#but I have a certain gripe with Crash's design in particular.

[thebuttsmcgee]

#anyways hiya yall! #the butts chronicles #honestly today wasnt that great but hey. hey~ #hm. oh yea thats what I was gunna rant about. so I really do love how Crash 4 looks! #the style brings the whole series to a zany but not too wild take while looking cartoony in a eye pleasing way #but I have a certain gripe with Crash's design in particular. #I get that the N Sane trilogy had that weird (but imo cool) realistic look but they had the right idea with keeping his #skin mouth. like that area around his mouth is just peachy skin and with the one pupil thats slightly bigger than the other. #like I love when designs use old cartoon elements and the mouth piece thats just skin but in a uncreepy way is a favorite. #like Sonic! or mitchell mouse. or Banjo! kinda like Bugs and Conker but they have fur on their mouth places. tho its still differentiated. #also there were little nuances with Fake Crash's design that are just like. gone in 4. his ears were droopy and his eyes were the same #but were creepy! he also hunched a little. and sometimes his fur was just a little shade darker. #but oh well. cant win em all. at least mostly everyone else looks great! especially Cortex like man he looks so much better. #not to shit on N Sane Trilogy but yea he looks a whole lot better. #anyways again. I drank milky and ate goldfish today. hrm. honestly probly shoulda ate more. #also was thinking about my honest faith in humanity and how so much of it selfish and while it's important to balance out selflessness with #selfishness it's even more important to realize that sometimes that selfishness can literally cause the suffering of others. #Its been so noticeable due to the pandemic. I still feel the weight of everything crashing down if it kills one of us. I feel the unease. #The reality that if one of them dies then thats it. If I die then I'll at least want them to be okay and they should be. Only if its me. #If one of them died then honestly bad things will happen. My mother could die we could then lose the house #A lot of bad things basically. but enough about that last night I saw the funniest fuckin meme #it was megatron related lmao. but yea hope yall had a great day tho!!!

[rukangle]

RWBY Tuesday: RWBY Black Trailer Retrospective

https://insufferablefirecrackersinsufferablesworld.wordpress.com/

RWBY Tuesday: RWBY Black Trailer Retrospective

DECEMBER 3, 2019 ~ INSUFFERABLE FIRECRACKER

If the RWBY Red Trailer is the least interesting to me, and the RWBY White Trailer is my personal favorite, then the RWBY Black Trailer has the best narrative. It’s the one that eludes best to greater plot elements and later story arcs. This means that it’s actually doing what a “trailer” should do. If I wanted to get someone interested in the series, this would be the first trailer I’d show them based on storytelling.

The opening starts with a quote as a red backdrop of forest paints its way across the screen. Red petals fall from the sky as a soft and somber melody begins to play. Viewers descend beneath the tops of the trees until we’re greeted with the ground below. There a girl sits with her back to the camera, looking up at the moon above.

A man calls her name. Let’s stop right there. I’m going to repeat that. A man calls Blake’s name. That is voice acting, and it’s finally in a trailer!

Up until this trailer, we’ve had great soundtracks, but no actual voice acting. This is a major issue with the other two trailers. The RWBY White Trailer manages to skirt around the issue, but it’s still a minor gripe I have.

However, this trailer has both a wonderful soundtrack and proper voice acting. This is what makes RWBY as a series so awesome in the early volumes. Voice acting, sound design, beautiful visuals, and stunning combat come together to really show off what the series could be capable of.

The complete synergy of Blake’s character theme song cannot be overstated. It works beautifully well with the visuals on screen. When I think of a good RWBY trailer, this is what comes to mind.

The man’s name is Adam, but we won’t know that for a long while. He tells Blake that it’s time to go. She agrees and they both run off, darting through the forest until they come to a cliff. A train sounds off in the distance. They both jump off the cliff, sliding down the steep sides at a breakneck pace.

With another leap they both manage to land on the train. They both use their weapons to ground themselves on top of a train car. The music here shifts to a much heavier beat. Jumping from train car to train car. they make their way along the speeding vehicle. Finally they come to an opening at the top of the train, both of them jump down into the train.

A fight scene breaks out on the train car as Blake and Adam dispose of the opponents in their way. They move to another train car. This time, more enemies are waiting for them. These are machines, so Blake’s ruthless in her fighting style. This is an important unspoken plot element in the trailer, and in the series as a whole.

Blake is hard to gather screenshots for, due to the way her semblance works in battle. She phases in and out of enemy attacks so quickly that her fight choreography is probably the most impressive to see on screen. There are times she appears faster than she should in this particular fight. Comparing Blake’s trailer to Ruby’s, Blake looks like the faster character here. That said, I chalk that down to the animators finally finding their footing. By this point, they’ve had two other trailers to practice with, and that’s important to keep in mind.

Blake and Adam finally find what they’re looking for. Adam tells Blake to move onto the next car while he sets the charges, meaning he’s going to blow up the train. Blake asks about the crew members, and Adam shows no sign of remorse for what he’s about to do.

There’s a sick, twisted sense of entitlement that clouds every single one of Adam’s words. He feels justified in harming the workers on the train, even if it means killing them.

A lot of fans don’t like the way the series handled Adam as a character. A large amount of criticism comes from the idea that the creators wasted Adam’s character. As if turning him into just a jealous ex-boyfriend was a huge mistake.

This trailer proves that Adam, at his core, will always be a vindictive person. He wasn’t a waste. He served his purpose from volumes 1-6 as intended. If he really cared about the Faunus plight, or about Blake, he wouldn’t do things that intentionally hurt the plight.

More importantly, he never would have hurt Blake. The key thing to remember is, we’ve just watched Blake cause massive damage to a bunch of artificial intelligence. We still haven’t seen her harm a living, breathing, person.

Just as Blake is about to retort about hurting the workers, a large machine comes crawling out of the shadows. It’s red and angry looking, just like the robots from before.

Adam leaves to go take care of the large machine standing in his way. Blake sighs out his name in frustration. A fight scene begins, but Adam and Blake find themselves crashing through the wall of the train car. The machine behind them in hot pursuit.

Adam orders Blake to buy him some time. She asks if he’s absolutely certain, and Adam gives the affirmative. Then, Blake charges headlong to engage in combat once more. She manages to land several solid blows, all while dodging return attacks.

She latches onto it and fires several rounds headlong into the armored shell. The Machine fires back, and Blake makes a fast retreat. The machine aims an energy beam right for Adam, and he absorbs it with his sword. Finally, Adam is able to land the final blow.

Adam turns to make a run for the next train car, but Blake is already there. Giving him a sad look, she slices the connection.

Blake only says one word to Adam “goodbye”, and then the severed connection force the two characters to part ways. Blake fades off into the distance, a sea of red coloring enveloping her black shadow.

This is the end of the RWBY Black Trailer. It’s sad and a little tragic, but the soft melodic tone of the music comes back just before Blake completely disappears.

All in all, I think that the RWBY Black Trailer is the best introductory to the series. That isn’t to say that it’s the most entertaining of the trailers. While I will always say that the RWBY White Trailer is my absolute favorite, there’s still one girl left to introduce.

Next week, I cover the most comedic and fun loving trailer of the four. The RWBY Yellow Trailer features Yang Xiao Long, the sunny fire dragon we all know and love. I hope to see you there!

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[the-desolated-quill]

Robot Of Sherwood - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When the Doctor exited the TARDIS and bumped into Robin Hood, who greets him with a cheeky wink before the opening credits, I started to shift uncomfortably in my seat. Mark Gatiss, why do you keep doing this to yourself? You know this kind of light hearted fluff doesn’t suit you. You specialise in the dark and the macabre. The Unquiet Dead and The Crimson Horror are probably your best episodes, and that’s because they play to your strengths. This... I’m sorry, but this is just sad.

Clara wants to meet Robin Hood, but the Doctor is adamant that Robin Hood doesn’t exist, so he takes Clara to Sherwood Forest to prove his point (again, it’s like Into The Dalek. He takes Clara to Nottingham not to make her happy, but to prove he’s right. I really like this more arrogant and stubborn side of him a lot) only to find that Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men are in fact real after all. Or are they...?

To be honest, I kind of half wish they followed through with the idea that Robin Hood really was a robot because that at least may have justified why he’s such an awful caricature. Tom Riley has a decent stab at it, but the character is so one note and so wafer thin that it’s damn near impossible to form any sort of emotional attachment to him. Why should I care about him or his desire to be reunited with Maid Marion? (who is basically handed to Robin Hood as a prize at the end for good behaviour). Some could argue that this was deliberate to keep up the pretence that he might be a robot, but that doesn’t work because once you learn he is in fact the real Robin Hood, he’s still a flat, one dimensional cardboard cutout. And the less said about his so called ‘bantering,’ the better. I’ve had dentist appointments that were funnier than this.

The Sheriff Of Nottingham has the same problem. Ben Miller tries his best, but there’s nothing he can really do because the character is so flimsy. Why is he working with the robots? What’s his motivation behind wanting more power than he already has? And if he’s just a pawn of the robots, how is he able to control them? (On a second viewing, I learnt that the Sheriff is actually a cyborg. This was an explanation that I completely missed the first time around because it was so rushed and I couldn’t hear it because of the sword fight and Murray Gold’s obnoxiously loud swashbuckler theme crashing and banging away in the background. Plus it doesn’t really address what I was saying. In fact it just raises further questions. Why did the robots upgrade the Sheriff? And why give him control over them?).

The robots themselves look kind of cool, I guess. But... robots trying to repair their spaceship using human resources so that they can get to the Promised Land? Isn’t this the exact same premise as Deep Breath? Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

But for me the biggest reason why Robot Of Sherwood doesn’t work (and it pains me to say this) is the Doctor. Now don’t get me wrong. I like Peter Capaldi. I think he’s a great actor, but I think it’s fair to say he can only really do certain types of comedy. The reason Into The Dalek worked so much better as an introduction to Twelve than Deep Breath did was because the story and humour was tailor fitted to suit Capaldi’s talents. Whimsy and goofy just doesn’t suit him. Deep Breath made that painfully obvious. He was miles better at the dry quips and dark sarcasm in Into The Dalek. So it baffles me why we’ve suddenly gone back to whimsy, goofy territory again. Take a look at the opening fight with Robin Hood where the Doctor brandishes a spoon. Now if it was David Tennant or Matt Smith doing that, it could have worked, but with Peter Capaldi, the whole thing just felt really cringeworthy. And I’m not saying it’s because Capaldi is a bad actor or he’s not funny. It’s just not the right material for him. It just doesn’t work with this particular Doctor. Same goes for the gag where he accidentally tells one of the Merry Men he’s only got six months to live. I could see Matt Smith making that work, but when Peter Capaldi does it, it just comes off as spiteful.

I suppose that’s really my main gripe with Robot Of Sherwood, apart from everything else. It feels like its been written for a completely different Doctor. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene where the Doctor, Clara and Robin Hood get captured and locked in a cell, and the Doctor and Robin start squabbling like children. This is by far the worst scene in the episode because the Doctor’s behaviour and attitude toward Robin Hood doesn’t make any sense. The only way his behaviour could possibly be justified is if he was motivated by jealousy. Except that’s not who this Doctor is. He has no romantic interest in Clara whatsoever, so that can’t be the reason for his jealousy, and you can’t even put it down to the Doctor being jealous of her hero worshipping Robin because he knows she hero worships him too and wishes she wouldn’t. It just doesn’t work with this Doctor at all.

Speaking of which, this is the third episode in a row where the story revolves around sticking the Doctor under a microscope. Deep Breath was about questioning whether the Doctor is the same man as before, Into The Dalek was about the Doctor’s hatred of the Daleks, and now Robot Of Sherwood is about whether or not the Doctor is a hero (and in case you didn’t pick up on all that, Robin Hood handily explains it all to you at the end because the writers clearly think we’re fucking idiots). I can see what they’re trying to do. The Doctor doubts whether or not he’s a good person and is projecting those doubts onto Robin Hood. This prevents him from seeing Robin as a real man and forces him to conclude that Robin must be a fake working for the enemy. I get it. The problem is in order to make it work, Mark Gatiss has to make the Doctor look like a complete and utter moron. The Sheriff spells it out all too plainly near the end. Why would the robots design an enemy to fight them? It’s just all so bloody obvious, there’s no way the Doctor wouldn’t pick up on that. I’ve got no problem with the Doctor being suspicious of the whole setup, but not if it comes at the expense of his own characterisation.

No. Sorry Mark Gatiss. This really isn’t good enough. You were in the League Of Gentlemen, for God’s sake! Write something better!

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