#mr geeky and i are actually discussing whether or not

[madegeeky]

Thoughts on The End of Evangelion (from someone who had never seen the tv show and after watching a video essay about how the movie is a hate letter to uber fanboys):

Boy, this movie sure expects you to have seen the tv series because they explain nothing.

So much vaginal imagery and somethings just straight up vaginas in foreheads getting stabbed.

Watching a grown woman kiss a 14-year-old boy for 20 seconds sure was fun and not super gross. (Mr. Geeky and I discussed afterwards if it was supposed to be seen as a gross thing and we're both leaning toward, yes, it was.)

For the first part of the movie I was like "oh yeah, this is definitely a hate letter to fanboys'", then the second part I was like "hmmm, maybe not", and the then the last part I was like "holy fuck, yeah, this dude hated the uber fanboys, especially the way they treated the girls and women in this show".

I missed out on basically all the plot (since I knew almost nothing about the terms and such) but it was a very visually interesting movie so I think it was well worth watching on the big screen. I wish there were more mech fights, though, cause they only had one and it was *really* good.

This show was really quite mean to Shinji, fanboy stand-in, and I'm all here for it.

Going back to the movie's commentary on fanboys' treatment of the girls/women in the show: This movie has a *lot* of female nudity (almost all of them 14-year-old girls) but none of it really felt gratuitous to me, which I found really shocking. The nudity always felt like it served a purpose or a statement about the treatment of girls/women by fanboys. (This is extra fascinating as Mr. Geeky tells me the show could be very fanservicy.)

There's an entire scene where Shinji is basically hallucinating all the girls/women telling him he's just a fucking awful human being and it was amazing.

"But maybe you're seeing too much into the girls/women aspect." The literal first scene of the movie is Shinji masturbating over Asuka's comatose body. The literal last scene of the movie is him straddling Asuka and choking her and, after stopping, collapsing on her chest and begging her to help him. Like, the movie is not subtle about showing that Shinji is shitty to girls/women.

Overall both Mr. Geeky and I agree with Dan Olsen and the theory that this movie is basically a hate letter to uber fanboys. That's not all it is, but that's very much a huge part of what it is.

#geeky talks #geeky talks tv #geeky talks movies #mr geeky and i are actually discussing whether or not #we should try watching the newest remake/reimagining of the show #i'd be interested in seeing how that version ended #this was actually a really fun movie to see on the big screen #it's only in theaters for two days #yesterday and then i think tues or Wed? #so if you want to see it #it's not gonna hurt to see if there's a theater near you

[rosalind-of-arden]

Ash and Quill Reread chapter 10

Here we go again. Let’s see what Morgan, Wolfe, and Santi are doing in this chapter.

Morgan’s door isn’t locked. Is she waiting for Jess? Or are locked doors a trigger for her?

Jess just left Wolfe and Santi’s room with them all over each other. He encounters Morgan in a bed, and what is he thinking? “He wanted to be in that bed with her, the way that Wolfe and Santi were no doubt already in theirs.” I think Morgan would approve of their relationship role models inspiring Jess to think of comfort sex.

Sharing Morgan’s Obscurist vision is painful for Jess, like a bad headache.

Obscurist vision: shimmering, shifting lines and colors. Jess can see sap moving in plants. Shows life energy in everything.

The Iron Tower lies about how quintessence works. Are any of us surprised by this?

Morgan had at least some direct interaction with Keria in the tower. Keria told her she has a gift for seeing quintessence.

Morgan can not only drain energy from living things, but also summon victims for draining.

Morgan asks the animals she’s about to kill to forgive her. She feels bad about killing them, and makes sure it isn’t painful. There’s her compassionate side.

But then we also have her ruthless cunning. She feels bad about it, but not so bad that she doesn’t recognize this as a useful ability and make an effort to practice and get better at it.

Morgan says she absorbs the energy from living things to make herself stronger. How accurate is that? After doing it, she feels cold, her eyes are lifeless, and she almost collapses. Is there just an initial shock to her system when she takes in new energy? Or does she not fully understand what she’s doing? I get the feeling that Morgan developing this power is a bit like Jess and Dario developing their plotting skills: doing the best she can based on limited understanding.

High Garda weapons have “power capsules”.

I love how Wolfe neither asks nor demands to be included in the press building. He just suggests the possibility.

Here, with only Jess (who has seen him in some bad moments) and Thomas (who has been in the same prison) to hear him, Wolfe can admit to his fragile mental state.

Also, Wolfe, actually understating his own abilities and achievements: “My version was crude.” “I’m not unskilled.” That’s some insecurity he’s letting show. He hasn’t been able to do this kind of work since before Rome. He’s probably concerned about how much he’s still capable of, so he’s not letting the boys set too high of expectations.

And then here’s the deflecting sarcasm after the display of vulnerability: “Don’t butter me, Schreiber; I’m not a piece of bread.” Wolfe does not want to be reassured that he is valuable after expressing insecurity, he wants to get right to work and pretend there is nothing emotional about this.

At the same time, what else is Wolfe accomplishing with all this self-deprecation? Building Thomas up. Telling him repeatedly what a genius he is. For all his attempts to pretend he doesn’t need it, Wolfe understands the value of having one’s talents recognized.

Thomas also gets Wolfe’s need to be busy with work. Wolfe says he wants to get to work? Thomas busts out the plans.

Thomas and Wolfe are both so happy to be working together. If it didn’t end horribly, this could have been such a healing experience for both of them, a chance to do the work they’d been violently stopped from doing and to be appreciated for it.

I am never going to get tired of Jess and Thomas discussing the names and genders (or lack thereof) of mechanical lions.

“I never expected to have to make anything but things of peace.” Awww, Thomas. Thomas needs hugs.

Thomas’s comments here make me thing he and Wolfe might have been doing some scheming as well as building. He’s building another Ray of Apollo and plotting to take on the Archivist. Jess is completely cut out of whatever Wolfe is planning this time, but it sure sounds like Thomas is included, maybe even an equal partner - he wanted the weapon power supplies before Wolfe showed up. Is this an indication of Wolfe’s level of trust in Jess, or just of the skills needed?

So many lessons Jess misses in this whole round of failed jewel theft plotting. Khalila is more perceptive and ruthless than he thinks she is. Wolfe can anticipate his moves and out-think him. Wolfe can find a better solution to a problem than Jess can.

“Mothers love their sons, however flawed that love might be.” Wolfe is projecting his own family problems onto Jess’s family here. There is some overlap, certainly, but we don’t know Mrs. Brightwell quite well enough to know whether this is accurate.

I do wish we knew how Wolfe got those gems, though. Another fun conversation Jess missed out on.

Morgan refines her energy draining powers, but she’s sad to see Thomas create the Ray of Apollo. She doesn’t want him to become like her: a kind person with destructive power that must be used for the greater good.

Santi: Ooooooh, shiny laser gun. Want.

It’s not just weapons geekiness that has Santi so insistent on more testing, though. He needs to know the full capabilities of this thing so he can properly incorporate it in battle plans.

Wolfe almost always calls Santi “Nic.” Here it’s “Niccolo.” I think this is the equivalent of a parent using a child’s full name when the kid is in trouble.

Wolfe vs. Santi, round 10, on shooting the Ray of Apollo again. Santi doesn’t even let Wolfe finish his sentence here, which is rather unusual. Have they had this fight already? This one is a definitive win for Santi, bringing the score to 6-3. That’s still Wolfe winning twice as often as Santi.

Here’s a bit of foreshadowing of Wolfe’s later discomfort with the Ray of Apollo, though.

Again, hints of schemes Jess wasn’t in on. Santi wants Thomas to make more Rays.

Morgan has clearly decided to be more direct about asking Jess for sex. It does not get much more direct than waiting in his bed in a sexy nightgown.

Morgan: You are upset and I know you’ve been plotting. Jess: Is that why you’re here? Morgan: No you oblivious moron!

Morgan immediately agrees with Jess that Santi wouldn’t go along with the plan. She knows how overprotective boyfriends are.

I am still of the opinion that Jess is right to anticipate that Santi would find out about the plan if Wolfe knew (but not because Wolfe can’t keep a secret, just because Wolfe would have no reason not to tell him), but his conclusion that Santi would not go along with the plan is flawed. He’s thinking about how much control he wishes he had over Morgan’s risky choices, and projecting that onto Santi and Wolfe. But Santi, despite his controlling urges, doesn’t actually exercise that level of control over Wolfe. See the Wolfe vs. Santi score above. Ironically, Jess gets Wolfe and Santi so wrong right when he makes his own decision to conspire with Morgan to send her into the same dangerous prison where she had traumatic experiences.

Chess ephemera. More “sacrifice” language. Caine is really setting us up to think someone (probably Wolfe) is going to die at the end of this book.

#The Great Library #ash and quill reread

[aion-rsa]

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 11 Review: The Dad Feelings-Limited

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This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 11

The Simpsons goes back to the past to make way for the future on Season 32, episode 11. “The Dad Feelings-Limited” is an origin story, revealing the sad and lonely tale of Comic Book Guy. No, it isn’t done in panel layouts, and his super strength turns out to be his greatest weakness. 

Comic Book Guy, diversely voiced by Hank Azaria, is a fairly one-dimensional character. He critiques everything he sees, and has no stomach for outside criticism. He’s already got a bellyful of tacos (breakfast burritos on a workday). He doles out droll insults to children too young to understand them.

Like many of the origin stories on The Simpsons, the first order of business is to explain the particular limits of the character. Professor Frink had the Nutty Professor for a dad. Comic Book Guy’s father was Postage Stamp Fellow, played by Dan Aykroyd.  

The sequence is slightly reminiscent of the Taxi episode where we meet cab driver Jim’s family. Christopher Lloyd’s presence even looms over this episode in the film parody. But the main difference is that here, it is the one dimensionality of the character which adds dimension to him. The very thing which pushed him into the comic book netherworld is the information he gleans from it, like reading a Classic Comics adaptation.

“The Dad Feelings – Limited” skips not only the couch gag, but the entire opening theme sequence, which is always an early indicator of a good episode. This means there is more meat to the story. We find ourselves in Comic Book Guy’s apartment, right above his store, where he has prepared scones for his mangaka muffin, his wife Kumiko Albertson (Jenny Yokobori).

She has fashioned his five breakfast burritos into a Voltron. They are nerds. They met in the Season 25 episode “Married to the Blob,” when she was visiting Springfield doing research about America’s saddest cities for an autobiographical manga. It was a match made in “Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con.”

They are now living what seems to be the perfect life. And for that they will pay. Their mornings are spent wandering as aimlessly as the plots of the upcoming Avatar movies. They go to Miyazaki marathons. They revel in a happy, carefree life. More than one, if you count their cosplay universes. Meanwhile, Springfield families like the Simpsons are circumnavigating the heedless waters of children’s birthday parties — intolerable, mal-nutritious events where every bouncy castle is a death trap — in the hopeful dreams of visiting parents. After a day of it, Homer and Marge need adults.

The first adult we see is Ned Flanders, and already eyes are rolling across the country, but he is dispatched in a particularly malicious maneuver, with no regrets nor even a pang of conscience. They know they’ll be forgiven. He’s in the left-handed forgiveness business. The grown-ups are gathering at Moe’s, and they’re playing games. Not even adult games, regardless of how much Moe grasps at single entendres for dirty jokes.

It’s Trivia Night at Moe’s and every question is so specialized it looks like the game is fixed. The Simpsons pair up with Kumiko and Comic Book Guy, and of course between the geeky young couple and the domesticated Simpsons, the disparate couples fill in every gap. It works not only as a contrivance, but as a gag in itself.

Kumiko gets the biggest laugh of the night. She actually commands and gets it on demand. The premise of the show is the discussion of having children, but this joke is brilliantly executed. After Kumiko spends time with baby Maggie, we can see her maternal instincts kick in. The transition is expertly muted, and there is a sweetness and innocence in the build-up. Kumiko is timid with Maggie, afraid to do anything wrong, but is brought into the child’s world completely.

We have no idea Kumiko is going to go Game of Thrones’ Dragon MILF on us, but her delivery on “impregnate me” can tumble walls. It is as hysterical as it is unexpected. Yokobori almost upstages herself in a later sequence. She commands Marge and Homer to fix a problem, calling Marge a “baby drug dealer” and Homer a “cheeseburger goblin.” To be fair, she’s really not off the mark with that one. He could put it on a resume.

Then things turn a little dramatic, what with all the discussion of bringing children into a General Mills cinematic universe starring the Hamburger Helper critter. But in the end, the “Great Resistor,” a hero Comic Guy thinks up in the heat of the moment, is able to frustrate his sexy Greenland gremlin’s deepest desires. Although I don’t for one minute believe she’s been keeping that particular fetish from him.

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The discussion at the center is a new one for The Simpsons. Apu’s children came organically, although Marge’s advice also played a big part in that transition. But with Comic Book Guy, we wonder whether a person who spends his entire life dealing with children should actually deal with children. Is he prepared to heat formula when he can’t even cool Kumiko’s baby fever?

The best part of the episode is how the “right” things are set in motion for the wrong reasons. Marge pushes to uphold Springfield’s community standards, but appeals to Homer’s base side to manipulate it into action. The young, unfettered couple can sleep in. They don’t have to lug car seats on airplanes. Even their cosplay sex is good. They can do it anywhere, on a kitchen or bathroom floor, on a new microwave popping popcorn. It is a Simpsons twist to have Homer vow to do “anything to destroy their paradise.” The concept gets two “fehs” for emphasis.

At least Homer and Marge get to “see how the other half dies” in a model crypt. The bit about comparing decomposing in adjoining coffins to “snuggling for eternity” is very goth, and the “Til death, do each other” line is poetry. Bart, however, gets credit for the best couplet of the evening: “Our parents are undead, our dad will eat your head.” Being Mrs. Dracula is all fun and games until you get trapped in a crate full of smooth jazz.

The segment pokes fun at the generational divide. Bart and Lisa put away their cell phones to watch the cemetery showing of “Forward to the Past.” Comic Book Guy points out that a movie screen is “unswipable.” This is also where we see the weakness-as-strength in Comic Book Guy. He realizes he can experience a movie he’s seen a million times for the first time again through the eyes of children, He also realizes “little ones love useless knowledge.” This is the one scenario where his superpowers actually come in handy. It is also his kryptonite.

“Living with your folks, the beginning of the end,” Groucho Marx said in Animal Crackers (1930). “Drab, dead yesterdays shutting out beautiful tomorrows. Hideous, stumbling footsteps creaking along the misty corridors of time.”  Kumiko calls it a place where there is no hope, and Comic Book Guy finds it’s also a place where his sheets haven’t been changed.

Aykroyd throws just enough SNL-consumer-probed-toy-manufacturer-Irwin-Mainway-intrigue into his introduction as Postage Stamp Fellow to pepper it with Ghostbusters suspense. One written gag which works very well is when a crawl explains that a philatelist is a person who specializes in philately. Comic Book Guy comes from a long line of collectible-collectors, from cruel bird houses to antique cricket cages. The house he grew up in displayed everything but love. The sequence also contains a very Rocky and Bullwinkle moment where the narrator, Bob Balaban, breaks the second wall by arguing with a character.

That’s not the only curveball in the episode. We learn Comic Book Guy tried to pitch at his school baseball team and had one devastating specialty throw. It’s what separates the men from the boys and ultimately the villains from the jugheads. The minor trauma of his “worst day ever” is basically a misunderstanding based on the expectation of a disappointment so great even “the left hand of god,” Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, could only walk it home.

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The Simpsons season 32 has been a standout because it is moving forward into new territory while updating the attitudes of their early seasons. The series is no longer as sloppy as it used to be but they are still putting the Springfield community under a microscope, and looking at the microscope through a telescope. It is as subversive as it has even been, but buries the subterfuge in plain sight, whether it’s well-lit or not.

The “Radioactive Man Re-rises” poster which frames Comic Book Guy and Kumiko as they mingle to create the “interracial nerds in the future” is a subtle double entendre in a pro-family themed entry; Bart and Lisa have to be bribed to act like desirable youngsters. “The Dad Feelings-Limited” is a very warm installment of the series, but it’s got a devious heart. What makes it so funny is how good it looks worn on their sleeve.

The post The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 11 Review: The Dad Feelings-Limited appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[kyotosummer]

I don’t know how to explain my feelings about this JK Rowling situation... this is entirely wild considering my experience with Harry Potter:

Grandmother got me the third book when I was in Junior High. Thought it was a lot of fun, wound up reading 2 and 1 right before the 4th one came out.

I guess because I wound up obsessing over Sailor Moon and anime, EVERYONE expected me to become obsessed with Harry Potter. Next thing I knew, everyone was buying me merch. I got annoyed with it back then because I felt like everyone was trying to avoid buying me anime/manga (it wasn’t nearly as easy to find back then. If you were lucky, you might find a couple of series in the graphic novel section of a bookstore, and they didn’t always recognize the term “manga”. Otherwise, you had to go to geek stores that sold exclusively geeky things.) Now that I’m older, I realize it was mostly my dad trying to avoid asking for Inuyasha/Yu Yu Hakusho, because mr. NASCAR macho felt silly buying them and couldn’t pronounce them.

My church/ school/ cult HATED it. To the point where our youth pastor went around loaning everyone interested a book called “Harry Potter and the Bible”. It’s a short book that goes into detail about how the series is evil and goes into detail about how it was influenced by the occult to suck more kids into the occult.

This backfired on them, because apparently the Mirror of Erised having backwards writing was an occult thing. I didn’t realize the writing was backwards (give me a clue that a series has a mystery or hidden messages and I WILL geek out, though I’m not always the quickest to figure them out) so in my excitement I showed my mom what the book said and the mirror stuff. She STORMED into the youth pastor’s office and let him have it, shouting that I only saw Harry Potter as a fun fantasy book and would have never known about the occult stuff if THEY hadn’t given been so obsessed to point it out. And if I wound up actually getting into the occult, it was THEIR fault. (She’s not wrong. I may have been a loud kid who hated homework, but otherwise I followed most of their rules and read pretty chill stuff like Nancy Drew and random 90’s girl books (about like babysitters getting into 12 year old shenanigans and horse girl stuff- the usual. ) They just hated that I liked “evil” stuff... like Pokémon, Sailor Moon, music worth dancing to, etc.)

In the end, I had to have a lengthy discussion with my YP about the books and whether I’ll keep reading them. Basically the end result was yes, I will keep reading them, if they become so dark that I’m uncomfortable I will stop, and a fictional story will not affect my faith. They FINALLY backed off after that.

As far as the movies went, never watched after the third one. I don’t remember the details entirely- I believe they changed something about how Harry got his broom & I think the parents’ patronus mystery was changed? Either way, I REALLY didn’t care after that. I wasn’t a fan of the movies’ asthetic, anyway.

So now, nearly 20 years later, everyone around me is talking about the creator being all hateful and I am both laughing at the irony and super confused. Like, JK, dear, the Christian community hates you. I have a hard time believing they’re gonna accept your books. What are you doing? Let people be themselves and your books collect value cuz DAMN I would like to have some compensation as my life has not known peace since I opened The Prisoner of Azkaban as a tween and thought it was neat.

#harry potter #my post #I did recently find a book called The Thirteenth Child #it has an HP feel but is set in the old west #it was a fun read!