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badlydrawndrawnings · 4 years

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*re-watches netflix asoue*

*Thinks about Gregor and Ike, and see how they’re missing a H*

*Thinks about how H could be Hector*

*’Oh yeah, Hector is not a VFD member in the Netflix show. Welp that can’t work in the Netflix show’*

*Suddenly realizes age lifts affect more characters, not just Kit*

*Spots some Barry Sonnenfeld cameos I didn’t see before*

*‘Hey wait a minute! [RETRACTED]’*

It’s a creator cameo, but Ike is played by Barry Sonnenfeld. Netflix!Ike is one of the older VFD members, meaning he got a major age lift upward (using Sonnenfeld’s age as a ballpark range), because there’s a chance Book!Ike -as with most members in the SBG- are in the same range, give or take several years. Gregor is dead, but he too got an age lift upward since Gregor is Ike’s older brother. They’re not the only ones (using most of the actors ages as a ballpark range) that are affect by them.

Lemony got an age lift upward, while Kit got an age lift downward (no amount of CGI on Patrick Warburton can make him look younger than Allison Williams -but it works enough for me to say he’s younger than Nathan Fillion- or stretching my disbelief Kit is older than Lemony, unless she found the fountain of youth). TUA has possible evidence Larry is the youngest SBG member if you don’t include Fernald (who age is more or less the same maybe slightly older but not by much), but Netflix!Larry certainly looks older than several members, including Kit and Larry. Ticket Seller Guy looks like the age I assumed Ishmael was in the books, and it stands out and goes to my next observation: Netflix!Ishmael certainly looks younger than I imagined (the beard and hair looks fake as hell that’s probably it) Is it because they made VFD Ishmael’s creation as a school principal? Probably?

Based on Ike’s portrayal and painting, Gregor and Ike are in the same age range as Ishmael. Ergo, those three aren’t part of the same ‘generation’ as Lemony and Co (the hybrid SB/OS Generation). Ike certainly doesn’t seem he went to school with most of them except Josephine (who looks like she got an age lift upward).

Given they’re brothers, Gregor and Ike will have a resemblance between each other. And there’s one VFD member in the Netflix show who got an age lift upward, and he also just happens to bare a resemblance to Ike. He’s the closest thing one will get to what Gregor would look in the Netflix show.

If the theory Gregor and Ike has a sibling who names start with H can work its way in the Netflix Continuity, the only contender for H is Widdershins.

*OBJECTION!* (says the non-crack theorist side of me who was listening to Ace Attorney OSTs on Youtube while writing this second half of the post) Fiona introduces herself as Fiona Widdershins. Fiona still calls her stepfather Captain Widdershins. That means Fiona is taking the Widdershins surname.

Given the numerous cameos of Barry Sonnenfeld (I never spotted the one in the Reptile Room and the Wasabi one in the Grim Grotto), there’s a gene floating around Netflix ASOUE’s world. Let’s call it ‘the Bullshit Gene’, because it’s bullshit how it keeps showing up. The Bullshit Gene is out there because some people with the gene can’t keep it in their pants, or the Bullshit Gene is super strong to be past down numerous generations and their face becomes very f*cking common to where people who don’t have it joke/comment about it whenever possible.

Gregor, Ike, and Widdershins could have seen how it’s almost bullshit they look similar to one another, and joke how their faces are almost everywhere in places they don’t expect. But the three only learn the truth that they’re half brothers in a DNA test that was supposed to be a joke. Gregor and Ike’s father and Widdershins’ mother cheated on their spouses, which lead to Widdershins’ birth (given Widdershins’ painting, he’s close to Gregor’s age or is at Gregor’s age). Mr. Anwhistle Sr and Mrs. Widdershins Sr didn’t tell their children or their spouses of the affair because of the Bullshit Gene. Anyone who makes a comment how the three share a resemblance to one other are brushed off because they just have that very f*cking common face that is everywhere.

So uh, there isn’t a proper ‘H’ Awhistle because H stands for Half-Brother.

*HOLD IT!* (says the non-crack theorist side of me) Would all three keep this hidden? Widdershins, yes. Gregor, maybe (it can go either way there’s little info about him). But Ike? From what we know of Ike, would he not tell Josephine, his own wife? What would be a reason to keep it hidden anyway?

Let’s say Fernald working at Anwhistle Aquatics as an apprentice happens after the three found out they’re half brothers. Gregor, Widdeshins, and Ike for some reason (in a rather idiotic move), thought to keep it to themselves because no one would believe them because the Bullshit Gene is everywhere and everyone knows about it and joke about it. Reasonable, but still idiotic. Ike is sort of hoping for the right moment to strike though to tell Josephine and maybe everyone else. They’re going to start a family after all. It would be wonderful if the two families got together for a real family picnic, not a VFD meeting/picnic.

With this new-found familial connection, Widdershins thought to use the the nepotist approach to get Fernald a job at Anwhistle Aquatics (‘Gregor can you help your step-nephew achieve his dream in Marine Biology and stuff?’ ‘Step-Half Nephew. Fernald actually has the best qualifications, so yeah.’).

That action decided they should do a test run of sorts. Anwhistle Aquatic is the chosen grounds. Fernald and Gregor are working together and they get along. Ike visits and tells Josephine (Josephine mentioning in Season One about she thinks boys would prefer to play with cards; she never met Fernald, but she heard of him through Ike), and Widdershins show up once in awhile to check up on his stepson (Fiona visits once or twice but she barely remembers them by the time she becomes 16). The brothers see it’s working...at first. The Medusoid Mycelium is now created. Ike and Gregor start fighting over it, as with Gregor and Fernald (who is more ‘hey just reconsider’). Widdershins isn’t getting involved, but agrees with Ike and Fernald. Gregor is outnumber but he still wants to go through the program, with or without his apprentice’s (nephew) help.

And then the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire happens. Everyone eventually learns it’s done by Fernald. And Ike is angry Gregor is dead. Gregor could still be alive if Widdershins didn’t try to get his step-son into working at Anwhistle Aquatics. If Gregor and Ike never discover their half brother and his family, Gregor would still be alive. And Ike wants to have a family with Josephine. With Fernald with mind, Ike doesn’t want Widdershins and Fiona to be around Ike’s family in case the same stunt happens again. Widdershins and Ike in a mutual agreement -with a heated argument- parts way and keep their family secret to themselves.

So yeah. Ike would keep a secret from Josephine if his buttons were push. Gregor and his death was the button that did the trick.

*HANG ON!* (says the non-crack theorist side of me) What does that means regarding the bad blood between him and Widdershins? Widdershins is the one who drove Fernald away in the books after all! For...well, no one know for sure. Just theories. Mostly related to Mrs. Widdershins.

*‘Hey wait a minute! I just realize there’s lack of an importance of Mrs. Widdershins and her death in the Netflix Show’*

Okay, so in the books, Widdershins for whatever reason (guilt? let’s say guilt), is on the denial train when it comes to Fernald. More often than not, Widdershins wants to remember Fernald as the teenage boy who is pleasant and charming. He never brings up the fights or anything bad regarding his stepson. In fact, the denial train is so strong, I think the reason why Widdershins made his weird comment of marriage to Violet is because he convinced himself Fernald is still a teenage boy, and not the adult he is by present time. And it’s clear as day Fernald really, really, hates his stepfather. A lot. At lot to where Fernald would start a fight with his stepfather in a parking lot Denny’s (and Fernald will win said fight). Apply the idea/theory Mrs. Widdershins was working with Gregor and she died in the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire, Fernald has every right to pick said fight: Widdershins was responsible for Fernald’s mom death in Fernald’s eyes.

In the Netflix show, Fernald hate his stepfather, but it’s not on the levels as his book counterpart. After his freak out over Madame Lulu!Olivia, Fernald thinks about calling Fiona, but gets the realization his stepfather could answer instead, and even comments/ask himself if Widdershins would still be mad at him [Fernald], most likely over the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire. Fernald’s tone in the scene means he is scare of meeting Widdershins again. Fernald gladly tells Sunny a happy memory of sorts with Widdershins, about how the two went ice fishing before immediately back tracking because Fernald realize (in horror) he has remnant affection (let’s call it that) left in his heart. And the biggest ‘slip-up’ of this remnant affection: Fernald calls Widdershins ‘step-pops’. He and Fiona call Widdershins their stepfather, but Fiona never says ‘step-pops’. It’s possible ‘step-pops’ was Fernald’s prefer terminology before the bad blood set. There’s hate, but it’s not worth picking a fight in a parking lot at Denny’s.

In the Netflix show...instead of keeping Fernald alive as a young teenager who is pleasant and charming, Widdershins wants Fernald very f*cking dead. He told Fiona her brother died in a manatee accident. He told Fiona this not long after Fernald set Anwhistle Aquatics on fire and presumably after getting kick out of VFD, and around this time the big fight happens where Fernald tells Widdershins he [Fernald] never wanted to see his [Widdershins] face again. It’s a f*ck up lie because when Book!Widdershins said the same thing to Book!Fiona about her mom, Fiona’s mom is dead. Book!Widdershins also never even told Fiona that Fernald is dead, he’s just alive and missing. And I should bring up the happy family photo. In the books, it’s more or less open correction it was crumple but it still show all four of the family members. Netflix’s happy family photo took a note from Mama Imelda in Coco who folded away her husband’s guitar on the ofrenda photo (after ripping off her husband’s face). Widdershins folded away Fernald, leaving only Fiona and Widdershins (and Fernald’s hand).

In both books and show, Widdershins drove away Fernald. In the books, it’s possible (but not 100% certain) Fernald blames Widdershins for causing Fernald’s mom death in the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire. In the Netflix show, under this theory Netflix!H is Widdershins, Widdershins drove away Fernald because Widdershins blames Fernald for causing Widdershins’ half brother death in the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire. However, Fernald decision’s to leave is also because Fernald doesn’t understand the full extent of his actions. Fernald knows his Stepfather is mad over the fire and Gregor’s death, but Fernald didn’t think his Stepfather would be super mad over the fire and Gregor’s death.

Of course, Fernald probably (probably) wouldn’t have set the fire had the three brothers you know, told everyone they’re related. It’s possible (possible) Widdershins did realize that terrible mistake in a cooling off period. If he also hated Fernald enough to never want to see his stepson’s face again, Widdershins could have torn off Fernald’s face of the photo.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #netflix asoue #asoue season 3 #asoue netflix #theory #this is a text post #tv show continuity

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emetophobiahelp · 5 years

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The Office (US) Master List

Office, The (US) NBC, 2005-2013 Season 1: Safe Season 2: S2 Episode 12: About 2 minutes and 30 seconds in, people watch Dwight from a window crash his car into a pole. he gets out, wobbles around, then graphically v*s on his car. It was slightly triggering for me but there is no sound. It’s still frightening though so beware S2 Episode 14: “The Carpet” In The Office 2.14, Michael thinks that somebody v*ed in his office. It’s actually poop! People g*g and cringe for a while at the beginning of the episode, but there is NO v*.

S 2 Episode 11: The company is on a Booze Cruise and at around 17:00, michael feels seas*ck and pulls out a bag and v*s. No visual except him bent over with his face in the bag and it lasts about 5 or 6 seconds. The sounds didn’t sound too realistic to me, just like fake coughing/hacking rather than g***ing but it might still trigger someone. Season 4 S4, Episode 1:isnt safe. after michael finished the run, he says (in voice over) “i eventually p* my guts out” and then pretty much immediately he bends over and v*, visual, no audio. wait til meredith starts talking again (i think she just says “hey michael”) because he has it on his mouth until then. During the last 5 or so. Very graphic, but no sound. He does say “eventually, I p*** my guys out” before he does it, but like be careful because it comes up fairly quick. Season 6; S6, Episode 4 Niagara part 1 Due to Pam’s pregnancy she sensitive to foods. And at about 1:20 almost everyone in the office v* in a chain reaction up until the theme. So it’s preferable to skip cause it does show the v*. Safe once the opening credits/theme song starts. S6 Episode 10 There is a short v* scene in the beginning around 4:20 where Michael learns that the company may be going bankrupt. It is behind a closed door and only quiet sounds. Didn’t find it super triggering, but someone else might. S6 Episode 18: No v* and no sounds, but towards the end at about 22:24, Michael smokes a tobacco at his desk and says “I think I’m gonna be s***.” And leans over the side of his desk for a moment as if he is about to (and nothing happens). The episode is safe, however it might trigger/frighten some people (like me) who are more sensitive Season 7 “Viewing Party” From 14:45 to 15:30, that character acts like they’re about to be sick and from 17:05 to 17:20, that character is sick, somewhat graphically. (Those timestamps are a bit generous, just in case.) Oh, and 21:00 in that same episode, that character is seen leaning over a toilet. It’s not really triggering whatsoever, but if you’re concerned, you can just end the episode there. To add on to the previous warning, the graphic instance happens right after Dwight is getting fed pepperoni and Kevin says his pigs in a blanket line. The scene switches and the character v*s a small amount with a very soft cough onto the bed and covers it with a pillow. It might catch you off guard. The sound is not bad at ALL (it’s just a kind of quiet cough. No gagging or heaving sound), so you can probably close your eyes after Kevin’s line and be fine right a S7 episode 14 Kevin g* and v*. I believe the rest of the episode is fine, but I found that one scene more triggering than a lot of other scenes involving v* in other shows. The sound is pretty graphic (I don’t believe there’s much visual stuff besides him holding a trash can, but I don’t remember for sure). I don’t know exactly where it is in the episode, but just know that when you get to the scene where Kevin starts running, you should skip to the next scene (I think this scene lasts about 1-2 minutes). S7 Episode 21 Episode is safe, however v* is implied. At around 9:50 after they introduce Diangelo, he starts looking pale and sweaty and he runs to the bathroom. Then seconds later Michael walks in and you can hear Diangelo groaning and leaning over a toilet, but nothing is actually shown. Then around 16 min he mentions it saying “I was in the bathroom v* and v*..“

Season 8 S8, Episode 16 At around 15 minutes in, Packer is dancing and runs over to Gabe and V*s. It’s over very quick, with slight sound and full visual. If you want to avoid it, mute and tab out when you see him dancing and leave it for about 10 seconds. S8 Episode 23 In the beginning around 3:30 in, everyone in the office is arguing and Robert California puts up his finger and shushes everyone, and proceeds to v* into a trash can. No visual (only him bending over) but there are sounds that can be triggering, and it lasts about 10 seconds. Season 9 S9 Episode 1 In this episode, at the beginning, all of the members of the office are talking about what they did over the summer. Dwight says he made a new sports drink made of beets. In the next scene, it shows Angela and Dwight in a hospital (for a completely unrelated reason, which makes this unexpected) and after getting some news from a doctor, Dwight v*s the bright blue drink all over Angela. Just fast forward past the doctors office, and it ends when Kevin starts talking

#the office us #the office #thank you so much!#submission

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traincat · 5 years

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Can you share why you like the 2015 Fantastic Four movie?

Must a superhero movie be “good”? Is it not enough for a superhero movie to criticize the US military, large?

Okay, seriously, a little bit of background in three points: 1) I followed this movie from the beginning. Through the casting, through the reshoots, through the cryptic articles about how the movie would feature an unexpected romance that turned out to be right but not how we all thought -- I’m pretty sure a Ben/Sue cut of this movie exists somewhere, but it’s hard to argue that the only romantic subplot that exists in the finished film is... Ben/Reed, so. I got excited over stuff in the trailers that was cut from the finished movie entirely. I analyzed the hell out of previews. I almost stole a theater stand but it wouldn’t have fit in my friend’s trunk. I, no joke, bought the Fantastic Four peanut butter. And I had friends who were also excited for the movie, so we were having fun together. So the anticipation definitely has a part in my enjoyment of the movie. “Even though it came like that?” Oh, 100%. 2) I really like Ultimate Fantastic Four, a bad comic, so in a way I was primed to already be like “must a movie be “good?” Must it not simply give me the Mole Man?” (It did not give me the Mole Man.) Fant4stic is much more heavily influenced by Ultimate Fantastic Four than it is by 616 Fantastic Four, especially in its Reed and his relationships with Ben and with Franklin Storm and the think tank. Finally, 3) I really, really dislike the 2005/2007 movies. I think they’re flashy, sexist, shallow hot garbage pieces of filmmaking and I hold Chris Evans’ Johnny from all angles -- writing, styling, performance -- largely responsible for a wide fandom perception of Johnny Storm as a hotheaded playboy. I like Reed and Alicia but that’s basically it.

And I can -- and have already -- gone over Fant4stic’s faults. It’s very clear that the movie largely falls apart after the time skip, but especially during the final battle, which is messy to the extreme. The extensive reshoots messed with the overall product to the point where you can pinpoint while watching what comes from which shoot, though that’s in part to the horrendous wig they put on Sue to cover up that Kate Mara had cut her hair for a different movie in-between. Josh Trank’s dogs did $100,000 worth of property damage, somehow, during filming. So I’m going to talk about what I like about Fant4stic, and here’s a really big thing: as superhero movies go, it’s different.

There’s something I hear a lot in discussions about Spider-Man films, when someone goes, “No, it wasn’t a good Spider-Man movie, but it was a good superhero movie.” Which is something I take issue with because how are we defining what makes a superhero movie good? And what people seem to think makes a superhero good is the MCU’s general formula -- not necessarily the content of their movies, but formula with which they’re devised, which does, it’s fair to say, make for a big office winner, too. And what the MCU does is it makes superhero action movies. It plays around a little with genre -- Captain America: The First Avenger is a war movie, but it’s an action war movie. Guardians of the Galaxy is a space action movie. Ant-Man is a heist action movie. It’s spun its Spider-Man movies as coming of age stories, but they’re action movies. This becomes a problem for a viewer (me, I’m the viewer) if you don’t really love action movies all that much.

In no way, shape, or form can anyone make the claim that Fant4stic is an action movie. Its one big superhero fight scene is a complete and utter failure and probably the worst scene -- probably because it was never meant to be in there. Fant4stic was meant to be a horror movie with a superhero angle, which isn’t all that surprising considering it was directed by Josh “Chronicle” Trank. And I’m really into using big superhero properties to explore other genres -- Logan’s dystopian western, TASM/2′s romance. Fant4stic’s horror. Some of the best parts of the movie are the ramping up to the accident. You know it’s coming. You know it’s going to go horribly wrong. You know Ben, in particular, played with a quiet but longing stoicness by Jamie Bell pre-transformation (and the only film Ben to be acknowledged on-screen as Jewish), is about to be, pardon the pun, doomed. And then there’s the utter horror of the aftermath: Johnny, apparently a burnt out shell, lying in the wreckage as Ben screams for Reed for to help him. Reed crawling through the smoldering chaos only to look back and see that his legs are still pinned under the wreckage. That’s good. A version of the film was apparently screened before the reshoots and the test audience found it “too dark” and I desperately want to see that cut.

In addition to Fant4stic’s horror angle, there’s the villain of the piece: the US military. Doom, despite showing back up last minute looking like lovechild of Annihilus and a melted toy soldier -- Annihilus was supposed to be an initial villain in the film, so the resemblance likely isn’t accidental -- isn’t the true villain of the piece. If anything, young ecoterrorist Victor who just wants to rule his own planet is kind of a charming concept. But the villain of the piece is the military, who wants to use the gate for their own purposes. The military imprisons Ben, Johnny, and Sue after their transformation and explicitly uses Ben as a killing machine. When Harvey Allen approaches Ben, he convinces him Reed’s abandoned him, and that he has to “play ball” with the government. Johnny’s youthful enthusiasm and longing to belong places him in similar danger -- Sue and Franklin explicitly talk about how, if they don’t do something, Johnny’s going to be used as a weapon. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Reed is brought back to the compound to see his reworked invention: “You made it ugly.” The film backs off on this at the very end -- it doesn’t stick the landing like TASM/2 does, where the ultimate villain that spawns the actual superpowered villains is consistently Oscorp’s abuses -- but it does better highlighting this than a vast swathe of other superhero films: the bad guy isn’t Doom. Doom isn’t the one who tortures Ben. Doom isn’t the one who remakes the gate with the express purpose of breeding super soldiers. It’s the military.

I also really like the characters within the film. I don’t think this is going to be hugely surprising to my followers, but really all you need to do to make me like a Fantastic Four adaptation is nail Johnny Storm, and Fant4stic nailed Johnny Storm. I think Michael B Jordan was really terrific casting, and I’m sad we didn’t get to see more of him in the roll, because he was great at portraying Johnny’s insecurities and his vulnerability, making his occasional moments of swagger charming instead of oily, like when he blows a kiss to a rival racer. Introducing Johnny with a drag race -- and with Standing in the Shadows of Love, which is a great Johnny song, and I love how music is a big thing for both Storm siblings -- established his ability with cars and his talent for building things, letting the audience know that Johnny is smart and capable, it’s just that he doesn’t feel like he is. I love this Sue, too, serious and blunt and a little awkward, incredibly smart and far more inclined to hold a grudge than her brother. I love how she’s styled -- her clothes are normal and her makeup is realistically minimal, not movie-minimal. There’s no scene where Fant4stic’s Sue has to strip off her clothes to use her powers, or where a sexy nurse exists so Johnny can hit on her and the audience can get their recommended fifteen minutes of female objectification.

Ben is, as he often is in Fantastic Four pieces, a standout, of course, and Jamie Bell gives a great performance, both anguished and full of rage and resentment and at the same time love for Reed, but it’s his design I love the best. The 2005/2007 Thing design is cartoonish -- the 2015 is monstrous. I love the first few Thing scenes where Ben seems to have trouble moving, dragging himself across the floor, because you get a sense of how incredibly heavy his new form is and how difficult it is to exist in it beyond just looking like a rock creature. The horror of the superhero transformation is built into Ben Grimm at his core, but here it doesn’t manifest in a lost fiance or children screaming on the street but in the difficulty with which he moves, the new grinding note of his voice, vocal chords landsliding together. It’s some really terrific work. And while I think Ioan Gruffudd’s Reed was actually a pretty perfect 616 Reed (more’s the shame about the rest of the films), the Reed of Fant4stic is Ultimate Reed in the beginning through and through. The precocious genius of his childhood, misunderstood by everyone but Ben until Franklin Storm sees him, the scene where he takes the kid’s model airplane and awkwardly apologizes afterwards (the “you’re a dick” line IS funny), his awkward attempts to connect with Sue, his attempts to connect with Victor. Like Sue, he’s straightforward and blunt. The way he isolates himself in his attempt to fix things. How gross his powers are in motion. The aforementioned “you made it ugly” line. I really do like him as a Reed. And Victor... Victor is hilarious. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I was on board back when they were like “he’s a blogger, he’s a gamer” like I was 100% down to see Doom’s tortured neon green on black LiveJournal screeds, and opening on Victor unwashed in the dark playing video games? Hilarious. Victor seeing glowing green energy and immediately going “I’m gonna f*ck it”? Superb. Is this a good Doom interpretation? Maybe not, but it was entertaining. I think they could’ve gone full Ultimate and put little metal hooves on him post-transformation, granted. It’s not the Doom I want for any upcoming Doom projects -- I want my science wizard monarch -- but I can’t say I don’t like the character that Fant4stic gave me.

Fant4stic is an imperfect film, but I’d rather have an imperfect film with characters and themes that I like and one that did something different than a perfect film made with the same old formula and the same jokes on the same beats.

Also, if anyone’s curious, since Fant4stic has no DVD commentary (a crying shame on so many levels), @johnnystormcast recorded our own in our Giant Size Annual and you can download it to watch along with our thoughts, which are very deep and not at all mostly about how Ben and Reed are in love in the film.

#fant4stic #traincat talks comics #Anonymous

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minervamoon66 · 4 years

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Changes to Artemis Fowl

1. The movie opens with the press swarming Fowl Manor due to A. Fowl Sr.’s recent disappearance and witness accounts of the LEPRecon siege of Fowl Manor.

2. Mulch Diggums (a dwarf with apparently a birth defect that makes him giant by dwarf standards) is arrested by HUMAN police and taken to a secure M16 facility for interrogation. There he proceeds to narrate the movie.

3. Artemis likes to surf, loves the outdoors, and is bored in school. The scene between him and his counselor at school is the ONLY time you get the Artemis Fowl from the books.

4. HIS MOTHER IS DEAD!!! Come the F*CK on, Disney! Why does every mother have to die?!

5. Artemis Jr. and Sr. bond over Sr. telling his son fairy stories, like all the time.

6. Artemis Jr. has no idea about his family’s criminal background. He doesn’t find out until his father goes missing and he hears it over the television. (In this scene Butler drags Artemis away from the television and out of the room instead of just turning the blasted thing off.)

7. Opal Konboi is in this. She’s kidnapped Artemis Sr. and is demanding Jr. give her a magic macguffin in return for Sr.’s safe return.

8. Butler goes by Dom. Like, the whole movie. Edit: and he's black. I didn't add that at first since it was obvious from the trailer.

9. Juliet is his NIECE! And also twelve.

10. The secret door to Artemis Sr.’s hidden room is ridiculously easy to find. There’s a “key” hanging out in like an umbrella stand that fits a weird spot on the floor. ANY child, not just a super-smart one, would have figured this out ages ago, because children are curious.

11. There is no fairy book. The scene that alludes to tracking it down has been cut. Instead we’re treated to Artemis Sr.’s only a bad guy because he’s stealing fairy artifacts that fell into human hands.

12. Neither of the Artemis’s are very smart. The secret door is one example, but also where Sr. hides his journal about fairies is relatively easy to find. We’re constantly told by Mulch’s narration how smart Artemis Jr. is, but I just didn’t see it. Since there’s no book, there’s no deciphering it. No concocting a plan. He’s just following what Sr. put in his journal.

13. Mulch introduces the fairy city like you’re walking into it, not like he’s reciting events to the cops. Serious fourth wall break.

14. Commander Root is a woman. I wouldn’t mind this change if it weren’t for the fact that it completely ruins Holly’s arc.

15. Holly’s arc is now she wants to clear her father’s name. (He’s the one that stole the macguffin, to protect it.) Edit: and she's white instead of nut brown.

16. I did not like Foaly’s animation much. He felt too slow when he was supposed to be running, and it looked like he was skipping when he did so.

17. The whole troll in Italy thing is actually fairly close to how it was in the book that I can remember. Edit: I was wrong. Upon relistening to this part there are several differences, the most obvious being an introduction to the Time Freeze in a very Checkov's gun way.

18. Holly is not out of magic. That’s not even a thing. Holly straight up goes AWOL after the troll incident to clear her father’s name.

19. I repeat, HOLLY IS NOT OUT OF MAGIC FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE! And yet Artemis is STILL able to keep her captive. The only thing Holly tries to do to escape is rattle her cell a little (no magic use that I noticed) and tried to hypnotize Juliet and Artemis a few times. They had reflective sunglasses on, so it didn’t work.

20. Right after the fairies set up the Time Freeze, Butler hit it with an energy arrow (Holly’s shape-shifting weapon) and broke it. So they only have 30 mins instead of hours and hours.

21. Artemis wants them to send Mulch in because his dwarven instincts will lead him to the macguffin which Artemis is sure is hidden in the manor somewhere. This isn’t the stupidest thing, except for the fact Mulch isn’t attracted to magic, but to treasure. Mulch could have been drawn to ANYTHING expensive in that house, but the plan works because the movie needed it to.

22. Mulch’s hair has some Sedusa-like properties instead of the “turns into lock-picks” thing from the books. It still picks locks and cracks safes, but not in the way you were expecting.

23. Artemis and Holly have a heart-to-heart about their daddies and suddenly Artemis trusts her enough to take off his glasses and let her go so she can help. Since in this she wants to clear her father’s name, so she’s kinda on his side. She does punch him for the whole kidnapping thing, so I’ll give them that.

24. Somehow LEPRecon can “scramble” a fairy’s magic, so Holly can’t use hers because she’s been labeled a traitor.

25. The LEPRecon sends in the troll, but Butler doesn’t go mano-y-trollo with it. It’s a “team” effort. Basically everyone scrambles around screaming until the troll is knocked out. Holly was stuck in a chandelier for over half the fight. Juliet is entirely useless.

26. Butler dies (crushed by falling troll), but then the LEPRecon have a “do the right thing” moment outside and turn Holly’s magic back on and she brings him back to life. I guess you could say she did a magic defibrillator. It’s all forced drama.

27. Mulch, who swallowed the macguffin to keep it safe (actually the CGI for him unhinging his jaw while creepy was one of the better bits of special effects.). He pulls it out of his mouth and Holly uses it to bring Artemis Sr. back from near death at the hands of Opal and teleport him back to Fowl Manor. Leaving Opal around for shenanigans later.

28. Sometime around now there’s an overly long scene of the Time Freeze collapsing. There’s no bio bomb, no super clever way out. The LEPRecon just give up because they’re out of time. (at least that’s what I got from it.)

29. Artemis Sr. gives Holly a list of names her dad had of corrupt fairies, and she takes that and the macguffin back underground.

30. The movie ends with Artemis Jr. rescuing Mulch from M16 custody. Not a memory wipe in sight. So, now M16 knows about fairies? I’m sure that’ll be fine.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting, but that’s the major things I can think of.

Edit:

31. Invitations work differently than I remember. Here if a fairy accepts an invitation, they have to obey you. But, it's never stated whether they lose their magic if they come in uninvited. The troll fight in Italy is outdoors, so that offers no explanation.

#artemisfowlmovie

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the-evcnstar-archive · 4 years

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So...The Witcher

I finally finished the season having mixed feelings about it. Keeping in mind I have only read the books, not played the game, I’d say it’s pretty well achieved, and most things I did like, though I still have some issues (Details under the cut)

What I liked

I love how the three main characters were portrayed, especially Geralt. Now this might be partly because I am a sucker for Henry Cavill, but I saw Geralt’s mannerisms in every gesture, in his constant humming and grunting and in his cursing and sharp, acid-wit comments. I do feel like they could have toned down a bit the seriousness on Yennefer’s character. While she is a very powerful, seemingly perfect woman who comes from a tragic background, she had her moments in the book in which she was not that solemn. I’m not sure if I see tv show Yennefer as someone who keeps stuffed unicorns in her room. But Anya is amazing I really owed all of Yenn’s badassness. As for Ciri, I really love the strength and innocence in her, as well as the hints of the little rascal she can be. I can’t wait to see her training to be a witcher.

Jaskier/Dandelion is spot on. Physically I didn’t like him at first, he was nothing like I imagined, but the acting got me completely on board. I think I just missed a little more of his womanizing ways, because it’s a huge part of who he is as a character: always getting himself in trouble because he just can’t keep it in his pants. But his upbeat vibe, his overly dramatic discourses, but also the way he interacts with Geralt, Yennefer and the other. It’s just so in character. And his voice is really nice.

BUT THE MUSIC. THE MUSIC WAS ABSOLUTELY NAILED! It’s the second thing I liked best after the main character’s portrayal. It’s so epic, and witchy. It’s what legends and epic fantasy is supposed to sound like. Also Toss A Coin To Your Witcher is so beautiful and catchy, which is exactly the kind of thing Jaskier would come up with.

Roach. That’s it. That’s the point. Just Roach.

The monsters’ designs. They’re unique, yet still believable withing the fantasy genre. They really help to build the world the action is set in. And also can be creepy af (like the striga).

The landscapes. I love the locations. The only location I was not entirely satisfied with was Aretuza, but that was simply because it was nothing like I imagined it. But objectively, it was just as beautiful and breath-taking as the resy.

What I did not like:

Fringilla. They might as well have created a new character and given her that name. Where are the green eyes!? That’s one of her main physical features because Geralt has a thing for intense eye coloring. Where is her seductress nature? Her extravagant and luxurious dressing? That’s another of her key features. Fringilla is a seductive enchantress, very smart and very beautiful and she knows it and exploits it to her benefit. She likes fashion and luxury. In the show they portray her as a flat, cold-hearted, fanatic b*tch, obssessed with the Nilfgaardian emperor. In the books I don’t think she ever even mentions it. She was never in Aretuza and she was never involved in Nilfgaardian politics, at least not as portrayed in the show. It just pissed me off whenever she came on screen because she was simply not Fringilla.

Cahir. Another character they’ve done dirty. Reduced to a senseless fanatic, blindly devoted to Nilfgaardian supremacy. Even before his redemption arc, Cahir was already different because he was never a fanatic. He was after honor and glory, yes, but had a strong mind of his own to start questioning his own orders. Also, he was a dumbass jock with an ultimately good heart, and barely out of his teenage years. Not a serpent looking, sour, psycho. TV show Cahir looked more like Emyr than Emyr looked like himself (if you know what I mean)

Triss Merigold disappointed me too. First of all, she looked nothing like she is described in the books. She looked far too mature. And I would have liked to see more agency, more interactions with Yenn (they’re supposed to be best friends) and perhaps a hint of her feelings towards Geralt, because Triss is supposed to be like blindly infatuated with him to the point of wanting to f*ck him while she was half-dead from sickness.

I missed some details from Yenn and Geralt’s relationship. I would have liked that they included some mention of the time they lived in Vengerberg together because sometimes in the TV show I got the impression that they were more like really good hook-ups and not on-and-off soulmates. What saved their relationship portrayal on screen was Henry and Anya’s chemistry.

I felt like some chapters, particularly the ones that were covering a long period of time (like Yenn’s education in Aretuza) were a bit too abrupt, jumping from one scene to the next leaving loose ends.

I don’t know if they will include other moments worth mentioning, during the next season, like Yenn’s revenge on her family or Geralt and Istredd’s conflict (since they chose to make the later such a relevant character), but I missed those too. And finally, I think a character as key as Philipa Einhart ought to have been introduced in the first season, considering the roll she will play later one. Maybe including more of the Northern Kingdoms politics would have been nice too, so as to get a better notion of the conflcit between them and Nilfgaard.

The final veredict is that despite the details I disliked, I was still entertained and ultimately satisfied and I can’t wait for more shirtless Geralt season two.

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #yennefer of vengerberg #cirilla of cintra #the witcher netflix #ciri #thaly speaks #thaly trash #ooc

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carndriverrecords · 4 years

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First Blog Post 3/20/20

Started CnD Records today. Feels Good.

Working on some diss tracks. Not sure if they see it coming - doesn’t matter either way.

Planning to release Car and Driver first real record this Friday 3/20/20. Driving Test Driver Fest 1.

Self release first record - another 20 tracks next week. Compile top 10 - 15 for first release with other label - thinking Terrible, Kranky, blu ish label or Thrill Jockey. Citrus City a no-go for now. Maybe just keep building CnD records.

Be the middle man - take advantage of opportunities without sacrificing my bands’ (and those I represent) integrity.

Reach sleep destroyer.

Last night at Ted’s - great DJ set. Kidz bop remixes, Fancy. Crowd hated it. Ted disappointed we had to leave but it’s ok with everyone. Tall guy took aux right out of computer, have video. Started dancing - cucked everyone. Everyone thinks they’re the crazy charismatic guy. Am I actually? I think so. Syd thinks so.

CnD Fest 2 , 3 , 4 at Purchase and beyond. Would like to play apartments, Scully’s den in BK (reach out) and Philly, DC etc.

Next voice memo album - 20 - 25 tracks right now. Better than the first. Danny said best album ever.

Working on “My oh Maia Reason Why” video - my favorite video I’ve ever seen. Getting good feedback.

Important to collab with certain SUNY people before I go:

Members of Lip Critic, Dawson, Neal, Gabe.

Send stuff back and forth with Joseph Kress.

Need to write song about not sharing a stage w unstable Car and Driver - cost me 2 gigs. Ok because I had the police interaction that night.

Things have been working out quite well. Syd is keeping me in check. Main priorities are keep the energy going while I can and make sure everyone around me is comfortable with me doing my thing, specifically mom, sofia.

Going to Only Angels tomorrow to collab with Alex.

Tues/Wed in RI with Zach Gorton. Need to see Nick Holcomb, Sofia, Will Orchard if he’s around. Riley in Boston? Would love to.

Visit Dad soon on the way to Richmond, in a few weeks perhaps. Grandma Roberta etc. They have a BBQ place now - I bet it’s great.

Follow up in the morning (3 hours from now) with wedding band, Kevin Daniels, drummer etc.

Film sunrise sessions at Purchase: My Ride’s Here, Splendid Isolation, Keep me in your heart, Studebaker, Cat’s in the Cradle, Everybody that you know. Don’t think twice, Boots of Spanish Leather, Someday my Prince, Teenage Dirtbag, Arthur (Woof Woof), Forget You, Signed Sealed Delivered, Superstition, The Promise, Hold me now (TT), Love on Top, Townes Van Zandt, 1-800 superstar, Evan Wright, Tom Petty, Blinded By the Light, Searching for a Heart, Mag Field’s, Barenaked Ladies, TMBG, Dolly Parton one sided love, Byrds, Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Parquet Courts, T Swift (Red, Way I loved you), Mitski, Sasami, Anything Could Happen, Beach House, He Needs Me, These Days, YLT, Beach Boys, Big Star Take Care, G500/Luna, Felt, Psychic TV, Shelia, BJM, Yellow Sarong, Over and Over, Hazel St, Heatherwood, Helicopter, He Would’ve Laughted, I wanna be your lover, The pump, Good enough (sleep destroyer), Them airs, BH (14, indian summer), help me scrape mucus off my brain), Beach Comber, DO YOUR THING, Icehead, Bobby, 1000 times, WIll Orchard, Bon Iver, MGMT, Tame impala, Instant Crush, etc. Art Vandelay, Quick Canal, Stereolab, Grouper, Broadcast, Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Bachelor Kisses, Cranberries, Cure, Pastels, MBV, I found a reason, pale blue eyes, Deerhoof, Gretel Alex G, Dancing w tears in my eyes, Elvis Costello, No age(things i did), Are ya ok, Maus, Ariel, R Stevie, Aphex Twin, Zomes, Vampire Weekend etc.

Bring Laptop for Beats on some and lyrics for all.

Love life more than ever before. Music feels so good. Want to help, make amends, everything that moondog did. Don’t be homeless much longer.

Not sure if I like throbbing gristle - definitely like Psychic TV.

How savage should diss tracks be? Very? Match the severity of the person’s treatment of me/others. Aka - pretty bad for all except for Auto.

Listened to new Kanye today - 10x better and more influential than death grips.

Realized today that i’ve spent my whole life wishing I was Kanye and now I am Kanye. Feels very good.

Everyone is gifted but internet makes us angst.

I am mostly Camus right now - maybe more Kierkegaard soon. Religion and Terrence Malik. Still need to read books.

Order of Books: The graduate Portrait of the artist Consider Lobster Infinite Jest Pynchon Ulysses (At recommendation of American gamer association)

Syd is incredibly gifted. Want to help her feel comfortable doing art/work here in the chaos but also sort out the chaos for both of ours’ sake. I thrive in it, she tolerates well. Want to move to Riverdale still, maybe East Williamsburg with Backpack Chris. We’ll see about money. Philly perhaps, little too far. Jersey is good location but bad commute. Bad to RI.

Visit RI and Boston Tues - Thurs. Sell Cigarettes at Concerts. Feels right.

Keep smoking for now - quit end of summer perhaps.

Don’t have Corona Virus - glad we are not quarantined. Still be smart. Don’t expose mom regardless. Protect at ALL costs.

Really though, why does Journee hate me? Write new track (Journee into forever nevermore not now not ever (Lou)) or Journee into SJW self righteous moral posturing (way too savage - maybe voice memo outro)

AR Kane album is incredible. Syd loves too. Sample everything.

Crazy - sound better at jazz than ever in my life. Exploring harmony - never practice. Teach free lessons all the time. Love the diminished scale. Might be best jazz guitarist to ever live. Time will tell. Would be cool long term. Prefer singing.

Getting good at piano too.

I’m my favorite lyricist/comedian/actor.

Is maia right, acting isn’t hard? Weird they can’t act.

^Remember to delete^

Don’t share this on Facebook yet.

Why does Journee hate me so much? Just the Louis CK joke?

People who stay home and do nothing hate to see irreverent people doing things.

People like when you’re losing - don’t like to see you win.

^That makes me sound crazy.

F00D outsider might make me famous first.

Need to keep up with legal situation.

Hope mom and dad both live long. Call Syd, get something nice for everyone in family. Get weird jewel cases. Order jewelry from etsy. Post merch on bandcamp.

Finish album art soon. Music videos. Get better at animation etc. Pay Ben for his poster. Actually really good. Maybe album art? Duo album! Record in Wisconsin, release under his name. WIll success be good for Ben? I think so. Still can’t believe Liv told him I wasn’t ok. Wow - good content for lyrics. You truly cannot write this.

How will people react to diss tracks? Extremely negatively. Or no reaction. We shall see. Maybe no real names in the titles...... only on Oh my. 4 names in titles is too many. Don’t release Auto track. Maybe on Voice Memos.

Track List: Good God Bed Head Rosa Reprise Oh My House Pop 1 skydive Pop 2 APhex GVO Pay 4 Take some Cherish Stars in F Are ya ok too bright Honeys Get to work Everybody That You Know Frost Bit BPC NYC New Age Heimet Helmet Deadbeat dads watermill for slitting bars romantic song david byrne Cinema study in cinema Brain ego Cherry doc marten Can’t liv w/o Venmo groceries Oh you like? Dancin DJ blues We are the State Farm robots Danny dorito is a dirty devito My funny valentine Zoomer blues The thing abt genres Blss Like minds ft dawson Lil toucha jazz Introducing car and driver The holy moment empire Ethics 101 - gma in the street Otto is sad I don’t know what it means! Operatic mellismatic Car and driver fest will be a success! Car and driver fest was a bust again! Cipha’s comedy corner Ryder Be gone evil atonal spirits!

Unreleased mental breakdown compilation ep:

I like all music! I’m a stupid pos Electric micro bike Get off your phone! John frusc Nice song Lap steel for 2 My masseuse advice Bed head wash sq Punchie John Maus yoyo interview Diminished kinda thing

Build the NYC scene, w Blu ish, Evan, 1 800, sweet joseph, Comics Club, Dawson, Sloppy Jane, Wheatus,

See Jack Fortin in NYC soon. Either my event or his.

Things are still good. Syd will be a great filmmaker. WIll maybe will end up with a dancer or a filmmaker - Probably not a musician. WIll have many loves.

Things are good right now - hope they stay that way.

Feel like Ezra Keonig - hopefully someone reads this one day and agrees. Different time in history and the internet - hope this is less cringe than Ezra’s blog , probably not. Ezra, if you’re reading this, sorry. See ya at Bernie’s rally.

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meimi-haneoka · 5 years

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Thoughts on Chapter 32 of Clear Card

Mwahaahah everyone, welcome to the review of this Cardcaptor Sakura doujinshi Clear Card chapter, we’ve reached number 32!

Yessir you heard me, the manga that was supposed to be a one shot has actually come this far, and CLAMP have waited all this time to turn Clear Card into the dream of many fans, a doujinshi!! XD Why am I saying this?

Well, since these ramblings have really no sense nor order to respect, let’s start from the bottom (after the cut, cause I don’t want any of you on my coscience for dying of cuteness, eh)!

Honey, I shrunk the kids

MWAHAHAHAHAH WHAT THE F*CK IS THIIIIS? AAAAAHHH???

Istg I can’t calm down whenever I look back to this page XD I mean, I don’t know about you but in all these years I’ve seen TONS of doujinshi and fanarts imagining how Sakura would deal with a younger Syaoran and vice versa... I’m pretty sure CLAMP must have seen them, I mean, come on. And now they delivered, they really did turn Syaoran into a little kid, through Sakura’s strong and uncontrolled magic. He’s really the cutest thing and I want to hug him so badly! <3 I found so sweet that Sakura thought about how it would’ve been if they met earlier than they did. I mean, I think that’s a pretty common thought in couples in love. ”I wish I would’ve met you sooner”. Especially as a result of making up after a rough period. You feel so full of love that you would want to catch up even for the time you couldn’t spend with your loved one, because you didn’t met them yet. And I also want to say THANK YOU to CLAMP for making Sakura express the doubt that Syaoran only came back for a “duty” (which was still in her interest, but maybe it would’ve pushed aside the romantic factor). Syaoran replies with a very firm and even slightly upset expression, like “hey love, are you really doubting my feelings?”, but his “I wanted to see you as soon as possible” is really a breath of fresh air, it eases even more the tension (especially in the fandom, for all of those doubting Syaoran’s feelings). I’d dare say CLAMP did it to let rest once and for all the question “are Syaoran’s feelings sincere?”. That little blush on his cheek was absolutely adorable too!! But after the due squealing, we better analyze the situation. Yes, Syaoran is very cute and I’m pretty sure Sakura will notice that. But after the initial surprise and feeling of tenderness will wear off, I expect Sakura to panic. Because Syaoran can’t obviously stay like that, and now she knows she’s the one causing this, and this will make her even more nervous to find a solution. When one is panicking it gets harder to think and find solutions. Syaoran didn’t want her to know as long as possible for a precise reason, it’s because her being conscious of it will make it even worse. We’ll see how CLAMP will deal with that. At the end of the chapter there’s this text put by the editorial department, talking about a “new development you can’t tear your eyes off” which makes us believe this will probably not be a thing of a page or two! Furthermore, story-wise it’s already evening, almost dinner time, and you can’t leave a child this small to live on his own. Hell, he looks like 4/5 years old at best. We’ll see if CLAMP will choose the comical way or the serious one!

Nakuru and Suppi are back!

Complete with a suitcase and a fancy dress, Nakuru became the embodiment of a meme we, the fandom, have often associated with her. XD CLAMP never cease to amaze me for how they’re tuning in with the fandom! XD But her (and Suppi’s) task this time is far more important: they’re here for an info dump and to be Yue and Kero-chan’s “batteries”, to keep them awake, especially in crucial times. It’s basically starting a new cohabitation that I’m sure will spark many funny moments. No matter what Touya might have to say about it XD The info dump turned into another fandom-oriented moment: during the more than 2 years period I’ve been chatting on the CCS discord server, I’ve often seen fans theorizing “Eriol is probably not coming to Tomoeda yet cause otherwise who knows what Kaito could do to the airplane bearing him”. Turns out, our fears were featured in this chapter! XD Kaito’s morality is still pretty unclear by Eriol’s words, but one thing is sure: Kaito’s got the degree of power needed to drop the airplane bearing Eriol, but he wouldn’t go that far since it would mean involving too many people and getting hassled by investigations...So yeah, he probably wouldn’t do it, but between the lines Eriol (and so, CLAMP) is telling us that it’s not because he wouldn’t want to kill Eriol. Or at least, this is what CLAMP want us to believe at this stage of the story (remember, it’s still all Eriol’s reasoning). To be honest, I’m still shocked that CLAMP would introduce this concept, this idea at all in a manga like CCS. It’s creepy and thrilling at the same time. I’ve been saying forever that they’re raising the bar in Clear Card, and they really are.

Kaito’s turmoil

I don’t really know how to interpret this, but this is the second time Kaito makes weird and sad faces while talking about how Sakura is loved by people and how she’s got great memories because of them. Is he relating this to Akiho’s experience? Is he relating this to his own experience? Is he feeling a bit envious there? Momo’s following statement “Akiho loves that girl a lot too” and his wordless reply only adds to the concerning moment. HOW should we interpret that? Does his plan include to hurt ot treat Sakura in an unfair way? So maybe he was silent because he was guiltily aknowledging the possible consequences of his actions on Akiho? Or maybe something else, like he was thinking of how the bond between the 2 girls will be crucial to the success of his plan? While brain storming, I had a lot of thoughts about this scene. It’s unsettling, but it’s interesting precisely because of that. And then, how can we not mention the cute scene where Akiho blushed? XD I’m pretty sure Kaito said that without implying anything, he didn’t even realize how what he said could be interpreted...for him it’s just (a part of) the truth! But Akiho’s loving heart of course couldn’t help but beating a little faster! (a little??) Let me tell you that Momo was GREAT when she said she would kick him once she went back to her true form!!! XD It must have been because how cheesy he sounded, and yet he’s not realizing anything!!

So that’s it for chapter 32, this chapter was great but I’m pretty sure next chapter will be EVEN MORE great, with the baby Syao madness!! Will our heroine find a way to fix this mess??

#cardcaptor sakura #Card Captor Sakura #clear card arc #clear card manga #ccs spoilers #chapter 32 #syaoran li #sakura kinomoto #syaosaku #yuna d kaito #rambling

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: episodes 3x06-3x10

Continuation of my post here

This post includes reviews the following episodes:

3x06 Bitter Harvest

3x07 Thirteen

3x08 Terms and Conditions

3x09 Stealing Fire

3x10 Fallen

3x06 Bitter Harvest

The Arkadia plot in this episode is quite interesting because it doesn’t go the way you expect.

It’s all about Pike’s plan to conquer some fertile land to grow food, so the Grounders couldn’t starve Arkadia out, but his plan requires them to “clear” a Grounder village in the area, as he already explained in 3x05. Bellamy was obviously horrified by the realization of what that would probably mean, but it ends up being one of several frustrating moments of this arc where he fails to change Pike’s opinion and then goes along with Pike’s decision in spite of his misgivings.

The story seems like it’s going to be all about the small armed Arker force victimizing helpless Grounder villagers – especially when it becomes obvious that Hannah and resident bigoted a-hole Gilmer would be ready to kill a child to prevent him from telling other villagers. And about Octavia saving the villagers by warning them to leave before they come. But there’s some moral complexity thrown in when Miller points out that the situation is tricky as warning the villagers, they might end up causing deaths to their friends, though Octavia also rightfully points out that an attack on a village, aside from being bad in itself, would be likely to make Lexa reconsider her decision and decide to attack Arkadia after all.

But I really like the twist that the villagers weren’t a bunch of helpless folks just waiting for Octavia to save them, and that, instead, they don’t want to leave their homes (why the heck would they?) and decide to defend themselves – and that they do it successfully, by releasing poisoned smoke. Because, guess what, Grounders aren’t “Noble Savages” or whatever nonsense some think they are. And it’s funny that Monty – who had pointed out “they are Grounders, they will fight” - actually had judged the situation better than Octavia, who thinks she’s so well versed into Grounder culture. If the village leader, Semet, hadn’t gone on to act like such an idiot in 3x07, I would have a lot of respect for him and the rest of the villagers (they showed themselves to be more competent than their soldiers). And just to be clear, I’m on their side here – as always, people have the right to defend themselves. Arkers here underestimated them and got smoked, just like Grounder army and Commander underestimated the Delinquents in season 1 and got burned.

In the end, Octavia had to warn her brother and the rest of the Arkers so they wouldn’t all die – and it still took two lives. It ends up with Octavia getting tied up by the villagers and brought to Polis, setting up 3x07, while Hannah blames Octavia and “traitors in the camp” for the two deaths, which sets up the conflicts in 3x08.

The first time I watched this episode, I was so terrified that they were going to make Bellamy’s group commit war crimes in the village – because of all the brouhaha I had heard about Bellamy’s controversial actions in season 3, the supposed “character assassination”, or even haters calling him “genocidal” (?). So it was a huge relief none of that happened. But it would have been interesting to see what he would have done if they had indeed run into villagers. I think he may have been able to proceed with the mission as long as the villagers were either defending themselves, or if they took them captive, but it would be different if one of the group tried to harm someone defenseless, and he definitely would have snapped if anyone tried to harm a child. And that would likely cause conflict with the more extreme members of the group, and maybe prompted him to break away from Pike earlier. But it didn’t get to that.

But the other plot, the one in Polis, drives me nuts, because it makes no sense on so many levels.

King Roan gives Emerson as a “gift” to Clarke so she could get her revenge. Instead of of enacting one himself or giving him to his people. And then Lexa and Titus act as if their people have no reason to want revenge against Emerson - and that Clarke and the Arkers are the only ones that the Mountain Men have hurt. Lexa even says “So it is Blood must not have blood only when it’s my people who bleed?” Wait, what?! Her people did bleed at the hands of the Mountain Men. For decades. In all sorts of horrible ways. They said in season 2 that they lost thousands of people. We saw it: they were killing them with acid fog, keeping them in cages, draining them and throwing them out like trash, or hooking them on drugs and torturing and turning them into controlled cannibalistic monsters and sent them against their own people. And Emerson is not some random Mount Weather resident, he was one of the leaders in their regime, he was Cage’s right hand and led the Ground Unit. Clarke knows it, Lexa knows it - because she directly negotiated with him in season 2.

Did the writers forget what happened in season 2, or do characters on this show have super short memory? Is three months the statute of limitation on “Blood must have blood”? It gets worse because we’re later supposed to believe that many Grounders are unhappy with Lexa’s decision to not take revenge on the Arkers for killing 300 of their warriors…which is somehow, apparently, much worse than everything the Mountain Men had done to them? First Nia, then Roan, now Lexa, none of them tried to get revenge for the crimes of Mount Weather against Grounders, but apparently there were no riots over that. The crowd just murmurs and talks at the end of the episode, when Lexa let Emerson go, after handing over the decision of what to do with him with Clarke. But that’s all.

The whole dilemma Titus and Lexa put in front of Clarke here is based on a ludicrous premise that Clarke punishing Emerson would be the same as Lexa and the coalition waging war and trying to kill all the Arkers. I guess you could just ascribe that to Titus being a manipulative d*ck (which he is). But committing genocide of an entire group of people in retaliation for actions of a few is very, very different from punishing one person for his own crimes. To be fair, Clarke points that out to Titus. But then he shuts her up with another false analogy bringing up Mount Weather. And it’s especially grating that it’s Grounder leaders, or even Emerson himself, who give Clarke crap about MW, which is incredibly hypocritical. They know damn well that she had no choice but either kill all of the Mountain Men, or let them kill her and all her people. And why was she left with no choice? Because Emerson and the other Mountain Men tried to kill all of her people (and they didn’t have to - they could have started by asking them to donate bone marrow. There’s a few thousand Arkers, no one needed to die to save the Mountain Men) and because Lexa and the Grounders betrayed Clarke and her people and left them to be killed by the Mountain Men. So Emerson is like “How dare ypu defend yourselves when we tried to kill you all?” and Titus is like “How dare you defend yourselves when we left you to die and they tried to kill you?” F*ck off.

Then there’s the stupid dichotomy of “either death by 1000 cuts, or let him go”. Come on, guys, surely you can think of other options in between? From killing him fast and without torture, to not killing him but keeping him locked up? This is not like that time in season 1 when the Delinquents exiled Murphy instead of killing him. They had a camp with tents, few people, few resources, they were not able to keep anyone imprisoned for any longer period. But in Polis, they have buildings and facilities (we later see cells in 3x13) and enough people to keep prisoners. Why would you let Emerson go free? Forget even justice, forget revenge - this guy is obviously a threat. Let him go, and he’s going to make trouble again. Who cares if he suffers? The primary concern should be stopping him from doing any more damage.

Clarke has always been pragmatic, so only way I can make sense of her actions here and not consider them OOC is that she’s been in this position where she is risking peace if she doesn’t let Emerson go, and she doesn’t have emotional energy to argue the case and point out the stupidity of it all, so she just opted for the lesser evil/lesser risk.

At the beginning of the episode, Lexa wakes up and says that she hears past Commanders talk to her in he dreams (setting up the chip reveal in the next episode), and that they’re not happy about her decision. So, past Commanders were really into killing and revenge. (Does that include Becca?) Lexa is clearly still unsure about her new policy at this point, though by the end of the episode, she gives a rousing speech about peace being the better option. Most of the episode’s plot in Polis revolves around Titus’ attempts to change Lexa’s mind, so I guess we’re supposed to think that Clarke’s decision to let Emerson go helped solidify Lexa’s resolve? This is dumb, for all the reasons above.

We see Clarke as an artist, again – she draws Lexa’s portrait while she’s sleeping, and this and her awkwardness while showing Lexa her drawing is an indication of her growing feelings for her. And that’s the only one-on-one scene they get in this episode, everything else is political stuff about Emerson, so 80% of the development of their romance is all in 3x07.

Another development setting up the next episode: captured Murphy is brought to Titus.

Timeline? Not sure, this time. One of the few times in the season where we don’t know

Body count: Two victims of poisoned smoke.

Monroe, one of the original 100 (leaving 45 Delinquents that are still alive)

another Arker – Lacroix, minor character introduced this season.

Note: There’s a huge continuity error in this episode. Emerson says that Clarke killed 381 people: “182 men, 173 women, and 26 children” That’s not true. Tsing said there were 382 people in Mount Weather in episode 2x11. Since then, a bunch of people had been killed before Clarke and Bellamy irradiated Level 5, so the number of people still alive in the finale were probably just a bit over 300. Many died long before Clarke came back to Mount Weather – killed by Bellamy or the Delinquents, some died fighting the Grounders and Arkers, some of them (like Vincent Vie) were civilians who were murdered by the guards for helping and hiding the Delinquents. Obviously, I have paid a lot more attention to these things than the writers ever have.

Rating: 5/10

3x07 Thirteen

And here we are, this infamous episode again. The title presumably refers to the 13th station, whose fate we find out in the flashbacks, but since 13 is supposed to be the unlucky number, it’s a very fitting title for the most unfortunate episode in the show’s history, the one where the writers had the romance between Clarke and Lexa happen for 15 minutes just to immediately kill Lexa, which it wrecked the show’s reputation and made a mess out of the fandom.

The present day events in this episode happen only in Polis, and Clarke Octavia and Murphy are the only ones out of the main cast who appear in it.

But to start from the beginning –the villagers from the last episode come to Polis for an audience with the Commander, and Titus introduces them. They give a redacted version of their story, with Titus claiming that their village was attacked and helpless. Which is not what happened – they defended themselves successfully. Semet also says Skaikru killed various members of his family. Which I guess might be true, but only if all of them were soldiers in Lexa’s army… but that’s not the story they’re trying to present, they’re making it look like their village was attacked and helpless civilians actually killed. And Octavia is there as their captive, tied up and gagged so she can’t say anything. And then, when Lexa reiterates that she’s not going to be going to war, Semet acts like a complete idiot and tries to assassinate her, in front of everyone (WTF) before getting stabbed by Titus. I always thought this was an incredibly stupid and unconvincing moment. But on rewatch, I noticed that Semet looks at Titus with a look of huge surprise and shock as he dies. Now why would he be surprised that the Flamekeeper killed him to protect the Heda? Either he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought – or Titus was the one who put him up to it in the first place (he was the one who brought them in and controlled the narrative they presented) in order to demonstrate to Lexa that her new policy will turn her people against her. He is maybe the only person with enough authority that he may have convinced Semet that he could get away with an assassination because he would support them. So, maybe at least this plot point was not that bad as I thought, but only if my theory is right. That would also solve the issue of “why are the people suddenly ready to rebel against their Heda over this, when they were OK with her deal with the Mountain Men and with letting Emerson go, and when they generally have a semi-religious worship of the Commander and value obedience and hierarchy” –if there was no spontaneous riot after all

Lexa makes the decision that every Sky person caught beyond the line would be killed. Which creates obvious problems for Octavia and Clarke. Octavia uses her remaining time in Polis to convince Indra to come with her, and to not retire because of her injuries, and to call out Clarke, making a snide remark about how she must be enjoying the comfort of her quarters in Lexa’s castle-like tower, and telling her that she has an hour to come back to Arkadia, or “you are not the person I thought you were”. Clarke says that she’s staying because she was needed for political reasons, but Octavia is not fully convinced, and Clarke seems unsure at this point. The fact she is even considering both options shows how much she’s changed. How much of it is being drawn to staying with Lexa because of her feelings for her, because Lexa is giving her comfort and making her feel good, and how much because she’s still scared of facing her friends back in Arkadia and the painful memories that would bring up, especially after that intense and painful confrontation with her Not=Boyfriend that reminded her of all that history and no doubt convinced her that he hated her, it’s up for discussion.

Good acting and the fact that the actresses have a lot of chemistry helps sell the romantic scenes between Clarke and Lexa in this episode, and on their own, they are really well done, with romantic music and soft lightning – but it all comes off as too soon, considering how poorly this has been set up and developed in the previous episodes. They both know they are going to go their separate ways, which prompts them to show their feelings for each other. Lexa suggests that Clarke could decide to stay with her, and Clarke avoids an answer, instead implying that Titus would have a problem with that (without naming him).If Clarke were to accept Lexa’s proposal, they could have an actual romantic relationship – all that Clarke would have to give up is: her identity, her freedom all of her remaining power, and all her family and friends, and live surrounded by people who dislike and distrusts her, with Lexa as her only protection. Seasons 1-2 Clarke wouldn’t even have considered that, but post-Mount Weather Clarke had already given up most of that, even before Lexa re-entered the picture. Still, she chooses to be herself again, and get back Arkadia. The best written CL moment in this episode is when Lexa show she expected that decision – she is aware Clarke would never choose her over her people - and comes close to telling Clarke she loves her, for being that way – “That’s why I… that’s why you’re you”. They are both aware that their respective roles are too much of a part of both of their identities and that they could only, perhaps, have a real relationship one day if they were free from leadership responsibilities (would that ever happen, if Lexa hadn’t died? We’ll never know, but it’s hard to imagine the Grounder society without a Commander, or a Lexa who retires and isn’t Commander anymore), before they kiss and Clarke initiates goodbye sex.

Two of the show’s many repetitive catchphrases get referenced- Lexa’s line “Love is weakness” from 2x09 and Clarke’s “Life should be about more than just surviving” from 2x14. Here we learn that “Love is weakness” wasn’t just something Lexa believed because of her horrible experience with what Nia did to her lover Costia, but something that Titus, her mentor, had always taught her. Later, in season 5, we learn that it is what all Flamekeepers teach Commanders. It makes sense: not just because of the Grounder views of what strength is, but also because, if a Commander doesn’t fall in love or get close to anyone else, the Flamekeeper can continue to be the main influence in the Commander’s life. It seems that Nightblood novices typically become Commanders as children, who are taken and separated from their parents– and Flamekeepers are quite older and their mentors, and the ones who can shape who they are. Titus is something like a father figure to Lexa, and also her subject, so while she has all the power, he has shaped her while she was growing up, and still has a lot of influence on her – and he hates someone else having more influence, especially someone from Sky people, who is making Lexa abandon the traditionalist views that Titus had taught her. He worships her, but he wants her to be who he made her to be, and love can be abusive (including the platonic, mentor/father-like love). Lexa had shown a tendency to try to control and isolate Clarke, and Titus has been manipulating and trying to control and isolate Lexa. In that way, her death, while problematic in many ways, isn’t random as people say – even though it’s a stray bullet, it happens because of Lexa’s choices and Titus’ toxicity, and it is tragic and both ironic and fitting that he is the one who ends up killing her. She ended up a victim of the traditions that shaped her and made her Commander but that she was starting to move away from.

Where I agree with Lexa/CL fans is that her death - the way it happened - was extremely poorly written and ended up playing into some bad tropes - Bury Your Gays and Death by Sex. Where I disagree with most CL fans is that I think the relationship between her and Clarke leading up to that was rushed, underdeveloped and poorly written. Both the CL romance and Lexa’s change of policy were incredibly rushed – and would have required a lot more episodes (probably an entire season, at least) and way better writing than what was there.

The weird way they wrote their relationship in season 3 weakened both characters in different ways. As a Clarke fan, I’m far more interested in her, and I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to do with her arc here, except give her another short-lived, tragic romance that ends in the other person’s death (because Clarke must suffer in her love life and never be happy or be in a committed relationship). There are interesting interpretations that Clarke falling in love with Lexa was symbolically about her learning to accept a part of herself that she hated – but I’m not sure that her overall arc really fits with that so well, since Clarke still feels guilty and hates herself over various things she has had to do as a leader. In any case, I wasn’t enjoying watching her spend almost all of season 3a as a literal Princess in the Tower, no more really a leader but just a court favorite, staying in Polis as a symbol and putting all her energy into convincing Lexa to do or not do things and having to depend on Lexa to do or not do things to save her people.

Maybe that arc was better if you look at it from Lexa’s POV or as Lexa fan, since a lot of her fans seem to enjoy it. But I don’t think her arc is great, either. Her transition from adhering to “Blood must have blood” to deciding to be a peaceful leader happened very quickly - she was going to go to war against Arkadia in 3x05 and changed her mind at the very end of that episode when Clarke told her she should be a peaceful ruler. She still wasn’t sure about it in 3x06. And they kind of made it all in the end about her romance with Clarke, which made it a very muddled arc: did she really change her policy mostly because of Clarke’s influence (as Titus and everyone around her believed) or did she start to really question everything she had been taught and believe in another way? How would she have dealt with the opposition to her new policy among her subjects? Would she continue to rule as a tyrant and use violent means – as she was taught a Commander should –or would she come to the conclusion that, in order to attain peace, you need to use peaceful means, too? We should have had more time with her struggling with that and making those decisions without Clarke and without the context of Clexa romance. And definitely a different death would have been a much better writing choice - either in battle or something else that was about politics and war, not right after sex with a bullet meant for her lover.

Another, most unexpected Luna mention happens – in bed, when Clarke is looking at the tattoos on Lexa’s back, and hears about the Conclave for the first time, and the fact Luna was one of the kids she was meant to fight.

My favorite moment of the episode is when Clarke finds Murphy tied up – certainly the last thing she expected to see in Polis – and yells “He is my friend!” That was kind of funny and unexpected, since they were hardly what anyone would call friends in seasons 1-2, but they do become more friendly in this episode, where Murphy later even offers her sympathy for Lexa’s death.

Finally, the Becca flashbacks… The first time I watched this, I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly bothered me about them, but I just found them boring and annoying. The second time I started to realize, and now I’m sure: it’s because Becca’s actions make no sense to me. Are we supposed to like her or be on her side? She comes off as an insufferable megalomaniac, the savior complex gone wrong. The android you created destroyed the world, and you think an improved version of that same android is going to save it? Really? And you get a bunch of people killed just to preserve it?

And this is the big revelation about the Flame, and Becca as the first Commander. This is probably my least favorite plot point on the show, ever. What were the writers smoking every time they came up with some new element of the Grounder culture? None of it makes sense, but the chip, in particular, creates a bunch of plot holes. The fact that Grounders managed to forget all the technology, history, culture, just after 97 years (in fact, less – they’ve been like that for a while, presumably) never made any sense – but it is even harder to make sense of if the Commanders all have memories of a genius scientist from before the apocalypse. I have no idea if the show expects us to take the Grounder tradition and belief seriously, and why it romanticizes it so much. From what we can see, having memories of past Commanders never helped any of them be any wiser. So how exactly did the chip help anyone? Unless it was all just about the prospect of ALIE 2.0 one day helping put down the original ALIE.

Timeline: How much time did the villagers need to get from their village to Polis? That’s the amount of time that passed since the end of 3x06. This should mean there have been about two weeks since the beginning of the season, give or take a couple of days.

Body count:

One minor character death - Semet stabbed by Titus

The most infamous death on the show: Lexa, shot and deadly wounded by Titus

This does not exactly count as it happened way in the past, but the flashbacks covered the deaths of most of the population of Earth (six and a half billion people, according to what Becca says in 3x16), and then later, everyone from the Polaris station minus Becca.

Rating: 3/10

3x08 Terms and Conditions

Timeline: This episode seems to take place approximately at the same time as 3x07, in a different location and with a different set of characters, taking place fully in Arkadia, which is under Grounder blockade that they are promising to lift only if Pike is handed over to them.

While 3x07 didn’t feature any of the main cast characters other than Clarke, Octavia and Murphy (and was the first episode of the show that Bellamy didn’t appear in), this is the first episode without Clarke or Octavia. It’s a pretty solid and intense episode that focuses only on the growing tensions inside Arkadia, especially the mistrust and schemes as the two sides are spying on each other and luring each other into traps. It’s like a little political thriller about what happens when a community living in the state of war and isolation and increasing paranoia starts looking for enemies not just outside but inside, with sharp divides between friends, families and lovers.

This is also most of all a Bellamy-centric episode, which starts with him doubling down on his loyalty to Pike, and ends with him finally making the decision to turn against him – maybe not yet to the point of being ready to hand him over to the Grounders, but certainly enough to go behind his back in order to save his friends. Bellamy has looked unsure about Pike’s policies since 3x05 when he told Pike “We went too far” about the killing of the Grounder army, and after that he was obviously increasingly uncomfortable whenever he realized how far Pike was willing to go, but whenever someone (Kane, Octavia, Clarke) would try to change his mind, he would bring up some of the reasons why he joined Pike in the first place (mostly their history with the Grounders and the resulting distrust) and double down on his allegiance, maybe because, to admit to himself he was wrong, he would also have to admit that he’s made a terrible mistake again and killed people he didn’t need to kill. Monroe’s and Lacroix’s deaths in 3x06, apart from being Pike’s reason/justification to start looking for traitors within Arkadia – or rather, prove that the ‘traitor’ was Kane, and find those helping him – also seems to have convinced Bellamy to go along with it. Another thing that made him double down even more is the Grounders delivering their terms with threats and heads of the dead Arkadia guards who got caught over the line. Shooting them on the spot is certainly one of Bellamy’s most impulsive violent moments, but it’s not surprising he wouldn’t react well to that. But when Pike decides not just to keep Kane and the others imprisoned, as Bellamy thought he would (and as Pike first said he would do, after arresting Sinclair), but condemns Kane to death for treason and attempted murder (for trying to deliver him to the Grounders), it’s the crucial moment where you can see Bellamy start changing his mind: “Are we killing our own people now?”

Pike’s policy certainly escalated from 3x04 when he argued to the crowd that they shouldn’t look for enemies among their own, inside Arkadia (and counted Lincoln among those their own). Bellamy’s attempts to pacify Pike up to an extent rarely worked, - maybe the one time it did was when Bellamy managed to convince Pike that the sick Grounders who tried to escape should not be punished, because they just didn’t plan an escape, just saw the door and run, “just as we would do”. But he can’t prevent Pike from sentencing Sinclair and Lincoln, as leaders of the failed escape, to death alongside Kane.

So many Finn references in season 3 – by Raven, Jasper, and now Pike (just none from Clarke since season 2). Arguing with Kane, Pike – who doesn’t believe Grounders would keep their promise if he gave himself up - brings up the time when, as he says, they gave Finn to the Grounders in similar circumstances: “You surrendered one of the young lives you were sworn to protect…” but it ended in Grounders betraying them. I guess that’s the idea he got from the short summary he heard from Monty (who was in Mount Weather when everything with Finn went down), but that’s not what happened. Finn gave himself up, after everyone had been protecting him as long as they could. Why didn’t Kane correct him? This may be one of those times when the writers forgot the details of what happened in season 2. Anyway, considering his genuine desire to protect the teenagers from the Ark, which we later see in the flashbacks of 3x13, I wonder what Pike would have done if he had found out that Miller and Harper were one of the “traitors”, and if he would go as far as to cross that moral event horizon or if that would make him stop, but we won’t ever know. He did find out about Monty’s betrayal in the following episode, but in that case he had to promise Monty’s mom he wouldn’t hurt him.

The strain that the political divide puts on relationships is best seen in the familiar relationship between the Greens – Monty eventually helps his friends behind his mom’s back – and the romantic relationship between Miller and Bryan, because Bryan is from the Farm Station and loyal to Pike because he feels he owes him his life, and because Bryan plants a bug on Miller. Bryan doesn’t feel about himself for doing that to someone he loves, but Bellamy tries to reassure him that this kind o deception and betrayal is OK “if you are doing it to protect him”. Bryan isn’t sure: “What if I am the one he needs protection from?” Parallel to Bellamy’s actions regarding Clarke in 3x05.

Kane was initially against Harper’s suggestion that they knock out Pike and give him up to the Grounders to lift the blockade, citing moral reasons – that it would practically be murder: “This is not who we are” = “Maybe it should be”, replies Miller. Two seasons ago, Kane was the one arguing for ruthlessness in the name of survival, but now he’s on the opposite end. However, he eventually changes his mind and agrees with Miller and Harper, and tries to hand over Pike himself.

The big argument between Kane and Pike after Kane’s arrest is a clash of two different views of the world. Kane calls out Pike on having become a dictator, and points out to him that the world is not the way he sees it and that his way of doing things is destructive and has no future. But Pike is convinced that he is being realistic and doing what is necessary for survival of his people, and his arguments, including invoking the Ark laws, must remind Kane of his old self back in early season 1.

The City of Light stuff in this episode is really strong. Having this storyline focus on Raven, who is incredibly strong but has suffered so much both physically and emotionally, and Jasper, who has been broken the most by his suffering, was the best idea of season 3. Raven, under ALIE’s influence, recruits Jasper to help her to look for the second AI that ALIE is focused on finding, but instead, Jasper ends up being a catalyst for Raven to finally understand the nature of ALIE’s brainwashing and turn against her. Raven is still wearing Finn’s necklace, but it turns out she has forgotten everything about him, including nice memories, like her first kiss. ALIE doesn’t just remove the pain, she removes all important and emotional memories (Jaha has forgotten Wells, Jackson has forgotten his mother…).

Is this the first time we see Maya’s music player, which Jasper kept, or was he already using it in 3x01? Was that what he was using to play Violent Femmes? This time he’s playing Algiers, the song “Remains”. Maya had good taste in music.

Body count:

4 Arkadia guards killed off-screen by Grounders, who delivered their heads,

2 Grounder warriors (the same ones who delivered said heads) shot by Bellamy

Rating: 7/10

3x09 Stealing Fire

This episode is much worse than I remembered it. It’s not even bad, it’s just mediocre.

That’s in large part due to the Polis storyline (again), which is particularly bad here. In the aftermath of Lexa’s death, we finally find out the details about the way that new Commanders are made: we had already learned in 3x07 that what was described as something mystical and similar to reincarnation, is actually more of a Dollhouse thing, with people having computer chips in their heads with memories of dead people< and now we find out that the romanticized story about the Commander’s “spirit choosing its successor” is actually about kids being forced to fight and kill each other until only one remains. That’s extremely disturbing. (It also makes the line about the Commander’s spirit nonsensical and probably referring to superstition.)

In addition to being messed up, the Conclave is also a really stupid idea. Best line of the episode – Clarke pointing out to Titus just how stupid their succession plan is (Nightblood people are so rare, let them kill each other). It’s terrible that Ontari kills all the children, but, as Roan explicitly points out, those children were all (but one) going to die anyway, except it was going to be by each other’s hand.

This is where Ontari really gets into focus as the new villain. She’s my least favorite character on the show – what a trashy, one-dimensional, over-the-top, badly acted villain, and on top of it all, she’s so sexualized, that her scenes, especially every time she interacts with Murphy, look like I’m watching some trashy exploitation movie fantasy. They even show her bathing and acting seductively towards her future rape victim. WTF is up with that? She manages to bring down the quality of the show several notches every time she’s on screen.

Roan, now King Roan, also comes back, and is in his usual maybe-ally-maybe-not mode, and saves Clarke and Murphy, but also supports Ontari, because she’s Ice Nation, so he doesn’t care that she’s batsh*t. He justifies it by throwing Mount Weather into Clarke’s face, and I’m really sick and tired of everyone (Lexa, Titus, Roan) making that comparison WHICH DOES NOT ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE to justify their BS.

Speaking of bulls*itting, Titus is a piece of work: dude actually tries to blame Clarke for Lexa’s death: “I may have pulled the trigger, but you killed her”. Yeah, Clarke, how dare you be my intended murder victim and not die!

Clarke, of course, desperately tries to ensure that Ontari doesn’t actually become the Commander, because she’s made it clear that she wants to kill all Sky people (and is generally awful), so she finally manages to convince Titus to give her the Flame to go and find Luna, who they all think is the last Nightblood (how lucky that Clarke remembered that and that she asked Lexa about that in bed). Before that, there’s a lot of talk about how the Flame works – according to Titus, if a bad person like Ontari gets the Flame, it only enhances those bad qualities, all the more reason not to give her that. (Does that mean it works kind of like Dr Erskine’s serum?) According to Titus, Lexa was the “wisest and purest” of the four Commanders he’s served (and Titus is not even super old, so that gives you an idea that Commanders tend to die violently). I really don’t know if this is supposed to be objectively true – Lexa made quite a few really bad decisions, from starting an unnecessary war against the Delinquents and losing, to making a deal with the Mountain Men and betraying the Sky people, to expecting Sky people to accept her as their Commander afterwards; but she was said by Emerson to be different from most Commanders because she was making alliances, and we don’t know anything about the earlier Commanders, except that they probably constantly waged wars between clans, killed a lot of people through the “Blood must have blood” motto, and failed to mount any serious resistance against the Mountain Men…. So it’s entirely possible that most Commanders were terrible leaders. So having the Flame didn’t exactly help them, did it? The one thing that would have been useful, Becca’s technological and scientific knowledge, they somehow didn’t know about.

On the other hand, Titus is hardly objective – dude is very genuine (and rather creepy) in his pseudo-religious adoration of his mentee/daughter figure/Heda Lexa (who, we learn from Luna later in 3x14, was his favorite even as the novice in the Conclave), He even kills himself with Roan’s sword, refusing to give Ontari the Flame, with the last words “For Lexa”. I don’t doubt that he really did love her in his toxic, controlling and manipulative way.

Throughout seasons 2 and 3, Murphy’s role was basically to be thrown around between various random storylines, and have bad things happen to him, while making snarky remarks and talking about being a survivor. Murphy ending up as Ontari’s fake Flamekeeper – just because he happened to be there and see when Titus took the chip out of Lexa - is one of the most random things that’s happened on the show. You’d think that Grounders would make sure that there would be more people who knew to do that, since the position of the Flamekeeper is so important.

The storyline in Arkadia is more interesting but also really frustrating in many ways.

The one good thing that happens is the Kabby development. Faced with the likelihood of Kane being executed, Abby indirectly admits that she loves him, by saying: “I can’t do this again” (see the man she loves die), and later, when he has to escape from Arkadia for the time being, Kane kisses her. Most romantic relationships on the show are either rushed or developed off-screen, so it’s good to finally see one that can be called slow-burn = their chemistry was obvious back in season 1 -and has had genuine development, but hasn’t been endlessly dragged out (slow-burn by TV standards – it’s actually just normal-burn, since it has been less than six months since the Pilot).

The episode starts as a follow-up to the resolutions from the end of 3x08 – Bellamy and Monty come to Miller and Harper, offering help and trying to convince those two they are on their side now because they want to save Kane, Sinclair and Lincoln, though Miller and Harper are unsure if they should trust them – trust between the Delinquents has really been damaged by the events of the previous episodes. Harper teases Monty about his mother, apparently not believing that he could oppose her or go behind her back, which Monty indeed does to help his friends. Bellamy opts to set up a meeting with Octavia to help her save Lincoln.

The Green mother-son relationship is pretty complicated – Hannah knows Monty ‘betrayed’ Pike to help his friends, so she warns Monty to get away but claims she didn’t give him up… although she actually did, she just asked Pike to promise not to hurt Monty. (This reminds me of Abby turning Jake to Jaha.)

The relationship between Miller and Bryan has been strained due to everyone spying on each other, especially since Bryan put a bug on Miller, and Miller found out someone did it, since Bellamy had to remove the bug first when he came to talk to him. And it wasn’t hard to guess who put it there. Miller makes Bryan reveal it, or maybe his intent was more to see if Bryan would choose him over his political affiliation and loyalty to Pike. Which he does, but that was when the stakes were as high as Miller’s life. The relationship was surprisingly fine after this point, I guess Miller was fine with Bryan making his choice at this point.

On the other hand, the Blake sibling relationship doesn’t heal so easy but gets worse, because Octavia meets Bellamy’s offer of help but nothing but distrust and anger, electrocutes him and chains him up in a cave and declines his help, saying that she doesn’t need his help “for the first time in my life”. Not a good decision on her part, since Bellamy’s plan was much more likely to work without alerting Pike, since he still had Pike’s trust and could have used that, unlike Octavia’s plan to be the lone hero – which was a lot more dramatic, but resulted in Pike using the interned sick Grounders to blackmail Lincoln to come back, under threat of the others being executed instead. Was that a deliberate parallel between Octavia electrocuting and handcuffing Bellamy, Bellamy handcuffing Clarke, Clarke electrocuting him to escape, and between Octavia electrocuting Bellamy and Lincoln knocking out Octavia with a syringe at the end of the episode, so he can go back to save his people and stop her from coming with him? Very different situations, but there has been a lot of that going around between people who love each other.

Lincoln’s death was a heroic, martyr-like one; he chose to sacrifice himself for others, which is fully in-character for him. His last words and the choice of music (“Cloud” by Elias) were really good. But it’s really hard to talk about Lincoln’s death without thinking of all the ugly BTS drama connected to it, and the fact that he barely had any screentime or development in season 3, makes me a bit bitter, as does thinking about the interesting storylines he could have had.

It’s interesting that one of the things Ricky said in his post-season 3 interviews was that he thought moving the death of his character from the finale, when it was planned, to this early, undermined the story, because, in his opinion, it made Pike too much into a villain. I thought the show was already going maybe too much in that direction, and Pike is actually not portrayed in muhaha villain fashion at any point, not even here (his attitude is more like that which we’ve seen, for instance, in Lexa – I don’t particularly want to do this, but I must do it to demonstrate my authority - but it’s true that the one thing audience doesn’t forgive characters is killing a beloved major character. However, in hindsight, Lincoln would have to die at some point even without the BTS drama, so Octavia would start her dark development.

Timeline: The episode starts almost immediately after 3x08.

Body count:

Seven Nightblood children/novices, including Aden,

Titus - suicide

Lincoln, executed by Pike – this is first death of a character billed as main cast member since Finn in mid-season 2, and third overall (the first one was Wells, another infamous death of a black character on The 100)

Rating: 5/10

3x10 Fallen

This is one of the episodes that’s really tricky to rate, because it has one storyline that’s great (the confrontation between Raven and ALIE), one storyline that is really good but where I have some issues with how certain things are portrayed in the long run (Blake siblings), but the third one is worst thing the show has ever done.

The City of Light scenes in this episode are really strong. I’m amazed to realize just how often in season 3 that storyline was the best thing or one of the best things about an episode, even though I found its conclusion in the season 3 finale really underwhelming. ALIE messing with people’s minds and characters either succumbing or fighting her was the most interesting part of that plot (way more interesting than everyone eventually joining to fight the evil robot). Raven’s storyline in seasons 3 and 4 is generally pretty strong and original, you don’t often see a character fighting a battle with and in their brain. Here, she tries to defeat ALIE, first by blocking her from her mind, and then she finds a way to block her permanently – through the wristbands that the 100 wore in season 1. (I’m not even going to pretend to understand Raven’s explanation how that’s supposed to work, it’s really not my field.) But Jaha finds and destroys them all (of course, there’s where the detail from 3x01 – Clarke noticing that Niylah had one of the wristbands – is going to come in).

This is where ALIE achieves her victory in Arkadia, managing to chip almost everyone. She wins the battle against Raven by making her relive all her most painful memories, from physical torture – like being drilled in Mount Weather, tortured in Tondc, her operation, to seeing Finn die. This kind of thing can break even the strongest person, and Raven breaks.

We learn that Jackson has also already taken the chip. We also get a bit of backstory on him – his painful memory that he forgot is the death of his mother Mary from an illness, and he became a doctor because he wanted to save people the way he couldn’t save her. (I’m still confused why everyone on the Ark, which was supposed to originate from 12 different nations. has English first names and why almost everyone has English last names as well, with rare exceptions like the Jahas, Raven Reyes and John Mbege, but that’s a part of this show’s problems with worldbuilding.)

ALIE forces Abby to take the chip, too , by making Raven cut her wrists and almost kill herself. Lindsey Morgan’s performance as Raven and ALIE in Raven’s body is amazing.

Jasper is the only one in Arkadia who isn’t chipped at this point, and he manages to escape in the Rover and save Raven, before he bumps into Clarke, which is very fortunate since Clarke is the one who knows where to find the wristbands. These are some Jasper’s last heroic moments, before he breaks and has an antiheroic role at the end of the season.

But thanks to the other two storylines, I tend to think of this episode as the one where engage in physical and sexual abuse of men, to questionable and varying portrayal on the show/responses from the fandom.

The Blake siblings relationship has always been dysfunctional, but it goes to another level here.. I get that Octavia is grieving and I have sympathy for her, but that does not excuse beating the crap out of your brother, and then not showing any remorse. Some people argue it’s not abuse because Bellamy allowed her to do it, asking Miller and others not to interfere. Just like he later let her treat him as a “hostage”, even though he obviously could have overpowered her any moment, since he did it immediately when he wanted to - after Pike told people to shoot Octavia in the leg. But if the genders were reversed, I very much doubt that the viewers would be that blase over a grieving male character dealing with his issues by brutally beating his sister bloody, or that they would be OK with it because she allowed him to do it because she loves him, or because “she deserved it” (yikes!). That justification is wrong and disturbing even if Bellamy were actually responsible for Lincoln’s death. Which is highly questionable at the very least. He did come to her and offer to help get Lincoln out, but she chose to distrust him, treat him as a villain and chain him up and went to rescue Lincoln on her own - but Bellamy’s plan was better and he had an opportunity to use Pike’s trust in him, just as he did in this episode. So, one could argue that if Bellamy should be considered partially responsible for Lincoln’s death (for unintentionally setting the chain of events in motion that ended with his death), so should Octavia. But I’m sure it’s much easier for Octavia to blame Bellamy than to blame herself or not have a punching bad to take out her pain on (since Pike is not there), and Bellamy also prefers it that way, both because he cares about Octavia’s well-being more than his own, and because he’s always feeling guilty over things.

This pretty much encapsulates the dysfunctional Blake sibling relationship, which never had a chance to be normal, due to the circumstances they were raised in. He is always doing things to protect her and being self-sacrificial, like a parent towards their child, and she’s blaming him for everything that goes wrong, assuming the worst of him the moment he is not only doing things she is in favor of, and taking things out on him at least half of the time

Unlike something else from another storyline in this episode, I don’t have a problem with how the beating is dealt with in the scene itself – it’s portrayed as a dark and disturbing moment, and Miller and the others are obviously upset. But the fact that, after this, it’s still all framed as Octavia having to forgive Bellamy things and having nothing to feel about or be forgiven for, really bugged me and made me unable to like Octavia again for a long time after this

I don’t know if the show was trying to fool the audience into thinking that Bellamy was really going to hand over Octavia to Pike and betray the rest of the group – I always found it really obvious it was a ploy. Anyone who knows Bellamy would have known he would have never prioiritize Pike over Octavia - at the time he probably wouldn’t prioritize Octavia over anyone (it took six more years for him to be able not to always put her first), but it wasn’t obvious to Octavia, since she actually believed his ploy.

Octavia wasn’t the only one who treated Bellamy as a villain throughout 3x09-3x10. Kane was also doing that, calling him an enemy an insisting he couldn’t be trusted, and the rest listened to him. Which is interesting, since Bellamy and Monty came to Miller and Harper to offer help after Kane, Lincoln and Sinclair had been condemned to death, and Bellamy has been trying to help since, while everyone is apparently cool with Bryan, who only switched sides after Miller figured out that he was the one spying on him, because he wasn’t able to sacrifice his boyfriend. Maybe Kane, Octavia and the rest were hanging out in The 100 fandom in 2016 too much… But I guess that’s just the way this show works – the more important a character is, the more blame and punishment they get from everyone and themselves and the more they need to work for redemption, so Clarke gets blamed the most and Bellamy gets blamed for things he didn’t do together with Clarke, while supporting and especially minor characters can get away with much more because the show doesn’t care enough to focus on them.

When Bellamy turns over Pike to the Grounders, which is to ensure peace and lifting of the blockade, Kane asks if he did it because it’s the right thing or for his sister, and when he doesn’t get the answer, points out that it matters, and „Until you understand that, you will still be lost“. Which is a good point, Bellamy does still need at this point to work out some things and not just make his decisions on the fact that he wants to protect Octavia… and Kane, and Lincoln, and Sinclair, and Harper and Miller (because the lives of all of those that made him decide to turn against Pike, though protecting Octavia is what made him decide to give up Pike to the Grounders. It should be about general principles rather than just protecting those you care about… So why is this one of the moments where I find Kane kind of irritating? There’s something about the way he gives his mentorship advice that grates on me at times, even if he’s making good points – he sometimes comes off kinda of condescending.

Unfortunately, this episode has another plot – everything in Polis with Ontari and Murphy. Even after everything else that I had a problem with this season, everything involving Ontari in this episode is utter trash and feels like it comes from some much cheesier and worse show. If that was the only thing I was judging this episode by, it would get a 1/10. Ontari in general is a terrible character – not because she’s evil, evil people can be good characters, but she’s not.

But that’s not all - he premise is completely nonsensical: she has to prove that she’s a real Commander by… reciting the names of all previous Commanders, which they said only a real Commander would know? What??! That’s like saying only a President of USA would know who the previous Presidents were. You don’t need to have a freaking chip with the memories of dead Presidents to know their names, LMAO.

After the show went two and a half seasons without any rape, but now we get that with Ontari/Murphy… Which wouldn’t be a problem, if the show really acknowledged that and treated it accordingly. But that doesn’t seem to be the case? On the one hand, they make it clear that she has full power over his life and she makes it clear she will kill him if he refuses to have sex with her (what exactly do people think that is? Yet I’ve seen articles describing Ontari as „Murphy’s former lover“!), and he will reiterate that a couple of times later… but the way the scene is portrayed is at odds with that – tit’s all sexualized, they even use the same music as in the Clarke/Niylah consensual sex scene in 3x01..it all feels very It can’t be rape when it’s a dude being forced to have sex with hawt chick, har har, right? Ugh. The worst scene in show’s history.

Timeline: The amount of time that passed between since 3x09 and the end of this episode is the amount of time that Clarke needed to get from Polis to Arkadia - so probably about a day, which is the case with most episodes (except 3x03, which took place a week after 3x02, and I don’t know how much time passed between 3x05 and 3x06 – a day or a few days). I guess this means this takes place some 16-18 days since 3x01.

Body count:

Three Arkadia guards who were with Pike, shot by Grounder arrows

Shawn Gilmer, stabbed by Octavia – because of course she was going to take a chance to finish that dude.

(Not really body count since the poor guy didn’t die – I guess – but there’s a scene where Ontari gets to be Ontari and gorge out an emissary’s eyes, after he has questioned her authority.)

Rating: 4.5/10

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rwdestuffs · 6 years

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How the show fails at being bad at power escalation.

Generally speaking, Power Escalation is what happens when you have a villain that has to be overpowered in order to defeat. So, by virtue of the heroes increasing their own power level, they can then defeat them.

If the series continues, in order for the next big bad to feel like a threat, the creator(s) typically introduce a new threat that is even more powerful than the heroes. This can eventually lead to the heroes going from Martial Arts to firing beams of energy that can destroy planets, or a show about people with magical ninja powers going to gargantuan avatars that can level mountains, to even something as simple and straightforward as a gang of pirates with a few interesting abilities turning into a series where having the power to destroy a mountain is normal. It basically becomes an absurd escalation of power that makes it harder to get invested because the series is likely to repeat the same formula until it becomes too crazy to follow the levels of power that the characters are throwing around.

In layman’s terms, it becomes: We just overpowered the big bad! Now we gotta do the same with the new big bad! We gotta get to a higher power level!

Now, rw/by is a show that succeeds at avoiding this for the wrong reasons. This isn’t like a franchise that started as a man trying to defeat undead foes with a magical breathing technique that eventually evolved into people wielding invisible ghost beings that punched things really hard and fast. This is a show that started as a group of schoolkids trying to save the world to……… a bunch of schoolkids trying to save the world on the road!

Unlike Jojo, which avoids this problem completely by starting each new part with a new protagonist (video detailing that here) in a new setting, rw/by fails at this because the villains remain at the same or similar power level as the heroes.

This creates a problem because they mentioned that Semblances can evolve. We have yet to see that sort of evolution in the show proper. Ruby’s semblance hasn’t evolved from super speed (or rose petals (whatever the f*ck that means)) to teleportation. Blake’s semblance hasn’t evolved from making shadow clones to making tangible clones. Yang’s semblance hasn’t evolved from turning physical pain into power into using preexisting pain into physical power. Nora’s semblance hasn’t evolved from lighting absorption into non-physical energy absorption. Ren’s hasn’t evolved from Emotion Masking to invisibility. Qrow’s hasn’t evolved from Bad Luck to probability manipulation. Raven’s hasn’t evolved from making portals to people she’s bonded with to making portals to anyone/portals to any location that she’s seen before. Emerald’s semblance hasn’t evolved from illusions to straight-up mind control/physical constructs.

In short; the characters’ powers have yet to evolve.

But you might have noticed that I didn’t include Weiss or Jaune on this list.- That’s pretty straightforward. Weiss learned how to summon, and that was an interesting jump in power. Unfortunately, that ability became completely negated and useless when Vernal destroyed her knight.

As for Jaune……… He just recently unlocked his semblance. There’s no real narrative reason for his power to escalate as of yet. Maybe in Volume 9, but we’ll see. But by that point, everyone else’ semblance should have also grown.

There isn’t even a growth in strategy. Jaune is as hotheaded as he was before, Yang’s fighting style only added kicks to her arsenal, and that’s about it. Weiss has completely forgotten how to use her rapier when Volume 5, and that’s a nerf.

Nerfing characters to make the big bad seem more intimidating doesn’t work. It doesn’t make the big bad look powerful, it just makes whichever character you decided to nerf look stupid.

Imagine for a moment, that a bad guy is about to sneak up on an innocent, and Spider-Man can’t get to him in time. In a normal situation, Spidey would use his webbing to disarm the bad guy, and deck him for trying to hurt a bystander.

But let’s say that Spidey instead tries to run towards his foe, and doesn’t make it in time. That doesn’t make the new bad guy faster than Spider-Man, it just makes Spider-Man seem stupid. Unless it was mentioned earlier that Spidey had run out of web-fluid and didn’t have enough time to reload, that scene would just make Spidey look like a total moron.

That’s what the current series feels like. Instead of the bad guys actually feeling like a threat, it just feels more like the good guys are just getting stupider.

Unlike having bad Power Escalation in the sense of “The big bad beat the city-block busting hero because they can bust entire cities,” it’s bad in the sense of “The big bad beat this character, because said character somehow forgot how to fight with their weapon.” There’s nothing at stake, and it makes the characters hard to root for when they make multiple stupid decisions after stupid decision.

Weiss once used her Glyphs to unleash what is effectively Death of a Thousand Cuts on a White Fang goon back in Volume 2. That hasn’t shown up again. She doesn’t even bother trying against Vernal in Volume 5, where it could have been a viable option. And even if it failed, it would showcase the difference in power that the two combatants had. It would showcase Vernal as a clear threat if one of Weiss’ better fighting moments in Volume 2 proved ineffective, and it showcased exactly why Weiss tried nothing but summoning. Would the summoning still prove to be useless?- Yes, most likely.- But at least then, it wouldn’t look like Weiss dropped a few levels in the intelligence department just to have Vernal beat her.

The very little power Escalation that we do get doesn’t even work properly. Despite being completely new to the whole idea of fighting, Oscar somehow manages to defeat Leo in a single shot!- That’s the villains getting knocked down a few power levels, not the heroes rising a few levels in power.

Escalation works in the sense of characters rising in power. Not a character being nerfed to ‘showcase’ another character’s progress. Imagine if Vegeta managed to beat Goku only because Goku forgot or couldn’t go Super Saiyan Blue!- Not only would that not be a victory in Vegeta’s favor, it would be a stupid way for Vegeta to win and a direct insult to his fans who want to see him surpass Goku.

Power escalation doesn’t even have to work in the way of characters getting stronger!- It could also work in the sense of creativity, but even that isn’t utilized as much as it should be. Imagine if Blake could use the momentum from her Shadow Clones to get in some extra speed for an attack. Imagine if Yang used the knockback of her weapons for a quick boost of power. Imagine if Nora developed a technique that would create a small tremor to shake the ground to disorient her opponents. How about Ruby using her speed semblance the same way comic speedsters do, and using it to create tornadoes? How about Weiss being more creative with the variety of Glyphs she’s got like we saw back in Volume 2?- While weapons themselves are dangerous, it has the potential to be even more dangerous depending on who is using them.

Take Okuyasu from Diamond is Unbreakable, for example. Having the ability to swipe things out of existence is deadly and dangerous. But because Okuyasu is an idiot, he doesn’t use it to it’s fullest extent. He’s still creative with it though, like how he uses the ability to erase the space and air between himself and his foe to close the distance between them and get in some melee strikes. While that is creative, it’s not dangerous, because if Okuyasu was smart enough to realize that he could just erase his opponents’ heart(s), well…

(Look, I wanted at least one image in this post, and this was the most natural place I could find for it)

Or take Chazz Princeton (Jin Manjome in the original dub) against his brother Slade (Chosaku in the original dub) from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Chazz using weaker monsters in creative ways so that he ultimately wins (spoiler?- It’s been over ten years since the episode debuted in the English dub (Dailymotion link)).

In a series about a card game can show off creative ways of using monsters that would be normally considered ‘weak’ and ‘unusable’ to win (Chaos Necromancer and Relinquished was in the well that he found for the restrictions that he had, what were the original wielders of those cards thinking?- Did they not have the required ritual for Relinquished or something?), a show about fights with interesting transforming weapons, super powers that are manifestations of the soul, and so many other things……… can’t be bothered to have the characters get creative with their movesets.

Where are the moments where Raven or Qrow use their bird forms in combat?

I mean, they showed a few faunus creatively using their faunus traits in combat situations, so why can’t the other characters do the same with their powers and weapons?

Ilia uses her color change to blend into the shadows (even though that really shouldn’t have worked for so many reasons), that bat guy (Yuma, I think was his name) used his wings to move around faster, that spider-lady pulled a Spider-Man and ensnared Blake with her webbing, and (most notably) Tyrian incorporated his tail into his attacks. I can understand faunus like Blake, Velvet, or Sun not using theirs (as they’re more or less useless in combat scenarios), but why can’t there be more characters like this?

This is what I mean when I say that rw/by avoids the Power Escalation trope poorly. Instead of the new big bad using different tactics, or having a different fighting style, the end solution is always the same: beat, cut, slash, and stab the crap out of them until they either surrender or are dead. Typically it is the heroes that need to change tactics, learn a new technique, or gain more power to defeat the big bad. But they just use the powers that they already have to defeat the big bad no matter what. There’s no change in tactics, nor is there any notable growth in power. They just beat them because they’re the Protagonists™.

#rwde

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Without Remorse Ending Explained

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This article contains Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse spoilers. You can find our spoiler-free review here.

For the most faithful Tom Clancy fans, it’s probably not the ending they anticipated. Amazon’s adaptation of the author’s John Clark origin story, Without Remorse, ends not with a justification for Cold War paranoia but instead with a greater fear of the enemy within. Defense Secretary Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) swore to uphold the Constitution and American interests. But in the end, the only oath kept was the one Michael B. Jordan’s then-John Kelly made to his late wife Pam.

“Her name was Pam, and [I swore] you’re going to say it before you die.” And so Clay did in his final moments after John drove the secretary’s vehicle off a D.C. bridge and into the cold waters below, drowning the old man and making it look like a suicide.

It’s a relatively downbeat climax to a movie that’s featured high octane shootouts, fisticuffs, and one gnarly torture sequence in a burning car. Yet it’s worth considering how the movie got to this watery moment, and how it appears to be intentionally tweaking Clancy’s worldview.

Throughout much of Without Remorse, viewers think they’re watching a simple revenge movie. At the top of the film, John led his team of Navy SEALs on a mission to Syria on the pretext that they were rooting out Syrian sanctioned murderers and thugs. Who they really left dead, however, were Russian spies. Afterward, every member of Kelly’s team was murdered seemingly by Russian agents, as was John’s wife and unborn daughter, who were executed while Pam slept.

Following the assault on his wife, Kelly went into Jack Bauer mode and killed every Russian official and underling who could bring him closer to Viktor Rykov (Brett Gelman), the alleged Russian operative who led the attack on John’s home at the beginning of the movie. And to be sure, Rykov was certainly there, as both John and the audience saw him with his mask off when John was shot during the home invasion.

However, the big twist of Without Remorse is that Rykov was not a Russian asset; he was an American one. When John, Naval officer Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), and CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) track Rykov to a Russian apartment, they discover the whole movie has been an elaborate ruse, played at the expense of American intelligence and (soon) the public. John and his family were just collateral damage.

“There are no other ops, John,” Rykov says when the American special forces team corners him in an apartment, revealing he’s been lying in wait with a suicide vest. “You and me being here is the real op.”

As Rykov explains before pushing the button, he fancies himself a true patriot, even more so than “those behind us in Washington.” He’s been convinced that the best way he can serve his country is by dying in a fiery explosion in Russia. His goal isn’t to take John Kelly or his team with him either. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Rykov is working for “those behind us,” and those D.C. insiders needed John, or an American soldier like him, to be in the building when the explosion went off. That way it’d look pretty damning to Russian authorities, especially since snipers working with Rykov murdered the first Russian cops to arrive at the scene.

This plan was executed on the assumption that an international incident would be created when it reached the press that American soldiers were killed on Russian soil while performing an illegal operation—which itself would be seen by the American public as retaliation for the illegal operation on American soil that killed John’s wife.

That perception is why Rykov personally executed the man who actually shot Pam in her bed. Rykov didn’t know John would take more of their men down, but the trigger man handed Rykov his gun, ready to die because it would build the narrative that Russian agents murdered an American family in their own home. If Americans then died in an even bigger clusterf*ck in Russia, the ensuing chaos would usher in a new Cold War. Hence rather than Russians being the bad guys, the villains of Without Remorse are Americans who want to pretend the 1980s never ended.

John, Ritter, and Greer figure out this much when they let John go ghost and report back to Langley he died in the explosion. John “being dead” gives him the freedom to sneak up on the Defense Secretary and test whether he actually had knowledge about Rykov’s op. The fact the Cabinet member didn’t balk when John mentions the suicide vest—a detail Greer intentionally left out of her report—is all he needs to know. Soon enough, with threats against his family, Clay plays ball and spills his guts about the whole setup.

“You know who won World War II?” Clay whines. “It wasn’t the generals or the admirals, it was the economists. War, tanks, planes, and all that spending lifted this entire nation out of poverty, freed the world from tyranny. A big country needs big enemies. The best enemy we ever had was the Soviet Union. Our fear of them unified our people, gave us purpose. The problem today, John, is half this country thinks the other half’s its enemy because they have no one else to fight.”

In other words, the shadowy conspiracy (which is still not fully unmasked) involved high ranking officials in the executive branch engineering a phantom menace out of Russia by killing a few Americans and a few Russians in both hemispheres. They only failed to anticipate how hard John Kelly would be to kill. Yeah, that’s definitely worth a dip in the drink.

What’s interesting is that this ending pretty much flies in the face of Clancy’s literary Without Remorse and his generally Cold War-attuned worldview. On the surface, this could be viewed as a naked attempt to play into the worst cynicisms of our age. While the movie was filmed before the Covid pandemic and 2020 election, it very much was written and produced after the 2016 one where Russian intelligence mounted a disinformation campaign designed to sew division in the U.S.

When a newscaster says in Without Remorse that this is the lowest moment in relations between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War, a viewer doesn’t have to imagine what that plot point feels like. Some might therefore read Without Remorse’s ending as a subtle play on the conspiracy theories in the U.S. (some of which were propagated by a former American president) that suggest any reports of Russian election interference are exaggerated.

However, I would disagree with that reading of the Without Remorse ending. While the film certainly plays fast and loose with “ripped from the headlines” plotting, the film feels as much a subtle critique of Clancy as any sort of movie about modern realpolitik.

It is indeed worth noting how much the cinematic version of Without Remorse differs from its source material novel. As with all Clancy page-turners, the narrative of Without Remorse is arguably too dense to transfer to a two-hour film. So gone are entire subplots involving prostitution rings and the historic crime of funneling Asian drugs to the U.S. inside the corpses of dead American soldiers (the book is set in 1970 during the Vietnam War). But also gone is the fact that the bad guys really are the Russians.

On the page, the man Kelly killx turns out not to be a KGB mole, but there is indeed a Russian asset high up in the U.S. government: he’s a senator’s aide who is cooperating in Russian efforts to sabotage the Vietnam War effort. And by working for an anti-war dove politician, one can sense the disdain in Clancy’s politics, which imagines anti-war leaders at least playing into Russian interests to undermine American foreign policy. (Oh, what he might’ve thought about his political party in 2020?)

In Clancy’s novels, the villains are almost always the Russians or other foreign threats attempting to besiege Fortress America. For all their technical authenticity and understanding of late 20th century spycraft, they’re very much fantasies tailor-made for the era Clancy found his initial success in as an author: Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America. In fact, what turned his first bestseller into a bestseller was President Reagan enthusing how satisfying the plot is in The Hunt for Red October.

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This is not to say that Clancy’s worldview was as simplistic or jingoistic as his critics might suggest. After all, that first novel which birthed the best Clancy adaptation to date, John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990), is about a Soviet submarine captain attempting to de-escalate the Cold War by defecting and funneling a nuclear Russian sub to the Americans. Of course, this is also because he and most of his officers secretly covet the freedoms borne from the democratic and capitalist West.

Other Clancy novels are not quite so nuanced in their view on Cold War politics, including literary Without Remorse. Yet the movie version of the film ironically brings it closer to the first novel, as well as another book/film which introduced fans to John Clark on screen: Clear and Present Danger.

That tangled narrative involves the perceived menace of South American narcotics at the height of America’s drug war and the criminal empire of Pablo Escobar. However, the greatest villain in the story, particularly the movie adaptation released in 1994, turns out not to be drug lords but a corrupt president who uses the War on Drugs as an excuse to turn American special forces into a personal hit squad out for his revenge—he then leaves those soldiers stranded to die.

The ending to Michael B. Jordan’s Without Remorse very much comes in line with the wary cynicism of Clear and Present Danger, which also feels a lot timelier after the last four years than it did in the ‘90s.

In fact, 2021’s Without Remorse leads fairly well into the Clear and Present Danger movie. At the end of Without Remorse, John Kelly drowns the Defense Secretary, making it look like a suicide. He is then saved by Karen Greer, who must’ve known about John’s plans to drive off the bridge. Remember, she helped set Clay up by omitting Rykov’s suicide vest.

She then escorts John to the airport and gives him his new CIA sanctioned identity, John Clark. Clark is of course the more famous name of Clancy’s protagonist. He is also introduced by that alias in Clear and Present Danger when Robert Ritter, now Deputy Director of the CIA, travels down to Panama City to meet Clark and enlist him in the corrupt POTUS’ secret war against Colombian cartels.

Barring the differences of actors and eras, one could even watch 1994’s Clear and Present Danger movie (also on Amazon Prime) and see a pseudo-sequel to Without Remorse. In the ‘90s movie, Willem Dafoe plays Clark as a hardened and skeptical expatriate who’s been living in South America for some time. He and Ritter have a long off-screen history, with the CIA bureaucrat eventually persuading Clark via the government’s checkbook to lead an illegal special ops team, which has eerie parallels to the Reagan administration’s own South American misadventures with the Iran-Contra Affair. In the ’94 film, Ritter is a slimy middle man for the corrupt interests of the White House, and it is not hard to imagine Jamie Bell’s 21st century Ritter from Without Remorse going along with a similarly corrupt fiasco.

Of course Clark is still a hero in the earlier movie, eventually teaming up with Harrison Ford as CIA analyst Jack Ryan. They even build trust over a mutual friendship with Rear Admiral James Greer, who is mentioned as Karen Greer’s off-screen uncle in the Without Remorse movie.So in the end, it’s all connected. Or perhaps this can just become the sequel crossover with Amazon’s Jack Ryan TV series?

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