#because in the end its up to which favorites do the showrunners have

[turrondeluxe]

I hate how tmnt will only ever give Mikey development in the comics like he has phased out into a background character at this point who is barley relevant in fact the only reason they add him is because he's part of a package deal and it would be hard to get rid of him even though it's become obvious they don't want Mikey a part of the series what so ever so they do everything in their power to make him as less relevant as they can. Also isn't it suspicious how when any big Mikey projects are in production of being made they suddenly get cancelled.? there was supposed to be a foot solider Mikey movie that got cancelled and the last Ronin was actually in production of being Mikey since the 90s there was another Mikey centric movie were his bros and sensei reverted back to turtles but guess what it got cancelled anything Mikey related that's important either gets \cancelled or thrown into the comics also rise actually had multiple Mikey centric eps on hand but the show got cancelled like it's honestly starting to get annoying let my boy live.

this is why i say that there really needs to be more mikey enjoyers in the writers rooms or in higher up positions

#because in the end its up to which favorites do the showrunners have #and nearly all of the times that is not mikey #yeah ive noticed its a very recurrent thing #it pains me more because mikey is quite literally the faceman of the franchise #and yet #oough #im hoping mm mikey gets more love than his past iterations have received :((( #from the showrunners specifically #ask

[londonspirit]

Our Flag Means Death’s season-two finale has it all. There’s a declaration of true love between our favorite criminals, Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Ed, a.k.a. Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). There’s also a heartbreaking death (RIP, Con O’Neill’s Izzy Hands), a pirate wedding that ends with the words “You are now officially mateys,” and some big-time fight scenes. “Mermen” packs a tight punch in only 30 minutes. The episode is both thrilling and satisfying, so even if Max makes the grave mistake of not renewing the series, fans will feel closure in a way that they didn’t with season one’s sendoff. And Our Flag Means Death creator David Jenkins already has some fun ideas brewing for a third season (and beyond!). The A.V. Club spoke to Jenkins about his plans to evolve Ed and Stede’s relationship, potential spin-offs, and how everyone on the show is handling its passionate fanbase.

The A.V. Club: First of all, how dare you kill Izzy Hands? Was that always the plan when you mapped out season two? 

David Jenkins: [Laughs] Yes. I felt that Izzy had reached a point where he broke through a lot of his major patterns. It was fun to give him a season where he got to do everything and where Con O’Neill got to do everything. Well, I won’t say everything, because Con can do light years beyond what I think he can do, and I do think he can do anything. We wanted to show the depth of that character. Izzy is one of my favorites. He’s like middle management who is in a sort of love triangle [in season one]. He got his wish at the end of the first season by breaking up his boss and his boss’ lover. He got punished as a result, and he had to come out on the other side, which felt like a good journey.

AVC: Despite everything that happens in season two, including Izzy’s death, the finale ends on a happy note with Ed and Stede living together. Why was it important for you to show that?

DJ: Season one ends on such a tough note for them. As you said, after what they’ve been through, they should get a moment of happiness. I won’t say however fleeting. They are going to have challenges ahead. They’re both not the most mature yet. I think that’s the fun of it, to leave them in a place where it’s a good kind of stasis. They’ve sent the kids off in the car, so to speak, and now they’re going to have to really grow if they’re going to start an inn. It won’t be easy, but I like that they’re going to try.

AVC: “Mermen” has all the elements necessary for a season finale. Did you partly add all that as a way to provide closure in case this is the end for OFMD?

JD: What’s important to understand is that you never even know if you’re going to get a second season. Maybe if you get picked up for two right away, and even then, but especially right now, who knows? I think with season one’s end, it was a gamble to leave it the way it was. Everybody stomached through it. Now if it turned out they didn’t want us to make more, I just didn’t want to have another story where the same-sex love story ends in tragedy, unrequited love, or if one or both of them are being punished.

AVC: I actually love that about Our Flag Means Death. It reminds me of Schitt’s Creek in a way because the love story just exists and is perfect; there’s no questioning it as right or wrong.

JD: That’s such a nice compliment because I also think Schitt’s Creekdoes that really well.

AVC: You’ve previously said you want Our Flag to have only three seasons. Is that still true or do you feel like the show has scope to continue beyond that?

JD: I feel like Stede and Blackbeard’s story is a three-season story, but the world of the show could go beyond that. It’s a really rich world with so many stories to tell and really good performers to tell it. I do want to see how Ed and Stede become a mature couple in the next season. They’re a couple who is like in their late twenties right now as opposed to being teens at the end of season one.

AVC: So if OFMD continues in some other form, are there characters you’d like to focus more on or other historical references you’d like to include?

JD: Yeah, a lot, because it’s such a rich ensemble. How do you not want to see more of Joel Fry, Samson Kayo, Ewen Bremner, Nathan Foad, or Vico Ortiz? Any one of them could carry their own show. It’s fun to think about that and the storylines we can do with them, mixing and matching all our characters. Vico is incredible, for example, and I especially love watching them in an action sequence. This is a weird comparison, but there’s a Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver vibe they put out. I’m such a fan of what they do.

AVC: You also really like parallels and coming full circle as a storyteller.

JD: Yeah, I do.I knew I wanted to start season two in the Republic of Pirates and end by coming back there. Stede goes on an amazing journey between the episodes. He’s thrown out of there initially, but then he comes back as a hero. I like the symmetry of that. And then the Republic of Pirates gets destroyed; it dies. It’s not just Izzy; it’s the place too. It was important to have a home, this stronghold for everyone, be destroyed. But the characters are not crushed. They’re going to try to move on.

AVC: One of season two’s new characters is Zheng Yi Sao, played by Ruibo Qian, who quickly becomes an integral part of the crew. What was the casting process like for her?

JD: Ruibo is an amazing find. One of our incredible casting directors, Cindy Tolan, she had Ruibo in mind immediately for that part by the time it got to her. And we had looked and looked before talking to Cindy. Ruibo has her own fascinating story because apparently, she had a couple of strong premonitions that she’s going to play Zheng Yi Sao. She had a modern take on the part without it being strained. She’s incredible. She’s a trained theater actor with a lot of chops. She has to go toe-to-toe with Taika and Rhys. She did it with such grace.

AVC: Season two takes Blackbeard on an interesting turn of denouncing being a pirate. But in the finale, it’s almost like he’s reborn as one, especially with that gorgeous shot of him coming out of the water. What was the thought process behind this arc?

JD: Thank you. Blackbeard is a guy in recovery when he comes back to the ship when he’s wearing the jumpsuit. He’s trying to hang on and find some kind of footing. Who is he if he’s not a pirate? Meanwhile, Stede is on his way up and wants to experience the rockstar life of a pirate, while Ed as Blackbeard is over it. It was an interesting tension of, which one gives up their dream? A lot of times in relationships questions can come up, like who is going to give up on their dream to take care of the kids? Obviously, no one wants to, but someone ends up giving up more than they want to at some point. What’s wonderful about a mature romance, and what I’d want to see more of in season three, is Ed and Stede making these tough decisions.

AVC: Stede and Ed’s relationship has led to a passionate, vocal fandom, which you didn’t have as you were writing season one. While working on season two, how did you avoid doing fan service and focus on meaningful storytelling?

JD: I never anticipated the strong reaction to season one. It’s incredible it happened. Everybody is buoyed by it in the cast, crew, and the writers’ room. To be perceived on that level with such enthusiasm makes us want to make more of it. A lot of the things the fans love are not different from things the writers love. We are fans of the show. We’re writing fanfic, but it’s called fic when we write it. The big thing for us is to make sure we’re writing beats for the characters that feel true and have moments where all of us go, “Ooooh, we have to do this.” If the beats stay true, it won’t feel like we’re simply pandering.

AVC: How do you break down those beats for Ed and Stede’s relationship as they go from wanting to take it slow to sleeping with each other this season? And where do they go next?

JD: It’s challenging with them because most rom-coms end with couples getting together. They don’t then stay with them and say, “We’re together now, but it’s turbulent; how is that going to work out?” We thought, “Okay, let’s look at our relationships in the room. What have we encountered? Who’s been dumped? Who has had to forgive somebody?” These questions were fun for the second season. I think for the third, it would [be], “Okay, who’s had a relationship for over 10 years? What things do you have to work on?” It’s fun to watch two people like Ed and Stede go through this experience.

#our flag means death season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #spoiler #our flag means death #ofmd #david jenkins #interview #av club article

[mirageofadesert]

Give me more morally gray characters ...

Let me interrupt my regular program for a brief rant about Downton Abbey and Thomas Barrow… well, not really regular as I've been too busy to watch anything with subtitles for the past few weeks. Instead, I passively binged on Downton Abbey while working.

I love morally gray characters, be it Tantai Jin from TTEOTM or Spike from Buffy. One of my favorite characters is Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey. (Spoiler Alert, TW // suicide, homophobia, conversion therapy)

Thomas is everything I need in a character ... unhinged, angsty and gay.

I loved him from the first rude line to the last. He starts out as a delightful troublemaker with a cruel streak born of fear, hurt and the desire to be respected, fit in and belong. He is, as Baxter understands so well, his own worst enemy, having perfected self-sabotage over the years.

A supporting character for most of the show, the footman-turned-butler's story is usually prioritized over his character development - meaning the writers know where they want him to end up each season, even if it contradicts previous characterizations. This leaves the audience with a character who can be hard to follow at times.

The writing really got on my nerves at times. From conveniently forgetting his medical training when they want him to despair during his job hunt, to pulling any kind of cunning out of him when they want him to appear changed (and depressed), Thomas is always what the showrunners need him to be, but not necessary what would make sense for his character. I'm still annoyed that they made him go through medical torture in the form of conversion therapy and a suicide attempt, and then glossed over these traumatic incidents in favor of boring other storylines. Or how they portrayed his war injury as an act of cowardice rather than desperation.

What I love about him is that he was still a coherent character who remained a morally gray character (the last film aside, because they sort of forgot to give him any of his character traits back). Thomas would still lash out when he was angry or hurt, would still manipulate others for his own gain, and would still feel wronged by the world. Once the world has brought him to his knees, he understands that he has only himself to blame, and he tries to do better - which has its ups and downs. The Thomas we see in the final and in the films still wants to belong, is still a desperate romantic, but he is also so incredibly insecure in a rather endearing way.

Younger Thomas was rather stiff but dignified, trying to appear immaculate, trying to hide the fact that he felt he was anything but. Once the mask comes off, he goes from being a reluctant cat to being full of nervous puppy energy. As a neurodivergent person who has recently struggled with not being able to masks well, I can relate a little too much to this version of Thomas.

Most characters, that start out as villains, either change completely (like Tantai Jin), their behavior will be excused (like Mo Ran or Spike) or they sacrifice themselves for the greater good to redeem themselves (like Spike). Thomas stays more on less morally gray. We understand the reasons better, why he would lash out at others, and we can feel sorry for him. He had a harder life than most, but that still does not undo the harm he has done to others.

All in all, the last film was a bit of a disappointment for me, mainly because a lot of the characters felt a bit off. I had to watch the film twice to get behind the romance with Guy Dexter. What Guy meets is Thomas desire to be respected as a person, to be seen as worthwhile, to escape the life as decorative wallpaper and to finally have a romantic relationship with someone that is rather enthusiastic about him. A lot of their relationships seems to have developed off-screen, based on Guy knowing who Carson was during his proposal and understanding how uncertain Thomas still feels about his role in the household. I wish them well - but not at the expense of Thomas being excluded from the rumoured 3rd film. I hope it takes place in the USA and we get to see him again!

I really wish we would see more morally gray characters like this, even through a quick look into the fandom of Downton Abbey shows me, that not everybody can handle it.

#downton abbey #thomas barrow

[nikibogwater]

Question: If the writers’ intentions were always to phase Din Djarin out as the main protagonist of the series, why didn’t they just wrap up The Mandalorian with a series finale and then move on to a dedicated Bo Katan show? I mean, yeah, these are the same people who put what should have been the first two episodes of season 3 in an entirely separate show, so I don’t know what I was expecting, but seriously--what benefit do they get from retiring Din as the main character in his own show that they couldn’t get if they’d just ended his show and made a new one? Is it because they worried people wouldn’t watch a dedicated Bo Katan show? I mean, if that’s the case, they’re kind of right--season 3 has already lost 60% of its audience base since the premier. But I imagine The Mandalorian’s audience would have been a lot more interested in a Bo Katan show if it featured fresh-from-his-completed-character-arc fan-favorite character Din Djarin in a supporting role. As far as I can tell, the majority of the show’s audience (including yours truly) watched The Mandalorian for THE Mandalorian--not just any Mandalorian, THAT specific Mandalorian. Of course they were going to bail if the showrunners suddenly made it about someone else after two whole seasons. Meanwhile, the people who are sticking around because they’re interested in Bo Katan would still be just as interested in her if her story was told in a different show. And the ones who might watch the Bo Katan show just for a little bit of extra Din Djarin content would do so with the understanding that this show isn’t strictly about him, which would keep Bo Katan from feeling like an awful fanfic OC who was forcibly inserted into the story for the sole purpose of stroking the author’s ego. Fans can make all the weak excuses they want, but at the end of the day, I just don’t see any benefit to suddenly changing the focus of the show like this over simply making a different show. Completely ignoring the question of whether or not the season was well-written, this is just a terrible way to structure the Star Wars cinematic universe. 

#star wars #the mandalorian #niki rambles

[geekgemsspooksandtoons]

Hazbin Hotel season 1 review

Last night, I finally watched the last two episodes of Hazbin Hotel's season 1. And this is going to be a non-spoiler review. Even though I feel like I should spoil some stuff towards the end of the review. A heads up before you read this.

Anyway, in 2019, I was one of the many who watched and really liked the pilot of Hazbin Hotel on YouTube. I along with many people waited for four to almost five years for the official show to premiere. I was also happy that the show was picked up.

This is all going to be my opinion and I want to talk about some other things too. So, expect this to be long. Because it's going to be a lengthy read possibly. Including I am trying to get better because I've been sick for a few days. Which has been really bothering me. But I'll be okay, I've slowly been getting better.

Also, I had wondered if I should rewatch the last two episodes. But I want to write this review anyway.

Anyway, yes, I like Hazbin Hotel. I also like Helluva Boss, which I'm glad we had that before Hazbin premiered. I've waited years for this show to officially air on a streaming service. And what do I think about it. In a nutshell, I genuinely liked it.

In all seriousness when I think about it. The waiting for this show feels like it was worth it. The animation is top notch, especially as the episodes go on. The animators do such a fantastic job with the visuals. All the voice actors do a splendid job. And the musical parts, the performances in those songs. Those are truly the highlights of the show. There's a lot of good songs throughout this season. Some really stand out. Some of my favorites were honestly "Loser, Baby", "More Than Anything", and seriously, all of them are good in their own right.

And the humor was fine at times too. I do feel like maybe it's my sickness really affecting my mindset with how I feel. Or I just wanted to laugh out loud more at some moments. But I sadly didn't do that. Yet the humor is fine. Some of it is hit and miss and it turns out I'm not the only one who thinks this.

I also want to talk about something concerning the show. And what I feel like is a problem for me personally. Because in all seriousness, the show is fine. In fact, I wouldn't mind it being 8 episodes...if the episodes were 30 minutes long instead of 24 minutes.

Before the finale premiered. I didn't want to talk about this. But when the finale was closing in. To me personally at first, this show felt more like a possible limited series instead of a first season. Because I legit felt like the idea that Charlie is already dealing with Heaven now this quick seems...kind of insane. Including the finale, we have the final battle with the exorcists? It felt like we were already at the series finale. Like, we were speed running things. Especially the fact instead of 13 episodes something like Hilda would do with its first two seasons. But instead, we have 8 episodes with 24 minutes. Like...that's 192 minutes and that's 3.2 hours. That's essentially the length of an extended cut for a movie. And as I've grown older, I've realized with the more time you have for a show or a movie, you can properly use to develop characters and other things.

I genuinely question if the 8 episodes were Amazon's decision or anything else. Because I'm aware showrunners aren't in control of how many episodes they are given. I'm hoping that for season 2, they are given more episodes. Because 8 episodes felt very short with that time frame. Granted, I liked the episodes and what we were given. But there's also another thing.

I think I expected a bit much from season 1. Considering Vivziepop or Vivienne as I should call her has said Hazbin is darker than Helluva Boss. Which...says a lot to me. But again, I expected a lot more out of season 1 because it felt like they were speed running some things.. Yet season 1 was essentially setting up more of the world.

I'm wondering what else to say. Like, I'm going to reveal some major spoilers in the next paragraph. The finale does end with some things that legit made me REALLY want a season 2 right away. Because holy crap, there are things that they need to follow up on.

The whole thing with Pentious getting into Heaven, that's game changing when you realize Charlie's hotel actually worked. But what about Adam? Is he going to go through a similar thing instead he's stuck in Hell? Who the Hell has Alastor on a leash? Because they did not reveal that yet. And why the Hell has Lilith been in Heaven for the past seven years? Which also likely destroys that theory that Lilith was the having Alastor on a leash.

Also, there are other little details I've wondered about because it while the pilot is canon. There have been little changes. Like, I legit question is Charlie still 200 years old? Or did they change because I legit question how she ages when everyone considers her young. And is Angel still Italian or is he Bronx now considering how he spoke at times. I'm remembering the details Vivienne confirmed before Hazbin was picked up for an official series. Because some details may have changed. Including Vaggie's "Date of death in 2014" not being a thing possibly...because of the twist that she's an angel.

Anyway, despite my complaints. The show isn't bad. The characters are entertaining and there are some arcs going on. The thing with Husk and Angel is going to be a slow building one which I like. And I always did love Charlie and Vaggie. I honestly wished we had more of Charlie's raw reaction when she found out Vaggie is an angel. And it's rather strange how I wanted Charlie to go full on ape shit in the last two episodes. Because that girl was in her darkest moment during that time. But while I loved her, "FUCK YOU, YOU OLD BITCH!" which is honestly haha. Honestly, I'm talking about more what I wanted or expected the show to do. And I feel like an angrier Charlie wouldn't have helped during episode 8. Also...I'm not saying Charlie is weak but despite being the Princess of Hell...Adam really kicked her ass before Lucifer came along, like damn. She's still strong though.

I think I've said enough. But I want to say something else too. You know, with all the controversies this show gets and there are things I agree with. I'm going to sound like a fucking douchebag. If some or a lot of these folks focused all their anger and energy into the kind of shit I have been trying to help with. Or maybe simply ignore the show...I don't wanna talk about it. But it's something that's been eating at my mind.

Anyway, yeah, I enjoyed the show. Maybe I should watch it all in one go considering how short the season is. And despite its flaws, it's an enjoyable show and I'm really intrigued with what they will do with season 2. I'm hoping they have more episodes next time though.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel spoilers

[rainparadefromhell]

My thoughts on season 3 of Never Have I Ever

SPOILERS AHEAD !

* author's note : it's long what can you do, i have an obsessive personality

• Things I disliked in no particular order

1. The pacing of this season.

The pacing of this season

The pacing-

I don't know what happened this season but it felt like someone pushed my head into a blender. Many things were so glossed over, I was actually baffled. People kept getting into relationships and breaking up like it was nothing and all sense of direction was lost. Everything felt like a fever dream. Ben and Aneesa break up. She cries one time, kisses Fabiola and now they are in a relationship only for that to not work out and Fabiola gets into another relationship (at this point i forgot Eve existed). No one reacts to anything, things just happen so there is no chance for the viewers to get attached to any new storylines/couples. Just borderline bad writing in terms of pacing.

2. What they've done to Aneesa's character

At the end of the show, the person I felt bad for the most was Aneesa. The writers just would not give her a chance. She wasn't a real character. She barely had any personality beyond being a plot device for multiple characters and getting into meaningless relationships every 5 minutes (the show does have a problem with doing this to all characters tbh). I wanted to know Aneesa better (I hoped for a pov episode) but all I've got was her getting left for another person in not one but TWO relationships? And they made her kinda not even care about it. It just wasn't realistic and I hated it.

3. Des.

Listen, I don't have anything against his character. Because his character doesn't exist. Des got, as well as all the new characters - Aneesa'd. His sole purpose was to give Devi an Indian boyfriend (which is fine). But he was just so.....unnecessary?? I'm sorry but while watching every scene him and Devi shared, I was begging for literally any other character to show up. Same with his two friends (extras) that had about two lines each. His and Devi's relationship, in my opinion would've been just fine as a fling not a real relationship. And it lasted SO. FUCKING. LONG. Why, just why were they wasting time (that could have been given to flesh out old characters) on something everyone and their mother KNEW wouldn't work out or have any meaningful addition to the show. Other things got sidelined, that's why I hated this storyline.

4. And save the worst for last. All of Devi's romantic relationships in s3

Oh God, here we go.

I understand that Devi is a teen girl that just wants to date boys, have fun, be in love. I really do. But as writers, it is the nhie showrunners' job to make this enjoyable for the viewers. And it worked, the past 2 seasons it really did. Team Paxton, team Ben, team Devi.... We've all had something to enjoy. So throwing in another boy - no, two actually (the guitar player she kissed isn't a big part of the show so I don't really care) made me so angry. They've disturbed a sort of a balance between silly/fun the show had with like 3 or 4 love interests all in your face at the same time so they all started to look kinda.... unimportant (except for Ben, but I am biased lol). It looked painfully unrealistic as well.

The show yet again suffered because of its format. you simply can't throw in a bunch of characters in a 30 minute, 10 episode long comedy show and just hope for the best. It felt messy, rushed and fleeting. Like there was no room to breathe, I felt so anxious watching the middle part of the show.

• Things I did like in no particular order

1. The adults' storylines

I found them much more tolerable and cohesive. I am a Nalini stan first and a human second. I just love her. I love watching Poorna be so brilliant in this role. I was thrilled they gave her a friend and quite sad that friend was taken away later on but oh well. Also, possibly my favorite moment in the show was this quote from Nalini : "You are never too much and always enough." This show was the first time I've truly seen my relationship with my own mother represented in a way that isn't black or white and just simple or complicated. For me this scene meant a lot - showing that no matter what may happen, Nalini will always love and support her daughter.

I also liked Kamala's storyline. Tbh I didn't like Prashant all that much. He felt like a more mature Paxton. I'm glad Kamala didn't rush into marriage, especially if it's something she does not want. I really liked the relationship between Kamala and Mr. Kulkarni, I just wish we saw more of them.

2. Trent and Eleanor ??

I totally predicted this!! I said they will be that odd couple that somehow works very well and I was right. They were really entertaining and I'm so glad we get to see more of them.

3. Trent and Paxton ??

I adored Paxton and Trent's friendship. You can tell they love each other in their weird ways. This totally made me like the characters more and I love love LOVE seeing healthy male friendships in media.

4. Paxton

And everybody gasped. (Hell, I gasped, too). Here it comes Paxton/Daxton stans....

I did really like Paxton this season. And he had his moments last season as well, I'll admit that. Is he my favorite character in the show? No. Do I still think he's kinda boring and overrated? Yes. But I did like him. My favorite Paxton moment this season was in the hospital with Ben (as well as his friendship with Ben as a whole). Not only was it very kind of him to stay with Ben and make him feel better, I also loved him admiting he doesn't really know who he is. How incredibly honest of him. I liked that he apologized to all the girls he hurt and that he was friends with Haley again. I also loved him telling Devi she can't love anyone until she loves herself (someone's been reading my posts 👀). He finally started to care about things (school) and even if his storyline is a simple one, it worked. I'm glad he grew as a person. For me, Paxton finally  became a full-fledged character with a unique storyline. It took only 3 seasons but we got there.

5. Benjamin Gross

I could write novels about Ben Gross. I could write about him until my hands hurt and then some more. He is easily one of my, if not my favorite fictional character of all time. He is one of the few characters that, in my opinion, isn't written in an episodic way. Jaren Lewison has this great ability to carry all of Ben's emotions in his pocket and whip out what he needs in a scene with such ease. The character doesn't forget his lessons, he remembers his past feelings and what they taught him which makes him develop and make progress so naturally within the show. Ben Gross isn't just a douche at the beginning of season 1 and a nice guy at the end of season 3. You can see all of his flaws as well as how caring and emotionally intelligent he is at the same time throughout the entire show. I'm so happy he learned to relax and not care as much about grades.

This kinda falls under Ben, but just 3x06 being the best episode (with the finale) for me. I don't know what kind of crack Mindy Kaling puts in the Ben episodes but she gets is right every damn time. Those 4 words being "I'm proud of you" from his dad made me so emotional. I wouldn't want them to be anything or for anyone else. Also I fucking loved Ben being into drawing?? We need more of that.

6. Devi Vishwakumar

My girl. I really liked Devi this season. I loved how they showed she's still grieving. Maitreyi's performance in the scene when Paxton tells her she doesn't love herself yet was so heartbreakingly beautiful. She knew he was right. Also can we talk about the best version of Devi aka post time jump Devi??? I love that girl! You can really tell she matured quite a bit. She's not as hot headed anymore. The only "bad" thing she did was throwing that book or whatever it was in the trash and honestly...? I didn't see how that was such a big deal at all. And the other team kinda cheated, too. Who cares? They're not in a courtroom. I really hope that in season 4 we see her growing even more.

7. The whole gang

One thing I also liked was that everyone was friends with everyone this season. We saw the Paxton-Trent-Eleanor group, Paxton and Ben's friendship, Paxton and Fabiola, Ben-Devi-Fabiola and so on.... I reallllly liked the different dynamics.

8. Ben & Devi

And finally - this is what (some of) you have been waiting for. As you can see the pacing and new characters really messed with how much I loved (or rather didn't) this season. But honestly, now that I had time to think about it, the character development and just the finale really saved the whole season for me. And yes, this includes Ben and Devi. This season we've seen Ben and Devi be mostly, friends. They didn't share many moments until the last few episodes which did frustrate me but that is exactly what made all of them feel so special later on. It was important for them to not spend as much time together then slowly be close friends for the finale we got. I really wasn't expecting it. For all my criticisms about the writing not being the best in some aspects of the show, the writers did such a good job with their storyline and it's safe to say that s3 is my favorite when it comes to them.

Last season we've only seen hints of them pining for each other. This season they were much more honest and comfortable with each other. I cannot stop thinking about how perfectly their little romance was sprinkled over the seasons, with season one's introduction and teasing of their feelings, season two's big conflict and hurt and finally season three's rekindling of feelings and big realizations. None of their storyline felt like sudden big explosions (like with Paxton), just a natural evolution of caring for each other. A sign that it wasn't just a crush (quick and overwhelming) but a first love kind of a situation. Realistic, messy, beautiful, simple. There isn't a doubt in my mind that these two will end up together in some way at the end of season 4. Truly one of my favorite on screen couples all thanks to the brilliant and talented Jaren and Maitreyi.

Overall, I still think the show's best season is season 1. It was almost perfectly set up. However, in terms of characters and our main couple, I have to say season 3 feels the most open, vulnerable and grown up. The last episode felt super special and teased season 4 in which we will see the gang prepare for college. I have huge expectations for season 4 and I really think it could be one of the best ones (best one?), but who knows...

Maybe I'm just a sucker for closures.

Also, I can't believe the finale??? Like they were evil evil for that one, not letting us see what happens! On the other hand I can't be mad bc as a writer that is such a me thing to do. Like, I can totally see myself be that much of an asshole and sadist so I kinda get it. Idk what I will do until s4.

#never have i ever season 3 #never have i ever #nhie #nhie spoilers #never have i ever netflix #devi vishwakumar #nalini vishwakumar #kamala nandiwadal #ben gross #fabiola torres #eleanor wong #paxton hall yoshida #trent harrison #aneesa qureshi #des nhie #benvi #can't believe i've been with this show for almost 3 years #i criticize it a lot but it really is very special to me and i do love it a lot #will be so sad when it's all over

[springfieldstills]

Hey! I super appreciate finding a fellow Simpsons fan that doesn’t completely deny the offensive aspects of the show 🖤

My basic philosophy regarding growth can best be summed up by this tweet:

There’s quite a few things I used to love that I’ve outgrown, either because I grew up enough to realize what I thought was inoffensive actually wasn’t, or because the creators have since revealed themselves to be major fucking assholes. The best example I have is The IT Crowd, which used to be one of my favorite shows. I was in my late teens when I first saw it, and didn’t really register the transphobia present in a few episodes. As I got older, it would make me cringe, but I could write it off as a product of its time. Once I learned about about the creator’s exceptionally awful transphobic behavior though, it kind of ruined all of his shows for me. I still have fond memories of the shows overall, and it sucks that in series full of talented people, the main creative voice belongs to a bigot. Fortunately on the whole, The Simpsons’ weak spots fall more into the category of “aged poorly” rather than “intentionally offensive.” And in a series with hundreds of episodes that’s been on the air for 30+ years, with dozens of writers, directors, and showrunners, there will inevitably be problematic material. I don’t think the solution is to completely abandon the content you love, but to engage it with a critical mind. (Of course this doesn’t apply to every person or every thing, choose what’s right for yourself!) Unfortunately sometimes when you do that, you can end up losing some of that love, but honestly, that’s just part of growing up and becoming a more mature and thoughtful person.

#sorry for the late answer #got lost in my notifications #anyway I must be following the right people bc I don’t see people denying that the Simpsons has never been offensive or problematic or etc

[biblioflyer]

The writer's strike and franchise fatigue: two heads of the same coin?

Context: I'm shamelessly reposting a comment on a popular webforum where someone posed the question "What's next for Star Wars?" that prompted a lot of discussion about the whats and whys of what's working, what isn't, and of course everyone's favorite hobby: performing yet another autopsy on the Sequel Trilogy. I declined to go there in favor of speculating on the production side.

Ultimately I think the future of Star Wars requires Disney to do what a lot of franchise owners have been resistant to doing for various reasons: allow their creative teams a wide latitude to fully develop their ideas without unnecessarily harsh deadlines tied to quarterly earnings reports. Now that isn't to say that projects can fail on their own merits.

I don't know for a fact that Book of Boba Fett was timid, awkward, and boring because the showrunners couldn't make a cut that worked with the time and resources allotted, but we were mostly all impressed with Rodrigues' work on Mando so we were cautiously optimistic that a Cool Gangster Drama with Boba Fett could be a thing. So what the hell happened? Solve that mystery and I think you ensure that Star Wars has a future.

Looking at another popular "Star" franchise, we see a lot of similar problems with uneven writing and what seems to be differing opinions both inside and outside the franchise as to what exactly it means for something to carry that name. What sort of stories can you tell? How do you tell them? Can you have a point of view character or does it always have to be ensemble? Can you deconstruct the setting only to reconstruct and reaffirm it in the finale without losing the fans?

What explains "bad" writing? Coercion by the studio? Writer inexperience? Showrunner inexperience? A failure to find the right balance between modernizing the storytelling of a franchise without it becoming illegible as part of that franchise or to cling so hard to fan service that it is afraid to experiment and becomes a less interesting and murkier Xerox of itself?

Something that I found fascinating in the discourse around the writer's strike is that the format of streaming TV with its short seasons has turned everyone involved in these productions into gig workers. Unless you're one of a half dozen showrunners who have helmed widely acclaimed franchises, modern tv has become severely siloed on the production side: writers have limited opportunities to learn directing, editing, and show running. They also have limited opportunities to see how their work translates to the screen when it lands in the hands of directors, actors, set decorators, and FX artists.

If you add up all of the live action Star Trek shows produced to date, you end up with 8 seasons of streaming that equal roughly 4 seasons of broadcast era TV. Which means that under the old paradigm, a traditional TV show would only now just be airing its second "good" season. Which, shockingly enough, maps very neatly to attitudes about Strange New Worlds and Picard Season 3, and to a lesser extent Discovery season 4.*

*To the extent it will ever be allowed to make a second impression, which is another seeming "problem" of the streaming era that needs addressing since any "failed" first season is very likely to result in a sub-franchise that is going to get cauterized and forgotten about given the era of a permissive financial environment for funding additional seasons and permitting a production to recover and learn from their mistakes is pretty much dead and gone.

Were I Disney, given these realities, I would probably fund 2 or 3 "stables" of Star Wars writers and production teams. One for light hearted action comedy, one for "serious drama," and a third for something more esoteric. Maybe a fourth for big budget tentpole films. Keep them employed and give them opportunities to develop their tradecraft.

Don't be so quick to slash and burn a dud, use failure as permission to experiment. If nobody cares about Book of Boba Fett anyway, why not take some risks and see if some writers who are claiming they can turn in a second season that can "fix" the first season by turning the stories that go nowhere or are halfhearted into the first chapters in more meaningful stories? People already tend to avoid series that have only one season anyway and become ever more likely to do so the more time passes without more seasons so you're just throwing away your investment by not trying to salvage it.

This is incidentally why I'm not antagonistic towards the prospect of trying to rehabilitate the Sequel Trilogy. The Prequels are poorly made but were rich in potential. That potential was not left on the table, it was exploited until we can no longer separate the Prequels as they originally stood from all of the tie in media that added depth and nuance to the setting and storybeats.

So were I Disney and I have all of these props and set pieces in storage doing me absolutely no good, then of course it will eventually be time to try to make the Sequel Trilogy good. Maybe do some Director's Cuts and then build out the universe to make it feel less claustrophobic and less overtly a bigger, louder, dumber rehash of the Original Trilogy.

#star trek #star wars #the mandalorian #book of boba fett #star wars sequel trilogy #star wars prequels #star trek discovery #star trek picard #writer's strike #disney

[denimbex1986]

'Doctor Who writer Phil Ford opens up about "The Waters of Mars" fourteen years later and reveals why David Tennant's penultimate Tenth Doctor story remains one of the show's scariest episodes to date. The 2009 special starred Tennant as the Doctor, alongside Eternals' Gemma Chan, Dune's Shanon Duncan-Brewster, and Andor's Joplin Sibtain as member of the crew on the first Human colony on Mars. In "The Waters of Mars," the Doctor arrives at the doomed Bowie Base One, forcing him to question what he can do as a time traveler.

While Tennant's return is imminent for Doctor Who's 60th-anniversary specials, Ford sat down with RadioTimes.com to reflect on his contribution to the actor's initial run and why it features one of the Tenth Doctor's most terrifying moments. When discussing what makes the show scary for audiences young and old, the writer stated that many viewers had spoken to him about their appreciation for "The Waters of Mars" before citing it as a personal favorite and explaining how showrunner Russell T Davies aided him in achieving a perfect level of terror for young audiences. Check out Ford's full explanation below:

"I'm not so sure that it's moved away from that so much, I have no doubt that there will be another Doctor Who story coming down the road that will be every bit as scary, if not more than The Waters of Mars. I think scaring kids is what I've always enjoyed doing! Whether it's in Doctor Who or Sarah Jane [Adventures]... I think Russell put it to me a long time ago that it's OK to scare kids, what you don't want to do is terrify them and scar them!

I've met at conventions an awful lot of kids that admitted they were scared by The Waters of Mars, but not so much to traumatise them! They loved it because it's scary.

The Waters of Mars, from my point of view, was always going to be scary because that's what I like to do. I think the team around Doctor Who then and now is just so good at what it does, I think we all have confidence in each other in knowing just how far we can go.

And certainly, whenever I went too far, I knew Russell was going to pull me up on something... my memory of Russell is not so much hauling me back on The Waters of Mars, but on other episodes, him pushing me harder to make things even scarier and even bleaker in some cases! Which is just wonderful, because he has this amazing opinion – and talent to back it up – that really there is no story you can't tell for kids. It's just a question of how you tell that story."

What Makes "The Waters of Mars" David Tennant's Most Scary Doctor Who Story

Tennant's initial Doctor Who tenure had no shortage of standout terrifying episodes that still rank high among the franchise's darkest moments. These episodes range from the Weeping Angels' terrifying debut in "Blink," the unstoppable mimicking menace of "Midnight"'s still an unseen entity, and the gradually worsening bleak what-if scenarios of Donna's alternate timeline in "Turn Left". Despite these story moments, "The Waters of Mars" stands out as the already-overpowering Flood virus is superseded in scariness towards the end by the Tenth Doctor himself, as the show's main hero loses himself.

After grappling with his role in the universe, the Tenth Doctor casts aside every lesson he learned and changes history by saving them, declaring himself as the sole being who could change the Laws of Time. Left with the knowledge that these events should have never happened and would impact her loved ones' fates, Bowie Base One's captain, Adelaide Brook (Duncan), sacrifices herself despite the Doctor rescuing her, leaving him emotionally shattered. "The Water of Mars" isn't just a scary Doctor Who story because of its monsters, but for how far the Doctor falls, as well as showing the negative impact his actions can have on the universe should he ever give in to his darker sides.

While the following adventure, "The End of Time," may overshadow Tennant's other 2009 Doctor Who specials, "The Waters of Mars" stands out for how far it pushes the show's leading character. Rather than relying on monsters, the Tenth Doctor going too far leaves a greater impact by breaking the hero and twisting him into a barely recognizable figure. As such, it is understandable why Ford and viewers continue to rate the Tenth Doctor's penultimate adventure as one of the character's darkest stories.'

#Phil Ford #The Waters of Mars #David Tennant #The End of Time #Russell T. Davies #Gemma Chan #Shanon Duncan-Brewster #Joplin Sibtain #60th Anniversary #Blink #Midnight #Donna Noble #Turn Left #Adelaide Brook

[moviemunchies]

We’re doing another TV series review!

Some things about this season were spoiled for me by YouTube recommendations and a thumbnail for a clickbait comic news site, so I’d recommend doing your best to avoid those as you watch the season.

Young Justice is one of my favorite superhero shows, and I think it’s one of the best comic adaptations I’ve ever seen. So when it was canceled after two seasons, because Cartoon Network decided they didn’t get enough toy sales, I was pretty torn up about it. But then it was brought back! On a streaming service I didn’t have any intention of getting. So it was a while before I got to season three (got it on DVD), and even longer before I got to season four (which as far as I know isn’t on DVD, but I got it on iTunes).

This season has a different structure than the ones before. There are clearly defined arcs, centering on characters from the original Team (except for Wally, of course). This is a really cool idea, especially given how massive the universe for this adaptation has become, and lets us separate the story arcs into ways that they’re clearly delineated from each other. The season won’t run together in your head, because there are obviously separate chunks of the story as it goes on.

Split attention also lets the series show off more corners that it wouldn’t have the time if it had a more focused story. If you wondered more about the structure of Atlantis, or what was going on in the mystical side of the DC universe, this season has got you covered. I appreciated that we got to see so much of the world developed in this season, outside of brief snippets that we got before.

The downside to this, however, is that there are arcs that don’t really have much to do with each other, all kind of vaguely leading up to a finale. I really liked Zatanna’s arc, but so many of the characters there don’t really add much to the overall story and don’t do much for the rest of the season.

There’s also the frustrating pace of the series, which hasn’t changed. Yeah, the overall storyline of the season moves along well enough. But since the end of Invasion we’ve been gearing up for war with Darkseid, and spoiler alert, that doesn’t happen in this season. By the end of the season, important developments have happened, and it’s kind of cool that the series is taking its time to build up. At the same time, it’s also frustrating because it seems like things are barely going anywhere, and this series keeps getting canceled. You’d think that would motivate the makers to speed things up, apparently not.

Overall though, I think the story is pretty satisfying. It pulls focus back on the core Team from the original season, which is a nice touch because it means that the makers haven’t forgotten where it all started, or where they plan to go with it. Even Raquel and Zatanna, who did not get as much development in the original season as they were late additions, have more to do in their own arcs this time around.

I don’t remember if the credits scenes were as meaningful last season, but I appreciate how they’re used here. I don’t think any of them are necessary to understanding the Plot of the season, but they’re cool little tidbits that feel nice to watch (it’s a shame HBO Max urges you to skip them with a timer).

Also, hey, there’s more blood this time around? Outsiders had some blood, but here? Especially in Zatanna’s arc, there is a lot more blood and guts going around. It’s definitely the result of the showrunners deciding they don’t have to hold back now that they’re not on Cartoon Network. Be aware of that going in!

So if you loved Young Justice so far, it’s a must-see, but if you’re just getting into the show, this season is an excellent continuation. Of course, I’d like to see even more, but that’s not much up to me as it is to whoever is in charge at HBO Max and DC Entertainment–and lately who knows where their heads have been.

#Young Justice #Young Justice: Phantoms #Movie Munchies #HBO Max #DC Comics

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Okay so that SaB S2 ending! The show runner—Eric Heisserer(sp?)—is a big crows fan but he said that they just loved Jessie so much. Alina and she have really become the “bedrock” of their mother show—Shadow and Bone and they had to keep her. I’m sure they had other reasons. One of them being that they know how lame her ending was in book 3 but they’ll never admit that. He also said that Mal needs to go find himself, now that he’s lost his purpose. I laughed because dude, just admit that he had no personality beyond nice guy who helps Alina. Not to mention bland love interest. Finally, he said that regarding Alina’s turn for the dark, the Darkling has been “quite honest with her” about the cost of power and that she’ll realize that everything he’s prophesied that will happen to her very well could come true.

Whatever the reasons behind the change, I’m happy for the change because it opens the door for so much—including Darklina! Just imagine, in S3, as she grapples with the corruption and darkness growing in her, she starts yearning for Aleksander, maybe reluctantly but she still starts looking for him. She could go back to that fountain, hold his ring, visit his old chambers etc etc, thinking about him, what he would say, the advice he’d give and just generally wishing he was there because he’s the only one who truly KNOWS, though she’d never admit her longing. Even if Nikolai is also infected, no one will truly truly know other than Aleksander. It’s the whole no one is like us thing. Think of the possibilities! The angst! The drama! Not to mention the possibility for a darklina endgame! Or do you think they’ll have her overcome that darkness (with or without Aleksander’s help) and ultimately still end up with Mal? I do think that the Darkling will be back because Ben Barnes is the most popular fan favorite on that show even more so than Alina or the crows and besides, it’s canon that he comes back in KoS. But still I think they’ll go for the latter unfortunately and have Mal and Alina reconnect in the end. Eugh. I mean why even keep Mal around? But who knows! I never imagined that they’d change the ending for book 3 so much and hint at a corruption arc for Alina. That’s pretty ballsy! So��maybe? Maybe they’re down for a complete endgame change. I dunno, what do you think?

(Ok weird spoiler alert but spoiler alert for vampire diaries, roswell/roswell new mexico and shadowhunters books and shows ships and endgames. It'll make sense when you read it I promise.)

I think anything is possible. They did drastically change the ending of the third book for the show so that does kind of leave it up in the air. I do think that the showrunners are aware of how unpopular the ending was which likely influenced their decision, of course they can't say that. But I also think they are aware that malina is not a very popular ship that doesn't generate much or any buzz really, not like darklina and other ships on the show do. Its also worth noting that there are other shows that changed the end games from their book counter parts. The Vampire diaries books for example, as written by the og author, ends with stefan and elena together but the show went for a delena endgame, which I believe was the more popular ship. In shadowhunters Luke ends up with Maryse Lightwood in the show but in the books its Jocelyn he ends up with. Then you've got the Roswell books and tv shows who take the cake for swapping ships about all over the place. In the books Max ends up with Liz, Michael with Maria, and Isabel has something going on with Micheal's brother trevor who doesn't appear in the show. There are other love interests in the books that don't show up in the og show as well, nikolas, adam and cameron for example. Then you have the og show where the ships end kind of similar with max and liz, Micheal and maria but Isabel is married to Jesse although similar to isabel and trevor in the books Isabel and jessie though they love each other go their separate ways, there is also a whole romance between Max and Tessa who is a character that was not from the books. Honestly when it comes to the newer Roswell New Mexico series I don't know what's going on with it anymore because I stopped watching it like halfway through season 2, but that adds new ships as well like Alex and Michael. The point is when it comes to shows and ships you never know what they are going to do. Sometimes they stick with the books, sometimes they put characters that are in the books together but in different pairings and sometimes they invent whole new characters to act as love interests.

I don't know whether they will go for a darklina end game but I don't think its out of the question especially if they are going with the corruption arc for Alina. It really could go either way they could have Alina and darkling go down a darker path together but then both redeem themselves at the end by sacrificing themselves for ravka, it could be just Aleks sacrificing himself, it could be that Alina is redeemed and ends up with mal after all, after he's gone off and discovered himself. It really is a anything could go situation so I would say don't give up hope for a darklina endgame. I won't until I see the last scene of the last season.

Irregardless I do think the change at the end of season 2 is going to open the door for alot of darklina content which I am really excited about. I did like what you said about Alina pining for Aleks and revisiting the fountain, the war room, his chambers and playing with his rings, honestly I would love to see that. If she also thinks she keeps seeing him about the place or even dreams about him, it would be even better.

#darklina #s&b season 2 spoilers #anti malina

[goddesspharo]

writer asks: 17, 18, 23

[ask me about writing!]

17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic? While writing a time loop fic (that ended up not seeing the light of day in that iteration anyway), I went down a massive wormhole researching chaos theory and LET ME TELL YOU I still think about small differences in initial conditions leading to the impossibility of meaningful predictions. I need to write about time loops more.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic? I am very bad at remembering lines I really liked writing or reading, not just in my work but in any prose written by anyone-not-named-Joan-Didion (“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty” floors me as much now as it did ten years ago when I read it for the first time), but I just watched a RHOBH trailer tonight, a show I haven’t watched in years, so I’m going with “Groping each other during a Real Housewives marathon hardly counts as dating” from smoother than the LA weather as being a fave.

23. How do you choose where to end a chapter (if you have multi-chapter works)?

Apparently I’ve decided that I can only write AUs that are so long and complicated that they need multiple chapters to work so I am a bit more disciplined when writing multi-chapter fics than one-shots (outlines vs vibes) simply to maintain internal consistency within the world I’ve created. But the one benefit of that is I know which plot beats I want to hit in a chapter and where that falls in the larger outline of the story as a whole. Within those moments, some lend themselves naturally to being better chapter endings than others. I also tend to end at a moment that can exist on its own while still being intriguing enough to make someone read the next chapter. I don’t like cliffhangers because a) I like the luxury of being able to skip forward a few days/weeks/whatever at the start of the next chapter; b) I try to end things so that if I were to never pick up that WIP again, it could still exist as a semi-contained story (although one that is not entirely satisfying because all the questions haven’t been answered) instead of one that ends on a gotcha moment. I can’t remember now which showrunner said that they tried to have each season of a show have a clear ending because they owed the viewers a complete story (especially in the landscape of things getting cancelled three seconds after they’re put out in the world) and I agree with that wholeheartedly. You’ll never get a “who shot JR?” chapter ending from me. It feels a little cheap.

#ask me things #we can pretend there is a thought process behind any of this

[londonspirit]

Our Flag Means Death is special. From creating a surrealist version of the Golden Age of Piracy, to centering a later-in-life coming-out story, to including people or many races, gender identities, abilities, and cool freaking hairstyles, to moving production for season two from LA to New Zealand in order to highlight the beauty of the land, Lord of the Rings-Style, and build a majority Kiwi crew. It’s makes our pop cultural heart swell to see a production being so intentional with its decisions.

But nowhere is that intentionality more apparent than in OFMD’s music. More than just fun, jokey needledrops, each song in Season One acts as a counterpoint to the action, adding emotion and depth to what becomes a surprising queer love story. A lot of the credit for the show’s unique tone can go to Music Supervisor Maggie Phillips and her team. Leah Schnelbach recently got to speak with Maggie about baroque pop, “The Beautiful Ones”, making “the non-obvious choice”, and—the long-awaited SEASON TWO.

Season two debuts on Max in the U.S. on October 5, and Neon on October 6 and is coming soon to Sky Open in New Zealand.

(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.)

How do you start? Do you get the script and let you mind wander, or do you pick a period and do a deep dive on songs from a period?

Maggie Phillips: It depends on the project. For [OFMD] I got the scripts—at least the first four or five—so I had enough to have a sense of the love story, and the themes. I made thematic playlists. Sometimes I do character driven playlists. But across the board it starts with scripts and playlists. Then I send the playlist to the director or showrunner and we start a back and forth. And this one, same, except that I’d worked with David Jenkins before on People of Earth, so I knew his taste already, and it’s very similar to mine, which is very melodic, we both like baroque pop, we both like a lot of classical elements in our music and in our pop.

And he’s very encouraging of me to—I realized when we worked on People of Earth—he pushed me to go weird. Some people have me rein it back, but he pushed me to go even further. So, I just start a general playlist, thematically driven, mostly romantic. We wanted to play up the romance in the first season, so a lot of romantic music and songs, pop songs about unrequited love, pining, heartbreak, heart-loss, it’s been a long time since I started these – longing, leaving behind a part of your life and moving on to another part, transition…and then another part was just like, ocean life! And the sea! I made a lot of playlists and sent them over to David, and what actually happens—sometimes we’ll pull from the general playlist. I work closely with the editors on specific scenes and send over specific playlists for each scene that we were listening for. I’d make playlists of 500 songs, and then listen to that for each moment—mostly end credits in Season One—and then send playlists over for spots. But that’s how it starts, and that’s the fun part.

That’s about twenty-five percent of my job. The rest is clearing songs and tracking rights and dealing with budgets, and blah blah blah. (laughs)

One of my favorites is Moondog. How did Moondog… happen?

MP: That’s a song that I’ve had, I love that song. His music is very avant garde, there’s only a handful of his songs that I thought could be synch-able. Even that one, I had saved on a playlist years ago, and hadn’t pitched it to anyone. It hadn’t worked in any moment, this I did not put on the general playlist, i tried specifically for the end of the pilot, and I almost didn’t send it because I thought, there’s no way they’ll go for this. And luckily the editor, the editor is sometimes the middleman, they’ll try out the stuff and show it to David. They’re in the rooms with David more than I am. So like sometimes I’ll send my stuff out to editors and not know which one they’re going to show. I’ll send them 15-20 songs, and they’ll show the director or showrunner three to five choices. But Hilda [Rasula], the editor of the pilot was very collaborative and communicative, and she responded and said which ones she liked and would try, and I knew this was one of them, so I was excited. There was a handful of songs that I loved for that pilot, but this one was one of my top favorites, and she said she was going to show it, but I still didn’t think this was going to be the one they’d pick.

Sometimes I’ll get an email saying we’re putting on [one of the choices], but I didn’t get it for this one, so I got to watch the pilot like an audience member not knowing which song they selected—I immediately knew it from the first note, and was like, “Oh they went with Moondog!” And then I got to watch and see how it works.

It worked beautifully.

MP: That was a really hard spot to nail, and that song is perfect because it’s melancholy and wistful, but there’s also hope. It hits both notes, and he just left his—you have to gloss over that so you can still love Stede, but he left his fuckin’ family. He’s having this intense mid-life crisis and he does what some people dream of, which is starting over, but most people don’t do, you know? I think we hit both notes with that song. And we wanted to hit the humanity on all those characters, we see Jim, we see a few characters in that montage. And the humanity of all of them being in the boat at sea all alone…

Heading out!

MP: Yeah! For the adventure of their lifetimes! (laughs)

It was perfect, I thought. I know from other interviews with you that you had a 300-song playlist for season one, were you able to use any for this season?

MP: For season two? Yes. I definitely we still… we still haven’t scratched the tip of the iceberg like there’s so many songs I have for this show… and there’s only so many songs in the show. There are fifteen in season one and even fewer in season two, and we only have eight episodes to work with. We use one in Episode 1: “Strawberry Letter 23”, the Shuggie Otis. We used one in the trailer, “The Beautiful Ones” by Prince…

That was uhhh pretty great!

MP: That was one of the first songs—I think the first song that David and I spoke about for the show?

Oh! Like, before season one started?

MP: Yeah, even before we spoke about “The Chain”—I can’t remember if “Beautiful Ones” came from David or me? But we talked about Prince and we both bonded on the fact that we loved that song specifically. That literally was the first song I had in my head for the whole show. I think in season one the estate was off-limits because it was soon after his passing, but then by season two his music was licensable again. I’ve been doing this for almost 18 years, and it’s the first time [I’ve licensed his music]. And he’s one of my top ten artists of all time.

When we posted the trailer, I’m pretty sure the tweet I wrote was just screaming about “Beautiful Ones”, I was so excited.

MP: My Instagram post I did like a purple heart, I made my own Prince purple heart background, and put the trailer on top of a ton of purple hearts, and I put a crown on top of one of them. Just the teenage glee of ohmygod, we got a Prince song!

Were there any songs that were absolute no, whether because they were overused, or they just didn’t fit?

MP: There’s one from season one and one from season two, and the one from season one is “Perfect Day”, for the reason you just said. I think it’s been overused, that was one I didn’t pitch, but I kept trying to beat it—it’s an amazing song. There’s a reason it’s been used a bazillion times, cause it’s a perfect song, right? I tried so hard to beat it, and I think I did, to be honest, but there’s an inherent familiarity and comfort when you hear a song you know, and I think that helps that scene. And David was just in love with it, and I understand why, and I’m sure it was very satisfying for the audience.

The one from season two—it’s a Kate Bush. I had advised against it, but, this one I don’t think we could beat it. I had used it myself, “This Woman’s Work”, in Handmaid’s Tale. It wasn’t a song I pitched. I pitched “Running Up that Hill”—which then was in Stranger Things—I pitched that for an end of an episode in Handmaid’s Tale, and the showrunner didn’t want to use that one, but it made him remember “This Woman’s Work”, and he put it into a very controversial scene, for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale—some people hate it, and some people loved it. So, I of course read all the backlash online about using song, and people have strong opinions about it. [OFMD] was right after the Stranger Things TikTok phenomenon, and I thought “We’re gonna look like we’re copycats”, but David was like… “I don’t care.” (laughs) he said, “People have a short attention span when it comes to music and TV”, and he’s right. And it was a Taika [Waititi, OFMD’s Blackbeard/executive producer/sometimes director) song, Taika really wanted that song, he’d wanted to use that song for many years. Then I saw it cut into the episode, and I think they transformed the song. They re-contextualized it and made it their own, even so the lyrics have different meaning than I’ve ever heard listening to it previously. They clearly had a vision, and it gave me chills to watch it.

I’m excited to see how it’s used in this context.

MP: And that’s what I love about my job, you put song and image together and they both change, and in this instance it was really powerful. But I mean, I always, unless it’s a show that doesn’t care about overusing, I always tell David if I have a reaction or an opinion, and one of the things I’ll react to is if a song’s been overused, or feels uninspired—but this one felt inspired once it was cut in.

I feel like this show is so off-kilter, and it’s always surprising. So the other one that I absolutely love was the use of the Beach Boys for the Blackbeard reveal. How did you jump to that? To me that’s their meet-cute, but it’s not actually cute.

MP: No, it’s demonic/angelic, weird vocals…I had tried to use that song in a different tv show, and we got denied actually, because it was a violent scene, so I had that song on a bunch of playlists. I love that song. I think that was one that was on my general playlist. And when I’m trying out music what I do for these scenes is I’ll do a brainstorm playlist where I’ll throw on a whole bunch of songs without knowing what’s going to work and without thinking about it, just like “That’s worth trying, that’s worth trying”—I call it my kitchen sink approach—I try not to overthink what I throw onto that playlist and then I just play those songs against picture, because you never know what’s gonna click, and that’s where you get the non-obvious choices, or like, the counterpoint choices, because you don’t know until you put them together how they’re going to play off each other. And so that was one that when I tested I was like, “Oh fuck, this is beautiful.” Then I sent it to the editor, and fingers crossed that they’ll have the same reaction. I try not to color…like I don’t say in my emails which ones are my favorite, because I want them to have an unbiased reaction. But that one worked, and everyone fell in love with it.

That one, well, they’re all my favorite, but that one might be my favorite favorite. It’s such a good contrast! Stede’s almost dead, Blackbeard’s covered in gore, and then there’s these angelic voices.

MP: Right? They’re saving each other. The relationship is that they’re each others’ saviors, right? I feel like that moment, that song sort of captures that.

But without being too sappy, it’s not a song I ever hear anywhere, so it’s startling. Bigger question: I know for The Dropout you did mid-‘00s indie, because it’s a period piece, horrifyingly, that’s becoming a period piece.

MP: I know right? That made me feel old, those were songs that felt like just the other day?

Yeah (laughter) but for this, obviously it’s the Golden Age of Piracy, but it’s also kind of a surrealist fantasy did you have in mind an era, like “Oh I’m going to use a lot of ‘60s pop to create a thematic contrast”? Or more hodge-podge?

MP: It was more hodgepodge-y, and then David and I both like baroque pop, we both love a harpsichord, and that style’s heyday was ‘60s and ‘70s, and that’s where my sensibility—I love music from that time period. There’s psychedelic rock, and there’s just so much cool stuff that happened back then. It has a timeless classic feel, and then there’s yacht rock happening.

I’m a sucker for yacht rock.

MP: I am too! And it fits the whole fantastical/dude/extreme-mid-life crisis. I hate to call it Dad Music, but there’s an element of that. And not that I think this is a male-driven show, but there is a lot of male energy, and it’s these two dudes’ love story, mostly. But the whole fantasy of escaping your normal existence and going off to live as a pirate has that whole dude-dad-driven energy. So that music works. But I think it if I look at my playlist, it was maybe half ‘60s-‘70s, and half more modern stuff, and that’s just the stuff that was working. For me, the way I listen for music is very emotional and gutteral it’s not as much thinking and making it logical and setting rules, it’s more just what feels right, and the we just kind of ran with it. With The Dropout we wanted a hard timestamp. I was given rules from the outset, and with Dropout, I loved working on it, but it was one of the easier shows I’ve worked on because we had those clear delineations. This song needs to be from these couple years, and it needs to have been a radio hit, there’s only so many songs you can choose from, but when you’re doing a show like Our Flag and there’s no rules at all…

Did you set any boundaries for yourself?

MP: The only boundaries I set was… stuff I hadn’t heard before. I wanted to honor the off-beat weird tone. This is something I’ve never seen before. There’s almost no comparable show. I wanted to honor that with music that was new and different.

The only show that feels similar to me is People of Earth.

MP: I loved that show so much. Not enough people watched that show.

It was so clearly ahead of its time.

MP: There’s been enough TV shows that are weird, people have… it lives in some sort of niche. But when People of Earth came out there hadn’t been enough of those kinds of shows.

Did you come into season two with a different approach at all, or was it more of a flow from Season One?

MP: The only thing that was different is that we get to dive into more of the characters, and we wanted to flesh them out a little bit. We picked a lane that was successful, and we want to stay in it. There’s so much I haven’t done yet [from the first playlist] I hope we get a third season.

Do you have a moment from a movie or TV show that is the perfect music cue for you?

MP: I like really understated music supervisions, like Succession or Roma—it’s such a beautiful movie, very understated, and there’s no score actually. The sound design is so beautiful. You don’t need music, they played up all the soundscape to score it. And there are songs, but they’re very diegetic, just like, on the radio, very elegant and quiet. I like a reserved, economical hand. Or if they make me laugh with their musical choices, like a bold unexpected choice that makes me giggle.

#maggie phillips #our flag means death season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #spoiler #our flag means death #ofmd #music #music spoilers

[sharpenote]

Do you have any YouTube video essay recommendations?

Sure!! Keep in mind, I don't tend to get into super-niche ones, since after watching them once I just cycle them into the sleep rotation, so it's pretty likely you've heard of most of these already.

Pathologic is Genius, And Here's Why - a classic and one of my favorites, partly because i just genuinely love pathologic, partially because i get infinite use out of ARTEMY BURAKH'S TORMENTOUS NIGHTMARE. hbomb has a lot of video essays that i like, so I won't link them all, but safe to say you'll get a lot of mileage out of his stuff (i tend to stick to the media ones though rather than political - i already know shitty people exist so they tend to just stress me out a lot lol)

iBinged iCarly (and the follow-up video, The End of iCarly, as well as The Failure of Victorious and its follow-up, The End of Victorious) - I grouped these together a) because they're by the same guy and b) they're pretty inter-connected, since the shows are by the same showrunner (you know, that one notorious creep who made his fetishes his child actors' problems, among other things). Might be worth checking out The Scandal of Sam and Cat by him as well? I can't actually remember if I've seen that one so I know what I'm doing tonight lol. Anyway you've probably heard of these if not watched them (ie the 8 hour long Victorious video essay). I linked to the videos in a playlist so you can also check out his other video essays if you're interested in them.

The World Record History of Super Mario Sunshine any%, The World Record History of Super Mario Sunshine 100% (120 Shines), and The World Record History of Super Mario Sunshine's Most Competitive Level - what it says on the tin, all by the same guy, but there are tons of speedrunning world history videos out there.

SummoningSalt also has a ton of speedrunning world history videos available and is largely responsible for the popularity of the genre.

The Speedrun Where Link Stares at Rupees for 17 Hours - low% is a pretty niche speedrunning category, and this is probably the goofiest example of it. I love it. A short, 15 min dive into it, which is very funny to me considering the actual run's length. I really love gymnast86's stuff - he's great at explaining stuff for a casual audience, which always makes him fun to watch during his gdq runs, but it also works very well for stuff like this. This video and The Glitch that allows Zelda Speedrunners to time travel - which goes more in-depth into one of the tricks used in the run - are both on LowestPercent's channel, but his actual channel is here - he might have a few similar things there as well? But it's mostly actual speedruns and randomizers.

Why Knights of the Old Republic 2 is Beautiful; An Analysed Playthrough - as the name suggests, this is half-playthrough, half-analysis, but I'm counting it anyway because It's My List And I Want To. SulMatul has a few more video essay-type vids on her channel as well, including Pathologic Analysis; Themes of a Dying Classic and Dissecting Pathologic 2; Why It's The Best Game of 2019 (THATS RIGHT IM BRINGING IT FULL CIRCLE BABEYYY THIS LIST IS A TRICK TO GET YOU INTERESTED IN PATHOLOGIC) and one on We Know The Devil which I haven't watched yet but I HAVE played the game and it's incredible, and knowing Hayley's work I'm sure the video is great as well. Huuuge huge fan of her content, and I think out of all of these she probably goes deepest into the subjects she discusses.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but hopefully that's a decent start for you, anon!

Also, not a video essay, but I'd be remiss not to link it since I mentioned it in my original post: the 0.5x A Press video

#video essays #answered

[weclassybouquetfun]

S3 of THE BOYS is here and it is still as unhinged, unapologetically depraved and unyielding in its humor and depravity.

Joining the cast this season is Jensen Ackles, late of CW's SUPERNATURAL, which was created by THE BOYS' creator/showrunner Eric Kripke.

Sadly Ackles won't let the show die. He's a producer on the prequel series for THE CW focusing on the parents of Sam and Dean Winchester.

This season Tomer Capone is being credited with his actual surname Capone, whereas in previous years he's worked as either Tomer Kapon or Tomer Capon (S1 and S2 of THE BOYS).

He follows with other actors who have gone back to their roots like Thandie Newton who now goes by her real name Thandiwe, A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES Greg Chilling who now acts under his real surname Chillingrian and A MILLION LITTLE THING and PSYCHE's James Roday who added his real surname Rodriguez to his stage name.

I'm just waiting for THE VAMPIRE DIARIES Paul Wesley to see the light and return to acting as Paul Wasilewski.

The first three episodes have dropped and what nonsense did THE BOYS bring to the yard?

SPOILERS

-While we have to wait until episode six to get the fabled "Herogasm" episode, episode 1 was likely a teaser of the insanity that will unfold in that episode. The first episode finds Frenchie and Kimiko after an Atom/Ant-Man-esque Supe named Termite who, in uses his body as a sounding device to give pleasure to his hook-up. Nostrils smarting from the lines he was snorting he sneezes while inside his partner effectively exploding him.

The Ant-Man v. Thanos fans got their wish.

There were other things that were cribbed from fan culture like -

-The Bourke Cut with DAWN OF THE SEVEN director Adam Bourke having fans hashtagging his crap, which is a direct nod to JUSTICE LEAGUE's SnyderCut fan campaign. Which was so annoying, but I do doff my cap to the SynderCut zealots who rigged the Oscars' Favorite Moment campaign and got a Flash scene from JUSTICE LEAGUE to best SPIDERMAN: NO WAY HOME. Not all heroes wear capes. Literally. Barry doesn't wear a cape.

-The line from Allison telling Bourke that Tony Gilroy's reshoots saved his film is a nod to Tony Gilroy having to step in to save Star Wars' ROGUE ONE. It could be a nod to Joss Whedon having to step in to finish JL, but c'mon, he didn't save that film.

-Jensen Ackles being cast as the show's version of Captain America is, to me, a nod to how Ackles (and his fans) swears up and down that he was up for Captain America but couldn't do the film because of his SUPERNATURAL schedule.

-Sean Patrick Flanery playing Gunpower when Flanery played the titular character Powder in the 1995 film.

-Homelander with the suicidal girl is a popular panel from a Superman comic. Of course, it ends waaaaaay differently.

Other things I liked about the first three episodes:

- The brief return of Simon Pegg as Hughie's dad.

-The before and after of Hughie's life when he realized the truth about Victoria Neuman. One day he's making smoothies, fixing the perfect breakfast; the next smoothie's splattered in the sink, food's rubbish.

-Characters letting their freak flag fly. The Deep drawing an octopus (the ill-fated Timothy??) into his sex life. Confirmation from what fans gathered from S2 that Frenchie is not just for people sexually open but he is, as well. Vincent Cassel as a safe word is a sexy choice.

-I love when a Nazi decides to k-word themselves but it's funny that Stormfront put up with giving Homelander handy js because she still had hopes that he was on the same Aryan wave she was but when she realized that he's only focused on himself that's what pushed her over the edge.

-Just when I thought Homelander couldn't be any worse of a person he does something nastier and meaner and cruel beyond comprehension. Antony Starr is remarkable because Homelander is truly frightening and almost stomach turning but I can't look away because Starr is so incredible as this character.

-If Hughie and Starlight break up it will be for the best. I'm not 100% convinced that her ex Supersonic is truly there to have her back, but if they got back together that would make perfect sense. She and Hughie are on different paths and as much as she was down for vengeance last season she's easing off it because - while she knows the inherent risks of trying to tangle with Homelander - she's not willing to lose her soul for the cause. Hughie is, though.

-What I didn't like is that Nate Mitchell who plays Black Noir didn't play the young Black Noir. We will never see this poor man onscreen.

Nate next to Karl Urban.

#the boys #jensen ackles #karen fukuhara #chace crawford #tomer capone #nate mitchell #karl urban #jack quaid #the boys season 3 #the boys cast #the boys s3 #the boys tv #laz alonso #antony starr #supernatural

[blogger360ncislarules]

The decision to pick up Sullivan’s Crossing wasn’t a huge departure for the CW; romantic, field-good series like Hart of Dixie, Life Unexpected and Everwood have long been hallmarks of the network. (And it doesn’t hurt that its two stars, One Tree Hill‘s Chad Michael Murray and Gilmore Girls‘ Scott Patterson, are longtime fan favorites).

Still, the show was immediately labeled as a cheap import because it first launched in Canada in March, where it became CTV’s highest-rated drama launch on over two years. It is produced by Reel World Management in association with CTV with Fremantle as global distributor. It’s from Roma Roth and Christopher E. Perry, the team behind Netflix’s Virgin River.

“We have to be entrepreneurial. We can’t just write a $10 million per-episode check for a show with some dragons in it,”  President Brad Schwartz said during the upfronts in May. He added the show wasn’t any less expensive than licensing a new series from a third-party studio. “I don’t differentiate homegrown from acquired. We’ve picked shows we think have a chance to do well. … Every single show we acquire, we do because we believe in it, and we do a deal [with the producers] to be involved in creatively going forward.”

The show’s launch Oct. 4 was underwhelming: only 494,000 total viewers in L+SD. But if the runaway success of Virgin River on Netflix — another show based on Carr’s novel — is any indication, the only way is up for Sullivan’s Crossing, which follows a star neurosurgeon (Morgan Kohan) who returns to her bucolic home after a scandal rocks her world in Boston.

Here, showrunner Roth talks about the show’s budget, why she thought Sullivan’s Crossing would work, and why TV execs has sometimes been too quick to write off romance stories.

DEADLINE How you felt when you first heard that CW was picking up the show?

ROMA ROTH Fremantle, our wonderful partner who was handling the sales, let us know about that. It’s a dream come true. To have a network show from somebody who was born in London, Ontario, Canada, that’s something in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have thought was possible. And I’m just very excited that it’s happening. Part of the strategy and the structure of the financing of the show is that they have to sell it in other territories. They are wonderful partners who actually believed so heavily in me and in what I had created. They had actually put up an advance against the foreign marketplace, and in the U.S. So I knew that it was going to end up airing somewhere in many different countries, and I really did believe that the power of Robyn Carr, her audience that she was bringing with her from the books, but also the audience that we had developed together with Virgin River … I mean, I felt very confident. I was extremely confident in how it was going to be received and that it would be well received with the same audience that is enjoying Virgin River. One of the reasons I wanted to partner with Robyn was because of the audience she’d already brought with her. I’m not exactly sure about the number, but I think it was close to 27 or 37 million. Once we developed Virgin River, we saw the numbers there and how it resonated with the streaming audience. I knew that Sullivan Crossing would resonate with the same people.

DEADLINE Robyn’s books have been around for a while. Why do you think it took so long to develop them into TV shows?

ROTH Way back before Virgin River, I was doing a lot of Lifetime a television movies. That’s where I cut my teeth. And at one point, I don’t know how many years ago, I had a feeling that we were going to have kind of a shift, pre-Covid, to what people would want to watch. I feel like things happen cyclically in television, and it felt like we were going to go back to the 80s and the 90s with regards to what was going on in the news. I kind of felt that people were lost, emotionally lost. They were desensitized to what was going on in the world, emotionally distant. So that would’ve been like season one of Virgin River. And then when Covid hit and everything went bananas, it just escalated what I had already been feeling. I wanted to develop shows that would allow people to reconnect emotionally with themselves, give them a safe place to experience feelings through characters that they could connect with and go on an emotional journey with. It allows you to feel again, and also gives you the catharsis that you need in your life to feel alive.

DEADLINE Shows that originate out of the country, or in this case Canada, are generally described as cheaper programming. Is that a fair description of Sullivan’s Crossing?

ROTH I don’t think our show is cheap, obviously. I don’t think it’s Canadian programming. Just because something is produced and shot in Canada doesn’t mean that it’s not something that’s going to resonate with a global audience. If you look at what the streamers are airing, for example, shows that are in the Korean language shot in Korea are huge with kids. I don’t think it matters anymore where a show is produced. I think what matters is what is the show and how does that show connect with an audience? The only thing that kind of differentiates our programming or the shows that we’re doing from others is that it happens to be filmed in Canada. But otherwise all the boxes that you would tick to make it a hit show are still there. Yes, we are benefiting from tax credits and subsidies, but that’s kind of where the world is going these days. You need to be able to make a show that doesn’t put a network at risk that allows them to still have the same quality show that they would’ve once had, but at a lower price point for them. The show itself is not a cheap show to make. It’s still a show, but it just has money that’s coming in from different funding areas.

DEADLINE A show like Sullivan’s Crossing isn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel. Shows like it or Virgin River are not what any TV critic today would call a cool show.

ROTH I disagree actually. If you watched a Sandra Bullock movie from 80s and 90s, or if you watched Runaway Bride, I mean, those movies were blockbuster hits and they were about romance. So what makes a television series seem like it’s a lesser show if it’s about romance? Just because we don’t have serial killers? Some executive, I don’t know who it was, decided that nobody wanted to watch romance. And yet love is what everybody wants in their lives. Every person wants to be loved, wants to love somebody. Even a serial killer show has somebody loving somebody in it. I just think that whoever that executive was who decided that romance wasn’t selling, maybe they were just having a bad day. The romance genre has the same dedicated and loyal audience as the Marvel universe. If you look at who’s going to get the autographs at those Comic-Cons, there’s always going to be somebody there from a romance show.

DEADLINE Can you talk about casting Chad Michael Murray?

ROTH We were looking for someone who is attractive and compelling, but also somebody who has within themselves the ability to really connect with an audience and with their female lead. Chad Michael Murray is one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet. He is genuine. He is warm. He shows up every day at work with a smile on his face and is supportive of everybody. So when I was looking for who would be our perfect Cal, I wanted somebody who would resonate with an audience. And so I did a lot of research. Chad has a history in television of being a quote, heart throb, right? He also came from a generation that I was looking again to reignite. I spoke to my then 13-year-old daughter about who resonates with her as well as me. Before I actually pulled the trigger on Chad, I went and talked to my daughter, who was familiar with him and his body of work. He crossed a generation between the shows that I used to watch as well as my daughter. That obviously can equate to eyeballs for the show.

DEADLINE And Scott Patterson?

ROTH I’d been searching for the perfect actor to play Sully Sullivan, an actor who could play a curmudgeon with heart. I needed someone who would have the emotional range necessary to dig deep and pull off the character while still being lovable. I was walking by the living room and my daughter was watching Gilmore Girls and I saw Scott Patterson and a light bulb went off. He was the ideal Sully and I instantly knew the audience would fall in love with him as this character.  I contacted his manager Leigh Brillstein and the rest is history.

#sullivan's crossing #the cw