride. I took points off for the uncomfortable moment as stated above in my “Darker Aspects” segment because that was honestly just disgusting to be portrayed in such a callous way and because of the disproportionate early payoff to the setup of the Emma and Killian dynamic. Flip My Ship - Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Hooked Queen - Regina’s hook pull was just sexy as hell. Going against someone as flirtatious as Killian with such an intimacy-inflicting maneuver just works so well! Captain Swan - Don’t think I don’t notice how the camera doesn’t point to Killian as Cora mentions how in 28 years, there will be a savior. Also, as this is a CS-centric segment in the scene with the infamous sword fight, I feel like I should weigh in on the immortal question: Did Killian throw the fight? My answer: Nah. There was this great post made a while ago and I don’t remember who wrote it, but they analyzed Killian’s sword fighting and concluded that he was trying to win, but not harm Emma in the process. Anyway, if you remember that post, please send it my way so I can link it! Finally, I found it to be such a good writing choice to have Emma be the one who heard why Killian saved Aurora’s heart because it was a good show of how he is someone redeemable. Swan Queen - Two things. First, Emma’s “thank you” is so amazingly sincere. It’s quiet, but energized, amazed and yet calmed. Second, the good-natured quips about Cora provides a very genuine moment of bonding for the two women for the first time really. Snowing - We get a great parallel here for the TLK that wakes Charming up. Not only is the dialogue given again, but the dwarves are there too and even the sheets are white just like in Snow’s coffin. It’s one of my favorite parallels of theirs, up there with some of the moments in “Snow Falls.” That’s because while there are these repeated elements, there are changes to make this a new scene and give it a different level of weight. It’s the first time we’ve seen a TLK in Storybrooke since the curse broke and new characters with new motivations are there for the ride. ()()()()()()()()() Season 2 has been utterly amazing thus far! Score wise, it’s doing better than Season 1, and even the disappointments have been relative improvements over the last Season’s. This is an especially great surprise because I had little recollection of Season 2 before I started this rewatch and I’m so happy that it’s been as good as it’s been and I hope that it stays this good going into the next arc!

Thank you all for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales! Putting this project together has really boosted my appreciation for the sophomore season of OUAT and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the extra boost my channel has gotten since this has started and the people I’ve met by doing this!

Season 2 Tally (86/220) Writer Tally for Season 2: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis: (29/60) Jane Espenson (17/50) Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (20/50) David Goodman (10/30) Robert Hull (10/30) Christine Boylan (7/30) Kalinda Vazquez (10/30) Daniel Thomsen (10/20)

Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairytales #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat #tw: assault #tw: mentions of abuse #basically every character in this episode is discussed #ships mentioned #hooked queen #captain swan #swan queen #snowing #ouat 2x09

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hamstermastersamster · 6 years

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Aww man, Voltron S7. General SPOILERY observations under the cut:

- 13 EPISODES AAAAAAAAAA - I binged them all in one stretch and I’m not even sorry.

- Oh, Dreamworks. You were so close. But it still counts as Bury Your Gays if you kinda split them up before you kill one of them :’( Disappointed.

- Once I caught wind of that Shiro revelation I was really looking forward to a good feelsy reunion once they reached earth and it was totally denied. We don’t even get to know more about this relationship, or what Adam was like as a person, or how he felt after Shiro took off for that last time and then was reported dead. These missing holes are always so frustratiiiiing grrrrrrr!

- Please for the love of god now hook Shiro up with some cute garrison officer or resistance fighter between seasons. Let him rest, let him love.

- I enjoyed seeing the brotherhood between Shiro and Keith develop in ep 1, but the other revelation about Shiro being chronically ill (I feel you, bro) was really odd. I’m all for characters with chronic illnesses that they just gotta Deal With but this disease has literally never been mentioned or its impact seen ever again. Not throughout the entire season, nor ever referenced by Shiro and Keith in seasons prior. Did the galra cloning process eradicate it? Is it just gone now? All the physical stuff he’s done right up until the final episode, he still seems at pretty peak condition to me!

Of course, maybe he’s just a Chronic Illness Icon and extremely good at pretending to be abled. God knows the poor dude has got enough else going on visibly (PTSD, amputated arm . . .), maybe he just told his invisible illness to piss off and deals with it without mentioning it ever (life goals right there).

Whatever, it’s weird. Chronic illnesses are called that for a reason - pls don’t drop ‘em in and then forget they exist.

- I think that intro threw me off ‘cause the season intro felt slow to me, without providing the meaningful post-S6 character moments I think we all wanted (or I wanted?). I wanted Shiro team hugs, to hear his feelings about Kuron beyond that, granted, hilarious one liner about his evil clone, to see if HE WAS OKAY MENTALLY but, as Romelle kindly points out, we all just move on again. There were 13 eps this season, there was room for this important shit!

- Okay, I laughed a lot at the obligatory comedy episode this season. Parody!Lotor made me piss myself and I never want to see blushing Haggar again.

- Zethrid/Ezor shippers, do your thing. I was glad to see Lotor’s generals get some much needed time for their characters to shine.

- Feels latched onto me from the lost in space ep and never really let me go from there. Until that point I was feeling like I could maybe watch this season in a few sittings. But team bonding is my jive, and . . .

- POST-APOCALYPSE EARTH IS ALSO MY SUPER JIVE OH SHIT. It’s like they knew what was in my heart. Everyone who knows me knows that I live for this crap and I never get tired or stop feeling emotions at the sight of our civilisation in ruins and brave desperate human factions trying to correct that :’D

- At first I thought the world’s reaction to Sam’s global broadcast was so simplistically naive. Like, based on today’s situation I’m pretty sure nations would immediately accuse each other of a) lying, b) developing superweapons to bolster their own power and take over the other nations, and c) start world war 3. But Veronica later says that WW3 has already happened on this Earth, and the garrison seems to be just one site for an international military organisation, so I’m gonna assume we’re at the point of worldwide peace, an enlightened human race and international alliance, and let it slide.

- Speaking of, SO MANY GREAT MINOR CHARACTERS WTF?! The cute MFE cadets! Veronica! Resistance fighters! And the usual effortless unspoken Voltron diversity in the garrison troops and the resistance fighters is so refreshing and fills my heart with joy. Women and PoC are just allowed to exist in the Voltron world without having to justify their presence or be a plot point or serve the white dudes of the series. They can be good, bad or nothing special in between and why isn’t this the basic standard of entertainment oh my god. It makes it doubly frustrating that they didn’t give Adam his due, gdi.

- I just really enjoyed watching Earth fall to the galra and the level of detail lavished on establishing that was, for once, just right. To the point that I didn’t even realise we’d gone a few eps without seeing a single Paladin. Sam Holt’s a good egg.

- The Hunk focus was welcome. The Hunk/Keith hug gave me life. Aw, Keith. You should do the emotional support thing more often. You’re getting better at it, honey.

- In general the Paladins w/family thing was super cute and cathartic after they’ve been away from home for so long.

- Like, I know there are a couple of ‘problems’ (arguably charming characteristics) of Voltron writing, that some people can’t stand. Like overengineered space problems for the protags to overcome (it took 2 Lions like, 30 seconds to take out one cannon in the end, WHY DICK ABOUT WITH THE REFLECTOR THINGIES AT ALL), or the deus ex machina (Coran you literally FORGOT you had an all-powerful crystal hanging from your damn neck and the base got exposed for NO REASON), or extremely delayed realisations of how a problem can be overcome while the audience is literally screaming at the screen (CALL YOUR DAMN LIONS IN THE CELLS GUYS DO IT DO IT NAO).

But I can’t lie - the way these scenes always get presented on screen in this series, with that incredible soundtrack making your heart race and the constant sense of urgency and danger, it really gets my blood going. I will defend its silly space antics until the day I die.

- I’m really glad Admiral Sanda got to redeem herself. She wasn’t a bad person, just had too much pride and bad solutions to an admittedly shitty problem.

- Man I really hope not too many garrison peeps got crushed by moving sections when the Atlas transformed, lmao

- Damn, the Atlas mecha is THICC

- Voltron needs a serious upgrade. It can’t keep scraping through fights like this and needing loads of help, surely.

- I’m so incredibly glad they didn’t end on a cliffhanger. There were moments toward the end where I couldn’t remember how many eps I had left and I kept thinking they were gonna leave us in the lurch. Thanks, Dreamworks.

- All in all, not as great as S6, but as usual I had a good time and lots of feelings and I feel good about how it ended.

#voltron #voltron spoilers #voltron s7

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kendalljane21 · 3 years

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Have you ever gone on a drive and seen some old houses? I love imagining what some of those places look like on the inside. Are they well taken care of, maybe renovated, or falling apart? Do their rough exteriors hide cozy, inviting interiors? How many different lives have broken it in? How many moments of joy, misery, and all the little things in between have happened inside those walls?

A brand new house just doesn’t inspire the same feeling. A beautiful exterior is nice, but all too often those homes are just a little too staged inside. The pillows are perfectly placed, the countertops gleaming, and the furniture spotless – but it doesn’t feel like a lot of life is happening in there.

So often we judge other people and their lives by how they look from the outside. And how we think our own lives are perceived by others has a huge impact on how good we feel about them..

Not having kids. Having a bunch of kids. Going back to school in your late 20s – or 30s, or 50s, or 70s! Living with friends or family. Living alone and secluded. Travelling a ton. Not travelling at all. Making no money...making more money than you ever dreamed. Doing something you love. Doing something you can’t stand.

This idea goes both ways. We all want our lives to feel amazing – for the things we do every day (or at least most days) are fulfilling, inspiring, and feel like part of something bigger than us. When you’re living a life that feels great, you’re happy, you’re surrounded by happy people, and you know that you’re living the right life for you – or at least working to build it.

But you could also be wildly unhappy with how your life feels on a day to day basis: whether it’s your work, relationships, where you live – really anything – but your life could look fantastic.

I definitely fell into the latter category for a long time. I was living the “perfect life” with my “perfect family” in a beautiful new built we designed ourselves, We took some really awesome trips a few times a year, and had a wide-ranging group of friends that i went out on the town with quiet regularly. I worked when I wanted and loved my job. My life looked great.

But my relationship was making me miserable, anxious, and draining me of all my mental energy: I did nothing except veg out in front of the tv every night, and occasionally go too hard on weekends. My marriage was on very rocky ground, we were putting no time or effort into our relationship, The cost of our house was bleeding us dry, and the noise pollution and general busyness inside my head meant I was barely sleeping.

The weeks leading up to every trip, or special event I would be an absolute mess, trying to make sure it was ‘perfect’ , and try to scrape together the cash to pay for it. I had to make it perfect for myself and to please other people. My relationship became incredibly surface level, Our friends and family saw none of this – and we kept everyone at arm's length. It was easy.

But I was miserable and barely keeping my shit together, but on the outside our lives looked pretty fantastic. I was ticking all the right boxes for a so-called ‘good life’ – why were i so unhappy day to day?

It took a lot of inner work to realize that so many of the ‘right’ things just weren’t right for us. That just because something is good on paper, or what’s expected from us by society, friends or family, or even ourselves, doesn’t mean doing it is going to bring us happiness. And continuing to make big life decisions based on what we ‘should’ have been doing just drove us further into the hole we had voluntarily placed ourselves inside. And let me tell you – digging yourself out of that hole is hard. Hard, but so, so worth it.

Life today looks a lot different for me. Im not married anymore, I’m not feeling obligated to stay with someone that I once loved. I found a man to live my life with, a man who by society may judge due to an age gap, but I don’t care! We bought a shitty old house to do up together in a suburb that is often frowned upon. My income is made from jobs without fancy titles or crazy high salaries. I buy a lot less, and see a friends when I can. By no outward metric are we killing it in the mainstream sense of the word. There’s exactly zero ‘hustle’ going on here.

But we’re thriving. My work situation means i can study again and we can spend our days immersed in things we really care about. We can work on side projects or businesses without focusing on immediately financially profiting from them. We can go outside without feeling overwhelmed or claustrophobic, and we live just a few minutes’ drive from good coffee and beautiful beaches. We have a few, incredibly close friends that we can talk about anything and everything with, and time spent with them is energizing and inspiring. We’re happy, my new relationship is stronger than ever, and the things we do together are so much more fulfilling and affirming.

My life isn’t perfect or inspiring from the outside – but it feels fucking incredible. And now that we know what actually makes us happy, what actually makes me feel fulfilled and content and like ive contributed something to the world at the end of each day, we can just run with it – making little changes and tweaks and adjustments as we go.

And I know it’s not easy – sometimes half the battle to feeling good about your own decisions and life is letting go of how they might be perceived by other people. Like those old houses, some people will just see imperfect exteriors and not give them a second glance. Others will seek out the brand new, perfect exteriors only to be disappointed with what’s on the inside.

There are still some days where my perfectionism tendencies rear their heads and I struggle with things not looking perfect from the outside. But those moments are fleeting now. And all it takes is a walk outside, a morning spent reading before diving into work I care about, or a deep, meaningful conversation with a loved one to remind me that this is what it’s all about.

K. X

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hauntedfalcon · 6 years

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TLJ reflections now that I’ve finally seen the damn movie

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS and LONG POST

I want to preface this by saying that we as fandom, any fandom, have thoroughly sold ourselves that line about how fanworks are the reclamation of our modern myths now that said myths have been fully commoditized. I felt powerful the first few times I saw that quote circulating. Then I started to feel tired, because every Johnlock shipper from here to space was using it in part to imply that they were, like, super progressive and important. Also, it has been used to justify some notion that fandom creates canon, and I’ve never agreed with that.

And now I just feel hollow. Is there a bigger modern myth than Star Wars? Could there be more thorough reminder than The Last Jedi that no, modern myths do not belong to us, and if we try to stake any claim on them they will be put into the hands of someone who is wholly disinterested in any aspect of them that we value, and they will be fed to us in a form that defies us to create any fanworks about it at all?

This is the first time I am watching a Star Wars trilogy as it unfolds where I actually care about most of the characters. For better or worse, and probably largely because of the impact of that idea of reclaiming our modern myths, I feel incredibly protective of them. I recognize that my basis for what I expect from those characters is one prior movie and a handful of expanded universe materials, so I wouldn’t say “the real [character] would never [heinous act],” because unfortunately the content of the movie I just witnessed is canon, but I can certainly say that my versions of those characters wouldn’t.

All that being said:

Paige

Paige Tico

Paige didn’t even get to speak a line

would it have killed them to have her say “I’m on it Poe” as she went to drop the bombs

with urgency and resolve and just a hint of fear in her voice

Paige Tico is a hero

Poe

Poe Dameron

Poe was right

#PoeWasRight

Finn and Rose and Poe’s plan actually would have worked if Holdo had spoken to Poe in good faith and given him cause to trust her with that information

I’m still not sure what Holdo’s plan was, she died as she lived, with hair full of secrets

Poe’s characterization was cocky, for sure, but people have been calling it chauvinist and I didn’t actually pick up on anything despite the efforts to play his concern when speaking with Holdo like a subtle wink wink nudge nudge to all the overqualified women in the audience who have ever had a dude tell them something they knew already

(also can someone tell me where the line was where Holdo and Leia objectify him? because I was watching and all I heard was “He’s a troublemaker. I like him.” which was... not at all the sort of thing that people were talking about)

I believe that Rian Johnson believes that Poe is the Han of this trilogy and I believe Oscar Isaac deliberately played all his scenes the opposite of how he could have played them and how Rian probably wanted him to play them

that being said, my Poe would never get his fellow soldiers killed with recklessness

you could absolutely get Poe to the place he needed to be at the end of this movie without bloodying his hands

“how did you two meet” was the most Jealous Boyfriend thing I have ever. heard.

Finn

why was so much of this movie about Finn being in pain

I don’t like that

his panic when he couldn’t move after being stunned? I don’t like that

Rian Johnson is great at writing abuse, both physical and emotional

he’s terrible at knowing when to stop

like when it’s an interaction between two people who are both supposed to be protagonists :) :) :)

why wasn’t Finn given anything meaningful to do

there was an interesting comment somewhere about how this is a movie about heroes failing, all the plans fail, every single one

but that doesn’t actually make it any less tedious to watch, and as my husband pointed out it’s not what people want in a Star Wars movie

also while this is supposed to be the Empire of the trilogy and there were many call backs, Empire never backed down from the mood it established, while Last Jedi suffered from wildly disparate moods and tried to end on a high note where Empire embraced the low and still made us feel like there was clear forward momentum

Rian Johnson had no idea what to do with Finn, just no clue how to handle him

why was he excited about Canto Bight? we just don’t know

on the upside Finn’s immediate concern upon waking being getting to Rey was A+++++++++++++ consistent characterization

as was the line “Rebel scum,” which indicated not a commitment to the Resistance the way I’ve seen people claim, but a commitment to rebel and as you might guess, I am one thousand percent HERE FOR IT

Rose

Rose Tico

you know how PacRim was in part such a big deal because for once the Asian woman didn’t sacrifice her life to further the white man’s story? TLJ gave us Rose stopping Finn from sacrificing himself and she didn’t have to die in the process

I can’t believe Rose and Finn doublehandedly destroyed war profiteering

Rose’s sense of wonder and her jadedness are my two favorite things

Rose gave away her necklace and her vintage Rebellion ring without hesitation in order to further the cause so I think it’s only fair that in Episode IX someone gives her jewelry

and by someone I mean Poe Dameron and by jewelry I mean one quarter of his mom’s ring because that my friends is a polycule in the making

Leia

why

why what? why everything honestly

why did they go to the effort of keeping her alive when she actually gets blown up in this movie, that was in the plot before Carrie Fisher even died

what the fuck are they going to do now

episode IX clearly would have been Leia rebuilding the Rebellion from scratch but uhhhhhhhhhhhh first they have to figure out what to do with the fact that they’re out of Carrie Fisher footage! and solving that problem is clearly going to require them to do one of the several things they’ve already said they wouldn’t do!

I surprised myself by not crying in any of Carrie Fisher’s scenes, but when R2 showed Luke the original message? HOO BOY it was raining on my face!!!!

no but the Confirmed Very Powerful Force User Leia Pulls Herself Back from the Cold Dark Vacuum of Space thing? gorgeous! gorgeous scene. gorgeous, breathtaking

but I’m just operating on the headcanon that she died in her coma and what remained was a tangible Force ghost

(Yoda bopped Luke on the snoot)

(the dice were a tangible Force projection what the fuck)

p.s. why didn’t Leia move the damn rocks

Rey

Rey spend half this movie talking to Krylon in her head but she didn’t even get to speak a line to Finn

they done you dirty Rey

I’m sorry Rey

the thing about this movie is that the people who are going to believe what they want to believe, no matter what, are going to find a way to say “that was misdirection!”

and for once I’m not (just) talking about Re/ylo, I’m talking about the bit with her parents

yeah Krylon doesn’t know shit about her parents and he was taking up the mantle of emotional manipulation and abuse that Snoke had just bequeathed

but Rey coming from literally nowhere is SUCH A GOOD and I’m saying that as an avowed Rey Kenobi supporter

let her come from nowhere and no one

let her be an example of a hyperpowerful hero in this series who didn’t get that way with midichlorians or bloodline

let her strive to be great for her own sake, not in relation or reaction to what came before her

Gareth Edwards

I SAW YOU GARETH EDWARDS, I SAW YOU IN THE TRENCHES, STICKING WITH STAR WARS TO THE BITTER, SALTY END

that came out wrong

Luke

damn Mark Hamill threw everything he had into this and I really respect that when it’s clear from his interviews that he hated everything he had to do

hate that the character was in that position, hate the shitty writing of the intervening time, love the resolution, but tbh if he was just gonna die why not actually physically show up

the total silence when Holdo jumps to light speed and everything gets reduced to stark iconic images: gorgeous, breathtaking

the hug: gorgeous, breathtaking

vulptices and fathiers: gorgeous, breathtaking

the Caretakers: I’d die for them

Rose converting her FO uniform to biz caj chic on Crait: gorgeous, breathtaking

Luke and Yoda cracking open a cold one while the Book Tree burns: gorgeous, breathtaking

everyone’s makeup: bad, they looked either ill or painted

(I don’t actually know anything about makeup but I know I grimaced a lot)

all the many, many moments of bombast that covered over or otherwise distracted us from the few instances of nuanced ideas or potential plot progression in this film: gorgeous, breathtaking

for half a second Luke was talking about how the light can still exist without the Jedi and I leaned forward in my seat like yes, yessss, but then we had to cut to Creepy Dark Cave on Training Planet Where You Go for Answers But You Only Find Your Own Face

like Jesus just let the philosophy professor ramble for a little while, it won’t hurt anything and he’ll be in a good mood at test time

anyway this movie sure gave my eyes a lot to absorb and occasionally it activated all three of my feelings

but all it actually accomplished in the context of the trilogy is to kill some people and take some stuff away

it occurred to me toward the end that there wasn’t anything in the movie I would have to edit out for my kid to watch it, but there’s no way she’d be able to sit through the whole thing

two and a half hours is too God damn long for a Star Wars movie, full stop

ten minutes of concrit from the story group could have led to some interesting avenues to explore and probably tightened it up a lot

but instead it was painfully clear that no one said no to Rian at any point and what that got us was a movie that was extremely fatiguing to watch

#TLJ spoilers #Star Wars for ts #The Last Jedi for ts #SPOILERS #long post

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carrionkat · 6 years

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Response for kateofthecanals

Here ya go, @kateofthecanals

I don’t really use Tumblr all that much so I apologize for any formatting hiccups or errors in courtesy.

Well, since I agree with literally all of your positive points (especially how Rey and Kylo’s visions could be the same, just viewed from a different perspective), and this is already getting too long I’m just going to address your negatives!

- The turning point for me, going from “YES YES YES!” to “oh…” was immediately after the team-up in the throne room, when I quickly realized that Kylo didn’t kill Snoke because he suddenly “woke up”, and he didn’t do it for Rey… he did it so that HE could be the HBIC.

I actually read the scene differently. Conflict is the central theme of Kylo’s character, so I saw him as undecided up until he realizes that he will never be out from under Snoke’s boot. He wants to be free to decide who he is and the path his destiny will take (as seen in his “let the past die” speech) and he can’t do that while Snoke lives. I think it’s less about taking charge of the First Order, and more about killing the monster who has been pulling his strings since he was an infant. And I think Snoke demanding he kill Rey is what wakes him up, in that it makes him realize that he will never be allowed to make a meaningful choice while Snoke lives. He doesn’t want to kill Rey (in fact he wants her to be a part of the future he creates). He achieves avoiding this by killing the person making her death a possibility.

- I was really bummed when Snoke “revealed” that he was the one who facilitated the Force-bond between Kylo and Rey, but I was relieved to see this wasn’t the case after all at the end when Kylo and Rey had that one last Force-encounter. But again, what was this actually worth in the end? She closed the door on him. It was established in this film, via Luke, that a Force user can close themselves off to the Force. Who’s to say Rey won’t do the same to Kylo? That she will find a way to cut him off completely? There’s literally nothing stopping her, because she has clearly given up on him…

This is going to be a steep hill to get over, but I think a grand enough gesture from Kylo could get through to Rey. Once she knew what happened to him as a child with Luke, she forgave him for a whole lotta bad. If he were to, say, sabotage the First Order or release a prisoner or something that showed he was still conflicted, I think that could change her mind.

- … as has everyone else. And with good reason, tbh. The moment Kylo threw Rey under the bus for Snoke’s death, declared himself new Supreme Leader, and went fucking buckwild on Luke, I knew all hope for redemption was gone. Even Leia was like, “nope, I was wrong, he’s lost for good.” Basically what I got out of this movie was, Rey and Kylo “flirt” with the other sides of the Force for a hot second but then just ultimately decide that they belong where they were in the first place. Gee wow what awesome character development…

I think there was actually development here. Kylo has gone from puppet to free being. His personality beyond that is still malleable. The Dark is what he knows and it’s what he’s been trying to be since childhood, so it’s the path he follows, for now. I’m not sold that it will be the one he continues to follow, however. I also think the hopelessness of the situation is supposed to parallel Empire Strikes Back. We’re supposed to feel grim. This is our heroes’ lowest point; we’re only going up from here.

Also, he despises Luke for good reason. Him going buckwild on Luke isn’t really a condemnation of his entire character. His uncle, who he trusted and loved, tried to kill him. That’s gonna leave some damage. His rage isn’t born out of a hatred for Luke’s ideologies or of hatred of the Light, it’s born out of having his trust broken in the most cruel way possible. Maybe even resentment that Luke’s actions drove him into Snoke’s less-than-kind tutelage, but that’s probably reaching.

- The revelation of Rey’s parents was just so… banal. I felt like this was thrown in there just to put the question to rest, without any additional thought or exploration, even though that was made such a HUGE deal of in TFA. But, nah, they were “nobodies”, end of story, case closed, that’s all she wrote. It was never even explained how Kylo knew about Rey’s parents!!

The way I thought Kylo knew is because Rey knew, the whole time, and was just in denial about it. He sees it through their connection. She sees herself in the Dark part of the temple because she already knows the answer. (Also her saying she was “unafraid” while stuck in the Dark says something, but we’ll see if it gets followed up on).

- I’ve seen people claim that this movie “shuts down” anti arguments for good and that is simply not the case. There is still plenty of ammo from this movie they can use, chief among them Kylo’s cringeworthy statement to Rey that “You’re nobody. But not to me.”

Oof, yeah, I actively cringed when he said that. Someone’s been reading PUA shit. But if you want to dig for excuses you can bring up that Kylo has literally zero positive interactions with anyone except Rey, and is thusly a social moron who has forgotten what kindness is. What he’s saying is what Rey feels (that she’s nobody), followed up by what he feels (that she’s somebody) and with no pretty trimmings about it. It’s still a really shitty thing to say and I wish that line wasn’t there.

- I’m glad everyone’s happy that Kylo didn’t actually KILL Leia (which I knew he wouldn’t) but I dunno how many brownie points he gets considering he still let those other fighters take her out…

He does seem a little shocked when the other fighter’s shots connect, so maybe he was so focused on making a choice that he didn’t realize the fighter’s were taking the shot? Still, I agree with you.

- And he barely even flinched when Snoke was torturing Rey. You’d think that, I don’t know, since they have a Force-bond and everything, that he would have been able to feel her pain or something???

Yeah, some kind of reaction would have been nice. I thought I saw him trembling, but I can’t remember it very clearly so I would have to rewatch.

- During Kylo’s attack on Crait, at a certain point (around the time Luke shows up), Rey just, like, disappears, completely, and doesn’t show up again until the very end to do her rock-lifting trick. Firstly, where the hell was she that whole time, but more importantly, wouldn’t it have been kind of awesome if, like, she could sense what was happening between Kylo and Luke and using their Force-bond try to talk him out of it? And see him actually STRUGGLE with it because he’s still torn between wanting to be with her and wanting to be the Big Bad? Buuuut no, because at that point, both their minds were made up, and Rey had given up on him anyway.

Rey’s part (or lack thereof) in that battle seemed really messy narratively. There’s no reason for them to be flying over the mountains in the Falcon; they have no reason to believe that the rest of the Resistance is trying to flee the base. Why aren’t they back there in the action? Why don’t they try to blow the cannon up? Or take out the Walkers? The bond that Rey has with Kylo AND the student/teacher one she has with Luke are both just left dangling there. The Kylo/Luke confrontation is incredibly tense and I loved so many things about it, but it does feel like substance was cut for style there.

- On a more technical level, I was really disappointed by how the Force-bond sequences were filmed. I expected way more from Rian Johnson; this was something any first-year film student could have come up with. Now, I’m not claiming to be “better than Rian Johnson”, but in my headcanons of Rey and Kylo’s Force-conversations, there was a noticeable atmospheric shift – some sort of visual cue that something “different” was going on… Instead of just this basic cutting back and forth between them in their respective locales. Meh.

There was a bit of an audio cue (the sound warped) but a bit of blur around the edges or color shift or something would have been a nice visual cue.

- I didn’t find Rose that memorable, sorry. And her whole mission with Finn, much like the Kylo/Rey storyline, ended up being completely pointless, thanks to Admiral Holdo needlessly keeping vital info about her plans from Poe. WHY??? All of it was just an elaborate excuse to send Finn off on another adventure where he would end up back with the First Order so he could finish off Phasma, period. Like, yeah, there was that little hint at the very end that those kids who took care of the fathiers would, like, have something to do with the Resistance in the next movie, but honestly that could have just been a little meta commentary about how kids have been inspired by the Star Wars franchise over these past 40 years. Which is nice and all, but Finn and Rose’s mission was still pointless.

Agreed; it felt like the weakest part of the movie to me. I wanted to like Rose and Finn, but I kinda ended up resenting that their (ultimately) pointless story was taking so much time away from what I thought were more interesting plot lines.

I think the last bit was meta commentary, as well as showing that Luke’s words are true; he isn’t the last of the lightside. It’s not just Rey who will succeed him, it’s every child who has heard his story and strives to be good because of it.

- Same with Holdo. So here’s this lady who just shows up out of nowhere, keeps vital information from Poe for no good goddamn reason, thereby forcing him to come up with his own plan and send Finn & Rose on a wild goose chase, and then suddenly we’re supposed to buy this close, intimate relationship she has with Leia so that we’ll feel all wistful when she decides to go on a suicide mission to protect the Resistance?? That should have been Leia, tbh… and not just for cheap emotional impact. At that point, Leia believed both the cause and her son to be lost and really had nothing else to lose at that point, and it would have been well within her personality to take out as many motherfuckers as she could to go down with her. Holdo should have been set up as Leia’s heir apparent going forward, and Leia going all kamikaze on the First Order would have been an interesting parallel to Luke also sacrificing himself to protect the ones he loved. AND it would have solved the whole issue of how to move forward in the story after Carrie’s death. I mean, we know that Leia was supposed to play a big part in Episode 9, but we’ll never know what that was supposed to be anyway…

I feel Holdo’s story was weakened by that last interaction with Leia and where she says she liked Poe. If she stuck to the opinion she voiced earlier about him being a liability, maybe cautioned Leia about his recklessness, it makes her character more consistent. She’s presented as being kind of “by the rules” as opposed to Poe’s casual improvisation. If they kept her mindset as “he’s an idiot who can’t take orders and that’s an issue; the chain of command exists for a reason; we can’t have everyone second guessing every decision I make and that’s why I didn’t tell him” it wouldn’t feel as wishy-washy. Maybe it could have even worked as a lesson for Poe.

I like that Leia didn’t die here. It helps keep that idea of hope alive. While the reasons you point out for her doing Holdo’s maneuver make sense on a personal level, Leia being alive gives the Resistance hope, and it gives the audience hope.

For some of my personal thoughts on where Kylo and Rey could end up going from here...

Where we leave Kylo he's still in strife. He's gotten everything he's wanted: eliminating his 'weakness,' eclipsing Vader in power (after all, Vader didn’t survive the Sith ideal of killing his master) but it will not bring him any sort of joy. He's lonely and lost, not power-mad, and becoming Supreme Leader is only going to isolate him more. His force bond with Rey is still intact, despite her metaphorically closing the door on him. Their interactions haven’t been intentional, yet they still happen, because they’re both lonely and long for understanding. That’s not going to change for Kylo, even if it does for Rey. That could be a piece of what causes him to change.

Kylo Ren doesn’t give a shit about the First Order, not really. He isn’t making rousing speeches about the necessity of the cause like Hux; his actions are all concerned with Snoke’s orders and his own internal strife. He doesn’t want to lead the First Order because he believes in it, he’s leading to use it as a tool. He wants to destroy his past so he can finally shape his own destiny and decide for himself who he wants to be. He’s been shaped by others all his life; now he’s free of that. Snoke, the biggest influence in his life, is gone. He couldn’t kill Leia when he had the chance. He is pulled to Rey over and over. He seems to feel regret at the end when he finds Han’s dice. The question is, who will be created by this situation? Will it be enough to pull him, maybe not entirely to the light, but into the grey?

Snoke made a comment that I think/hope will come to be very relevant. Something to the effect of “darkness rises, and light to meet it.” The Force strives to create balance. The more dark there is, the more light there must be. But trying to balance two extremes causes tension and strife. They try to eliminate one another, and the pendulum swings wildly between the two. The true way to create balance, is to move towards the middle. I think that’s what the point of Luke’s arc was. Luke’s fear of the Dark helped create Kylo Ren from Ben. His adherence to an order that gave rise to Sidious and pushed his own father into Dark caused it to happen again. This makes it clear that the Jedi order of old doesn’t work anymore.

The Jedi were a defunct order. They swung the pendulum to far to the “Light” and demanded impossible things: emotionless, passionless, unquestioning devotion. Does any of that sound like Rey? Emotion drives everything she does! To eliminate her emotions, to make her a Jedi, it would destroy her entire character. If they do that they’re throwing out all the themes and messages they built up over Last Jedi. Same thing if Kylo stays entirely Dark. I think (hope) that they both come to realize that neither of them actually wants the destruction of the other. Maybe Rey reads those texts that made it onto the Falcon and realizes that she can’t follow the Jedi ideals. Maybe those old texts contain the idea of grey Jedi instead of the Light/Dark dichotomy; after all, there was a shrine to the Dark on the island, so the founders of the temple couldn’t have rejected it entirely.

They’ve set up plenty of signs that point to the emergence of grey Jedi instead of the Sith and the Light. They could end up pulling the rug out from under us and just make IX flat “good” vs evil with no nuance, but that would be ignoring all the work done in Last Jedi, and it would be messy story telling to not follow the cues that they already laid.

And honestly is Kylo goes grey there’s no reason why he and Rey wouldn’t end up together. Force bonds are powerful things, and their awareness of one another is almost painful. Rey would have to shut herself off from the Force to cut off her awareness of him, and is she really going to do that? Maybe she will for a time, but that’s not a long-term solution.

So while there are no steadfast assurances that we will get what we want from IX, I would say that the necessary groundwork for what we want has already been laid.

Oh! Another thought. Kylo’s “rule the galaxy at my side” is the SAME EXACT THING Vader offered Luke (but, like, without the romantic undertones). Like Luke, Rey rejected his offer. But Vader was still redeemed in the end. If Kylo’s story continues his mirroring of Vader, we will get a redemption. The real question is, will we get it without Kylo dying?

#last jedi spoilers

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