The Hollow review/summary/rant/explanation of why i hate the ending
I wasn’t sure whether I should post this, but I did enjoy reading others experiences watching this show, so here’s mine under the cut. Edited from a convo with a friend.
(Obviously, spoilers!)
Me: Okay so to properly express my disappointment i gotta take you through the major beats
The show starts with three teens waking up in an almost empty room, finding out they all have amnesia. They quickly solve a puzzle to escape the room, and just as quickly Adam and Mira realize they have superpowers (superstrength/agility and some weird 'speak to animals/know all languages' hybrid, respectively. also she can breathe underwater and swim really fast. its kind of vague)
Kai is already clearly a comic relief, discount Ron (from HP, the movies, no idea about the books) so me and sister correctly predict he'll get jealous of adam and miras relationship (even if there is none), gets pissy and jealous that he has no powers, but then finds out he has powers anyway
he does, hes a fire bender. cant say im not bitter about that cause id put my money on invulnerability but eh its alright
he has red hair after all
hes still fun
Friend: Of course he is
I just feel bad is all aldjs
Me: adam gets a throwaway line of 'maybe were dead' and kai never lets it go
this food might be poisoned but im starving and hey were dead anyway! right, adam
Friend: I love him??
Me: i loved him as soon as he spoke his first dumb words
also he puns
but basically hes the only interesting char; adam and mira are just cookie cutter 'male lead 1' and 'female lead 1'
i mean, he’s cookie cutter ‘jealous 3rd wheel’ but that has more going on than the first two
still servicable though
anyway so
the jokes are sometimes fun, and superpowers are always my jam. but the REAL reason to keep watching is just, whats going on?
ARE they dead? or in some kind of weird gvnmt experiment?
some weird magical vampire guide (dont ask) hints they wanted this themselves
ooh, intrigue. and the world is very very quirky
they start in a gravity falls-y woods and then get teleported to a desert with minotaurs and witches, then get invited for tea by the Grim Reaper and the rest of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse
tbh Grim is the best part of the show but thats neither here nor there
anyway they have a magic map that updates once theyve been somewhere, and it shows them that the hot dry desert and the swampy wood bunker are like right next to each other
so you start thinking, how are they gonna explain that? this is too weird to be handwaved away. theyve gotta be going somewhere
they visit some other exotic locals, like what appears to be the set of Alien (complete with alien) and an abandoned old fair
and a floating island with japanese inspired evildoers on it
the weird magic guide keeps showing up and being vague, dropping hints that there are other kids there etc
at some point Mira says "This is no time for games!"
Weirdy: "Thats where youd be wrong~"
me and sister: Aha! videogame! that connects all the dots, and also makes the tropes clear: small world with all kinds of different areas, quests, fights, superpowers, an updating map, fast travel
Adam, a few eps later: guis i think we might be in a videogame
me and sister: [high five]
Anyway in the meantime also the second predictable Kai (discount Ron) plot happens: they meet three other kids (boy boy girl) and they act shady
but the girl takes an immediate and obvious interest in Kai
so obviously theyre gonna manipulate him and have him betray his friends but in the end he'll see through their facade and kick their ass
that more or less happens. The other teens also confirm that this is a game, and theyre trying to win.
winning is done by bringing the MacGuffin to a tree
fights over macguffin ensue
situations are dire
but our characters persevere
(also Mira kisses Adam and he acts very weird about it, almost as if hes gay and the only reason they didnt make it canon is censors)
(no lingering gaze, just him going 'hehe yeah no thanks, its not you, its me', but in a very... he doesnt seem to be saying it with shall we say burning desire in his soul. hes literally just like 'eh youre a good friend.' Cool move, cartoon that made the two main boys have arguments over nothing cause of course the two main guys have constant dick measuring matches)
this all is not the offensive part btw it was all fun and games, its just a flash cartoon i wasnt expecting Shakespeare
anyway so
theyre in a videogame, and apparently thats the answer to all the weirdness. A bit of a cop-out, cause thats a very easy answer, but eh, it works. it wasnt immediately obvious.
also something i hadnt mentioned yet: thisd be ideal for making (self-insert) OCs. Unique powers for each person, there are clearly more characters than shown, the world is your playground
and maybe the video game thing could be interesting on its own
in the last few eps the game seems to be glitching out a lot
they say its breaking apart so they really gotta hurry now
maybe they were beta testers for a vr game gone wrong
maybe this is part of it but its like a huge experience that you tell all your friends about
anyway there are ways it could be cool, could be expanded to a season 2 despite having solved the mystery
but. last episode. our heroes get the MacGuffin, go to a final stage, and fight the Boss Battle (its a dragon). they enter the Castle....
...and the screen zooms out, into a sudden live action stage, where we see the cartoon (literally what you were just watching) on screen. there are 6 chairs, 3 with our heroes, 3 with the other teens, presumably. theres a host and hes dressed exactly like the weird guy (and that was already kind of a clashy outfit in the cartoon). it was all just a game show. but. the worst part is the live action
you. dont. go. from. animated. to. live. action.
other way around? fine, can work. But now? WHY
itd still be dumb and dissapointing but if itd been animated too itd at least have been.... nice to look at
but the acting.. oh god
they didnt even say anything and it was all wrong
clearly theyd just picked the first random teens that vaguely looked like the chars and put them in there cause they had no lines so who needs acting?!
the enemy teams girl had, in the cartoon, pink hair. Purple with pink highlights
instead of stylizing that into something more realistic or painting the actual hair, they gave some 30-year old woman a wig and called it a day
keep in mind i binged this show in one go
purposely stayed up late to watch the last ep with my sis even tho we shouldve gone to bed and were disobeying our dad cause we Had to Know
and theres more i said they had no lines but i was lying. Kai did have a line. well, his voice actor did
they dubbed him
also the line was about him having to pee which is already not the most hilarious in animated version but a live action kid whose supposed to be this character you spent 3 hours with but looks nothing like him saying that in a voice that doesnt belong to his throat, as he stands bashfully in front of a live audience, the only words spoken by your main characters in the last moments...
*its actual hell*
oh oh one more thing
at the end the six kids stand in a line and kai is next to other girl
they glance at each other
and as the eyes of this teen and 30 year old in wig cross, her eye glitches for a moment
dun dun duuun
bUT
i dont care anymore, The Hollow. You overestimated your own premise. this wont be forgiven. your most interesting part was the mystery, and the answer to that was "just a normal game show" (which also doesnt make sense on another level smh) soo if you think that im interested in what these two-dimensional (ha) characters will do now about the glitch in the eye of a bitch then i have news for u
i dont
...if they get a second season ill probably check it out though as long as its animated
Friend: Gammi I'm getting the real sinking suspicious feeling that what you saw isn't the real end but bad on purpose because there's more to it
Me: the show didnt seem good enough to be bad on purpose
and yet im still not done, if youll still hear me out
i mean, im an animation fan so ill still watch but if theyd wanted to be bad on purpose they really shouldve done a better job fleshing out the characters
thats what people come back for
that was a bit of a sidetrack BUT so i said why the live action itself was just terrible in overal quality
but the resolution that 'oh it was all in a game show' doesnt work on multiple levels
first of all, they show a short flashback of "About 5 hours earlier". The kids stand on the stage and are instructed to take their seats in the vr-chairs, and pick their superpower
2 things i dislike about that
1) there goes all the self-insert/oc potential. they werent teens in over their heads, they werent gvnmt experiments, or just some kids who wanted to play a game -they were in it to win it, from the start. thats very specific and not the most appealing to all kinds of characters (goodbye, all the 'im just an average girl whod never step into the spotlight like that' characters).
Also, all the expansion on lore is gone. maybe there were other games simultaneously? eh, maybe, but theyd be all gameshows. Maybe someone ended uo trapped there for way longer? nah its just a gameshow theyre not gonna let anything actually bad happen. Maybe there are other worlds, other areas, other weird creatures? unlikely, they finished the map and familiarity seemed to be a thing for the audience. Now every new idea has to be put not through a 'whats interesting for a player' but a 'whats interesting for a viewer' lens, and whats a selfinsert if not a player in another universe
2) HOW IS THIS A SUCCESSFUL GAME SHOW
who the hell watches a game show for 5 consecutive hours, some of which mustve been just them walking. also, we zoom out of the screen were watching, so implication is that everything up until then has been what the audience has seen. but... we only followed the one team. there were two? why didnt the audience want to see what they were up to? ~reality tv usually thrives on showinf the worst assholes so realistically they wouldve been the focus~
There are also way too many times *both* teams couldve failed, from early on till late in the game. Not a single game i can think of thats played for an audience is set up like that, and especially not a televised one (okay tbf idk if this was televised, i dont remember if i saw cameras, but. it mustve. monetary reasons.)
What r u gonna do if they all 'died' from the monsters in the first ep? Call it a day? boring for the audience. let them restart from scratch? boring for the audience. the existence of an audience messes with everything
AND THEN ANOTHER THING what do you mean, "5 hours ago?" you never get a time stamp to show how long theyve been in there but there are some cuts, when they travel and such. The actual show is a lil over 3 hours runtime. You mean to tell me you sat through 2 hours of the characters just walking?
okay last thing. so. they were clearly second season teasing with the glitching eye thing. i already said this but. theres nowhere to go from here that isnt worse that the first season. your mystery is dead. you clearly know your live action teens cant act so youd have to go back into the game - but why would they do that? how would that be in any way interesting? you explored all there was to explore.
The other, more out there option, is that as you said the 'real world' was a fake-out and theyre still in a game. but. how would- how would you even make that remotely convincing? if youd just left the 'real world' gameshow as animated too this wouldnt have been a problem. but there is absolutely no conceivable reason to justify, in universe, why another meta-level up is 2D animation again unless they were in a game, in a game, in a game. and thats just dumb. yall aint inception
Friend: HONESTLY if they just kept the whole deal animated it'd probably be okay. Not good, but better,
Me: ye me and my sister came to the same conclusion
i couldve lived with that. at least, i couldve just acknowledged the finales existence but chose to ignore it. now however im full phantom planet levels of denial. in fact i dont even know how the show ended anymore, suddenly
Friend: what finale? what show?
Me: also at least now we know why its called The Hollow
it leaves you feeling empty inside
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Long thing. Suuuuper super long thing about doing your idea even if youre scared to... Hellsing fandom positivity and a "new" Alucard (someone has to have done it before, but...)
But long ass post. FUCKIN LONG. "Keep scrolling cuz its gonna keell you" long!
Okay... I harshed on myself some for this, and even more for making this post, just cuz... what DON'T I harsh on myself about? ^^; I mean, I was making a Hellsing positivity sideblog and I could just make the blog and NOT make this post, right? I mean, a stupid post talking about it, just make a short promo post and don't waste anyone's time, right?
I just keep thinking about others who feel similar as me, and I know how validating it is to read someone else having same thoughts... I don't think anything I do will have any horribly great impact, and in a POSITIVE WAY no less (in fact, I'm stunned when ONE person says I've made their day better... like, are they high at the time or did they dial the wrong number??) but on the chance it can help one person just a tiny bit, it's one drop in an ocean that's made up of tiny drops. It's always a straw ("a small thing") that breaks the camel's back.
So
Yeah
I've had an idea for a Hellsing positivity blog for a while now and a couple days ago set about getting things ready. Yesterday morning, though, I got a different idea, realizing it was just what was lacking from the previous idea. A general positivity blog is fine and good, but there was something distant about it somehow. Then yesterday as I was driving home from dropping my nephew off to school I just kinda chuckled to myself about how everyone's making "ask" blogs now (the one Father Anderson's been there for a while, but we have a newer joint Alucard/Seras, an Iscariot-Seras, and now a Punkcard one, etc...) and that it was cute and awesome how everyone was having fun. I hadn't thought about making one until just that moment. It would deal with the "distance" factor that was missing from the first positivity blog idea. People can have a character personality to interact with.
Parking the car [from taking nephew to school] and walking to the house I mentally skidded to a halt as it hit me. The idea that surfaced was an abscure one, it was literally random but I had found it PERFECT--but then came the worries.
The idea was basically "Priestcard." Alucard if he was a priest, except for some reason creativity wants this to be a PART of Alucard, like say some familiar that gets cut off from him (don't question the sciences on this... DARK MAGIC, somethingsomething), someone who was a priest or at least thinks he was, remembers nothing, not even of being a priest, and just looks like Alucard as priest. Being the most popular character in the Hellsing franchise, who better to "host" a Hellsing positivity blog? But when the Father Anderson blog did that Andervamp event they got anon hate because someone else already had a vampire Anderson RP blog (who fully supported the Andervamp event and did NOT support the anon hate)... and Anderson is basically Alucard as a priest anyway (canon)... both the Anderson and the Andervamp blogs are run by totally chill people, I know they won't mind my Priestcard idea one bit. Walking up to the house [after taking nephew to school] as I realized some of the possible shit certain others may want to stir up scared me. Even now in typing this hours later, I'm shaking just a bit.
But I've really wanted this blog, no matter who the fictional host was or wasn't. Priestcard had nothing to do with Anderson or their blogs, it was a random thought brought on by multiple people making ask blogs conveniently solving a distance problem. Maybe my random thought was Priestcard because of subconscious attachment to Iscariot lately (I mean... Anderson blog, Andervamp blog, Iscariot Seras blog... it MAY have all influenced me without my knowing). But it doesnt matter. I've wanted mere Hellsing positivity in the community to be more active since before the PSA linked in my Herushingu blog description. I wanted to reblog that thing to my RP account and give the same thing to others, but was insecure about being able to be in-character enough for it. If even one person came to me in need of character cheering up I didn't want to fail them. So I didn't reblog it there. Shortly after I thought about a whole blog just for positive vibes. Nobody asked for it. I'm sure it won't gain many (if any) followers, but like I said, if it helps one person then that's all that matters.
I'm still scared. But dammit I'm tired of doing nothing when I've got an idea just because "what if" someone decides to be a douche and start drama... Let fear stop me on the next idea. It won't stop me from THIS one. This can be that one in ten thousand ideas that actually makes it to at least creation. If someone starts shit, let it be on them. I don't have to acknowledge it.
If anyone's still reading this far then lol, I'll send flowers to your funeral after this lengthy load of whatever kills you, but thanks for sticking around for this idiotic prattle. Let's move on to the blog details themselves, hm?
Priestcard will be 100% passive sugarcoated sweetheart material that will make Mr. Rogers look like a gangster. He won't remember being a vampire so for all he knows he's not one (since, you know, Alucard is immune to sunlight, so Priestcard thinks "sunlight doesn't hurt me, so I CAN'T be a vampire..."), he's just an ordinary priest-guy who also for some reason he can't fathom knows nothing about being a priest besides "be nice to people and God loves everyone." He's taken up residence in an abandoned church that he has decided needs some TLC and should not be thrown away so quickly. A little tidying up and anyone can be saved, one small step at a time. People call it "his" church but he insists it's "a church for everyone, even nonbelievers" who he finds no fault in merely for that. I'm making some basic emote art for him now. Oh--he's Father Vlad Dragulya, and no he doesn't know why that's his name (but it's one of the two ways actual Vlad Dracula signed his name). He's walking anmesia, lol. His actual conscious memories start when he woke up, alone, a separate being (from Alucard) just down the road from this very church. All he wants is for you to feel better from anything that bothers you. Anything. (my heart bleeds for Priestcard, I swear... <3) The interesting parts will be when someone has a papercut around him and he "feels strangly facinated" about it or the rare (suuuper rare) ocassions when he actually gets angry and dark powers flare up. ;)
but yeah... these are the types of posts I don't usually make anymore. "Once upon a time" kind of thing. This long LONG "my exact thoughts and here's what's going on behind the scenes" delightful bullshit. Maybe it's pointless. It wont become a habit lol ^^;
I just want anyone who feels scared of doing a thing to know YOU'RE NOT ALONE, READ ALL THIS, SERIOUSLY, THIS LITTLE THING HAS ME SCARED HALF OUT OF MY WITS and I'm still doing it. Try thinking about other people who want to see that thing you want to do anyway. DO IT. MAKE IT HAPPEN. Some people think I'm fearless because I'm so passionate about my opinion HAHAHA, NNNOPE. Look at what I've typed here and ask yourself if you would tell me not to do this thing, make that Priestcard blog, that you (at least as someone who I presume doesn't hate me, lol) don't want me to have this thing... if you can't say it about me then you can't say it about yourself. If I deserve THING, then you deserve THING too.
GO!
DO THING!
and tell us all about it because it's probably going to be awesome and we don't wanna miss out!! <3 <3 <3
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