#like it's not good just because its big and grand and epic or something

[flower-boi16]

You Didn't Know: A Beautiful Song With No Impact

So...You Didn't Know. You Didn't Know is definitely one of my personal favorite songs in the show, simply because like all the songs in HH, its incredibly well sung with a good melody and lyrics. But...I can't help but find the song...hollow. The song is good, but there are so many things about it that could have been so much more impactful that aren't because of the writing outside of the song.

The song is supposed to be a big turning point for the series; its this grand epic musical number and the climax of episode 6, it's supposed to make you feel something...but It doesn't. And that's because the things that actually happen in the song don't have any real impact on the viewer because of the writing in the rest of the show; here's why.

The song begins with Emily singing about how Charlie actually proved that Sinners can be redeemed and how unfair it is that they are still turn their backs, after that, Charlie stands up to Sera and sings about it noting being fair, how a sinner can be redeemed. Then Adam and Lute come in singing about how stupid the discussion is and take some lyrics from Hell Is Forever.

Now, you have Charlie and Emily singing about how souls can be redeemed and calling out Sera for her bullshit, and you also have Adam and Lute come in spewing out their black and white nonesense.

So why isn't this verse impactful? Simple; we never actually saw Angel Dust grow as a person, it happened off-screen. I already talked about why Hazbin Hotel's themes of redemption feel ungodly hollow as well as how hollow Angel Dust's "development" in episode 6 is, and both problems greatly harm this song as a whole and are part of why it feels so hollow; just imagine how much more impact this lyrics would feel if we actually saw Charlie help Angel Dust grow and become a better person, if it came after a full season of character development for the guy, if it came after we got to actually see Charlie help redeem him.

This is what I mean when I say that this song is harmed by the writing around it; in isolation, it sounds like a kickass song, but as something that's part of the story, it feels very hollow. And it wouldn't feel so hollow if the writing around it was better, but it isn't.

These lyrics don't feel impactful because we never saw Angel Dust's development into becoming a better person, it happened completely and utterly off-screen, and that's a major issue.

Then after that, Adam actidentally spells out the truth about the exterminations just existing and Emily is shocked by this. Sera tries to explain why saying that she wanted to protect Emily and she had to do what she thought she needed to, buuuuuut Emily isn't buying and her view of Sera bassically shatters.

So, we have a character whose whole view of someone who she admired completely shattered after finding out the things that she was doing, basically being murdering people. This would be very impactful...if Emily was a character that the audience actually cared about. Again, this is something that's affected by an outside problem with the show's writting, that being; introducing new characters and expecting the audience to instantly care about them.

I already talked about my issues with Emily as a character but a major issue with her is that we barely even KNOW her. She's introduced in this one episode and the show instantly expects you care despite her when we don't know her as a person or character yet. Again, imagine how much more impact this development would have if we actually got to know Emily as a character so we can care about her, what her interests, desires and personality are.

We don't need a full episode developing her, but like, a few scenes where we actually get to know her as a character and actually get to care about her would have made this more impactful.

And then in the grand climax of the song, we get a duet sung by Charlie and Emily about how bullshit Heaven's rules are with a reprise of Hell is Forever thrown in.

I don't have much to say about this part of the song, it just suffers from the same problem that the first part I talked about does; it doesn't have any impact because we skipped Angel Dust's development because this show only has eight episodes (for SOME REASON), so it, like the rest of the song, feels hollow.

So then we get to the end of the song, where Adam reveals to Charlie that Vaggie is an fallen angel, and dramatic music plays to signal how big of a reveal this is to Charlie...

...but it's not much of a reveal to the audience. The audience already knows that Vaggie is a fallen angel, so while this moment is impactful to Charlie, it's not exactly impactful to us. Imagine how much more impactful this moment would have been if this was the actual reveal that Vaggie was a fallen angel; the reveal would have shocked both Charlie and the audience and would have ended both the already epic and dramatic song and the episode on a dramatic note, providing one final big reveal to end the episode off.

But...we didn't really get that. This isn't as bad as the problems with the other parts of the song but it still feels like a big missed opportunity imo.

So...that was You Didn't Know. Its a good song with great singing and powerful instrumentation, but in terms of the narrative of the show itself, the song feels completely hollow. None of the things that happen in the song have any impact because of the writting around it, and this is not the only song with this issue.

Whatever It Takes has a very similar problem; the Vaggie parts are fine, its the Carmila ones that I take issue with. We have Carmilla singing about how she just wanted to protect her daughters but it falls flat due to Carmilla having a similar problem to Emily; she's a character that was just introduced in this episode that we are automatically expected to care about despite the fact we haven't even gotten to know her yet.

This song would have been a lot more impactful if we got to know and care about Carmilla as a character, like Emily, but we didn’t.

You Didn’t Know while a good song feels complete empty and hollow. It feels like it’s supposed to be the culmination of something…but it isn’t. The song is just completely empty and hollow due to it suffering from the writing around it, and if that writing was better, this song would have a lot more impact…but it doesn’t.

And THAT’S the song’s fatal flaw.

#hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism

[lazulian-devil]

I think, deep down, what Im enamored with as a Skulduggery Pleasant Fan, is not the actual written canon but the vibes.

I dont know when it started and how and why, but there was a shift at some point in which the silliness of the books was outweighed by reality.

And yeah. Thats fair, honestly. But Ive read Demon Road as well and it just.... It literally oozes fun. Its a short, contained thing. Its full of funky ideas that dont have to be perfectly explored because, oopsie daisy, we dont actually have the time. It says something about growing up, about gender and sex, about trauma and about magic and then its over.

Maybe the Skulduggery Pleasant Universe is just... its been too long. If you need to reset everything, if your scale goes from Ireland to global to godhood, from Mage to Grand Mage to Supreme Mage, from protagonist to hero to godcreature? Maybe its too big.

I really enjoyed Book 10 and 11 and even 12. But its not the same enjoyment I have of Book 1. Or 2. Or 3. Like... This whole rant was prompted by Valkyrie saying, ca. Two thirds into Book 12, that (this isnt an accurate quote) "At first, it was Elementals and Adepts. Now theres so much more. Neoterics and Mutations. I think its enough."

And thats kind of funny, isnt it. Because yeah. The world grows and grows and grows and we say goodbye to characters, we get invested in new ones, we worry about Omen and Auger and Never. Militsa, even. Oberon. We meet characters again and they're different and new now.

But maybe, and I love this series to death, maybe its enough. There is an expiration date on all ideas. You can only write so much.

I wish Landy would do something like Demon Road again. It was fun, it was fast, it had vibes. At the same time, I know theres Book 16 to 18 in production right now and... Do I read them? Will they be good? Or have I already said goodbye to this series and all the things I held dear about it.

I was so young when I read the first book. And all its ideas and all its contents have been living in my head, essentially rent free. It has inspired me. It has shaped my perception on urban fantasy. It made me want to become a writer.

... So what now, I suppose.

I have 2,5 books more to go. I have a few ideas for analysis left. At the same time, the characters I love and want to support arent really there anymore. And thats both good and bad. Development is good, moving forward is good, writing shouldnt necessarily be stagnant.

I feel like - and this will make no sense to anyone - the bard in "The Sims Medieval". I have traveled the world, I have gathered my inspirations. Time to retreat and write an epic.

Or something silly like that.

#skulduggery pleasant #demon road #derek landy

[merklins]

🃏 with whoever you want?

Well, since the two of you seem to agree...

I PRESENT TO YOU

Sleepless as a Tarot card (:

(Sketches and my epic reasoning for why I chose the Ten of Swords below the read more) (It's long)

DISCLAIMER: I didn't know much about Tarot cards before these asks, so everything I mention here came from approximately four hours worth of research. Enjoy!

There are seventy-eight tarot cards in a deck, so how do you pick just ONE? There were sooo many good options that I was considering for Sleepless, it was really tough! The Cups had a LOT of cards if I wanted to focus on his relationship with Doc, and Wands was a big contender too, but it would have been tricky to pick just one to sum up all of the internal stuff Sleepless had going on. I excluded the Pentacles because those were mostly focused on work life, and the Major Arcana was out of the question too because. I. I forget now but I think I wanted a challenge and none of the Major Arcana explanations were sparking anything for me. SO SWORDS IT WAS!

The Suit of Swords are kind of like the Suit of Wands, but it seemed to focus a lot more on how everything builds up because of external matters and what you do with it! For example there's some cards in this deck that deal with heartbreak, contending with your feelings, fixing mistakes, and even more! "BUT MERKLINS aren't those all things that Sleepless had to deal with?" Well, yes! From what I read, Tarot cards are used to reflect upon and even predict events that happen in your life. Heartbreak, rest, and distancing oneself are all individual matters that Sleepless, and anyone else, have gone through or overcome! But I wanted something that tied in really closely to zer role in In Your Dreams. If you think of some things Sleepless did during the blog, I IMAGINE that zer grand double-crossing redemption would be pretty high on that list!

So the Ten of Swords, and In Your Dreams. Ready for this? The Ten of Swords in its upright position carries a lot of heavy meanings about being betrayed, abandoned, befallen by a horrible fate, losing something or someone important to you, all of that and even more. It's the card that sends you crashing to the lowest that you've ever felt, and drives you to either give up or take ACTION. I believe ALL of these different meanings could be applied to Sleepless! I can't remember if we were given a precise explanation for what Sleepless did to earn the ire of the Mad Science Team, but Coomer did mention at some point that they never should have banished a mad scientist for being a Mad Scientist. So I imagine that means that whatever it was Sleepless did, it was hardly out of place for them! They were simply a Mad Scientist doing mad science, and suddenly EVERYONE was against them! Their closest allies, their friends, and even their partner. What do we call that? BETRAYAL! Sleepless probably felt BETRAYED. Everyone they cared about had seemingly abandoned them and. that was it! That was IT. He fucked up one time (he didn't even understand what he did was wrong) AND EVERYONE LEFT HIM FOR IT. Hence the five swords in his back: Benrey, Coomer, Bubby, Tommy, and Doc, who pierced RIGHT THROUGH HIS HEART.

But the Ten of Swords is also about moving on. About recovery and acceptance.

You see, Tarot cards have another interesting feature, in which reversing the card so it's upside-down changes the meaning. For the Ten of Swords, these altered meanings are about what comes from that anguish. What you do as a result of the grief and turmoil you were faced with. In some cases this is a solemn acceptance as you grow a new circle and start anew, and in others this is dealing with the emotional scars you were left with, and fighting to get back what you lost. The reversed Ten of Swords is meant to resolve whatever conflict it inflicted upon you from the upright position. How did Sleepless resolve that? What did ze do to recover from the pain zer friends caused zem? Well, after a little off-screen trial and tribulation... Ze found the man who hurt them. AND REPAID HIM THE FAVOR! Sleepless rode out the act they had been carrying to get in G-man's good graces, even confronting their friends and presenting those scars in a way that scraped at their hearts like little daggers, before finally driving their own sword (scissors) into the perpetrator and ending it ONCE AND FOR ALL. Sleepless followed through the entire meaning of the Ten of Swords. He was abandoned by his friends, left alone and betrayed. He braved out those feelings in solitude, coming to terms with what he did wrong and how his friends had hurt him. How they hadn't meant it. And finally, HE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Sleepless made that effort to mend that bond he had lost, AND FOR THAT HE WAS REWARDED HANDSOMELY! Sleepless got his friends back. His team. His partner. They ALL learned from it. Everyone grew.

In the reversed position of the Ten of Swords, some people say that the image is meant to portray the healing process. The swords would have fallen out, and all that would remain would be the wounds, which would eventually heal and scar over with time. IT'S SIMPLY PERFECT FOR SLEEPLESS' CHARACTER ARC!

Ah ah ah, I'm missing something here, aren't I? "That's only six swords! This is Ten of Swords, where are the rest?" Well, the remaining "swords" are shown off by the chat bubbles in the background, which are meant to represent the messages on the blog! It's a metaphorical thing (: Every time the messages accused Sleepless, doubted his intentions, or said horrible things to him throughout his journey of healing and redemption. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but WORDS ARE SHARP AS SWORDS!

If you've made it to the end of this post, and survived reading my lengthy analysis, then I reward you now... WITH THE SKETCHES!!

#hlvrv #Dr Sleepless #m scribbles #m scripts #I KNOW THERE'S ONLY NINE SWORDS but it's WAY TOO LATE to change it now #If it bothers you. we can all pretend there's an extra metaphorical sword in here somewhere #The second person's other request is covered up because I haven't finished it yet #Let me know if there's anything spelt. formatted. or explained weird under the cut! #FUN FACT: I didn't notice until I was drawing this that Dr. Hypnos really steals his partner's belt for his epic evil costume transformatio

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 25/09/2023

Aquarium in the Ocean

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF

Ripped by Zielony Szpieg

If you ask any avid SiIvaGunner fan to recount the most important parts of Season 5, you'll find two songs to be nigh inevitable to be brought up. There's many concise ways to identify the fifth season by today - it was one of the lightest years on the channel in terms of new lore, it was the season tasked with succeeding the indescribable scale and success of the King for Another Day Tournament and its celebration the year after, it saw the official debut of SiIvaGunner Fusion Records, and it overall was one of the highest-quality years in terms of rips uploaded. Yet two icons remain dominant in the minds of many a SiIvaGunner fan, two songs that caused an absolute uproar during their heyday - Astronaut in the Ocean and Yankin'.

Its hard to really overstate just how much chaos these two songs alone put the channel audience in: I once previously tried to summarize it all in my post on Knowledge of the Depths from the same season. Put simply, Astronaut in the Ocean began to appear frequently in low-effort, unsynced mashups in reference to its origins as a TikTok meme, which gave it a sort of perception as an anti-hero for the fanbase - the joke that, no matter what it was attached to, would never even try to deliver something that sounded conventionally "high quality". If the astronaut was an anti-hero, Yankin' was a full-on villain - the crassness of the song paired with the somewhat hard to listen to vocals and immediately identifiable beat made the song into a source of downright hatred within the comment section, on a level only really previously matched by Season 1's "Bean" (more on that guy at a later date). It was fascinating, for a year without much in the way of proper story progression, to see so much community discourse still happen althesame regarding the state of the channel.

Months later, when Season 6 arrived, the dust had settled´. Astronaut in the Ocean had gotten a sort of cult following for its apathetic, inconsistent use in rips very much unique to it, and Yankin' even had its own takeover, to directly address and cement the meme's status as a villain on the channel. The memes are now a staple of SiIvaGunner despite - or perhaps because of - our ire, and they've been infrequently appearing in rips the same way that Grand Dad, Snow Halation, The Nutshack and so many others oft would back in the early days. And to me, no rip better illustrates that new status quo than Aquarium in the Ocean.

Aquarium in the Ocean follows the style of several rips preceding it as a "mashup medley", most easily comparable to something like Memey Hell from Season 1. While that rip acted as a sort of celebration to Season 1 as a whole, Aquarium in the Ocean feels like it does the same for Season 5's two big jokes as discussed above. Despite featuring both the Season's bringers of hell, they're used in very genuine, serious ways - Astronaut in the Ocean leads the song off and is actually, for once, tuned to the original song's key, and Yankin's vocals play surprisingly softly when paired with different instrumentation. The two are blended together with several other memes from the channel's history, be it old-school like Soulja Boy or more recent ones like Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney's Epic Rap Battle of History - its a sort of scattershot selection of jokes, yet each one is given enough time to sink in as funny whilst matching the Aquarium Park instrumental backing quite nicely.

Really, though, above its quality and sound its the meaning to the rip that I really care about. There's no longer any sort of panic in the comments over the presence of Yankin' - many are even surprised and delighted to hear the track finally sounding *good* in a rip. The two are now just jokes amidst the many others, accepted tools within the arsenal of the SiIva team - and permanent member of the channel's family. I can't say if Aquarium in the Ocean was really the rip to cement that, but something about its assortment of various jokes paired with its somewhat sentimental sound really carries that energy through. Zielony Szpieg, as far as I'm aware, is someone who submitted this rip to the team through email as a fan, and they did an excellent job at both making a good-sounding tune and something surprisingly poignant for the subject matter at hand. I know not how to contact him or if he'll ever see this, but if he does: Ya did good!

#todays siivagunner #season 6 #siivagunner #siiva #Zielony Szpieg #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic colors #sonic colours #sonic colours ultimate #sonic colors ultimate #sonic prime #sonic frontiers #sonic superstars #sonic music #astronaut in the ocean #yankin #Youtube #Bandcamp

[phaeton-flier]

The season (series?) Finale of Lower Decks was, like almost every other one, very ok compared to the average episode. It's not bad, but the writers are. Less than skilled. At mixing the comedic and serious moments of the show, and that causes a lot of tension to get lost. Ooooh, we need a ship so we can DISOBEY THE ORDERS OF THOSE STUFFED SHIRTS AND DO THE RIGHT THING, fine, it's cliche as hell and honestly has its own problematic elements but sure. Now we're going to do a DUEL and BETTING OUR SHIP to get theres. UH OH, I BET YOU DIDNT EXPECT WE WERE GONNA MAKE THE MILQUETOAST BIRD GUY FIGHT? OOHH, WE'RE SO CLEVER AND WACKY.

C'mon, this is never half as funny as you pretend it is AND he's going to lose anyways so you can an extra layer of drama. Just do the bit where she has to agree to leave star fleet to save her friend and let's get moving.

Honestly felt the stuff with the friend would've more interesting to play straight. Like, a major part of Star Trek is that despite being a glorious luxury space communism they also have military hierarchy with the sort of boot-licking bullshit that often entails and exploring that more would've been interesting!

But that a) would require having an entire extra episode of arguments and counterarguments, which in 10 episode season means someone's baby gets cut (and as much I disliked some b-plots I can respect that they were loved)

b) would thematically require the Cerritos to have bad or at least sometimes grating management, and that's something the shows dropped in favor of "Cerritos Strong" where most everyone gets along. And that's good for most episodes because episodes about having to scrape and respect some jerk higher on the food chain than aren't as good (see the hazing subplot). It does the Lower Decks idea seems sorta lost, in a way, and especially cuts out ideas like I'm suggesting here.

Still, though, the idea of putting together a fleet of like-minded lower deckers to produce a less hierarchical, or at least less stand-at-attention and yes-sir-no-sir, fleet, is much riper for the sort of deep philosophical discussions that are Star Trek at its best. Him just being butthurt about getting kicked out for killing someone through overconfidence and then being conveniently competent enough to shut down ship weapons but charismatic enough to sell crews on doing a coup with 100% rate is less interesting. His grand plan flops in 5 minutes and it's unclear what he even imagined doing, really.

The show is a lot better when it has a proper theme it wants to explore, but the finales sorta gets swallowed in having Big Epic Movie-like Moments that they feel sorta empty in the same way the Crisis Point holodeck adventures were.

[twistedtummies2]

Fifteen Days of Disney Magic - Number 8

Welcome to Fifteen Days of Disney Magic! In honor of the company’s 100th Anniversary, I am counting down my Top 15 Favorite Movies from Walt Disney Animation Studios! We're now halfway through the countdown! Today’s entry proves the quote, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” Number 8 is…The Lion King.

If I had to make a few guesses, I’d say the most unorthodox things about my countdown would be the following: one, putting “Fun & Fancy Free,” of all films, in my Top 15. Two, only including one modern era Disney film in the ranks, and we’ll get to that one eventually, don’t worry. Three, not including “Beauty and the Beast” in my Top 10…and four, making “The Lion King” ONLY 8th place. Yes, I am aware that I am a blasphemous heathen who deserves to be hit with a stick. So sue me. Once again, I must stress, do not take the lower placement of “The Lion King” to mean I dislike the film. Because, obviously, I do not. I think the movie is one of the most epic features Disney has ever put out, and it’s not a surprise that so many people name it as one of their top five favorite Disney movies, or even their absolute favorite. It was one of the most successful features of its time, and for good reason. Combining elements of Shakespeare with earlier animated works, including the anime “Kimba the White Lion” and Disney’s own “Bambi,” and a lot of its own original material, “Lion King” was and still is a unique movie in the Disney canon. In some ways, I would argue it’s a little more adult than many other Disney films, although it still has plenty of elements that can appeal to children, or even to one’s inner child.

There are many things that make this film as “big” as it is. The visuals are sweeping and grand; even the most minor shots always seem to have a lot of punch to them. It takes great advantage of the colors and visual motifs of its natural African setting to create some of the most gorgeous images you’ll find in any animated movie. Practically every frame of this film, if you were to halt it in place, could make a perfectly composed picture; almost something you would want to hang up on your wall. From childhood innocence to the bitterness of adulthood, and everything in-between, it patterns the emotional and physical journeys of Simba beautifully. Hans Zimmer’s score is equally powerful; I feel this actually may be one of his most underrated soundtracks, since when most people think of his name, they probably think of his work with Christopher Nolan, or on franchises like “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and when most people think of music in the Lion King, they tend to think of the songs. And while the songs are great – REALLY great – I think that Zimmer’s score is equally applause-worthy, as it works with the imagery (and the splendid voice cast) to paint every character and scene expertly. However, when I rewatched the film, what struck me most was the overall message of the story. This is where I think it’s most adult elements show: not in the death of Mufasa, or the family struggles, but in its ultimate and most prominent theme. The film is ultimately about one person learning to overcome his own perceived past mistakes, and bring justice and truth to a world filled with lies. We have all made mistakes or wished to correct unjust situations, and I think that theme is just as powerful today as it ever was. For me, it is perhaps especially poignant; I have, more and more frequently, found myself dealing with old wounds and not-so-forgotten errors, and wishing I could find a way to correct all those terrible things I did or said. So I can relate to someone like Simba in a way that’s different from many other characters Disney has created. As far as its competition with “Aladdin,” "Peter Pan," and “Beauty and the Beast” can be concerned, Lion King ranks high on all counts. Using the criteria I named in my previous two entries on the countdown: Lion King certainly has a lot of nostalgic value for me, and I do tend to refer to it more than “Beauty and the Beast” in everyday situations. I’d say it and Aladdin are pretty evenly tied there. I also have a close connection to it in writing, since my commission work has led to me writing A LOT of stories set in the universe of this film and its later spin-offs. And while there aren’t AS many parts I’d like to play in the story, in terms of a stage version, the chance to be in it, or even to just SEE it, onstage would be absolutely fantastic beyond belief – something I’d look forward to more than either of the other two films it was competing with. Therefore, it tops them both…but not the other films yet to come. I'm going to be honest, before I close this out: this film actually rose in the ranks by a grand margin. Just as I fully expected to put Peter Pan at the top of the four-part stretch when I went in, I actually expected to put Lion King at either 9th or 10th place. But upon returning to it, and reflecting on everything it means to me and all its done for me, I realized just how special this film truly was. It's not enough to break it into the Top 7...but I think when you see what those seven films are, you'll understand that being 8th place is far from an insult to this film's colossal credit. The countdown continues tomorrow with my 7th Favorite Disney Movie! HINT: An Underrated Mouse-terpiece.

#disney #disney 100 #disney 100 special #list #countdown #top 15 disney animated movies #fifteen days of disney magic #number 9 #lion king

[onewomancitadel]

Hey. I remember a long time ago you said that romance was absolutely necessary for Cindemption. At the time I disagreed. Now? I can safely say I was wrong. After the events of Volume 9 I've become very certain that Knightfall is in fact happening and that it's crucial to the story. I mean we have a character who has never been loved and we're literally told word that love is the answer to resolving the story. It cannot get anymore blatant than that. I'm just shocked that they would be so direct.

I've said over and over that romance is necessary for Cinder's redemption as a consequence of her character wound, yes; it's the central conceit to my blog lol. I think that all love is magical in the story (for good or ill), but romantic love in the context of her character makes the most sense with the character stakes at hand, and the characters who've failed her.

The question is how you get someone to uncompromisingly understand her and someone who's willing to transgress everything and who's actually crafty enough for it - and in this case I think that it necessitates romantic love because a) the friendship of magic hasn't saved Cinder (or Ironwood), but um, that's not our only option, b) epic grand high stakes and c) putting a character into a position where he's actually risking a lot, not necessarily with the guarantee everybody will understand him. Secret Fall Maiden love affair makes sense to me. Then you'd also get the inverse of Rhodes (which is paternal, because she's a child) where she's a shameful secret who has to keep quiet, but in Jaune's case it's actually a redemptive one which can be revealed and precipitate her transformation (and is romantic because she's an adult).

It's not solely a consequence of love (not just romantic) as a metaphysical power in the story (and it is a big deal otherwise, with the brothers, and the familial connections in the story between creators/created and siblings).

But it is absolutely a consequence of Reverse Ozlem and its implications on Cinder's redemption. Salem and Ozma fell deeply in love and their split has physical consequences on the world; we're told very directly that this is a wound which needs resolving in Volume 6 and it recontextualises the show. Salem and Ozma aren't plain old enemies, they were married, and this isn't a bad guy you can just kill (literally, but to represent a symbolic idea).

It's telling that Jaune is the most angry about this because Jaune is also set up for precipitating the resolution of Ozlem with Cinder, so it's got to be something that initially disturbs him (not being able to kill the bad guy, like he wasn't supposed to kill Cinder at Haven) for the full character development effect.

You may also notice that Jaune's journey with Alyx (her being 'good -> evil -> redeemed') and generally his time in Ever After as the Old Man in the Four Maidens story sets him up for helping Cinder, too. He's been put in a more Ozma position as Cinder's afflicted with the Grimm curse, and then you have that whole Reverse Ozlem song and dance.

I am pleased that they reaffirmed this idea and particularly reaffirmed the more positive resolution of fairytales in the story (as a non-cynical rendering, fairytales are real and humanistic). I think that they had already set this up, but we got very straightforward affirmation.

I am also pleased that the trust I put in the story has actually been answered positively in some way, and I appreciate you stopping by to tell me you've changed your opinion. (:

#seraphina's asks #user: emperorluffy #knightfall #cindemption #seraphina ruminates over V9 #rwby9

[cimeret]

So, I'm a die-hard Cyan fan. Myst has been very influential to me as a child and kinda defined my whole idea of what a good game should be able to achieve in terms of immersion and atmosphere. I've been hyped for Firmament ever since I heard Rand say the words "callbacks to Myst" and "steampunk magic vibe" and "cool machinery". But now that I've spent a sleepless weekend playing the game, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Because the Cyan fan in me really, really wants to love this game and there's so much good stuff, but some of the decisions in gameplay and storytelling don't work for me and I just know Cyan can do better.

Spoilers for the game under the cut. Also, this post is going be image-heavy because, yeah, it's a Cyan game.

And first of all, YES, there's no absolutely doubt that this game was made by Cyan. Everything feels very Cyan. They just know how to build worlds. Beautiful abandoned places that fill you with a sense of melancholy and nostalgia and spark your imagination. Even on my old potato laptop with abysmal frame rates, I felt like I WAS in the world of Firmament. Sometimes I just stood there and looked around, enjoying the view. All buildings and machines are designed in Cyan's typical style between slightly fantastic and nitty-gritty steampunk realism, and fit seamlessly into the beautiful nature. For the architecture, this time they've opted for a heavily Art Decor inspired style. It makes everything seem very epic and grand, but also a bit austere, and goes very well with the many old and deserted factories we explore in the game. Where Obduction had worlds that felt like a small, close-knit community where people used literal junk to craft their homes and environments, in Firmament everything feels monumental and larger-than-life. The giant arches that span the skies of the worlds are visible from almost everywhere. You handle huge blocks of ice, dump tons of red acid into the sea (yuck), and raise large towers from the ground and open them. This feels like the stuff the D'ni might have constructed at the height of their power. And all of that fits right in with the theme and backstory of Firmament, that megalomaniac multi-generational plan to set off for a new world.

Much of what you would expect from a Cyan game is there. Three very different, atmospheric worlds + a smaller hub world. Epic maglev rides. Turn-on-the-power puzzles. A great visionary tale of hubris and enslavement. An underwater area that is the reincarnation of the selentic maze puzzle. Yeah, even the last one made me roll my eyes in fondness.

(The way the frozen waterfall reflects in the ice ... so gorgeous ...)

(You know it‘s a Cyan game if a puzzle looks like a something out of an amusement park)

(Look at the pretty! I was blown away by the beauty of the whole conservatory area. Just wanted to grab my things and move in.)

The great sound design also does so much to immerse you in the worlds. Headphones recommended! The crunching of ice, the singing of birds, the hissing when you open doors, the grinding of machine parts — I'm quite an auditory person and a big part of the charm of the Myst series for me were the very realistic noises when you turn rusty valves or some heavy door closes and locks behind you. The soundtrack itself left me a bit disappointed. It's mostly ambient and rather unobtrusive, creating a suitable atmosphere, but there were few pieces that stood out for me. One can certainly argue that this should be the point of an immersive soundtrack. Personally, I prefer Robyn Miller's haunting, simple melodies. Still, there were a few songs that I liked, such as Batteries Casting Shadows or Power Station.

(The most beautiful chill disco)

(Firmament also has its own "linking books". Never change, Cyan. <3)

The puzzles were integrated well into the environment. I found them all quite easy. For the most part, I figured out what I needed to do fairly quickly, and it was just a matter of getting it done.  A lot of the puzzles dealt with finding your way through an area and navigating the space, so they were puzzles that challenged spatial intelligence. And I love that kind of stuff so I was never really bored, but still a little more variety would have been nice. I would have liked to see some puzzles where you have to take notes or collect clues at different locations in the worlds.

The best puzzles were the ones where you had to learn how to first power and then operate huge machines that required multiple steps. Those kind of puzzles are a staple of Cyan games and always a lot of fun. My favorite puzzle in that regard was the sulfur processing factory. Just staring at the schematics of the huge mixer and the pipelines and figuring out what to do, then moving machinery parts and twiddling with them until it finally clicked — easily the best part of the gameplay for me. I just wish we could have had a bit more of this.

(That whole area gave me so many flashback to the original Myst .)

(YES just give me some huge, unnecessarily complicated, creaking machinery I can rotate and break!)

All the interaction happened via the adjunct only, so you just searched for sockets and operated them. In fact, everything was operated via the adjunct: doors, elevators, the maglevs, everything. And while handling the adjunct itself was very intuitive and the gameplay felt engaging and satisfactory, it did feel a bit monotonous in the long run. I miss my levers and buttons and valves. Interacting only via a blue glowing string that connects to the same socket model all the time made me feel very detached from the environment. As a direct consequence of the adjunct-focused gameplay, there were also no items outside of puzzles to interact with (aside from the few lore documents). No small, seemingly pointless toys that secretly taught you the mechanics of a larger puzzle. No drawers that you could pull open. I remember the creepy little projector in Achenar's room in Myst where a rose turned into a skull. All of this helped so much to make the worlds feel alive but there wasn't anything like this in Firmament. The decision for the adjunct was probably influenced a lot by the fact that the game is designed for VR, I get that. But when I look at the old kickstarter vids for Firmament where the little floating device is combined with "manual" actions like pulling a lever or pushing a button, I can't help but think the gameplay could have could have been more diverse and still applicable for VR.

(I loved taking a bath in sulfuric acid. But even the suit mechanic was getting a bit repetitive by the second time ...)

Speaking of worlds that feel alive ... here, too, I would have liked to see a bit more scenic storytelling to support the plot, which is largely carried by the monologues of the mentor. This is definitely something I know Cyan do better! The worlds they design are always very special in that they are deserted and contain hardly any NPCs, but at the same time so much life and story is conveyed through the setting. And I'm not just talking about the countless journals Myst is infamous for. The characters in Obduction, for example, had personalities — C.W., Caroline Farley, Mayor Josef, they felt real. Walking into the classroom in Riven, or Gehn's temple, you learned so much about him and how he presented himself. You slowly put together a picture of what had happened, of who these people were and who you could trust. And Firmament also makes some promising approaches in this direction. The constant unsettling brainwashing of the Keepers on the one hand. But on the other hand, everything we see presents a picture of a small community that lived very much in peace and simple happiness. There are things that don't add up, vaguely foreshadowing the twist at the end. All of those little bits and pieces are really great and inspire so much intrigue and mystery.

(Totally normal to have all those banners and doctrines on the walls of your workplace. Not creepy at all.)

(Who were those people? Wish we could've get to know them more ...)

But ultimately, at some point, the mentor decides to just tell you the truth and that's it. Most of the plot is covered in fifteen minutes of gameplay at the very end, through her monologues and the newspaper clippings and documents in the spaceship's control room. But at this point the game is already over, because there are no more puzzles to solve, no more decisions to make. The ending plays out like a visual novel. A beautiful one, no doubt — I loved the resolution and the kinda open, but hopeful ending. But I still I think the game would have worked better if Cyan hadn't been so bent on the spectacular effect of that plot twist at the very end. During the game I had already considered whether the mentor would turn out to be Turner, or maybe me? I was coming up with theories on where Turner really came from, and what he did to those people. And what the real purpose of this cycle of Sleeping and Awakening might be. I don't know, I think it would have been so much more exciting to discover clues for theories while exploring the worlds (via lore documents and setting), and not just through the mentor's monologues. The big twist at the end would have been less surprising, but I think the plot would have unfolded more organically and it would have felt more rewarding to come up with the truth on your own.

I am definitely going to replay the game (after buying a new laptop) and I'm curious to see if it changes my opinion. I've heard that Firmament runs very buggy for a lot of people and apparently, VR is broken. I'm not going to talk about bugs, because yes, while the game crashed numerous times during my playthrough and some parts played really janky, I'm not sure how much of that was due to my hopelessly outdated hardware. But all these things — buggy gameplay (I wonder how much playtesting was done?), poor VR implementation, a story that feels a bit lackluster in its presentation, lack of all those little loving details in the scenery that I usually appreciate Cyan for — all of it feels like some things were rushed during the development of this game. It might have needed just another round of polishing.

The basis for another Cyan classic is definitely there, but I'm afraid Firmament won't leave the same long-lasting impression on me as Obduction and certainly not the Myst series. And I'm a bit scared of what that might mean for the future of Cyan Worlds.      

#firmament #cyan #cyan worlds #puzzle game #i want to love this game #there's so much potential #and i enjoyed playing it. i sacrificed my sleep bc i was so invested #so many ahh and ohh moments #it was a good game with beautiful visuals and a promising story #cyan is just a small indie studio and yet they set out to create visionary experiences and i love them #but this wasn't the epic game i was hoping for. esp not compared to what cyan is capable of doing #i have to say though: if there's merch i'm definitely gonna buy it #the artstyle is just gorgeous!

[puellafuriadarkmagica]

There is, I think, this notion in the landscape of the pop-culture plutocracy under which we live that a person's tastes straying from the mainstream is pretentious, somehow, on an ontological level. I honestly could not disagree more, although I like to wear the label with some sarcastic pride (which is why PFDM is narrated by such a condescending, egotistical caricature of myself). But I think I have some idea of what this nonsense is all about.

I think the idea in the heads of the mainstream crowd is twofold: First, that the image of the gatekeeping hipster circa 2013 still exists in the public consciousness, and anyone bearing a modicum of zealotry for something niche that they enjoy is moments away from living up to this image at any moment. Second is some kind of myth of common knowledge, that something's importance must correlate directly to its popularity, or else why would it be popular?

I think both of these are perfectly reasonable beliefs to have, if you're the type to discuss your relationship with the creative pursuits using words like "influencer", "content", "consuming", "media", &c. on the regular. I think possibly even in PFDM's initial months of gestation in my head, even I did, although I tried to tell myself I didn't. More on that in a second.

The fact is that, behind the façade of irony and pretentiousness I put forth, I wouldn't consider myself a hipster or even a contrarian. I just think I can't stand 99% of what is mainstream because it means nothing. Because it's had all its corners rounded off to be as dull, unchallenging, inoffensive and (gasp!!) marketable as possible. It's insincere. Almost all top 40s hits or blockbuster films or streaming service original series or whatever feel so insincere, it's like I'd be paying $9.99 a month to be lied to, to my face.

And this is an important difference I hadn't thought to watch for until some time into writing PFDM. If I might set an upper bound on the amount of honesty about myself I care to show off on this blog, perhaps I had this assumption in my head that if I constructed a grand enough epic, no matter what, it would come to be celebrated in the same breath as the big-leagues PMMM fics I spent a great effort ripping off just a couple of chapters ago.

But in failing at that spectacularly, not least of all because of the undeniable irrelevance of PMMM itself, I found something far more satisfying:

You.

Yes, you specifically.

How many people read PFDM a month? A few hundred. How many people are, to my knowledge, fans of it? Like six or seven. And this is only natural for something so multifaceted, demanding... unmarketable. You either adore it or you don't care at all. And given how my prior works before this had garnered dozens of casual fans who certainly enjoyed but would never really “get it”, I definitely, without a doubt, prefer it PFDM's way. And I'm sure to maybe a couple of you this is exactly why it's worth reading at all.

So what's the takeaway of all this? I don't know. This is just something I've been sitting on in response to being repeatedly told "this should have so many more likes/views!" I'm certainly flattered by the idea that what I'm doing is so good, it's worth other people's time, but I'm not sure what response is being asked of me. Really, if you want more people to get into PFDM, you're going to have to tell them yourself. Neither of us can make a horse drink, but I'm only providing the water. You have to lead it here.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week - #76

RRR, an anti-colonialist Indian epic - apparently the most expensive Indian film ever made, and one of its biggest earners. Based on the fight of two real-life 1920′s revolutionaries against the British Raj. I need to watch more Tollywood movies. 8/10.

🍿  

Korean auteur Hong Sang-Soo X 2:

🎦🎦🎦 More of Hong Sang-Soo ‘domestic realism’ small stories: The Woman Who Ran. The beautiful Kim Min-hee had been married for five years, and when her husband leaves for a business trip, she reconnects with 3 old girlfriends, and they sit and catch up. This is whole story, and as always, there’s hidden tremors under the surface. She mentions to each that she had never been away from her husband even for one day. And each of the three conversation is being interrupted by an unwanted man who bursts in, and the men are shown only from the back. Hong does not specify who of the 4 women is the one who ‘ran’. Gentle film making that I love. (Photo Above). 10/10.

🎦🎦🎦 In his melancholic Hotel by the River an ageing poet is staying for free at a small inn because the owner likes his poetry. It’s winter, and he invited his two estranged sons to visit, telling them that he had dreamt that his death is imminent. There’s also a young woman staying there, distraught over a recent breakup. Told simply in bleached out black & white, like the falling snow, and just as beautifully.

🍿  

Hong’s delicate films remind me of Éric Rohmer’s. My Night at Maud’s was the 3rd of Rohmer’s ‘Moral tales’. Seemingly a story of four people talking, it’s about finding grace in the ordinary. Cinematography by Néstor Almendros. 9/10.

RIP, Jean-Louis Trintignant.

🍿  

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a surprisingly original and frank sex comedy about a 60-something widow who hires a male escort in order to feel the passion she never experienced before. Taking place 99% in a British hotel room with the delightful Emma Thompson and her young escort, and thankfully, directed by a woman, it’s 100% satisfying. 10/10. 

🍿 

Under the skin, an unexplained, ‘different' Woman Who Fell To Earth type mystery, which unsurprisingly bombed at the box office. Told in meditative, nearly abstract geometrical style. Enigmatic, dark-haired Scarlett Johansson drives a big van in Glasgow, preying on lonely men and lures them into a viscous liquid where they stay suspended. I read about the science-fiction novel on which this was based, and I’m glad they striped off everything from it, except the loose frame of reference. Somebody wrote a 279 page scholarly book, Alien in the mirror, about its meaning as a woman's journey to self-discovery. Hard to pin down.

The director, Jonathan Glazer, directed the Sony Bravia paint advertisement years ago. I will seek out his two previous films, ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘Birth’. 7/10.

🍿  

The Year of the Everlasting Storm is a lovely 7-part Covid anthology, shot at the beginning of the epidemic in 5 countries.

Iranian Jafar Panahi filmed his 90-year-old mother who came to visit, and didn’t like his giant iguana pet. From Wuhan, Anthony Chen filmed a young couple, struggling to get along, when tending to their toddler. In Little Measures, a black father was trying to reunite with his 3 kids, each in a different foster home. Laura Poitras investigated the Israeli NSO-group’s spyware. The Chilean story told of an opera singer and the birth of her grandchild. Apichatpong Weerasethakul just filmed a bed covered with insects, as an installation. Another story tells of a woman who find a box of letters in a storage place. 7/10.

🍿  

Revolutionary Road, the second romance starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Sam Mendes directed this fine story about 1950′s malcontent and a woman’s ennui in East Coast suburban life. 7/10.

🍿   3 neo-noirs from John Dahl, First Watches:

🎦🎦🎦 Rounders, a tight high-stakes poker thriller. Matt Damon is the Rocky of Texas hold 'em. John Malkovich chews the scenery with an atrocious Russian accent. Also John Turturro as ‘Joey Knish’. Seems to be written by somebody who knows the game. If I’d known how to play, it might be even better. 8/10

🎦🎦🎦 Beyond femme fatale: Mid-90′s pitch-dark Noir The Last Seduction with very Bad Girl Linda Fiorentino. Sexy and amoral, she gets away with everything: Phone scamming, smoking and drinking, sex with strangers, manipulation, theft of $700,000 drug loot, rape fantasies, even murder. Also tacked on is a transgender sub-plot. With Hank Schrader as a bar-fly. 6/10. Why did Linda Fiorentino stopped acting?!

🎦🎦🎦 Red rock west, his 2nd romanticized dark Noir. With honest but unlucky  Nicolas Cage drifting into a tiny Wyoming town, getting mistaken for a hitman, getting involved with TJ Walsh & Dennis Hopper, and barely escapes within an inch of his life.

Why did John Dahl stopped making movies, and turned exclusively to television for the last 15 years?

🍿  

My 5th Aki Kaurismäki, his second French-language film, Le Havre. It tells of a poor but decent shoe shiner who saves a young illegal immigrant from Gabon. His good deed is rewarded with a miracle, as his terminally-ill wife is healed and returns home in her favorite yellow dress. A soft and humane story.

I watched it in French without subtitles, so I surely missed some of the subtleties. 

🍿  

3 old re-watches:

🎦🎦🎦 Spy noir Notorious, "the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement” as Hitchcock himself pitched it. 1946 politics, a bottle of “uranium” powder and Claude Rains as another 60-year-old emasculated bachelor who must get “Mother”s approval for his love life.

🎦🎦🎦 I loved The Big Sick when it came out, and I loved it even more on review. A great story telling, well told, with no false tones. The fact that it’s semi-autobiographical and written by Kumail Nanjiani and wife Emily Gordon is a big attraction. With Bo Burnham and cute Zoe Kazan. 10/10.

🎦🎦🎦 Hail Freedonia! Duck Soup, the 1933 Marx Brothers farce that was banned by Mussolini. Childish slapstick. As Groucho explained "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life."

🍿  

The original Duck Soup, a silent comedy 2-reeler starring Laurel and Hardy from 1927 which was later remade as ‘Another Fine Mess’. 

🍿   

In Save the Cinema, Samantha Morton plays the Walsh hairdresser, who in 1993 formed a grass-root campaign to save the local theater from closure. And she eventually managed to win by getting Steven Spielberg to send his personal copy of the new Jurassic Park for a UK premier at the cinema. The movie was very cheesy and sentimental, and worked hard by comparing itself to ‘Cinema Paradiso’. Interestingly, the only Indian character in this British feel-good fare played the only ‘Bad Guy’, corrupt Mayor Tom. (He also played Naveed, Kumail Nanjiani‘s brother in ‘The big sick’ above.). 5/10.

🍿

Based on another true story, Jerry & Marge Go Large tells of the retired Brian Cranston who discovers a mathematical loop hole in the state lottery system, utilizes it to win $27M, and uses the money to help the local community. Everybody loves a lottery winner, but this was sweetly-pedestrian with mainstream uplifting message. Best scene: Cranston hiding his first stash, fat stacks of thousands in the pantry, and getting discovered by his granddaughter in a comedy of blunders, a la 'Breaking Bad'. 2/10.

🍿 

My first 70′s-style disaster film, The Poseidon Adventure. The real disaster was me staying for the full two stupid hours. Hopefully I won’t do it again. Does not compare at all to ‘Titanic’ though. 1/10.

🍿  

Persona non grata, a very Danish debut-drama about a writer who returns to her rural village and her estranged family for her brother’s wedding. She discovers that he is marrying the one person who used to bully her the most, and about whom she wrote her latest book. 3/10.

🍿  

...Imagine the smell… Perfume is a period piece about a man with a superhuman sense of smell, who becomes a murderer, in order to capture the essence of women. It starts by capturing well the putrid stench of Paris 300 years ago, but turns into a long and sadistic gore-fest. The only positive I found here was the final, inexplicable mass orgy. Narrated by the voice of John Hurt. Stinky 1/10.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

[dragonkeeper19600]

Jaws: The Musical (Concept)

So, out of curiosity, I looked online to see if anyone had ever adapted a musical from Jaws. There is a musical called Bruce that’s scheduled to debut in Seattle next year about the production of Jaws (and I would be interested in seeing that), but as for a musical of the Jaws story itself, I found one that’s for kids and about 48 minutes long.

Now, I’ve never seen this musical, so I cannot attest as to its quality, but, in my opinion, both of those choices are wrong. This musical should be the full two acts, and it should be aimed at adults. 

I’ve been brainstorming, and I think I’ve got a hypothetical musical all mapped out. You might think a musical based on Jaws is silly, but a lot of successful musicals have been adapted from really strange things (such as a comic book artist’s coming-out memoir, a crappy Roger Corman movie, and a collection of goofy cat poems), and I feel like a Jaws musical could be really epic. The story easily lends itself into a two-act structure. The first act is the shark attacks on Amity Island, and the second act is the hunt for the shark in the Orca. 

However, the musical wouldn’t make the mistake of putting lyrics to John Williams’s iconic Jaws theme. The theme would obviously be used as a leitmotif throughout the show, but it’s not the type of song that lends itself to lyrics, and I think that would be corny,

So, the musical would play out like this:

ACT ONE:

The movie opened with Chrissie’s death, so the stage show will do the same. The scene will be short and all dialogue, no singing. The shark will also not be seen, but its presence will be implied by the music, lighting, and Chrissy’s acting.

First song: “Welcome to Amity Island.” Functions as an intro to the setting of Act One. The tone is joyous and celebratory as the islanders welcome the flood of tourists that always come in the summer. A big portion of the song is sung by Mayor Vaughn as he sings about what a wonderful vacation spot Amity Island is. We also meet Brody, and a dark undercurrent is introduced to the song as he finds Chrissy’s mangled body.

Brody, of course, takes steps to close the beach right away, but he’s stopped by the Mayor, who sings the second song, “Summer Dollars,” where the Mayor insists that closing the beaches is bad for the town and that Brody shouldn’t be causing an unnecessary panic and causing hysteria that could drive tourists away. Brody tries to argue back but in the end, Vaughn has his way.

Brody returns to the station, apprehensive about keeping the beaches open. Here, we’re introduced to Brody’s wife, Ellen, who saw no problem with visiting him at work since nothing ever happens on Amity Island. Brody expresses his uneasiness, but Ellen assures him that his fear of the water is making him overestimate the danger. This gets Brody’s coworkers curious, so, with a little prompting from Ellen, Brody sings his first solo, “Drowning,” about his fear of the water. In the song, Brody sings about a childhood incident where a bully held him underwater at a public swimming pool. Not only did this give him a fear of water, but the bullying he received as a child is what set him on the path to become a cop, since he wanted to be able to protect people from suffering the same mistreatment he did. However, he moved from New York City because the working environment there was unfriendly to cops who wish to protect and serve instead of, well, being typical American cops.

Next song: “Blue Sky” Just as the Mayor wished, the beaches are open, and summer is in full swing. Brody is there with his family, anxiously keeping an eye on the water. The rest of the ensemble doesn’t share his anxiety, however, as they frolic and play in the sun. Brody is jolted to his feet several times by the sound of screaming, but it’s always a false alarm. However, the mood turns scary as we segue into the next song:

“Shark!” - While out swimming on his raft, young Alex Kintner is attacked and eaten. Brody sees it and screams the title of the song. It’s pandemonium as people rush out of the water, and the song is fast-paced and chaotic. However, it ends on a mournfully quiet note as Mrs. Kintner calls for her son. (”Alex? Alex!?”)

Quick scene transition, and we move immediately into he next song, called “Something Must Be Done.” Here, at a town council meeting, the townspeople argue back and forth about what to do about their shark problem. I imagine the music here sounding like the “Mayor’s Meeting” theme from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Brody argues strongly in favor of closing the beaches (in song, of course), but he is shut down not only by the Mayor but by the rest of the townspeople, who still rely on the income brought in by the tourists. People throw around various suggestions, with one woman finally declaring that she’ll reward whoever catches the shark with three thousand dollars. The song descends into a cacophony as people argue over each other.

The noise is interrupted by the screech of nails on a chalkboard. It’s Quint who sings the titular song, “Jaws,” as he sings about his job as a shark hunter and how dangerous sharks can be. (”Those jaws will swallow you whole. / A little shakin’, tenderizing’, down you go.”) He offers to kill the shark for ten grand, not three. The woman who made the offer balks at the high price, and the Mayor explains that kind of money isn’t in the budget “right now.” Quint takes it in stride and tells everyone they’ll know where to find him if they change their minds. He’s supposedly addressing the room, but he looks right at Brody as he says it. He can tell Brody is the only one who will actually listen.

Many sailors of various aptitudes come to Amity Island, hoping to catch the shark and cash in on that three thousand dollars. Among the new arrivals is Hooper, who introduces himself to Brody as a marine biologist from the Oceanographic Institute. Hooper sings his intro song, “Beautiful,” referring to his views on sharks. Hooper recounts how he was bitten by a shark as a child, but instead of coming to fear them, Hooper walked away fascinated by them and now views sharks to be beautiful creatures. However, the song takes a somber note as Hooper is brought in to examine Chrissie’s remains, and the word “Beautiful” is shifted from referring to sharks to referring to Chrissie when she was alive. (“She was just a kid. / So much of life to live. / Now, bits and scraps are all that’s left. / Of a girl who was once so beautiful.”)

“Hell of a Fish” - The fishermen succeed in catching a large tiger shark, presumed to be the shark that killed Alex and Chrissie. Brody joins in the celebratory atmosphere, but Hooper examines the dead shark’s teeth and is convinced they’ve got the wrong fish. The Mayor and the fisherman who caught the tiger shark argue that this is the shark that’s been causing the trouble, while Hooper argues back that it’s definitely not. Hooper angrily demands that he be allowed to dissect the shark to confirm whether there are human remains inside, but Mayor Vaughn rejects his request. He doesn't care if they’ve got the right shark. He doesn’t believe a third attack will happen either way. (”We’ve got a hell of a fish to show. / And shark attacks are pretty rare, you know?”) 

This song is interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Kintner, in funeral attire, who goes up to Brody and slaps him. She then sings “My Boy Is Dead,” a slow, tragic lament about her son, Alex. (“He was just a boy. His whole life still ahead. / Now, I’ll never know what he would’ve been. / Because my boy is dead.”) Mrs. Kintner blames Brody for not warning the town after Chrissie’s death, and Brody takes the blame to heart. The song ends with a callback to “Hell of a Fish,” as Hooper bitterly remarks that he hopes Mayor Vaughn is right about the tiger shark being the culprit, otherwise there’s a “hell of a fish” still out there somewhere.

“Cloud on the Horizon” - Song is kicked off by a TV reporter, who delivers a brief story to the audience about the recent shark attacks on Amity Island. The holiday-making resumes on Amity’s beaches, but people are more nervous than before, The ensemble sings amongst themselves about whether they should go in the water. They finally do so with a little encouragement from the Mayor. Meanwhile, Brody encourages his son Michael to stay in the shallow pond.

“Shark! (Reprise)” - A shark fin is spotted in the water, and the ensemble takes up the alarm, scrambling while frantically singing a reprise of “Shark!” However, the alarm dies down when the fin is revealed to be a fake worn by a swimmer. However, a lone woman takes up the cry again as the shark is spotted swimming toward the pond where Michael is. The music ramps up as the shark takes down a boater mere feet away from Michael, and the audience gets their first clear view of the shark.

“Red Sea” - The song functions as a reprise of “Blue Sky,” but also contains musical elements from “My Boy is Dead.” Brody pulls his son Michael out of the water, unsure of whether he’s still alive. Luckily, Michael is only in shock. Ellen runs to call for an ambulance. As he waits by Michael’s body, Brody sings his second solo, loudly berating everyone in town, including himself, for allowing this to happen three times. All of the beachgoers, including the Mayor, are cowed by his song.

“(Can’t Find) a Good Man” - This is the first song between all three crew members of the Orca. Brody goes to hire Quint to kill the shark, agreeing to pay whatever he wants. Quint knows he has Brody by the balls and keeps upping the price, demanding additional payments like various kinds of booze and a color TV in addition to the ten thousand dollars. Brody agrees to all of it, but Quint’s one crew member refuses to go out after the shark, so Quint fires him. Hooper and Brody volunteer to go along, but Quint is reluctant to bring them aboard. He contemplates whether he should go alone, since Hooper and Brody will be useless on deck. Hooper loudly argues that he's qualified and “doesn’t need this working class hero crap,” but Brody is more gentle and persuasive. He reminds Quint that his own son was nearly killed by this shark and feels he owes it to both his family and the town to help in whatever way he can. Quint is won over by Brody’s humility and agrees to take them both on.

“Farewell, Amity Island” - Reprise of “Welcome to Amity Island” and the Act One Finale. Like “Welcome to Amity Island,” this is a huge ensemble number, this time centering around the Orca’s upcoming departure. Several characters come to see the ship off as Quint yells at Hooper and Brody, including the Mayor and Ellen. The Mayor apologizes to Brody (“I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. / My own children were there in that same red sea.”), where Ellen bids a tearful farewell, knowing she might never see Brody again. Brody’s sung farewells are intercut with a spoken back and forth between Quint and Hooper, as Quint snarks at everything Hooper does. The song also contains instrumental traces of “Spanish Ladies.” Brody and Ellen’s embrace is broken up by Quint as the Orca shoves off.

ACT TWO:

After the act two opener (which is an instrumental of “Jaws,” the song Quint sang earlier), we return to the Orca where Quint fishes off the stern, loudly singing “Spanish Ladies” a cappella. It sounds pretty good, but he’s interrupted by Hooper, who yells that he’s been listening to Quint sing for three hours and can’t take it any more. Brody has no choice but to listen to the ensuing back and forth as he chums the water. 

The childish behavior is interrupted when Quint gets a bite. He's convinced it’s the shark, but Hooper, still annoyed with Quint, believes it’s some kind of sport fish. Hooper begrudgingly goes to help Quint pull in the line, but a moment of inattention causes the line to snap.

“City Hands” - Quint berates Hooper for losing the shark and trying to tell a professional shark hunter how to hunt sharks. Their animosity finally erupts into an angry duet as they hurl very personal insults at each other, with Hooper calling Quint a drunken, senile sea dog, while Quint berates Hooper for being a coddled, privileged city boy. Their musical fight looks like it’ll get physical when Hooper snatches the beer Quint was drinking out of his hand and chucks it into the ocean. Luckily, Brody breaks it up, pointedly reminding them why they’re here and that they don’t need to be at each other’s throats when the shark will gladly do that for them. Quint sheepishly apologizes to Brody and only Brody. Hooper likewise backs down.

Brody returns to chumming the water only to toss a shovelful of chum directly into the shark’s face. The shark is right beside the Orca, and it’s huge. There is an instrumental score but no singing as all three men work together to try and bring in the shark. The shark seems unfazed by all the bullets and harpoons they shoot into it, but they manage to attach one barrel to the shark. Quint is satisfied that the shark will tire itself out with the barrel attached and that all they have to do is wait it out. Brody is all for returning to shore and calling the Coast Guard, but Quint ignores him.

Scene transition, and we’re in the ship’s cabin that night. All three men are staying up to wait for the shark, and they’ve had a bit to drink. Quint catches Brody examining the rope burn he got on his hand earlier in the day and reassures him that it won't leave a permanent scar. This segues into the duet “Something Permanent,” as Hooper and Quint compare scars. The tone isn’t angry and harsh as before but jovial and upbeat. Clearly, the earlier animosity is forgiven. 

“Those Eyes” - This is Quint’s solo about the sinking of the Indianapolis. Brody asks Quint about a scar on his arm that he hasn’t mentioned. Quint offhandedly mentions it’s a tattoo he had removed. When Hooper makes a joke about it being a “Mother” tattoo, Quint informs him it’s actually for the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Hooper clearly knows the story, but Brody doesn't, so Quint tells it. The song is slow and eerie. The words “those eyes” are used to refer to both the sharks’ eyes and the eyes of his crew mates as they were devoured or lay dead in the water. Quint sings that he still sees those eyes looming up at him in the dark of the night. He then catches the looks on Brody and Hooper’s faces and chuckles darkly, telling them not to look at him with “those eyes.” After all, they delivered the bomb. No one comments on this, but all three men have now sung their backstories at some point in the show.

Hooper quietly starts to sing “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” The other two join in. Their singing is interrupted by the shark ramming into the ship.

The crew scramble back on deck. Quint, his mind still swimming in the memory of the Indianapolis, wildly fires a rifle at the shark, but he only succeeds in driving it away, Hooper goes belowdeck  to assess the damage. The ship can still run, but it’s struggling. Brody loudly advocates returning to shore, but Quint refuses.

The shark returns, leading to the next song, “Barrels.” The song has a lot of dialogue and instrumental but also functions as a reprise of “Something Permanent,” as Quint gleefully proclaims his intent to leave “something permanent” on the shark. The crew manages to attach three barrels to the shark, but they lose track of it again. 

Quint decides that since barrels and weapons don’t seem to be working, and the ship is only becoming more damaged, that the thing to do is lure the shark back to shore and drown it in the shallow water. Hooper warns Quint that he’s overtaxing the engine, but Quint only leans harder on the throttle. The engine gives out. 

Brody goes to the radio to call the Coast Guard for help but is shocked when Quint smashes the radio with a baseball bat before the message can get out. This leads to an even angrier reprise of “City Hands,” now with Brody insulting Quint instead of Hooper, calling him “certifiable.” Quint shouts more than sings that he can handle it and he doesn’t need rescuing “this time.” The song shifts to the slower, gentler melody that was used when Brody calmed Hooper and Quint before as Quint tells Brody he vowed that would never be helpless in the water again. Both Brody and Hooper, who was heard the entire outburst, are struck silent.

“Beautiful (Reprise)” - Hooper somberly volunteers to be lowered into the anti-shark cage. Brody argues against it, but, for once, Quint is willing to hear Hooper out. Hooper sings about how putting himself in harm’s way is his only chance to the tune of his intro song, “Beautiful.” Hooper then admits that Quint is right, he hasn’t been through what Quint has, but he’s willing to try and prove his worth. Quint and Brody realize they don't have much choice and agree.

Hooper goes into the cage. Brody takes Hooper’s glasses, and Hooper gives them both one last look before he puts on his mask and goes under. 

“In the Cage” - Instrumental. While below the water (which is just another part of the stage covered in blue spotlights), Hooper tries to attack the shark with the syringe on the end of a spear, but he drops it. The shark begins to break its way into the cage, but Hooper manages to escape and hides behind some rocks, apologizing to the men above for failing.

Quint and Brody, of course, can’t hear him, nor can they see what’s happening below. Quint and Brody pull up the cage to find it mangled and empty. Brody is devastated, thinking that Hooper is dead, but Quint seems to be truly unraveling. He sings a shaky reprise of “Those Eyes,” this time obsessing over the look Hooper gave them before he went under. He frantically recalls that he saw the same look on the faces of his crew mates after the sinking of the Indianapolis. Tragically, the song also functions as a callback to “My Boy Is Dead.” (”It’s far too late for me now to take back the things I’ve said. / They’ll haunt me ‘til my dying day. / Because that boy is dead.”)

“Quint’s End” - Instrumental, spoken dialogue. Quint can’t get the last image of Hooper out of his mind and begs him to stop looking at him like that. Brody is alarmed as Quint’s pleas to Hooper change to pleas to his dead crew mate, Herbie Robinson. Quint has slid into a full-blown PTSD flashback. In his mind, he’s back in the waters of the Pacific thirty years ago, surrounded by sharks and dead crew mates. Brody tries to calm Quint down by reminding him where he is, but at that moment, the shark leaps onto the stern, and the Orca lists backwards. (In my head, the Orca set is on some kind of platform that can be raised at an incline.) Both men begin to slide toward the waiting jaws of the shark. Brody manages to grab onto the door frame leading into the cabin. He tries to hold onto Quint, but Quint slips out of his hand. Quint tries to fight back against the shark, but with a sickening crunch, Quint falls silent. The shark retreats with Quint’s lifeless body.

“Smile!” - Payback time. The Orca is sinking fast, and Brody knows that if he ends up in the water, it’s game over. Brody manages to ward the shark off with one of Hooper’s scuba tanks. The shark takes the scuba tank into its mouth, giving Brody the chance to climb onto the mast with Quint’s rifle. The music ramps up in speed and intensity as the shark closes in. Brody’s singing ramps up to match as he fires at the shark again and again, reminding himself of his promise to protect others and vowing that this shark will never kill anyone again. Then, with a final, bombastic, “So, smile you son of a bitch!” he gets a hit on the tank, and the shark explodes. He whoops and hollers as the music swells.

The finale instrumental is both sad and sweet. The sinking mast deposits Brody in the water. Hooper surfaces besides him. They laugh together, relieved that it’s over. Hooper asks about Quint, but Brody only responds with the single word, “No.” Hooper and Brody are close enough to paddle back to shore, so they do just that. As they set off, Brody begins to sing, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” Hooper joins in. The curtain falls.

#jaws #the musical #i spent way too much time on this #steven spielberg #martin brody #matt hooper #quint #ellen brody #mayor larry vaughn #fan fic #what if #long post

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

do you have favourites among transformers media?

among?

- big BIG fan of the G1 Transformers cartoon. its reputation is a bit tarnished between 40 year old white guys proclaiming it's the best most epic thing ever way better than you modern calarts cartoons blah and then the backlash of "umm actually it SUCKED" but the thing is when you get past that you find that the show was just really really fun. Just an absolutely stupid 80s cartoon where optimus could one second be giving an epic rallying cry against megatron's evil whatever and then the next be shooting hoops with his pals and also starscream is being really annoying. and of course da movie is a great time. it's a shame that a lot of modern media that's referential of it treat it as this grand epic source material to be made into gritty Adult tm adaptations bc i would love a return to its style of stupid cartoon logic

- cybertron is. it's not fantastic. but it WAS my childhood and i am all over it. it's a really bad dub of a stock footage-filled anime where 90% of the cast is bad CGI and there's shallow characterisation but again like G1 it's just a great time, and sometimes those Grander Epic moments do work well. i often go back to the starscream vs galvatron fight bc there's something i just really like about that

- will it surprise you if i say i liked a lot of IDW1. because i did. very valid mtmte criticisms be damned i really loved so much of what was going on in that comic and i adore the complex characterisation and the wild sci-fi adventures it was used as a sandbox for. it's a shame it overwhelmingly overshadowed the windblade and OP comics though bc i think i actually like them more?? windblade is a very intriguing analysis of the political situation post-war and i think it's successful in most of what it does while OP is a great deep dive into prime's guilt and decisions as a leader, not to mention the best characterisations of soundwave and thundercracker there's ever been. pretty much all my favourite characters in transformers come from IDW1 and i know it's criticised a lot these days but they were popular for a reason, there's some good shit in there

- as always though the greatest transformers media of all time is not anything that actually exists but the universe you make in your own mind out of tech specs and the grabbag of toys you have. thinks wistfully about my fanfiction-that-never-was of razorclaw squawktalk triggerhappy and sky high going on a quest after being abandoned post-war

[gofancyninjaworld]

Garou and the futility of heroism

.With much thanks to @the-nysh for the conversation.  I thought of making this longer and more detailed, but I know myself: it’ll turn into one of those drafts that hangs around for years.

 I've recently been reading the Epic of Gilgamesh as a part of reducing my terrible ignorance of the foundations of Western literature.  Cracking good yarn, highly recommended, but I’m not here to talk literature. The latter half of the story is dominated by Gilgamesh’s struggle against the idea that he was inevitably going to die.

Where this relates to Garou is not that he’s railing against the inevitability of death and the reality that everything built up over a life will crumble to dust.  What Garou is struggling against is the seeming futility of heroism.

His specific approach is all sorts of bad, but the reality he's struggling against is something brought up repeatedly in One-Punch Man.  One of the *big* themes in One-Punch Man is critically examining what a hero is actually good *for*.  No matter how diligent a hero is, no matter how strong they are, the world's evils do not disappear. 

It's very outrageous and painful to acknowledge how small and fleeting one's efforts are in the grand scheme of things. 

The moment we get a look into Saitama’s thoughts, it’s the very first thing he leads with.  Literally the very first sentence of his thinking.

Saitama might be the strongest hero ever, able to defeat anything in one punch.  Not only has the world not become a better place as a result of his actions, but the very neighbourhood he lives in has become depopulated as it’s become too dangerous to live there.  In its own way, having birdsong be the loudest sound in the morning is its own rebuke to Saitama’s ambitions of helping people.

Watchdogman is the most diligent hero ever, with a perfect monster elimination record.  And yet, City Q is as monster-infested as ever.  Should anything happen to him, it will be as if he never existed for all the good his previous efforts will have done its inhabitants.

however diligently he sits, the pedestal he’s on will crumble the moment he cannot do his job any longer.

 And that’s just talking about monsters.  There are a lot of very bad people in OPM world and not just of the cackling mad scientist variety, although it’s got plenty of those too.

The world of One-Punch Man also has evils driven by factors that are far too big for any hero by their action to stop.  Problems best addressed at the political or economic level aren’t going to be solved with a punch.

Even when the evil appears to be tied up with a single person, like the Ninja Village was established by That Man, getting rid of them doesn’t necessarily change affairs.  The Village stole the freedoms and lives of boys for a good fifteen years after Blast defeated That Man.  It was still too profitable to *not* do.

when you think about it, crime must really pay in One-Punch Man!

Even when you say you’re going to do something simple and heroic, like save a single child from the clutches of a monster... what do you mean by ‘saved’, exactly?  How brutally difficult it is to save even a single person, how easily it is that your best efforts to be turned to naught by an adverse event, like springing a rabbit from a trap only to have it swooped up by a hawk, is fully on display this arc. 

so many heroes’ efforts and yet Waganma went almost nowhere...truly like fetching water out of a river with a basket!

Other than Saitama, we see so many other heroes struggle with the reality of how little they can change things in the long term.  Very notable is the conversation that Snek has with Suiryu, where Suiryu challenges Snek to justify why he bothers being a hero at all? “No matter how hard you try, it’s just drops of water on burning rocks,”  Suiryu says, something done for self-satisfaction rather than because it actually creates meaningful change.   Snek’s thoughts mirror Suiryu’s as he considers whether heroes are actually necessary at all.

Let’s bring it back to Garou.  Garou’s Very Bad No Good Plan to Avoid Heroic Heartbreak he laid out in chapter 41.  Quite simply, heroes always have to wait for bad things to happen and then react to punish the evildoers and/or save people. 

I love how long this guy is...um, sorry I was supposed to be typing something insightful here

But what if it was possible to take the initiative instead, like a monster does?  What if people could stop wanting to be bad and monsters could stop wanting to attack people?  That’s where the Human Monster was born, the quest to create a persona so strong that no one could oppose it, and so senselessly evil that no one dared to do anything that attracted its attention.

punishing the good and evil alike, don’t make him come your way if you know what’s good for you.

I see a lot of readers read superficially, misunderstand and think Garou is punishing heroes in some way. That heroes are bad in some way.  Nothing like that: he attacks heroes because they’re good and devote their lives to protecting people.  After all, only a total monster would do that.  Also, if even the strongest heroes aren’t safe, what hope have the regular people of this world?

All throughout the arc, that Garou doesn’t actually want to be a monster at heart is clear to every actual monster.  It’s clear to us as we see his interactions with Tareo.  It’s clear to him himself as he tries to steel himself to take a life just to prove to himself that he can (thankfully it’s Saitama he tries to kill). 

It’s what makes Saitama’s bullshit-cutting words as cutting as they are.   Ultimately, his trying to scare the world into being good is his way of running away from the tough, heart-breaking work of being a hero.

there is a crazy confidence a hero needs to embody in order to step up, as if by doing so they can do something

The pathos that we can empathise with is that it’s hard to look on a world as messed up as theirs is and not feel that surely, surely there’s something more that one can do.  Garou’s struggle is absolutely legitimate.   However... I’m going to let the however hang a moment...

It’s childish thinking to frame heroism in terms of strength and it’s not much better to frame it in terms of being of exceptional virtuousness.  What a hero is, according to ONE, is someone who can look honestly at the cruelty and randomness of the world, who can acknowledge frankly the fleeting nature of any good they can do, feel the pain of this reality fully.   And then choose to reach a hand out to help anyway.  

In a world where feeling helpless in the face of impossibly large and complex problems feels inevitable, cynicism is too ready a refuge, and just looking out for yourself is common sense, the mere act of reaching that hand out is an act of courage.

not with illusions of good triumphing over evil, but the dogged determination to do the right thing even if the world burns down.  That’s what being a hero is about.

However...

...the way Garou worked out his inner conflict was not legitimate.  He picked the worst possible way at the worst possible time to wrestle with it. Which I think goes to a second theme: that your feelings may be valid.  But that does not mean that every action that follows from those feelings is valid.  Garou hurt a lot of good people and impeded their vital work at a time the world could ill-afford it.

One of the joys of fiction is that not only do characters act for reasons that make sense, but we get to hear and understand *why*. And at the same time, the external actions they take on the world persist. I’m very happy too that ONE isn’t glossing over the consequences of Garou’s actions.  Too many readers pick one or the other and lose half the joy.   

Thankfully, ONE isn’t a half-ass.

It doesn’t become okay for the heroes that Garou attacked that they were assaulted.  It doesn’t become okay for the world that so many people were needlessly deprived of heroes when they needed them most.  And it isn’t okay for Garou that he’s made an outlaw of himself as a result of his actions.   The ramifications on both personal and societal are going to be explored for the individuals involved.  I bless ONE for his conscientiousness and for creating so many excellent characters that make the enterprise worth the candle.

What kind of hero Garou will decide to be and how he’ll make it work in practice, ah that we’re waiting to see.

Coda:

Of course, that’s not the whole story.  There’s one other part.  Occasionally, by being the right person willing and able to step up in the right way at the right time, a hero can change *everything*.

#OPM #meta #Garou #heroes #for a story that is a parody the thoroughness with which it unpicks heroism is very serious #long #yes I said I wasn't going to run long but I have so much more I want to say #which I guess will put people who came for the luls off but there you go #making peace with what one can do as an individual is a very real problem that's both topical and timeless #making peace that nothing lasts forever not even one's achievements is another #finding meaning and a way forward in this impermanent life is a little triumph

[rikalovesrice]

My Thoughts on Trollhunters : Rise of the Titans

WARNING : ALL THE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

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Mmmmm. Okay. So I just finished the movie. I’m fatigued as always so this’ll be a bit of a mess lol. Gotta spew the thoughts while they’re still fresh, y’all know how it is.

Right out the gate, I definitely want to talk about the things I loved.

The animation was, of course, phenomenal and gorgeous!

Voice acting was incredible as always

MUSIC SLAPPED

Douxie. I just loved seeing Douxie again and honestly kept my eyes trained on him for most the of movie lol

OK DOUXIE AND NARI SWITCHING?? BODIES??? Definitely didn’t see that coming and I legit started screaming lol

Nari in Douxie’s body is the most precious, chaotic, and wholesome thing like holy cow that was so adorable LOOKIT DOUXIE CROUCHING AND CRAWLING AROUND ON ALL FOURS WITH THOSE NOODLE LIMBS OF HIS I CAN’T --

We called Nari’s mind control and Douxie trying to reason with her!

In the very few scenes they were together, Douxie’s love and affection for Nari really came through. You could really feel how much he cared about her. ALSO THAT TENDER HUG AND NARI’S LITTLE HAPPY SQUEAK MY HEART NO--

Loved Barbara. Always love Barbara.

Walter and Barbara getting engaged

Nomura back in action

Claire being the powerful sorceress she’s become

Loved seeing Aja, Krel, and Varvatos all together again.

NARI VS SKRAEL WAS ALL SORTS OF EPIC AND CRUSHING EMOTIONS.

The way Douxie yelled Nari’s name and ran to her after she died and the remnants of her magic falling all around him, like she was saying goodbye, just *UGLY CRYING*

It was so cool to see Charlie out of his den and flying about like the mighty dragon he is

Loved the Guardians of Arcadia pulling Excaliber out together.

All the gang all going after Bellroc together

YES JIM MY BOOOOOOY

BLINKY DIDN’T DIE

Aarrgh I love you so much

Stuart, what a bro!

We saw a hint of mercy in Bellroc towards the end.

Toby’s death... That was a huge curveball. Jim might as well have cut my heart out with Excaliber as he sobbed over his best friend.

Uh.....um....and.....Er...what else........ .___.

..........Alright so.......It’s about to get a bit brutal from here on out as I talk about the things I didn’t like at all. And the really sad thing is, at least to me, the cons far outweigh the pros in this movie. Because I’m actually having difficulty picking out things I enjoyed, they were so few and far between...which really sucks.

So here we go.

Gosh, where to begin... I guess I’ll go ahead and say this : I’m really disappointed. 

Like as I’m here typing this, I’m just thinking, “...That was it? That was the movie?? The big finale???”

So much of this movie just felt....unnecessary. I hate to say almost like filler. The entire intro re-caping the series really wasn’t needed. And then Toby went and restated it all again when he was being interrogated. The pacing, oh my gosh...Guys, the pacing in this movie was not good. The action started and it never seemed to stop. There wasn’t a single moment of rest, of levity, of our characters just being themselves, getting to know each other, being friends outside of the battle. No Reckless Club Segment. No fun, just... I mean Claire and Aja didn’t speak to each other at all. Douxie and Toby hardly interacted. Steve was turned into a gross male pregnancy joke. Jim and Krel barely spoke. Douxie and Aja had nothing to say to each other. Even Aja and Krel didn’t have any moments together. The list goes on. The whole movie was just go, go, go. And it’s so frustrating because there was time for it but it was poorly executed.

Like was the whole break-in to the Chinese Trollmarket really necessary?? Guys, I really found myself not caring. I didn’t care to see this random side quest involving an insignificant new troll character and a Trollmarket that had little to no bearing on the plot. Did I love seeing Charlie, Archie, Blinky, and Claire? Of course! But these scenes were so pointless. So needless. They could’ve written other ways for all our heroes to go after the chronosphere (Maybe we could’ve had Zoe for crying out loud). But instead this vital artifact was the hands of a character we don’t know and don’t care about in a place that turned out to have basically nothing to do with anything.

Deaths. The deaths in this movie. Because of the pacing in this movie, there wasn’t nearly enough time for the emotional impacts to sink in. Nomura? Gone and the only ones mourning her are Aaarrgh and Douxie, who barely knew her. Walter’s death was handled better since we got to see Jim and Barbara actually having a moment to mourn him. The weight of Nari’s death was singlehandedly carried by Douxie, but even that was over before it started. The immense gravity of Toby’s death, which really got to me, was also short-lived to make way for an ending that...I don’t know. 

ALSO DOUXIE JUST??? BEING OKAY WITH HIS FAMILIAR, THE ONE WHO RAISED HIM AND WENT THROUGH SO MUCH WITH HIM FOR CENTURIES, LEAVING HIM FOREVER TO BE TRAPPED IN THAT DUMB TROLLMARKET WITH CHARLIE LIKE???

“I hope he’s happy.”

WHAT. THE. EVERLASTING. FRICK. 

Douxie’s reaction objectively doesn’t make a shred of sense. Geez, it’s almost like Douxie was expecting Archie to up and leave him someday to be with Charlegmane. Just...what???

What also frustrates me so much is how this movie undid so much characterization and development that happened in Wizards. Or more like all that development didn’t even matter.

What was the point of Steve’s arc in Wizards if he was just going to be reduced to...this?

I was so excited to see Douxie really being a Master Wizard. To see him lead the Guardians of Arcadia alongside Jim. To see him in action as Successor to Merlin and Protector of this Realm.

But no.

Douxie, who had such an incredible arc in Wizards and a character who’s come to mean so much to me in my life, was nerfed and sidelined.

And then time restarts and I can’t help but wonder why any of this mattered at all. What the heck was the freaking point of the suffering, the loss, the pain, the growth, enduring and overcoming so much, the friendships and family spanning across three shows... All gone. Starting all over. Undoing everything, except what Jim went through. As much as I love Jim, I didn’t think he’d be the only character I’d be getting closure for at the grand finale of this entire franchise. But that’s what happened and I really hate it.

Just...all in all, this movie wasn’t satisfying. Not to me. It had its good moments. But not nearly enough. The comedy was misplaced and fell flat. The climax was sorely anticlimactic and didn’t hold a candle to Eternal Knight. The writing, the direction, characterization...For some reason it was all lost and confused and none of it felt right and so much didn’t make sense.

I’m not at all upset with the writers, though, because they still pulled through and did what they could. When the movie did something right, it was beautiful. The things I loved about it I truly adored. No, I’m not upset in the least bit with any of the creative team.

I’m upset with Netflix. I’m upset that Wizards was robbed of the seasons it should’ve had. I’m upset with big cooperations stifling creators. I’m upset that this’ll be it. This is the ending we got and nothing can be done about it.

Aaron did say there’s every possibility for the franchise to continue in some capacity, and I’m hoping for that someday. Because so much, too much, has been left unanswered. So much left to be explored that couldn’t. But until then....I guess this is it. This is what we get.

Now, I want to remind everyone that this is my own personal experience with the movie. These are all my opinions. If you enjoyed every second the movie, that’s wonderful! And who knows how my thoughts will change upon another viewing. But in the meantime, Rise of the Titans really missed the mark for me. I wanted found family badassery and fluff. But nope. Just fighting and heaviness and no payoff. It’s such a letdown...a real shame. 

But yeah...Thanks to any and everyone who read to the end of this haha

I still love Tales of Arcadia. It’s a series that has blessed and inspired me so much as an artist, writer, and as a person in general. I do want to keep making ToA content for a while. Cause this movie isn’t the end. Not my ending, at least.

I’ll continue to hope for more Tales of Arcadia in the future (a Douxie spin-off series please Lord pleaaase). We shall see. Until then, fics and fanart fixing this mess galore haha

Until next time everyone! God bless!

#trollhunters rise of the titans #rise of the titans #rott spoilers #tales of arcadia #jim lake jr #claire nunez #toby domzalski #steve palchuk #aja tarron #krel tarron #douxie #hisirdoux casperan #toa archie #nari of the eternal forest #toa wizards #rika rambles #this was tough guys #sigh #but oh well what can you do? #again I'll always cherish this franchise #but oof #They all deserved better

[nickjunesource]

Full article below.

Max Minghella is sitting in his backyard in the LA sunshine, his t-shirt an homage to the French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, his adopted shepherd mix, Rhye, excited by the approach of a package courier.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks — the dog, not me — tenderly.

Minghella, who at 35 has dozens of screen credits to his name, is best known as The Handmaid’s Tale’s cunning chauffeur Nick Blaine, a character who it’s difficult to imagine saying sweetheart. In airless Gilead, of course, a cautious hand graze with Elisabeth Moss’ June can pass for a big romantic gesture. In a Season 1 episode featuring child separation and hospital infant abduction, Nick’s major contribution is to trade stolen glances with a sex slave while “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” pumps discordantly along. I ask Minghella about playing the series’ closest approximation to a dreamy male lead against the show’s dark narrative of female subjugation.

“I know this is not the answer you want to hear,” Minghella says with none of Nick’s hesitation. “But I like that stuff, right? In the pilot, I think Nick only had a handful of lines. It wasn't clear that this is what the character would turn into. And it's quite fortunate for me personally, because I'm not a massively sort of intellectual person in my real life. I love Fifty Shades of Grey. That's like my Star Wars. It suits me to play a character like him.”

Minghella surmises that this enduring romanticism is an outcome of nurture. His father, the late British director Anthony Minghella, made grand romantic dramas like Cold Mountain and The English Patient. And there was the young, cinema-mad Max sitting on the living room sofa, absorbing everything. “It’s taken me a long time to understand this,” he says of his prolonged childhood exposure to love stories. “My dad made The English Patient when I was 10. So it was two years of watching the dailies to that movie and then watching 50 cuts of it. And then [The Talented Mr.] Ripley he made when I was 13, and it was the same thing.” These were an adolescent Max Minghella’s alternative to reruns. “I think they did shape my perspective on the world in a lot of ways, specifically The English Patient. That was a complicated love story, and I wonder sometimes how much it's affected my psychology.”

Some sons rebel; others resemble. Minghella’s co-star O-T Fagbenle, who plays June’s other lover from before the time of Gilead, got his first job acting in Anthony Minghella’s romantic crime film Breaking and Entering. “Anthony is one the kindest, most beautiful men that I've ever had the privilege of working with before,” Fagbenle says. “And Max has his gorgeous, sensitive, open-minded soul.”

Though Minghella spent his childhood on the set of The Talented Mr. Ripley, playing an uncredited Confederate soldier role in Cold Mountain, and tooling around with a Super-8 camera Matt Damon gave him, he insists his upbringing was normal. He grew up in South Hill Park overlooking Hampstead Heath in London with his father and mother, the choreographer Carolyn Choa. (Minghella also has a half-sister, Hannah Minghella, who is now a film executive.) Yes, technically, it was London, but that’s not how it seemed. “I feel like I grew up in a very small town. Every school I went to was in Hampstead. I was born in Hampstead,” Minghella says of the small map dot of his life before university. “When I went to New York, I felt I was going to the big city.”

Despite his illustrious surname, movie-watching was far from restricted to the classics. “Beverly Hills Cop is definitely the movie I remember having an unhealthy obsession with. I think I saw it when I was 5 for the first time, and I'd watch it just two or three times a day for years. I'm just obsessed with it.”

Plenty of actors can trace their love of movies back to a love of stories, but for Minghella the relationship seems to flow in reverse. When he left for Columbia University, Minghella opted to study history for its connection, through storytelling, to film. It was during the summers between his years of college that he started taking acting more seriously. Before his graduation, he’d already appeared in Syriana, starring Damon and George Clooney. Soon, he’d make a splash as Divya Narendra in The Social Network in 2010 and be cast in Clooney’s Ides of March. As all young actors eventually must, Minghella moved to Los Angeles.

It’s been over a decade since he last lived on the Heath, but, perhaps unusually for a person who’s chosen his profession, Minghella is adamantly not a “shapeshifter,” in his words. Home for Christmas this year, he started sifting through old journals stored at his mother’s house, “just like scraps of writing from when I was extremely young up through my teenage years,” before coming to America. “It was hilarious to me,” Minghella says of staring at his childhood reflection. “My review of a movie at 7 years old is pretty much what my review of a movie at 35 will be. My taste hasn't changed much. And when I sort of love something, I do tend to continue to love it.”

Which brings us back to his enduring love of romance, born of his bloodline, which is all over Minghella’s own 2018 directorial debut. Teen Spirit is a hazily lit film about a teenage girl from the Isle of Wight — the remote British island where Max’s father Anthony was born — who enters a local X-Factor-style singing competition. (It stars Minghella’s rumored girlfriend of several years, Elle Fanning.) The story is small, but its crescendos are epic.

Minghella calls the movie — an ode to the power of the pop anthem — “embarrassingly Max.” Max loves a good music-driven movie trailer — he’s watched the one for Top Gun: Maverick “many” times. And Max loves the rhythmic beats of sports movies like Friday Night Lights. Max loves movies with excesses of female energy, like Spring Breakers. He likens Teen Spirit to an experiment, his answer to the question, “Can I take all these things that I love and find a structure that can hold them?” The result is a touching “hodgepodge” of Minghella’s fascinations, inspired by the songs from another thing he loves: Robyn’s 2010 album Body Talk (itself a dance-pop meditation on love).

Minghella hasn’t directed any films since, but he sees now how making movies fits his personality — organized, impatient — more organically than starring in them does. Directing also helped him to appreciate that acting is “much harder than I was giving it credit for,” which, in turn, has made him like it more. Besides The Handmaid’s Tale currently airing on Hulu, Minghella appears in Spiral, the ninth installment in the Saw horror franchise and, from where I’m sitting, at least, a departure.

“I do like horror movies, but the thing that was really kind of magical is that I was feeling so nostalgic, right? We talked about Beverly Hills Cop earlier. I was just missing a certain kind of movie,” Minghella explains of his new role as Chris Rock’s detective partner. He was yearning for simple story-telling, like in the buddy cop movies of his youth, especially 48 Hours. It almost goes without saying that a buddy cop movie is another kind of love story. “And then I read the script and it was very much in that vein.” He clarifies: “I mean, it's also extremely Saw. It's very much a horror movie.”

His renewed excitement for acting translated onto The Handmaid’s Tale set, too. Veteran Hollywood producer Warren Littlefield describes casting Minghella in the role of Nick as an effortless choice: “Sometimes you agonize over things. [Casting Minghella] was instantly clear to me, and everyone agreed.” Now in its fourth season, the tone of the Hulu hit is graver than ever. Gilead is more desperate to maintain its rule, and so more audacious in its violence. Perhaps it’s fitting that the show’s romantic gestures finally match that scale.

In one particularly soaring moment, Elisabeth Moss’ June and Minghella’s Nick meet at the center of a bridge and crush into a long kiss. It’s been two seasons since they held their newborn daughter together, and it’s hard to see how this isn’t their last goodbye. Littlefield, like Minghella, is here for the romance among the rubble. “It's spectacular when they come together. In the middle of all of the trauma is this epic love story,” he says. “Max is just magnificent in the role.”

For Minghella, the satisfaction is more personal. He works with good people, he likes his scenes, and he thinks Nick is a complex character. Minghella read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in college in 2005. Like all the things Minghella has ever liked, he still likes it. He’s as proud of this most recent season as he is the show’s first. And he watched Nick and June race recklessly back to each other across the expanse of the screen exactly how you might expect. “I watched it like a fan girl.”

#max minghella #the handmaids tale #the handmaid's tale #nick blaine #nick x june #june x nick #osblaine #*

[20dollarlolita]

The guide to re-upholstering your office chair while you're at work at the sewing machine store.

You can generally do a full office chair cover in 2/3rds of a yard of fabric (with or without nap), so hit up your former craft store job's remnant section, since you don't have your employee discount anymore.

If you have access to a huge collection of top-of-the-line sewing machines, you can make a nice chair cover embroidery on the HV Designer Epic with the Majestic Hoop and not need to re-hoop halfway through. If you're doing this on your own time, however, and had to spend that eighteen point five grand on, you know, a car and rent and food, because you make barely minimum wage at a sewing machine store and can't actually afford anything that you sell, you can find some lovely patterned fabric and have a chair cover that's just as nice.

Using pins (if you have them) or staples from your office stapler to shape the fabric around the back of the chair, so that it's smooth on the front and there's no wrinkles on the front. You can pin/staple directly into the cushion of the chair. Take your time with this and make the front look good.

Also make sure that your design is centered on the front. Don't do this entire step and then realize that you never centered it and have to redo the whole thing.

Now, grab yourself a hand sewing needle and some thick thread (I just used four threads of this spool of hand quilting thread that for some reason floats around the store) and run a big running stitch around the entire edge of the fabric.

Important: your goal here is to ease the fabric around the whole cushion without making any creases or big folds. You don't want to be tacking any pleats down. You can see how I have some big fabric folds near the edge of my fabric, but the part that's on the cushion is almost smooth.

(yes, this is a cropped version of the picture above)

Grab a pen (ideally one that evaporates away) and mark where the fabric crosses the edge of the plastic back plate. It's easiest to do this in a series of dots.

You want it so that when you cut the fabric off, your cover will cover up all of the chair's cushion fabric, but doesn't overlap the plastic back plate.

Grab whatever elastic is also floating around the store for hell knows what reason, and start sewing it down. If you've ever done a connect-the-dots puzzle, you'll know how to do this. Sink your needle into the fabric and elastic at your first dot, and then stretch the elastic to its absolute max and sew it down along your line of dots.

Setting the machine to a very narrow zig zag (1.5mm if you want to be specific) because it's a little bit easier to keep all your stitches on the elastic. If you're off by a little, the zig zag will still usually hit your elastic, so you don't have big rows of skipped stitches.

When you go over and put the cover back on your chair, it should fit nice and pretty. The elastic should hug the plastic backing plate, but cover all the chair's original cushion fabric. Now, you just need to get rid of the extra fabric.

I have access to a serger that's only $1,399 so I just did a 4-thread overlock around the entire piece, letting the serger cut off the edges. If you don't have an overlocker, you can cut off the edge and do something like binding the edge with a tape or ribbon, or just picking a fabric that won't fray and leaving it raw.

If you want, you can pull out your gathering running stitches if you think they're ugly. I pulled out the visible ones on the top and left the ones on the bottom.

There's a little elastic tail down there that I added to tie the cover to the chair. That tie is largely decorative and mostly useless. It exists so that people can see "oh, yes, there's a cover here." The bow is also knotted in place, because if there's a bow, someone will try to untie it.

There's also a very large tacking stitch at the top, bottom, and each side. These are sewn directly into the chair cushion, and they serve two purposes. First, it keeps the cover spread nice and tight so that the embroidery looks good. Second, it stops people from freaking stealing it because some people just go into a high-end sewing machine store and then decide to steal the chair cover for no reason . Like ma'am. Ma'am. You just signed up for financing and we have your social security number and your home address so can you PLEASE not shoplift our display models directly in front of my face??

Anyway, the embroidery doesn't photograph super well, but here it is with some contrast adjustments.

#long post #tutorial #not lolita #upholstery #today at owrk #today at work