#long ass ramble about 50 seconds of a teaser

[thefirstknife]

THOUGHTS

My thoughts are that I am insane right now!!!!!!!!

I was in a raid when this happened and then just like a few friends alerted us to come see the channel and we straight up did not believe them. TFS teaser THIS EARLY?? And then they also ofc said "Cayde is there" so we were convinced that they're messing with us.

But then we watched it and like, Cayde being there is the least of my concerns tbh. THE ENVIRONMENT???? It's the other side of the portal! It means we go through at some point in the next two seasons! This was expected of course, but I didn't think we would see anything about it until the actual campaign, definitely not this early. Like, seeing what it looks like on the other side is a huge teaser. I genuinely did not think we'll see a single glimpse before TFS, not even maybe during reveals and trailers later.

But Cayde being there is actually also important. He's not looking right! He has a weird glow on his eyes and other places, including the way Ace of Spades looks; some sort of weird gashes of light-ish tint, almost Taken in nature? But brighter. Kinda reminds me of the way time rifts look on Mars.

The fact that he has Ace in the first place is also suspect; we have Ace. Like, that was very much a huge plot. He can't have it back, not broken up like this, unless some truly WILD shit goes down in the next two seasons and YW like... dies or something. This, alongside the weird lights on him and the gun, seems to be indicating that he's not real. Like, he's obviously him and he is corporeal in some form and he speaks the same and knows who he is, but I think he's a memory that Ikora can access. (more under for length)

Which ties into the place they're at. Me and others have speculated before that what lies on the other side of the portal is the original garden from Unveiling, or some sort of a similar place outside of space and time. This can be neatly tied in with what we know about the Darkness and what has been the most important plot thread since Lightfall: Darkness is memory, emotions, psychic. It's history and time. I've spoken a lot about this recently. Lore has been focusing on it as well, most notably with Inspiral lore book from the raid that showed us two different ancient species that were capable of using the Darkness to access the collective consciousness and the memory of their civilisation, but this has also been brought up before, for example with the Psions who communicate in a psychic way and have an ancient religion that allowed them to contact their ancestors.

This is also heavily reiterated this season with Ahsa who has a similar power, as well as the Pyramid ships, the portal and the Veil who can all affect people's consciousness and give them access to their memories. One particular interesting bit is the ship from this season called Akashic Revelation. In it, we see the Titan, Joxer, making an attempt to pass through the portal. As he gets near, he goes through a massive whiplash of spacetime distortion and ends up having flashes of memories of his life before being a Guardian. The memories continue as he passes through, but we know what happens to him later. He is found outside, bent and broken, fused with his ship and dead. But the portal triggered a flash of memories of his past. Not only that, but the name of the ship is important as well: it refers to something called akashic records, an occult concept of there existing a compendium of everything that ever happened in the universe: all of past, present, future, all memories, events, emotions and people. Joxer seemingly accessed it as he touched and passed through the portal. This is absolutely a wild word to use here, given what we know of the Veil being the "mind and memory of the universe" and everything else I've mentioned.

What I'm trying to say is that the best way to tease about us gaining access to the source of the history of the universe is by showing Ikora speaking to a dead character who only exists as an imprint in the history of the universe. The potential here, if we're on the right track is huge. Not only is this super exciting on its own (a connection to everything that ever happened!), but it also brings the potential that other dead characters might also appear in some shape or form, to help us or tell us more.

It's also wild that this is a teaser. Meaning this is the least spoilery they could get and it's already so wild that it's making me lose my mind. I would definitely advise people not to expect Cayde (or other dead characters) to suddenly "come back" in the sense they expect them to. I don't think he or anyone else will be properly "alive." So in that sense, I don't think he's "back" the way people may think. He'll obviously have a presence in the story, and that makes sense if the story is focused on Ikora. Ikora has never truly recovered from his death and if there was a memory she would access (consciously or not), it would probably be his. She has already involuntarily accessed him as a nightmare.

But given how much we're focusing on the psychic aspects of the Darkness, including right now in this season which is pretty much all about the psychic bond between an ancient creature that has the power to show people visions of the past and the future and Sloane, a bond we have to strengthen to learn more about what's coming and what our enemy really is... The fact that the whole campaign and post-campaign and all lore and quests were focused on explaining the metaphysical properties of Darkness and its connection to the mind, the psychic, the consciousness, the emotions and the mind of the entire universe... Well. It's building up to something. And us being able to communicate with people long dead is not only useful, but might be necessary to understand how to defeat our enemy.

All of this is ofc purely wild speculation. It's way too early to say anything conclusive, outside of just trying to gauge which aspects of the lore Bungie wants us to pay attention to and which aspects of the lore are being focused on. The Veil and the memory of the universe seems to be this year's theme leading us into the Final Shape so for now, that's the direction to go into.

Full reveal will be on 22nd of August, which is the start of the next season. We'll definitely know more then, especially since Deep will be done and most of the new Ligthfall quest audio logs will likely be done too. Until then, I know people will go into wild directions and speculation, mostly because it's Cayde. In the same way that I advise people not to think that he'll suddenly be alive, I'd also ask people not to be too negative about what may happen because we literally don't know. Cayde's presence is not an indicator of either good or bad. I'd also like for people to focus more on the actual important background stuff rather than zero in on a single character, but I know that won't happen lmao.

In a way, I wish Cayde didn't overshadow the completely insane scene of Ikora sitting in a garden-like place on the other side of the portal that nobody has been able to go through before (and those that tried suffered violent deaths after being having visions of everything that ever happened). Because to me, that's the true teaser here. I can't wait to find out more and I'll definitely be looking at the upcoming lore from Deep in a different light. Things are building up and I hope people will pay attention to the background stuff that's been going on about the Veil, memory, history and consciousness.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #the final shape #cayde-6 #ikora #the veil #lore vibing #long post #long ass ramble about 50 seconds of a teaser #but i know what the major takeaway will be and i want to mention some of this stuff before people hype themselves into oblivion #about cayde being alive somehow. which is like. i'm 99% sure he's a memory in the fabric of the universe as everyone else is #if that's wrong then it's wrong in such a spectacular plot twist way that i am genuinely at the edge of my seat to find out #i definitely would've loved if ikora was more of a focus though. she should be #i feel like this is such a huge tease to drop this early but then again they KNOW what hype it will generate #ask

[twiststreet]

Southland Tales 2049 (2017):  I saw the Ryan Gosling-Harrison Ford robot movie.  I’d seen the first one a half-dozen or a dozen times when I was a teenager, off Channel 19, at least, but it’s nothing I’ve revisited as an adult.  So I was pretty lost watching this in places because... I just kept thinking, “Wasn’t Blade Runner about robots???  Are these characters robots?  Who is a robot and who isn’t a robot??  Wait-- are ANY of them robots?”  

It’s based on a Philip K. Dick book called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and 13 Other Brain Teasers for Rambunctious Teens” that they used to sell at the front counters of Barnes and Nobles.  And I always thought androids = robots....?  Like, androids are a kind of robots.  Right?  The robots in this movie, they act like robots-- they’re all strong like robots-- they seem pretty good at math and bad at feelings like a buncha Rain Man-y-ass robots (iko iko wan dey)-- they have fake memories like robots would have-- people are all angry about them because they’re like “fuck you robots”, classic anti-robot sentiments #Trump’s America-- but then all of the sudden in this movie they’re dying in some very not-robot ways!  None of the robots get AIDS or anything, but to my mind, they just don’t die like robots.  And according to the friend I was with, none of them are robots!  And they were just like a buncha Captain Americas, or some shit this entire time...??   What happened to the robots???  Were they ever robots?  

I have no idea what blade running is even about anymore, it turns out!  They try to explain it in the first 30 seconds, but instead of having some cool title card, there’s like “Okay, there are robots, but also because of starvation following a global climate collapse there was a corporate merger, but it was just one of those mergers where a company buys their rivals’ assets instead of the company itself but leaves the rival entity intact and as a debt-ridden empty shell in order to oppress creditors, triggering various lawsuits alleging fraudulent conveyances, also nobody’s a robot, fuck you.” I haven’t seen the first one since I was 17!  

Anyways, it’s directed by Denis Villeneuve, the Stupid Man’s Frank Miller, so it’s all very portentous and heavy on quality production design (and gorgeous thanks to my man Roger Deakins, who I hope wins all the awards, forever), but fundamentally stupid, stupid all day, stupid for miles.  The plot at its core doesn’t really work (the “Triggering Incident” of the movie makes no sense once the Explanation for the Movie is given), and setting aside the plot, the basic story’s about twice as stupid as I’d expect from Vilaneuve (dig this: a cop on the edge finally decides to take the law in his own hands after they come after his girl!!!  “It’s asking important questions about what man is”-- people on the internet, for serious).  He just makes his movies super-long and super-slow to create this illusion that something deep is happening, but what’s happening?  Dumb-dumb shit.  

The first one was very straightforward and lean-- there are some robots, and then Harrison Ford’s gotta fuck ‘em up.  This one, it’s just Ryan Gosling rambling around, and then when he’s not rambling around, there’s all these scenes where he’s dating a hologram that’s into being a cuck...???  But when you’re not watching all these scenes of Goose and cuckbot exploring their relationship, the fundamental mystery was all a little TOO earth-shattering -- like, it wasn’t just an A-to-B movie because they went just so, so big with it all.  So, after 3 hours of nothing much happening, SLOWLY, they end the movie with nothing much resolved, so they can set up a half dozen sequels because the story’s too big for this one...?  And it’s just all another example of how people keep gambling on franchises instead of movies.  I got no rooting interest in franchises; I just want to see a movie.  

But this one’s all slow just so you can watch Jared Leton ramble melodramatic nonsense while doing his O-Face while talking about robots (in a very cool office), or at least a half hour of Ryan Gosling staring blankly at a camera.  I like the Goose but after the Nice Guys, that guy can do comedy, he can do character bits-- having him just stare blankly at a camera just isn’t as interesting as it was the first dozen movies he did it in.  But everyone in the movie is the best actor in the movie because Robin Wright is the 50 worst actors in the movie.  If I had to list the 50 worst actors in the movie, I’d list her 50 times, before bothering with anyone else.  You can tell she’s been hanging out with Kevin Spacey-- they’ve been sharing notes on how to do the acting.  She is terrible, plus they hand her a character with no comprehensible character motivation, so she just yells “the plot of this movie is very important” over and over again, in increasingly melodramatic ways.  Overacting a nonsense character? Hoo-boy.  Bad combo.  All the actresses who were hot for Goose’s robo-dick were okay, at least, though-- I liked the cuckbot, or the dom-bot, or the ho’-bot.  Deep movie-- deep director-- what’s your favorite Frank Miller comic?  Frank Miller’s Robocop vs. Terminator is massively underrated.

Nice to see the Syd Mead designs again, though.  Though this time, without any Asian people who were in the first one, anywhere to be seen!  All the Asian people in the first Blade Runner fucked off to the Tannhauser Gates inbetween the fist movie and the second movie, where they were never heard from again (iko iko wan dey).  There’s a good scene of Han Solo and Goose doing robot-shit in a casino that’s pretty decent, I liked when cuckbot had a robo-threesome with Goose, and you see a hologram’s titties at one point, which I thought was pretty deep and said a lot thematically (e.g. “men get boners for hologram titties... for it is the NATURE OF MAN”), but besides that stuff... I mean, I’m just not the audience for this guy, man!  It would just take a lot at this point for me to be on board the Villaneuve train with the rest of y’all.  I just think he’s a dumb-dumb, that thinking has really calcified with me, so when I watch his movies, I’m just like “oh that’s cute, you’re trying to think deep thoughts, dumb-dumb”, the way “normal people” do with Michael Bay or whoever that I'm more into.  I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt...

#movies i saw in 2017