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death-himself · 3 months

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alright episode 7 thoughts, i don't know how to feel about this episode because it had both my favorite changes so far and my least favorite

procrustes' outfit was fucking VILE, it was godawful but so perfect, and honestly good casting too I think

I feel mean saying this, but does crusty's actor naturally look like that or was it makeup, because his wrinkles seem at least a bit exaggerated or maybe I'm just not used to old people looking old on tv

ok the waterbed looked cool, but I'm so mad they didn't kill him. It's probably another way to get around disney censorship but come on live a little

also the entrance to the underworld being in his mattress shop?? are you fucking serious

this is the first change that I've actually hated, like what the fuck

the entrance being in a record shop is funny and it makes sense because records/vinyl are sort of a dying fad, what's the reasoning behind the entrance being in a mattress shop???

I didn't really have many expectations for the crusty scene because it's not much of a thing in the books, but damn did that whole part annoy me

annabeth giving grover the stress ball was funny and made sense though, considering she couldn't have gotten it from waterland, and honestly her getting it from there doesn't really make sense in the first place

more about the earlier flashback, I have some thoughts about sally's characterization but I'll save it for later in this analysis

I get that all the dead lined up outside the wall makes more sense mythologically, but I'm too in love with the thought of having to sit in a record shop turned waiting room for eternity, it's just too funny to me

we didn't get charon's characterization :( I love charon in the books, I'm sad about that, justice for charon

the way cerberus just fuckin NOMMED grover, I don't think percy and annabeth freaked out enough about that, because I was freaking the fuck out

also I loved how they mentioned annabeth's dog as a kid, like that's how they should've been doing more of the exposition in previous episodes

having it be more of a background thing made it feel like a thing for the characters between the characters, instead of for the audience's sake

"it's in the dog" THAT HAD ME CACKLING he said it so dramatically with the dramatic music but it sounds so stupid I was dying repeating it to myself for so long

I LOVE what they did with the fields of asphodel, it was so creepy, and the implication that all the trees used to be people, it's so much creepier than just a bunch of people wandering around

I feel like it's a concept that's been done before somewhere, but I don't care, it's a cool concept

and then annabeth being rooted down by her regret, I feel like there should've been some beats between that and her explanation of the roots, but half hour episode, I've gotten used to the bad pacing by this point

also I'm assuming the regret has to do with running away from home? since her dad and their dog were mentioned and that's a whole thing in the book

maybe because athena's shown that she doesn't give a shit about annabeth, annabeth wants to give it another try with her dad? idk I'm just trying to think of what works logically tv series-wise

I didn't expect her using the pearl there, but honestly I think it works just fine, i have no complaints about that

percy and grover's interaction when they saw the bolt was so funny

and ok, I know they were gonna save percy's mom no matter what, but things have changed now that the solstice has passed. Zeus is already gathering an army so why aren't they rushing??

i think how they could've fixed that is have grover take the bag to bring it back to zeus, then have percy go on his own to save his mom. then maybe when he comes back to the beach ares is already there and attacking grover and annabeth or something

grover didn't do anything when talking to hades so I just think that could've worked better

OK NOW ABOUT THE FLASHBACK I...don't like how they handled sally being a mom

yes, being a mom is tough and I like that they're showing that, but when your kid asks you "why are you trying to get rid of me" you don't fuckin kiss them and walk away! that causes issues!!

I know that she didn't want to cry in front of him, I understand why she was hurt by that, but you don't just leave after your kid asks that! especially with how young percy was, she needed to reassure him that she's not trying to get rid of him

am I not seeing something here?? is that just my own trauma ringing through or something?? that was such a horrible move like oh my god, I was waiting the whole episode after that for her to go back and apologize or explain or SOMETHING, but we didn't get that

now I understand that line from an earlier episode about loving each other so much when you can only ever hurt each other, but damn

also final thought about sally, the woman playing her has a gorgeous side profile, I'm gonna draw it someday

anyway, hades's palace looks nothing like how I imagined it, I don't hate it, I just prefer my version way more mostly because I like Nico being like an actual prince in there

I hated Hades's new characterization for the first like 5 minutes, then I realized that he acts kinda like a confident Nico and that's funny

also I feel like this characterization makes him stand out more, it's very different from any other interpretation of Hades in media

at the same time it reminded me a bit of Hades in class of the titans, and that interpretation pisses me off to no end so...

but yeah, I still prefer book!Hades, but tv show!Hades is interesting so I like him

it really feels like the production crew figured out how to 3D print statues and Rick was like "that's cool, let's use statues whenever possible," there are so many damn statues in this show lol

"it's all candy canes and rainbows down here, I'm doing just fine" with the gloomy-ass wide shot and thunder in the distance, that's funny

with hades seeming to be the only one of the gods who's actively recognized how toxic the godly family is, it makes me curious how they'll handle his relationship with Nico if we ever make it to seasons 3 or 4

because his relationship with Nico is one of the better ones among godly parents, but it's not really the best in terms of parents, so I think they'd end up having to change a few things

the way sally summoned poseidon felt like a reversal of giving an offering at camp. she gave the fire to the food instead of the food to the fire. there's a meaning behind that, but I don't know how to articulate it

I was so certain that was poseidon walking up to percy, and then it turned out to be annabeth and I felt so dumb lol

but that means poseidon might be making an appearance to help percy in the fight against ares! right, maybe? i think it'd be cool

with how little percy's actually fought in the tv show, and with the exclusion of his training at camp, him beating ares without A LOT of help isn't gonna be satisfying, so we'll see

that little teaser with percy and luke going into the forest under the fireworks has me so excited

i feel like a lot of people have already said this, but I think all of the actual issues with the show are disney's fault. the censorship is just a small part of that, but the amount of episodes and their length was probably decided by disney, and that's really hurting the show.

yes, i have issues with the writing and the direction rick's taken with the series. but I definitely wouldn't have as many issues if disney allowed them more time each episode to expand on what they're going with. i saw someone say that an 8 episode series used to be called a miniseries and honestly, a miniseries isn't enough for an entire book to make it feel complete

anyway, with that all out of the way, I'm still enjoying the series, I had much fewer complaints about this episode than last episode, and honestly, all of my real complaints from this episode aren't gonna play a part in later seasons if we get them, so I'm alright with that

#pjo #percy jackson #pjo disney+#pjo tv show #pjo spoilers #percy jackson spoilers #pjo disney+ spoilers #pjo tv show spoilers #was a little late to this one bc I straight up forgot it was tuesday #someone please tell me they agree with my thoughts on sally #it feels wrong to say that i don't like something sally did

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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Occassionally I come up with a story I really want to do where I just go "crap... I'mma need advice on this one..." and this one involves goblins. I wanted to write an episodic comic that picked on fantasy tropes a bit about an exasperated Goblin girl who just wants to do her "mundane minimum wage job of the week" but Goblins being the canon fodder level 1 mooks of the fantasy genre she keeps getting roped into "The fantasy bullshit quest of the week" usually due to some reward or prize that is too good to pass up to stay at her day job, usually just barely missing out on their reward before going on to the next episode with a new town, job, quest, and reward, while having left some positive impact in her wake that will eventually positively help her personally in the finale.

As much as it was completely unintentional, Goblins have their antisemitic roots and I have been considering changing her to something else that can translate as "Level 1 Fantasy Mook" for the story such as a rat girl or a kobold or something, the story is still a comedy about a member of a super marginalized group of non human humanoids being bribed with rewards/riches and still feels very unavoidably and problematically 'Jewish coded'.

I normally am not too worried about adding POC characters into stories I write because them being poc is not usually part of the plot and I am also prepared that I am going to mess up here and there and completely welcome people calling me out on unintentional microaggressions so I can improve in the future, but for stories like this one I think I might need some advice considering the roots in Jewish stereotyping seems to be this ideas grandpa and is intrinsic to the plot... or if this is something that just can't be done inoffensively and should just be shelved...

Non-human creature tempted by monetary reward

Can she be a little creature that isn’t ugly?

Sorry to put it so baldly, but for me a big part of why I find the goblin/dwarf etc. stuff disturbing and hurtful is that it often plays on imagery in which phenotypic features associated with us, like hooked noses, are exaggerated to the point of looking non-human. After all, what is the logical purpose of the prosthetic nose on the traditional Halloween witch costume?

So that would fix part of it -- if she’s a fairy instead of a goblin, since fairies are usually portrayed as attractive. Or if she’s something that has no connotations like a cat girl or an anthropomorphized rabbit in a dress.

I also think you might already be okay because while “being bribed with riches” is money/greed-adjacent, it sounds like she’s not actually being given access to any of those riches for most of the plot. Subsistence-level poverty and working for minimum wage would make anyone want more, no matter what their cultural background was, so I think reader sympathy will be with her and her genuine need rather than it coming across like she’s naturally motivated by money for its own sake.

But honestly I think this would be adorable with a hardworking little rabbit girl. And then you extra don’t have to worry about accidentally having coded her Jewish; rabbits are super not kosher anyway.

--Shira I love this story conceptually, but you are correct to point out possible issues. Goblins are often Jewish-coded, and even your possible replacements could easily pose their own challenges: propaganda images of us often featured rats, and there is an entire conspiracy theory about us being lizards that makes kobolds, lizard folk, dragonborns etc. a possible problem. Like Shira I feel like your character is in a financial position that will be very relatable to many readers, and won't seem like an extension of any sort of greedy stereotypes.

For me, I feel that if your character doesn't have additional Jewish coding, and isn't falling into antisemitic tropes, it's fine to write a story about a goblin who is roped into adventures, and who makes money doing it that they can't make in their low-paying day-job. I'll be honest, I like goblins. I like kobolds, and gnolls, and orcs. I definitely want to be friends with an owlbear, and have tea with a hag, so I'm hesitant to advise people outside the community to avoid stories with goblins altogether. I encourage you to either change the character to something that is less likely to be Jewish-coded like Shira suggested, or keep your character a goblin, and put a bit of work into showing her do specifically not-Jewish things, while avoiding antisemitic tropes in her characterization and plot.

Whatever you decide, I will be thinking about hanging out with her.

--Dierdra

#asks #kichimiangra #jewish #Jewish stereotypes #Jewish coding #goblins #fantasy #Greedy Jew

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naivesilver · 3 years

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top 5 adaptations of the Fairy from Pinocchio? (or maybe top 5 best AND 5 worst?)

I spent so long staring at this and wondering if I even KNEW five good Fairies, but it turns out I do, albeit mostly for asinine reasons. Anyway AHFAKKJKFHAHJKJA thank you <3

Ask me my top 5 anything

Obviously under the cut because I couldn't resist and did BOTH

The salt AKA the worst of the worst first:

1) Piccolino No Bouken

Surprised? I suppose most would have expected me to put the Disney Fairy first, and I did, too, for a while, but as I was sitting in my car pondering this ranking I realized I was SEETHING with rage about this one, so I had to rearrange things a bit. This, guys, is where my Fairy hate begins - not the book, not the Mouse's interference. This woman.

I hate her. I hate her SO MUCH, for all that I love this adaptation more than most things in the world, and that the choices made about her characterization were a huge inspiration for me. Not only does she not send Pinocchio to school, instead teaching him on her own, she is the only one to actively keep Pinocchio from his father - indeed, she makes the choice for them, saying to Geppetto's face that it would be best for the boy to be taught something before he goes back home. Who the hell are you to make this call, uh? You have known him for a day at most! You left him hanging from a fucking tree all night! I wouldn't trust you with a bloody lapdog, nevermind a child!

Also she lets Pinocchio believe she's dead UNTIL THE VERY END. She turns into a bird while he cries at her tomb. Are we fucking serious now? Leave him alone.

(Yes, this is elementary school me howling for revenge. I've been mad about this longer than reason would let me. Sue me.)

2) Disney's Pinocchio

Bane of my existence. I don't know if anyone remembers that pic of me at the Pinocchio theme park I posted a while ago, but basically in that moment they were putting up a little show to tell children a little bit of the OG story, and they asked the audience if they knew what color the Fairy's hair was - a few said blonde, and I, being on stage next to her, distinctly heard her mutter "dammit, Disney". I've been living with that mantra since then.

Nobody asked you to make that puppet sentient, ma'am. He doesn't owe you shit. Aside from that, just like Jiminy Cricket, she ruined her character in a good two thirds of future adaptation. And while we're speaking of Jiminy, WHY did she think it would be a good idea to entrust a little boy to a slime ball such as him? He's too horny to have an ounce of sense. Conscience, my ass.

Basically...begone, asshole.

3) Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night

This film is so horrible, the Fairy had no chance to be decent at all. A cheap copy of the Disney one, with the addendum that she turns MULTIPLE toys into living beings while holding them responsible for whatever they do after. Basically Victor Frankenstein, but make it a poorly dressed woman from a direct-to-TV movie that shouldn't have existed at all.

-100/10, at least you're pretty, but by God, SHUT UP.

4) Once Upon a Time

Honest to God if she doesn't keep her filthy hands off my faves she's gonna get a slap across the face so strong her Wish Realm self ought to feel it sting. I am not exaggerating.

Seven seasons in, she hasn't done ANYTHING useful that I can remember. She's not even good at her own fucking job! Not only that, she's traumatized and guilt-tripped a good chunk of the population of Storybrooke, including first and foremost my beloved son August. The Pavlovian reaction I had every time she appeared on screen can't be described in coherent words, only in eagle screeches.

She's wrong. On principle, she's wrong. Let's move on.

5) Luigi Comencini's Le Avventure di Pinocchio

Doesn't rank higher only because she's played by Gina Lollobrigida (my beloved). She's book accurate, which means she'd be annoying as fuck as it is, but what little they added only makes her worse.

She has the gall to tell Pinocchio she'd like to see him happier. Like, apart from the fact that the ghost of his father's deceased wife isn't exactly the most reassuring person to hear it from...Said father has been swallowed by a giant fish. You told that boy he's only going to see his father if he studies hard. You keep turning him into a puppet anytime he misbehaves. What did you expect, that he would do the Macarena every time he entered your house? I am honestly too shocked to say any more. What the fuck.

Okay, I've been enraged enough for a single night. Let's move onto brighter shores!

1) Enzo D'Alò's Pinocchio

Enzo D'Alò knows what the fuck is UP!!! The only one with the courage to let the Fairy be a weird little girl - not only for a short time, but up until the end of the movie! That takes guts! Balls of steel!

I've said before that this movie has nothing memorable to it, and it's true, but also...Pinocchio wanted a sister so bad, and the movie gave him one. And they even explained the plot hole of the medallion with Pinocchio's face in it! That's twice as good as the fact that they cut out the most awful parts of her story, which is already delightful.

Thank you, Mr D'Alò. You have my trust until the end of days.

2) The Adventures of Buratino

Speaking of weird girls, this one is officially balls to the walls enough to gain my respect. She's bothersome to Pinocchio, but she's bothersome to everyone and everything, so I'll let it pass. Her role is exclusively to appear out of nowhere and do batshit insane stuff for no good reason at all. A star.

Plus, other than having an handwashing obsession that I've felt very keenly in the past year and a half, she also has a boyfriend - her and Pierrot are the original girlboss and malewife, I'm not accepting any criticism on the matter.

(Fun fact: when I was a young kid I once dreamt that the Piccolino No Bouken Fairy was dating a big, buff and blonde farmhand. He wooed her by gifting Pinocchio a dog. Apparently I've always been very interested in Fairies getting a love life and staying the fuck away from my specialest little boy.)

3) Pinocchio miniseries

"Serena, but you said you were disappointed in this adaptation so many times!" True. But consider: I am also very, very queer, and Violante Placido being motherly and wearing wispy dresses stirred SOMETHING in 11yo me that I can't very well ignore.

In hindsight, she and the Cricket probably had something going on behind the scenes, which is a shame. Miss Fairy, I swear, you could do better than Luciana Littizzetto in an ill-fitting green suit. She's gonna break your heart and lose your puppet charge in a crowd of little idiots. Do me instead.

4) Pinocchio Vampire Slayer

This woman kills monsters - and she's damn good at it! Honestly, so badass, and such a good mother figure too, even in trying times. I don't want to spoil the comic much to those who haven't read it, but she and Cherry are the highlight of the first volume and I am very fond of them. A+.

5) Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio

This one's book accurate, too, but Garrone did something with her that almost burst in tears in a crowded theater. She's awful, and irritating, but she's...she's so human, too. I can't rage against a Fairy that's so impossibly human even during the smallest of scenes. It breaks me over and over again.

Look at her SMILING, for pity's sake, am I supposed to think there's some warmth in the dead lady? Fuck you, Matteo, what did you do to me? I am an honored Fairy hater. You're going to ruin my reputation if you keep this up.

#ask meme #bewilderemoth #pinocchio #the tag needed some more bullshit from yours truly didn't it

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ganymedesclock · 4 years

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So... What do you think about revisiting Danny phantom in general? Revisiting the fandom I've noticed a lot of fanfic that have Danny's parents finding out his deal rather violently, or generally having more violence/angst than the original show..

I’m assuming you’re sending me this ask because of my recent burst of Danny Phantom art, so, it’s probably not a surprise to say I’m doing a certain amount of revisiting myself, and certainly not about to shame anyone else for it. It was a very dear cartoon to me in many ways and left some enduring hallmarks on my own writing, and I can absolutely understand people feeling the same way.

That said, as someone who’s been in this fandom for a while, albeit quietly- there certainly is a thread of macabre interest in fandom spaces, one I don’t always know that I agree with, especially when it comes to the Fentons.

My personal verdict on the Fenton parents specifically is I think they are not handled fairly by canon. This is a problem that Danny Phantom as a show shares with Fairly Odd Parents, though I would argue the Turner parents in FOP are quite a bit worse at this.

Roughly, I think how the Fenton parents are canonically depicted suffers from a phenomenon that affects many parts of the show: DP, as a series, has a bit of a sense of confused priorities between comedy and drama, and as a result, what’s 'real’ in-universe and what’s “just supposed to be a joke”. The kind of humor that DP tends to spring for is exaggerated or shocking behavior- it also tends to be a humor that hinges on the idea that other people are generally inconvenient to the main character. So humor-characterization is inconsistent here- Jack is negligent until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as overbearing (see: Girl’s Night Out and other cases he desperately wants to bond with Danny) he’s a recluse only loved by his wife until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as having an active social life (Masters Of All Time and that he and Maddie are going to a themed party so they’re dressed ‘weirdly’ in public)

A big victim of this is Jack’s sense that ghosts aren’t people and his desire to dissect them. Because here is the thing: it’s all talk, in the worst way. It hinges on the idea Jack- someone who knows enough of what he’s doing that along with Maddie and, in the past, Vlad- ripped two different holes in reality hard enough to permanently alter someone’s relation to undeath- has never seen a ghost before the series as he says in Mystery Meat.

The series has a big problem where it hinges on the Fentons’ inventions and expertise but also wants to treat them like idiots constantly. And if you notice how much I’m talking exclusively about Jack- that’s part of the problem. Maddie, in many ways, outside of episodes that throw her a bone, despite constantly being told by people she’s too good for Jack, is really treated as an extension of Jack. Masters Of All Time even suggests that her choosing Jack in the first place was just a path of least resistance between her two college friends, and she’d have married whichever one stuck around.

The Fentons are not respected as experts, so Jack is given his ignorant line about dissecting a ghost. The Fentons need to remain exaggerated, ridiculous, an inconvenience to Danny- so they threaten his alter ego and point guns at him, but this is funny and not serious and not a reason to be worried about them as parents, because they are not on Danny’s level. Nobody is ever on Danny’s level. There is literally an episode called The Ultimate Enemy. The antagonist is an evil future Danny. The only person who could ever be Danny’s ultimate nemesis is Danny himself.

And when the series stops milking the Fentons for jokes about how they’re so stupid and how Jack is an idiot and Maddie married that idiot but even she doesn’t respect him even though she loves him and dutifully follows him everywhere and god how can these people care about ghosts they’re so ignorant and out of their league-

-then it kinda shuffles its feet awkwardly and goes, yeah. the Fentons love each other, and love their kids.

Yeah, Jack has framed photographs of Maddie, Jazz, and Danny on his personal workstation.

Yeah, in Mystery Meat Jack was seriously debating walking away from his lifework because it upset one of his kids.

Yeah, every time in canon the Fentons find out Danny’s secret they’re immediately all in supporting him.

Yeah, even not knowing it’s Danny, Jack has an amiable conversation with him in Million Dollar Ghost and the ghost containment units designed by the Fentons get some jokes about that they’re a little cramped but they aren’t horrifying prisons of inhumanity- and as soon as Danny Phantom the ghost boy has a good point, Jack lets him go on purpose.

Yeah, Jack is a competent ghost hunter who can take on Skulker and win as well as beat down the giant lake monster Skulker brought with him in Girls’ Night Out and would do this in a heartbeat, no jokes and no sidetracks, because that monster just chewed on his baby boy and nobody does that to his baby boy.

Yeah, Maternal Instinct is an entire episode of Maddie throwing hands with (or deceiving and manipulating) literally anything she thinks was responsible for getting Danny in this dangerous situation.

...And then the series says “but that’s not funny! Here, have jokes about the Fenton Stockades, that exist and have spikes and Jack wants to put his kids in them for time out, when the spikes apparently don’t hurt given Jack is not injured for being put in there. Here, have a joke about Jack attacking Jazz with a vacuum cleaner because he gets hellbent on the idea she’s possessed for no good reason. Here, have an uncomfortable joke about how badly Jack Fenton wants to vivisect a ghost while it screams. Funny funny funny. Why- why are you flinching?”

It basically creates a comedic situation where the show is constantly winding up like it’s gonna punch you- with the idea that the Fentons are bad parents and this has consequences for Danny and Jazz personally- and then laughs in your face if you flinch. It’ll never actually punch you- but it will sure keep swinging its hand really close to your face and laughing at your reactions.

This is, I’m just gonna say- one of the worst elements of the series, this weird relationship it has with “hahaha are we depicting an abusive family or not? ;)” where its actual point is that Jack Fenton is a person who should be shamed for being overzealous, for caring about this niche field, because nobody cares about ghosts! (unless the entire premise of the show does) Nobody wants to think about ghost science! That’s LAME! (unless Vlad does it)

So I think ultimately this creates a polarizing experience in the fandom. What part of this information do you take?

Do you take, say, my personal approach, which is:

“Hey, so it’s pretty clear and consistent that the Fentons love their kids and wouldn’t hurt them. The Fentons are nice people. They can be obsessive or headstrong but there’s nuanced and salient ways to examine this in the basic framework that they care, both about their family specifically, and in general- and while I think they can have flaws or conflicts with their kids, and with ambient ghosts in the world, I really don’t think they’re in danger of torturing a sapient entity in their basement and it frustrates and annoys me that canon ‘makes a joke’ of them doing these things because it thinks they’re so incompetent that these things are not really malicious actions, when- whether or not you successfully shoot them, it takes a certain kind of person to point a weapon you know is dangerous at something that looks, and talks, like a fourteen-year-old, especially when you’re a parent who has probably at least once in your life worried about something happening to your kids, and the ghost of a teenager means something happened to someone’s kid, in a general sense.

So my end conclusion on the Fentons is I think they are being depicted in a kind of metatextual bad faith, that they are not cruel or malicious people, and in my personal take or understanding on the series, I’d massively dial down those elements, and if any remain, take them seriously as problems they have in their relationships with other people.”

Or do you take an approach more rooted in,

“If the Fentons are shown to be negligent parents they are negligent parents, I’m going to examine and depict them as that, and I find this very hard to forgive, so it’s going to have real and nasty consequences.”

Both are basically valid. The place where I tend to get a little uncomfortable is twofold:

First, I think sometimes people just really want some fictional tragedy to either create or consume, and to that end, you aren’t going to get much juicy drama out of the Fentons being reasonable people. This isn’t evil or unforgivable, but for me, it’s definitely my least favorite fannish content to create or consume. I’m no fan of angst for angst’s sake, and I feel like there’s enough misery and heartbreak in the world that I’m not interested in wallowing in it unless it’s got something interesting to say.

Second- and this is a point I’m gonna be saltier: A lot of abusive Fenton fics that refuse to forgive them for the poorer-taste jokes the series makes, simultaneously give Vlad a blank check, when he has done targetedly malicious things to Danny.

Now- do I also have a more sympathetic read on Vlad, and feel like canon also gives him a bad rap? Yeah! But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “I can’t forgive the Fentons for stuff that was tagged onto them because canon thought it was funny, but I’m gonna editorialize Vlad’s depiction to lionize him as the ideal parent figure for Danny to run into the arms of.”

And the main reason I get so worked up in this, is I feel like Jack in particular (when Maddie is characterized as subordinate to Jack, following his cues, etc., and that’s its own demon) is... characterized as kind of a mocking caricature of traits that I personally recognize as an autistic and ADHD person.

Because the reality is? In many practical ways, I am Jack Fenton.

I like a bunch of weird stuff people find unacceptable or gross, like bugs

I’m hyperlexic (that means I talk, a lot)

Scatterbrained, forget words or where I left something or, sometimes, to do something important

Passionate and excitable including and especially in situations where it’s not normal, or expected, to have this much energy

I absolutely can forget birthdays, even for people I love dearly that mean the world to me! It’s horrible! There’s almost nothing I can do about it! My brain refuses to hold onto this information reliably and no amount of caring fixes it.

And being this way, living like this? My worst nightmare has always been that people think I either don’t care or that I’m just too much of a stupid, flippant buffoon to get right.

The thing about Jack is he’s “a person like me” and he’s “a person like me” who was designed to be a joke. We’re clearly expected to view him as untrustworthy, stupid, just like a big dumb dog of a man who barks in the wrong directions, who sometimes, when it counts, fetches a stick like he’s supposed to. Good job, Lassie. You got little Timmy out of the well.

And I am going to say with certainty and confidence that feeling like this is how people see me is the most unbelievably crushing feeling I have ever experienced in my life. That my excitement and passion means I’m unprofessional, stupid, don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s nearly painful for me, as an adult, to watch Danny Phantom because the show can never get off Jack’s case. And the few times it does, he hauls overtime arduously to make a difference, to help, to build something that will protect others, to put his own life on the line to stop hostile ghosts.

And immediately, then he goes back to being stupid stupid dog man. ha ha. why does his wife love him? no wonder his kids don’t ever want to be seen with him. no wonder his best friend is trying to kill him and he doesn’t even know, the big idiot.

(never mind that we see a scenario where he does know. and admits he would’ve forgiven Vlad anyway. but he can’t forgive Vlad hurting Danny.)

So to rein in this wild tangent: I’m not saying all must love Jack Fenton and despair. I’m not even telling people to hide their angst. If I have a sincere request, it’s this:

If you’re inclined to thinking of Vlad as a cool, troubled, complex person (as I do!) and are haunted by the implications of The Ultimate Enemy specifically for Vlad, that when Danny lost everyone else in his life that Vlad really genuinely tried to help, and was not gloating and happy and victorious to have Danny as his protege, and when that went badly, he was haunted to the end of his days by not having been able to help-

-but immediately turn around and think Jack is just a rotten awful person who’d absolutely hurt his own kid in spite of canon to the contrary (when there’s just as much, if not more, canon of Vlad being willfully hostile)

It might be good to examine why you’re feeling this way, and if this might not come down to the fact that even when canon has people call Vlad a desperately lonely fruit loop, it has a lot more respect for him than it does for Jack, and this isn’t because it’s actually taking a stance against any of the qualities it gave Jack that someone might find disagreeable- it’s because Jack’s just “a big old fat idiot nobody likes, right?”

and that’s... not something comfy to buy into.

#Danny Phantom #readmore #long post #I have a lot of feelings about the fenton parents #and about how generally cartoons like to normalize child abuse in the context of jokes #and this creates a very upsetting similarity between parents who are otherwise characterized as good and reliable #but given these jokes anyway #and parents who genuinely seem really nasty #but it's tied up in a bow with 'it's Just A Joke'#Anonymous

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mc-critical · 3 years

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Asking because I’ve seen you say it on here: What is it that you disliked about Mahifiruze and Aysë as characters (writing or otherwise?)

It's not a problem of sympathy alone, because while these characters have quite a few offputting qualities and have certainly done some heinous deeds, it would be unfair to judge them only by that. There are way worse people in the franchise, which turn me off way more, after all. (*cough* MCK Turhan *cough*) Sympathy-wise, I'm overally ambivalent towards both Ayşe and Mahfiruze and if we only take that into account, I can take or leave them. It's their writing, however, where things take a different turn. Almost everything went wrong there.

The critical problem I find with both of the characters is that they're engrained in one and the same character archetype the writers refuse to get them out of. That brings harm not only to their characterization and the way they're built up, but also to the sympathy we're supposed to feel for them, because, more often than not, it didn't have a ground to stand on. It's true that archetypes often risk to make a character bland and one-dimensional, but the way they went with it is strange and unfortunate, because this all could've been averted quickly.

Magnificent Century's character core is mostly built on archetypes of a soapy drama and Magnificent Century: Kösem seemed to be following that trend. I understand that choice, in a way, because well, it could've just been easier for them, they could've thought they would win their former MC audience once again, playing it "familiar" and "safe". Thing is, the whole franchise overally does pretty well with archetypes: they either subvert them, deconstruct them or break them entirely later, either (in the case of MCK where we saw many previously established MC archetypes) use them with some core conceptual changes and a different theme in mind, which, as far as writing goes, worked very well with many characters. (see: Dervish - Ibrahim; Dilruba - Mihrimah; Atike - Mihrimah; Davud - Rustem, etc.) The thing is though, the writers didn't give Ayşe and Mahfiruze any of that and their archetypes felt like they only were in the beggining line, going almost nowhere beyond that and making the characters feel very often as cardboard cutouts as a result. They're going with archetypes, but they somehow give only a single fraction of these archetypes to figures that play a relatively big role in the story.

Comparisons to other usages of the character archetype of Mahfiruze and Ayşe's help even less, because everything now not only turned out to be a bad concept, but and a shaky, underdeveloped attempt at something done way better before. Mahfiruze and Ayşe both fit in Mahidevran's early season 1 archetype - the rejected, jealous woman, previously valued and loved by the Sultan, which loses everything quickly, planning and ready to do anything to take the rival down, including petty sneers, irrational decisions and will for murder. But even at its worst, Mahidevran's characterization was balanced overall, having moments where we could sympathize or condemn her respectively and had character fleshing out come to the surface as often as the reducement to this one sole archetype, which was lacking severely in Ayşe and Mahfiruze. I'll talk about the similarities they share with Mahidevran only briefly when I analyze them, because I'm admittedly very biased when it comes to this (especially with the double standarts I encounter with the YT comments, where the same people judge Mahidevran and Ayşe by the exact same metric and yet, they love one and can trash the other all day, eh.) and I don't want that to take over the topic at hand so much.

Mahfiruze has the problems I listed above to a much lesser extent than Ayşe, but that doesn't mean they're not present at all. She has a very familiar character role and personality - she is a mother to the eldest heir of the throne and gives jabs and insults to her rival. And.. that's all there is. It's undeniable than Dilara Aksuek's Mahfiruze definetly had a tough act to follow, since the former Mahfiruz screamed potential and promise the latter character was expected to fulfill, but they did the barest possible minimum. (and I don't think Dilara's a bad actress by any means: she acted amazingly in the show Istambullu Gelin as Ipek, an arguably similar and much better written character.) It definitely felt as more of a regression than a progression, because Mahfiruze had no fleshing out or development at all. Her meanness to Kösem seemed central to her character, she barely had any interactions with the rest of the cast and what is worse, used her as a plot device for a plot-line with Ahmet's enemies and then when her role was fulfilled, they.. killed her off just like that without any warning or elaboration. She was the very definition of a one-dimensional obstacle to Kösem that seemed to exist only for the sake to be an obstacle to Kösem. It was as if she didn't matter. And when she did, it was only as a narrative instrument to stir the conflict between Kösem and Osman (which I find very interesting, but I feel it would've been way more impactful if Mahfiruze wasn't only... this.) It was as if the writers ran out of stuff to do with her, which is a very lazy copout for me, because she could've had interesting storylines, if only they just wished to "shake up" the traits of her archetype for a bit.

Ayşe's character is where this repetitive problem shines through the brightest. We can argue that the love triangle plot and Farya's Mary Sue stance ruined it all for her from the get go, but for me, the foundation of her character is what truly did. Ayşe wasn't used simply as a plot device as much, she wasn't even underutilized at all, she was put into an archetype which undermines how different she is as a character in practice and the greatly dissimilar circumstances she's under. They tried to fit Mahidevran's S01 archetype in an environment it would never do in the first place. It not only becomes a stagnant, more over exaggerated repetition of a concept and forces unnecessary drama to prop another character up, it way too often puts a sole angle of Ayşe's character into focus, making Farya the center of her writing. Not to mention that for long, we didn't have a cohesive reason to root for her, her early love for Murat being the thing that was the least fleshed out about her and could make her too obsessive and yandere at times. Her interactions are criminally underdeveloped, as well, and unlike Mahfiruze, that could honestly be cut shorter except for Osman, they were something Ayşe desperately needed. We got only hints of her relationship with Kösem, Silahtar and Gevherhan and that was far from enough. Most of her scenes were either with her maid or Farya. Her alliances with Gülbahar and Sinan respectively were... fine interarion-wise, to be honest, but writing-wise, they only enforced the fairly consistent endorsement of the soapy aspect of her character beyond any measure.

Now, I can't doubt the development in her later episodes, where the writing admittedly improved. I'll always love her scene before the death of Gevherhan and her message to Murat, because that's the Ayşe I wish I saw more often. The self-awareness she gained of how Murat screwed her over was amazing and something I wish happened more gradually and over the span of more episodes. But it was all somehow "too little, too late" for me and it didn't completely save her messy writing. And it's a crime, because Ayşe played a much bigger role than Mahfiruze in the narrative, she was basically a main character and she got robbed of a good, organic fleshing out and arc.

Ayşe was the most egregious example of the severe flawed writing of repetitive archetypes and catch me forever mad about it, because she could've been much more. It's a mistake that had no business being there at all. And it was anyway.

#magnificent century #magnificent century kosem #magnificent century kösem #ayse sultan #mahfiruze sultan #ask #stuffandthangs

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nadiaportia · 3 years

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1, 29, 37 - vesuvian-disaster

Thank you SO much! I will make a section for each for the sake of clarity.

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective?

37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?

Deirdra

1. Deirdra Margalit Ayara. Deirdra because at the very beginning I envisioned them as Irish, but as they were also inspired by the Catalan republicans that fought in the Spanish Civil War, I swapped the E for the A. Margalit is a Jewish last name and their father is Jewish while Araya is of Catalan origin and the last name of their mother. Deirdr(a/e) also means ‘wanderer’ which is a fitting choice for someone who wandered with their fellow partisans through their homeland and ended up forced to leave it for good when their side lost the battle.

29. They do tease people if the fear is relatively minor and in that case either forget about it or jokingly bring it up if it comes up and it’s taken lightly. If it’s something more severe, they will be very overprotective should someone else be insensitive.

37. Their father was a teacher and taught them to read, they’re a journalist as well so yes, Deirdra loves to read whatever they can get their hands on. They are a rather slow reader despite that but take their time with enjoying a good book, as long as they’re not very long or too heavy material.

Sayelle

1. Sayelle bint Zahir. The name Sayelle actually belonged to a secondary character of a German fantasy novel I read some years ago but it stuck so much with me that I ended up using it for her, and while a woman named Sayelle was always in my drafts for a love interest to Nadia, her characterization changed fundamentally. Bint is similar to ibn or ben and means “daughter of ___” in Arabic, while “zahir” is a romanization of “magician” - all children raised in the Bizateni temples that become fully-fledged magicians are given the possibility to reclaim the name.

29. Whatever your fear is, she’d most likely not make fun of you ever should she find out about it, depending on what it is, she might even help you get over it. Whatever it is, you must’ve confided in her enough to tell her, and she won’t betray your trust so that your secret is safe with her.

37. If Sayelle’s something then she’s an ambitious nerd, and she has probably read more papers or academic volumes than most people could dream of. She does have a soft spot for poetry, but there’s nothing better than to pick up a scientific journal and read through it at terrifying speed.

Ximena

1. Ximena María Magdalena de Rubalcaba y Saavedra. I’ll be honest and admit that part of all the Rubalcabas names is to give them names that sound preppy and snobby enough that it could be a real aristocrats’ name back in the old day. The in-universe reasoning for all three sisters having a middle name that starts with ‘María’ is that their mother had a similar name to them, María de la Soledad, commonly called Marisol. Ximena is a Basque name and means ‘she who heard’, and since she is the one with the most magical affinity who sees a vision that prompts her to essentially betray her family and has an almost uncanny ability to read people and their emotions, she is definitely someone who hears. The last name is based on Spanish naming conventions as Calpacia is inspired by Spain and parts of Latin America, except that the nobility of its capital Cartagenth usually put the family name of the more influential/powerful parent in the first spot while the “lesser” parent’s first last name gets the second. So in this case it’s for the daughter of Marisol of the Rubalcaba noble family (with the nobiliary particle De) and Valentín of the Saavedra merchant family (very influential and well-off commoners).

29. Depending on how close you are, she will make it clear she’s aware of it, and using it against you is out of the question for her from a moral standpoint. If she doesn’t like you and you’re a legitimate threat... well, you’ll know, and she won’t pull her punches.

37. Reading is good, she’s neither very quick nor very fast at it but she does find poetry more accessible for her personally. A very big penchant for well-written epics though, she does love to be sucked into a world and trapped in there, and also doesn’t shy away from the classics, perhaps coming across as a bit pretentious when it comes to who reads what.

Cibela

1. Cibela María Teresa de Rubalcaba y Saavedra. Cibela (the C is pronounced like an S) is derived from the name of the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele, and also is the eldest of three sisters by roughly half a decade (Heloisa) and a full one (Ximena), as well as the only one by the time when the story begins who has an actual child. Also a name that was around ever since I first thought of the character back in a completely different fandom, although in that version Cibela was dead long before the story even began.

29. She will keep it in mind but not bother you with it at all. Teasing someone with their fears is a low-hanging fruit and Cibela most likely and without exaggeration doesn’t give a shit, and you will probably have forgotten about having told her at all -- until the day comes where it’s used against you if you turn out to be moving against her, and she will know just to fuck you over.

37. She is well-read due to being of very high standing in the Calpacian nobility but she has no real passion for literature. She does have her favourite novels and poems but it’s not something that will make her giddy or cause overt excitement. She is a much bigger fan of music, being a trained pianist and all.

Heloisa

1. Heloisa María Dolores de Rubalcaba y Saavedra. Heloisa (the H is silent) is the German variant of Héloise and means “famed warrior”, which is basically what a part of Heloisa wishes she were due to having literally no fighting skills whatsoever unlike Cibela and her aunt Esmé, both famed warriors and generals, and Ximena, who still has an advantage due to her magic, which leaves Heloisa having to rely on her charisma and way with words exclusively in the cut-throat world of the Cartagense court among her fellow politicians.

29. Mentally take note of it, store it away until needed, and when that moment comes that person will be under her thumb, and she will follow up on her threat even if it’s just to get a laugh out of it. If you’re asking yourself whether everyone in this family is at least partially inclined to lie and manipulate others; yes, they are. It’s what happens when the arguably the most important person in your life during your childhood lies to you all the time.

37. She’s a playwright herself, and as such an avid reader herself who takes part of her inspiration from having read other novels. She can downright devour them, but has no real preference between fiction and non-fiction but cares more about the actual quality of what’s written.

#asks #vesuvian-disaster #sayelle bint zahir #ximena rubalcaba #cibela de rubalcaba #heloisa de rubalcaba #deirdra margalit #oof this took a while but it was VERY fun #Anonymous

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smallhatlogan · 4 years

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Admittedly Tannis’s characterization probably kind of marred by being written and voice acted by presumably allistic people who might not interpret autistic traits accurately? Sometimes it does probably sound like she’s being sarcastic or purposely mean for the sake of being mean (like, the way some of her lines in the clinic are phrased it sounds like she’s trying to insult you instead of genuinely expressing “Why are you still here? -insert one theory of why you’re still here, based on Tannis’s interpretation of other people-. Please leave.” Which is how I read those things.) And sometimes she does just genuinely insult people’s intelligence to their faces and IDK I guess when writing this they were going for “she’s blunt about how much smarter she is than you and also fails to realize that other people have rich inner lives”. Bluntness is definitely an autistic trait (and IDK in my experience, thinking “people are super illogical compared to me” and getting all superior about it is also relatable and common), but I think Tannis would have realistically learned that it’s in her best interest to not say things like that- but also this being Borderlands it makes sense that her personality is super exaggerated that way, I think? I appreciate it about her, I think it’s a fun quirk and in some ways I appreciate a female autistic character who'd be difficult to get along with. I think maybe it would have been worthwhile to make it clearer that she genuinely cares about people and wants to do good. Then again, Handsome Jack was way meaner than her and people adore him so tbh IT’S PROBABLY MOSTLY MISOGYNY LOL.

Anyways, her dialogue after Maya dies feels more in-line with realistic poor social skills, low empathy, and bluntness. It’s not that she doesn’t care about Maya, it’s more that sometimes our feelings about this stuff do not manifest in socially acceptable ways. She’s trying to logic her way through loss, and is also trying to use that logic to make other people feel better. Like, “Yeah it sucks that Maya died but it also makes sense and someone we like was bound to die, all things considered. We can’t afford to linger on it right now because we have a war to fight”. (it didn’t make sense that Maya died, it was contrived and written poorly, but like, that’s irrelevant in this particular case. And I’m gonna give the writers a few points back for that particular bit of Tannis dialogue lol)

#HI i'm having some real strong tannis feelings tonight #and i'm extremely rambly #borderlands 3 spoilers #tannis

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imitationpersonne · 5 years

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Impressions of BNHA Chapter 217

I...really liked Bakugou this chapter??? I don’t know, it felt like something’s been missing about his characterization lately, and that’s not missing this chapter. It’s just a feeling that I can’t exactly explain; maybe it’s just me. But I liked this; I’m happy for his role in this secret-keeping. ...And low-key judging people who are oblivious about it adsdhfgf.

“YOU NEED TO BE IN MORE DANGER!!” *WHEEZE*

At first I thought maybe almost all of class B was at the joint dinner, and does that mean Monoma’s like the only one staying away--eating alone in his room or something??? But looking more closely, there are only 6-9 B class members in the dinner panel, depending on the ones I’m not sure who they are. Of course, that doesn’t mean that’s all who are there, but at least half the class might not be there. That’s a little bit less sad/lonely for you-know-who. Yes, I’m making the assumption he’s not there. I think we would know if he were there.

Not surprisingly, we weren’t shown his mindset for not coming. But it makes obvious sense for a range of sentiments/reasons. Even if he were tempted to come and stir up trouble, now is not a good time, considering he could easily get wrecked for losing his match. No, thank you, save face please. At this point, after magnifying the competition and rivalry so hard, there’s really no way to pass it all off as insignificant tonight. If it were me, after such a rough day for ego and morale, I would do best just to go straight to bed, tbh.

“DARK SIDE”... MIRIO!!!! Monoma’s reaction is everything I could have wanted.

IF YOU DON’T THINK SHE’S MORE SCARED OF HIS ANTICS THAN IF MIRIO DIDN’T ASSIGN MONOMA THAT SCARY TITLE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU. I LIKE HOW AIZAWA CALLED THEM HERE JUST TO BABYSIT MONOMA’S INTERACTION WITH HER FOR THE SAKE OF HER MENTAL HEALTH(???), BUT MIRIO’S OVER HERE HYPING THE FEAR. MY DUDE. YOU’RE ALL ASSHOLES. I’m not actually mad; I’m just incredulous.

Perfect responses; I’m with my boy 100% in this chapter, LOL. Being real, though, Aizawa doesn’t actually know this kid well; he’s not a student of his, and all he’s really seen of him is probably a lot of anti-A gremlin-ing. Plus, everybody knows Aizawa’s a mistrustful asshole; this isn’t news.

There’s also the fact that... I mean, I kinda called it, y’all. That whole “He’s going to be an angel to Eri; surely he is amazing with kids!!” anticipation I’ve been seeing floating around the internet...? Nah. Nah, guys, nah. Take a look; he didn’t say a single word directly to her the entire time. Almost reminiscent of somebody who doesn’t really know how to interact or talk with pets (not calling her that--just a similar lacking intuition).

And then there’s this:

If this isn’t “A’ight, kid’s getting fussy; I’m done” energy, I don’t.......

Am I over-analyzing all of this? Probably--it’s what I do. Could I be exaggerating the portrayal? Possibly. But one thing he sure isn’t is a child-whisperer. Are people still thinking this somehow???

Horn...!!!

Okay, but the milder expressions, coupled with the repeated instances of “I could let you down” kind of talk just brings me back to his “knowing your limits” speech. Like it's kind of rueful resignation; ‘Yep, I'm not useful here...’ Is it easier or harder to swallow if you just physically cannot do something? Can't copy a quirk; that's not something you can change with effort. It’s a hard limit--and with how quirks are treated in-universe, it’s kind of like a limit on your very identity. Your quirk is Copy, and if you can't even do that....... Just a thought.

SDFGDF THIS EXAMPLE IS NOT SOMETHING I KNEW I NEEDED, BUT NOW I’M-- P L E A S E LET ME SEE THIS ANIMATED

Aaand in conclusion...goddammit, Hori. Failed again! Not useful or important again. Was this really just a four-page escapade to briefly tie up loose ends? Are we even going to see Monoma anymore for a long while? I really don’t have a lot of hope at this point. And I’m really not ready. I’ve gotten spoiled, and now I can’t go back to such a minor character status life. Ahhhh, I’m sad......

#Monoma Neito #Monoma #BNHA manga #BNHA 217 #meta #Eri #long post #I honestly just didn't know where to cut it #Message me if it bothers you; I'll cut it if people really prefer #I'd really like to know if it's important to you

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scooperkin · 5 years

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I've seen someone draw the puppet with muscles (I have the picture on my phone)

Sorry I got a bit carried away with my insight on this and the fnaf characters, style and designs in the form of horror media so it’s long and under readmore

Forgive me for any writing errors, this was written on impulse and I probably won’t look into fleshing it out:

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with art or portrayals of the Puppet with more human-based anatomy features but it’s tiring to see this non-stereotypical gendered entity/child’s toy that isn’t supposed to be presented as anything near human both for the in-universe creative of the children’s imaginations, but also as a horror character that is importantly keep vague because a as a horror character, the unknown of what it could be and it’s odd undefined behavior coupled with this vague humanoid but, UNhuman frame makes it scary to in-universe adults, as well as real fans.

So seeing it so commonly characterized as a shapely-human just ruins the original intent and just takes away my interest in whatever story or fanart is being presented to me. And while this is a personal opinion and really doesn’t matter in what content people should do as if it disinterests me I’ll move on but those who enjoy it will still enjoy it. And there also fan content I’ll still occasionally remain interested that present not just the Puppet but other fnaf characters in campier and, stylistic content; any more serious, spooky, horror or more faithful fan media that has both the Puppet and other FNAF characters portrayed more comfortably artistic light, such as the Puppet having a “motherly” body shape (most likely thanks to Living Tombstone’s FNAF 2 song), as well as Toy Chica’s already feminine body pushed further with more defined features about her body (*ahem* boobies). And notice again how a lot of this is more aimed at the more “feminine” of the cast.

Circus Baby, along with Ballora, are the only animatronics that ends up being drawn straight up as organic entities even when in the presence of their fellow Funtimes, still depicted as their more horrific, robot designs. It’s fine if they’re drawn as regular furries and Baby and Ballora as human women (or little girl), its a chosen style someone chose, and again this isn’t wrong just because I don’t find it interesting enough, it’s not my cup of tea and I move on. But, several times I’ve come to accounter, more organically designed characters often are reduced to basic human features in their design. The Puppet gets curvy, Ballora and Baby get real hair that fluffies and moves organically, Baby herself often made into a tiny cute friendly young girl. The (fixed) Mangle, and Funtime Foxy getting more curves and floof. And don’t even get me started on people who sexualize these characters to the point they’re just human bodies with cartoon heads to just be more comfortable with consuming not safe for work content of them, proving as well these character’s designs, in the long run, don’t matter in this nsfw work, but that’s a different subject on a different type of content for a different day. (And notice how all these characters are feminine? While Scrap Baby can be portrayed as a cute girl in fan content but Molten Freddy is still what he is in the game in his fan content.)

Circus Baby is highlighted by the fact she is a massive robot towering over even the tallest of men, a single eye of her’s can fit two if not four pairs of human eyes in it’s size. Her fingers, thicker than most children’s arms. Is TERRIFYING. And she’s supposed to be. She’s a horror game character. Her scale towers over adults, their parents, the protectors of their children. Her movements are jerky and uncanny, her stare to an older audience member or child can give them the creeps. But ultimately her design–safe, safe for children to run up to, and safe for a child to trust. While her existence and design as a whole in-universe and above the surface is so supposed to be a large child, an older sister, still young enough to play with you but old enough to trust to be alone with. But behind the stage, back underground, that’s not who she really is. I’ve never seen Circus Baby as a giant child as she is seen to the outside world, no because underground, in the darkness she’s kept, we’re shown the real her, the true her. She isn’t some dumb playful child, she is a discerning actor. And her “real” mental age can be debated and discussed among fans, but it’s clear she isn’t an arrogant child. And more specifically for me, I see her depicted as an actress. An actress who’s been conformed to take on this child role both on and off stage. She purposely has a voice higher, she purposely choices her innocent-word structuring. She’s acting, she’s Pretending for the sake of her own safety against this Location she’s in. When even being off character for a moment such as taking a rest off your stage gives you a painful shock. It’s not too unusual as several stars and actors, usually young and more impressionable ones are told to act a certain way even with off-screen. A good example of this is several child stars on the work of Disney Channel original series. They tell their actresses to dress a certain way, to speak in a higher voice, don’t be serious, always smile. Because it earns the trust and love from children viewers better than just, Bella Thorne or Miley Cyrus being her honest self off set to their younger fans. Too risky, keep your voice pitched up. And even though you’re 19 please, please don’t act like it, act younger, the kids won’t ever relate to you if you sound too old, if you act to old. So while Baby and the other Funtimes’ situation is a very exaggerated version of this (no don’t worry no disney stars are getting shocked when they don’t act hard enough) to the point that it’s a horror genre story about it makes sense why this is unsettling as a player and in the Funtimes’ shoes.

So while Baby does everything to keep pretending, this is something Ballora can’t do. Ballora can’t pretend, she refuses. She refuses to pretend when under the surface away from the crowds and people, where she’s alone and can be herself. But she doesn’t get that, she gets shocked and ends up being scooped to “fix” her. Too much free will. Foxy isn’t explored as much but I feel goes through the same trouble as Ballora. And the only one who is seemingly left unpunished is Funtime Freddy, not even getting his own room, just stored somewhere until it’s time for a show. It’s implied he’s either the least sentient out of the cast or the one who acts closest to his original programmed personality. But either reason leaves him unpunished, not locked away for safety and disobedience. He’s unpunished but left alone in a single storage room. But whoops maybe having him follow his programming better than the others wasn’t the best idea. As he gets confused to when he’s on or off stage, when he should be sleeping, forgetting this hug is too tight for a child, or that said child is actually an employee that happened to go into the Breaker Room and is in fact not a birthday boy.

So Baby is unsettling both by design, in context, as well as her history, being created by the infamous William Afton making her again, do things she didn’t want to. So when I see her turned down into cutesy little teen girl or small child, and portrayed as such, I can’t help but again lose interest. And once again this is more of a personal preference, that isn’t how I understood Baby to be, or that she needed to be fixed from a large scary robot to cutesy bab. But it’s how others want it and I step away.

And I know this sounds like I’m going everywhere with this, and barely has to do with your ask, but I fear my post may have been mistaken as I feel this ask is talking about a way people shouldn’t draw or portray the Puppet when I wasn’t trying to say and I’m sorry if it came across that way.

As it stands a muscular portrayal of the Puppet is harmless, and a rarity in re-contributing fan media when compared to the more favored “curvy” puppet design trend. And of course these portrayals are no big deals in the end, and it’s just a preference but, I see more and more young artists following these trends because they seem more normalized. And no it’s not the original artists, of the young artist’s lack of understanding but, the fact that a lot of the fnaf fandom doesn’t treat fnaf like the horror media it is. Which is fine on it’s own, but when it’s brought up, I can’t help but look at a large side of fans like I’m looking at a Happy Tree Friends AMV with a song like this. Yeah Happy Tree Friends is a disturbing creation on it’s own but it’s not because it’s done in seriousness and the fact it’s cutesy IS what makes it disturbing, not any relevance it has to a subject or stories its trying to tell. So paired with a song as intestine and serious in tone as this one just seems…. silly. The editor wanted it to be horrific and scary but with the content at hand… it’s nearly impossible to do and takes a lot of figuring out to make work and only a few horror media can pull it off. And once again maybe this is just a me problem and how I intake content, for me FNAF is a horror story, a tragedy, it keeps you up at night not because the fiction itself is scary, but the contents implied and the contents hinted. Freddy Krueger was a sadistic child murderer in life because it was the evilest and scariest human conduct he could think of. And it’s why it’s so disturbing in FNAF that this ominous purple figure for the first few games was clouded in mystery and terrifying because while Krueger he killed innocent children, the purple figure was scarier over the fact he worked with these children, and he might still have worked with said children and he was Never caught and we didn’t even know his name back then. But we, the player saw him. Then we’re given just his vague actions of not only killing innocent children for no rhyme or reason (and any reasons at the time being just as horrifying )he then“Stuffed the victims in the animatronics” makes you think about how utterly disturbing that is. How did he even manage to do that, how did they not find him, that’s so horrible? And if the Puppet did that, why? The Puppet is vaguely sympathetic or is it? Because why would it do something so disturbing and as horrible as stuffing children into metal suits to the point their blood and organs leaked out, even in the name of “saving” them. It’s still horrible! It’s still tragic!

So when I see attempts at acknowledging in the horror in FNAF I want to give reminders that despite everything, Baby was HORRIFYINGLY big, looked had a cuteness that leaves people with the uncanny feeling of a porcelain doll’s stare. (as well as Ballora’s horrific treats being based off that).

That the Puppet despite everything it’s not a human, and has never been shown to bend in the same way a human can, and when it does move its arms and legs are still stretched out in space as it jumps in to kill you.

And to keep aspects like this when creating fan horror content or original horror content. The simplest of choices are usually the best ones, the feeling of being unable to move while your vague unknown attacker's inch closer and closer, to walk blindly in the dark with dangerous creatures. And in the end of this scary tragedy, or wanting things to be happy again, trying to solve the mystery, trying to make the horrible less horrible, only death awaited. For all of us.

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ladyloveandjustice · 6 years

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Reflection on Attack on Titan: How the narrative failed its characters

I did a breakdown of how Attack on Titan failed the potential of its premise due to its commitment to being edgy fascist garbage, but I also want to talk about how it failed a bunch of characters who were brimming with potential.

(This is gonna be messy and loooong, because I have a lot of feelings. Someone on the last post noted my “rhetoric blows” and I will freely admit I’m not really trying for coherent “rhetoric” here, I’m just venting my frustration so I can get it all out of me and move on).

Yes, it wasn’t solely the premise that drew me and so many others to Attack on Titan and its potential. There were a lot of unique and exciting elements with the way this shonen manga handled its characters.

I said before that Isayama never cared about his characters, but that was a bit of a exaggeration. I think he did start out caring about some of them...it’s just he quickly got bored with them and started treating them solely as tools to serve the “plot” and the screwed message he wanted to impart.

Isayama does have one strength as a character writer- he excels at showing characters who are messy, flawed and selfish but nevertheless sympathetic. Nobody in Attack on Titan is a classic unselfish “pure” hero, they are all deeply flawed. Isayama’s characters were compelling in the beginning because of that. He allowed his characters to exhibit cowardice, he allowed them to fail spectacularly, and that made Attack on Titan stand out. Despire the melodrama of their situations, actions and personalities, there’s a rawness to (most of) his characters that fits the horror of the setting.

Even the protag Eren, who a lot of people dislike or find easily the most boring character (honestly I found Levi the most boring though), has this ugliness to him that makes him distinct from the billion other teen boy protags in shonen. He is genuinely unstable and honestly a bit disturbing, as this collection of weird murderfaces he makes shows (behold my post popular aot post, ah memories).His obsession with killing Titans was unsettling, it was the classic determination of a shonen hero through a screwed up horror lens, this kid ain’t all right.

Historia especially resonated me because she was TRYING to be that classic pure heroine- but she was selfish like everyone else deep down. She just wanted to be SEEN as an pure-hearted martyr who sacrificed for others, when really all she was doing was giving into her suicidal urges. It was criticism of the very concept of the “immaculate woman”, and that’s pretty cool. So was the fact she was seen through by Ymir, someone who embraces selfishness in all other aspects of her life but is ultimately selfless when it comes to her love for Historia...that’s some good shit. It’s fantastic as a character concept, and Ymir and Historia’s initial character writing and backstory will stick with me because it was genuinely good in all its melodrama.

Historia and Ymir were nuanced queer characters whose relationships were fleshed out well. I do believe Isayama put care into crafting their initial arcs and developing them.

But then we run into a problem. A problem that eventually we run into with every character in AOT. Isayama stops caring about them. After their initial big arcs or moments in the spotlight or backstory reveals, he just doesn’t know what to do with these characters anymore. So they completely disapppear from the manga or fade into the background only to matter again when he decides to kill them off for some cheap shock moment. Either that, or they just exist to further the narrative of how the military is cool and we have to exterminate all our enemies and blablabla.

Because he ultimately cares about that narrative far, far more than he does giving these characters the full stories that resonate, make sense and are effectively paced. He's completely willing to undo all the character work he did previously if it means he can be edgy or impress his ideals on the reader.

That’s why Ymir and Historia have this dramatic parting that gets the audience pumped to see what happens to both of them and when they’ll reunite...only for Ymir to just completely disappear from the narrative, then be killed offscreen without even really re-entering the story again. That’s why Historia has this whole big arc about reclaiming her agency, resisting her abusive family and learning to live for herself...only to be intimidated into becoming Queen even though she’s not super into it, because she needs to serve the military and NOT live for herself after all, I guess? And oh, now she’s numbly accepted her duty to endlessly make babies for the sake of the nation! Turns out her real purpose is to be something for the other characters to be sad about.

Isayama got bored with Historia’s arc and Ymir’s arc and their relationship. He may have fun coming up with characters backstories and the big dramatic moments, but once those are over? He doesn’t care enough to do the work to conclude their stories. He gets distracted by his next plot point, his next action scene. The characters are toys he discards or breaks for the sake of either some edgy ‘anyone can die!’ moment or to push forward whatever new stupid plot point he’s thought up for his fascist narrative. (Links to evidence of Isayama’s views in this post).

Even in the (dumb) sense of “oohhh doesn’t this impress life’s cruelty upon us”, Ymir’s death is a failure. When she’s been gone from the narrative so long, to have it suddenly be like “oh, she died” just makes for a reader feeling confused and cheated, not devastated. It becomes painfully clear she’s an afterthought to the author, a loose end that needed to be cut. Same with Sasha’s recent death, I saw no sign she’d been anything but background in the narrative for a long. looong time before she was killed off.

Heck, look not further than Annie, who has now been trapped in crystal for what, 800 chapters? It’s been YEARS, both in universe and out. It’s honestly FUNNY at this point that she’s still fuckin’ in there, literally just frozen until Isayama can decide what he wants to do with her.. I hope the manga ends with everyone dead and then 1000 years later Annie emerges like “hey guys I’m back!” Then a meteor hits her or something. The intrigue surrounding her fizzled out a long time ago, yet Isayama still expects the reader to care whenever that hunk of rock shows up?

Let’s bring it around back to Eren. There were a lot of interesting directions he could have actually gone as a character, had he been forced to actually, y’know, deal with the fact he was channeling his grief in an unhealthy way or his worldview had ultimately been challenged at all. But Isayama actually agrees with Eren for the most part, he does think enemies should be exterminated without fail and genocide is cool and stuff. So Eren’s development throughout 800 chapters was just to ultimately get more and more obsessed with killing enemies, to the point where he doesn’t even enjoy seeing the ocean for long before deciding that was more important. Only his targets are definitely people now, and he doesn’t care about children or civilian casualties anymore, and yeah he’s screwed up, but doesn’t he have a point???? You can almost hear Isayama say this.

Eren exemplifies how Isayama approaches character development. He allows his characters to get more ruthless, more calculating, more fucked up, more comfortable with killing and torture as time goes on, but they can’t develop in a positive way ever- if they start going in that direction, it’s time for them to either die or regress. Nobody’s allowed to find any sort of lasting happiness, nobody’s allowed to become softer or kinder. “Cowards” (like Armin or Sasha) can become “brave”, but they’ll eventually lose most of their softness and empathy too. But that will be excused at every turn, because that’s apparently the price, the sacrifice of being a soldier. It’s “necessary” and it’s something Isayama very obviously admires. “Bravery” trumps compassion, soldiers must be ruthless to win and in the end, any growth is meaningless.

To be clear, a lot of negative character development isn’t a bad thing and “anyone can die” narratives aren’t either (though both are very tricky to pull off without losing audience investment- if you know it’s all just gonna be suffering, why keep reading?). But even when your story has those elements, you, as an author, have to have some respect and perspective in regards to your characters and Isayama has neither. He AGREES that his characters terrible actions (like torture) are necessary, because he thinks what Japanese soldiers did to Korean civilians was A-OK too...so it all just comes off as sickening.

And in a story, even if you’re trying to impress that death is random and arbitrary, that your story’s world is dangerous for everyone, those deaths should still mean something to you. the author. Otherwise the reader can’t feel their impact. It shouldn’t be easy to kill off a character. It shouldn’t be simply because you’re bored, or don’t know what to do with them- yet Isayama has openly admitted what he does. A character ceasing to matter, and then dying, has no impact. A character must matter up until the moment they cease for their death to matter.

( And lbr, if “anyone” could really die in AOT, the four main characters wouldn’t have gotten a million miracle reprieves by now).

It’s not surprising it ended up this way, though. It’s not surprising a man who has no sympathy or compassion for victims of war crimes has no sympathy or compassion for his characters and slowly drains them of their humanity as the story goes on. His love of war and domination is more important to him than human beings, and that comes through in his narrative, where characterization takes a backseat to his love of depicting war and violence, of impressing its necessity on the reader.

The characters of Attack on Titan deserve better than to be embedded in this cynical, cheap, fascist narrative. Fortunately, there are a ton of stories out there, and you can find similar characters with authors who actually care about them and aren’t openly fascist. For instance, while thinking about Historia’s arc and how good it started out, I remembered that one of my favorite narratives has a very similar main character. If you like Historia and wish she had a better narrative, I encourage you to check out the anime or light novels for The Twelve Kingdoms.

Similar to Historia, Youko is raised in an oppressive environment and constructs this entire personality around the idea of being an ideal good girl who lives for others, even though deep down she didn’t really care much for the people she was pleasing. When she’s stranded in an unfamiliar world, she slowly finds who she really is- and she’s pretty hardcore. She comes into a royal position of power too, but needless to say, it’s handled much better than Historia’s arc in AOT.

True, she’s not explicitly queer, but there’s no explicit love interest either (the anime does add a “crush”, but he disappears pretty quickly and she gets over him amazingly fast), and ton of strong female relationships in the story too, that don’t end with one party dying and the other becoming a baby machine. And it’s written by a woman who’s never openly supported war crimes, so.

So yeah, there are so many better options than Attack on Titan, and so many better ways these character concepts can be used. If you’re as disappointed as I am, it’s important to remember that. These character were failed, but characters like them can still be given the narratives they deserve.

Here’s the final part of this series:

The final reflection on Attack on Titan: How the narrative failed its potential in regard to gender and queer themes.

#attack on titan for ts #meta #forced pregnancy cw

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padawanlost · 7 years

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in what ways are anakin and obi ooc in tcw?

My problemwith some aspects of the characterization of Anakin and Obi-wan in TCW is howsome character traits are exaggerated and others are downplayed. I don’t thinkthey ever went full OOC but there was some moments that made me roll my eyes,especially some Anakin moments.

Overall,how they turned Anakin, an awkward AF, emotionally unstable, traumatized,abused and grieving teenager into a smooth action hero is the most obviousproblem. Anakin was never supposed to be THAT type of hero. Not only it doesn’tmatch what was previously established about him, chronologically, it doesn’tmake much sense:

Shmi’s death

The Clone Warsis set only a couple of weeks after Shmi’s death. Considering all of Anakin’semotional issues, how attached he was to his mother and how he reacted to herdeath, we should have seen more grief there. A bit more grieving and a littleless joking around would’ve made Anakin more realistic.

“Smooth” Anakin

I’ve saidthis before and I’ll say this again: Anakin Skywalker is awkward. He had few healthysocial interactions in his life and this idea that he can charm his way intoanywhere, that he always know exactly what to say and how to say it goesagainst everything we know about Anakin. Look at this awkward nugget ofself-doubt before TCW:

And afterTCW:

It doesn’tadd up. I’m not saying tcw!Anakin should have been awkward and uncomfortableall the time but the character would have been more in line with the movies ifwe had been a little less “macho”.

Again, theclone wars is set weeks after AOTC and NO ONE changes that much that fast. It’strue that awkward teens don’t necessarily remain that way but it’s usually theresult of a process. You don’t wake up one day and decide you’re to be “cool”.I mean, you can decide but you don’t actually change (permanently) overnight. It’sa process that involves the person’s social environment and it’s something thatwe never saw Anakin go through.

Slaves of the Republic

IMO, thisarc is by far the biggest offender. Fromthe moment they landed in Zygerria everything about Anakin felt off. I had readthe comics it was based on before I watched the episode and maybe thatinfluenced me a little but imo, the way they had Anakin handled the Queen andthe entire situation went against everything I knew about Anakin.

AnakinSkywalker, former slave, does not joke about slavery. In the comics, he makessure Ahsoka understands the seriousness of their situation, he doesn’t let heranywhere near a slave market (until he feels absolutely needs to) and he certainlydoesn’t crack jokes about it. You can feelhis barely concealed anger and how hard it is for him to be nice to the Queen.

He grew upin Tatooine and knows exactly what happens to beautiful young slaves. And he isdeeply attached to his padawan. It makes no sense for him to volunteer Ahsokaso easily to play the role of merchandise. It goes against his protectivenature. He’s “okay” with Ashoka going into a war zone because it’s somethingshe’s ready for and he knows she understands what’s at stake there. But Ashokabeing sold into slavery is a risk he wouldn’t take lightly.

In thecomics never flirts quite so openly with the queen, because let’s face it,Anakin Skywalker can’t flirt. It’s why people mock him in AOTC. Turning Anakininto a smooth lover who can easily charm a powerful queen with a few whisperersdoesn’t make sense. His “flirting” only “worked” on Padmé because she wasalready interested and because she knew he was genuine (like any queen, she wasused to empty flattery and could spot from miles away).

Obi-wanKenobi

With Obi-wan,my biggest issue is how much emotion he demonstrated and how easy it was forhim to break the rules. Obi-wan cares about his friends but what separates himfrom Anakin is that he doesn’t allow himself to show it.

Obi-wan is the guy wholoves Anakin more than anything but can’t actually say it until Anakin is dyingat his feet. Like a true Jedi, he is emotionallyconstipated. So turning Obi-wan into a externally compassionate person doesn’tfit. And it’s the same with him breaking the rules. Obi-wan drank the kool-aid.He honestly believed that the Jedi way is the best (only) way. That’s why I don’tbuy Obi-wan going against the rules to rescue Satine. he’s the man who tried tokill his best friend, even though he didn’t really want to, because his Mastertold him to.

That’sObi-wan’s tragedy. He wanted to help, he wanted to save Anakin and his friends.but he was held back by his upbringing. Everything he thought would help endedup making things worse.

It’s why I havetrouble accepting an Obi-wan that can put his entire belief system asidewithout any major personal consequences. I guess the real problem is not thatbroke the rules but how easy it was for him to break them.

Conclusion

And to bereally honest here, I’ll say that the one thing that still bothers me about TCWcharacterization of Anakin is why it was made that way. But this is long enoughas it is so i won’t into that right now.

All thoselittle details I mentioned above about Anakin and Obi-wan are solved in thebooks. Once I started to into Legends most of the OOC moments didn’t bother meas much. Like Shmi’s death. She’s not a big part of TCW but in the novelizationof TCW movie Anakin thinks about her a lot so now when I watch I know she’sthere even though she’s not mentioned. It only made me love TCW even more.

I think itis interesting to pick apart these little discrepancies we find for the sake ofdiscussion but in no way it diminishes the importance of the show as a whole.

#ask #anon #the clone wars #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #sw meta #fuck this got long #sorry #and i didn't say half of what i had in my mind #i have feels #okay?!!!!!!!

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2nd-rate-film-school · 7 years

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Why Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Is Actually a Masterpiece of Modern Blockbuster Cinema

This is a review written by my friend and fellow filmmaker, @kubrickking. It’s a bit long, since she is a huge fan (and good film critic, imo), but it is definitely worth the read.

Since my sisters and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003, we have all shared a sense of undying loyalty to the franchise. As BIG Disneyland people, the ride was a staple in our short lives long before we even understood how the concept could become a movie. Thus, we’ve enjoyed going to the midnight premieres, viewing the ride updates, and gathering pirate merchandise through the years. At this point, however, I think it’s fair to say that while we will see whatever film they release, we consider ourselves more fans of the original trilogy than what has followed with Dead Men Tell No Tales and - what was that fourth one called again?

To that point, this review is going to be biased as shit. I was an impressionable kid when I first saw these films and I will always remember them fondly. That being said, I just rewatched them at the age of twenty and feel my reaction is very similar. I was only fourteen when I saw the fourth film and was able to admit that it was terrible. In addition, know that this is not a reflection on Johnny Depp or any of the recent publicity he has faced. I am, and would hope you are as well, able to separate his work as an actor in this series from the recent revelations about his personal life.

As a side note, I am operating this review under the information given in the films, not the historical accuracy of pirates during this time. I don’t know if pirates regularly helped transport slaves and I acknowledge that the themes related to pirates having duality as both savage criminals and good men shows undeniable moral ambiguity regarding the historical truth. Jack, along with Will, is a romanticized version of a “good” pirate for the sake of a family-friendly protagonist in a story about pirates. And this analysis operates under a full awareness of that fact.

Regardless, one of the things that has always bothered me is the dismissal of the third film subtitled At World’s End. Common criticism of the film labels it as too long, too odd, and too exaggerated with little at stake and even littler sense to it. I do agree that any viewers expecting a simple, enjoyable action flick will be undoubtedly disappointed with the third Pirates offering. However, if you’re the part of the audience that is at all invested in Jack’s dive into the Kraken at the end of Dead Man’s Chest and is smart enough to realize the film is only truly 15 minutes longer than the other two, At World’s End delivers more than you could ever ask for as a conclusive chapter.

While the first film is obviously the most efficient and coherent on both a plot and tonal level, the third film acts as a bridge for cohesiveness between the entire trilogy without shying away from taking risks. And I firmly believe these risks pay off. Unfortunately, a majority of viewers feel it is more madness than brilliance. And to them I say, “It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.”

The film begins on such a dark note that it’s easy to see how people get the initial impression that it will not be a “fun ride.” A montage of hangings with a somber pirates hymn that ends with the murder of a child who can’t even reach the noose without a barrel to stand on is quite a way to open a film. And those are the kinds of risks you will see taken throughout the entirety of the movie’s 169 minutes. And I intend to prove to you that they are worth it.

From that first moment onward, you are given a direct association for the villain which up to this film is still underdeveloped and has done the majority of his evil actions off screen. The actions of Lord Cutler Beckett - or the pathetic cousin from another Keira Knightley film: Pride and Prejudice - now have tangibility. He’s no longer just the plot device for the evil Davy Jones, but a bastard in his own right. While Jones did senselessly murder sailors with the Kraken, his actions were motivated by a personal and justified search for Jack. But he never murdered children during a crackdown on pirate conspirators. Beckett’s actions serve as a power play, but also as revenge for Jack's refusal to transport slaves for the East India Trading Company; okay I’ll admit, Beckett’s motivations are still a little glossed over. But the film is juggling so many of the series' villains, anti-heroes, and “bloody pirates” with selfish motivations that a further explanation just isn’t necessary. Let me clarify that. Beckett’s specific personal motivations beyond greed for fucking everything up would simply distract from what we all really care about: Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Fucking Swann.

The film proceeds to build characters and set up future plot efficiently as the setting moves to Singapore, which is not a “random” or “meaningless” choice as some would have you believe. Dialogue from Jack in the first film and during the search for him in the second have previously established Singapore as a hub for a significant band of pirates. Their journey there serves a two-fold purpose of procuring mythological navigational charts that will provide a course to Davy Jones’ Locker as well as a ship and crew to get them there. They do all the pirate-y things like misdirect attention to allow an alternate plan of stealing the charts including a crew below the floorboards ready to provide weaponry and the secondary motivation of enlisting Sao Feng in the meeting of the Bretheren Court. It also gives just a glimpse of the assertion and decisiveness that Elizabeth has carried over from her choice to sacrifice Jack to the Kraken at the end of Dead Man’s Chest.

The number one thing I love about the romance at the center of Pirates is that Elizabeth and Will still have their individual character arcs, motivations, and plot. Even after the revelation that Elizabeth indeed left Jack, they do not immediately fall back into the simple conflicts related to their affections. A confrontation below deck parallels the scene from the first film as secrets and feelings are once again revealed. But instead of making this the focus, they both decide to carry on their journeys making their own choices. In fact, the root of their individual character arcs can be traced back to the first twenty minutes of the first film, Elizabeth’s being a more internal struggle and Will’s a more external one. Elizabeth continuously evaluates her own evolving moral beliefs and desires for her life; does she condone, participate in, and forgive the actions of pirates or does she condemn them. Meanwhile, Will must focus on the familial promise and connection with his pirate father Bootstrap Bill Turner that has been a source of conflict for him since the opening sequence of the series.

Just as it has always been, their love story at the heart of it is pulled apart and put back together by the choices they make and, thus, the people they choose to become. Neither needs the other for fulfillment per say - this is why Will always waits until the last moment to profess his love or insist they marry - but they work better together than they do apart. And that is why their ending is both ironic and essential. Their marriage being officiated by Barbosa in between sword fights with cursed pirates is the only appropriate setting for the unification of the two and one of the best damn scenes.

Call me dumb or sappy, but this romance still feels honest and emotional to me in its restraint. Even though I know it was cooked up in some board room meeting of Hollywood execs, I still genuinely feel invested in it. I think it comes down to the fact that they don’t hit you over the head with it. They allow the female character room to breathe and grow independent from the romance; which is perhaps why you can interpret her ending as either the greatest or worst conclusion to a character arc. Elizabeth’s speech to the crew of the Black Pearl before they enter into battle with the Flying Dutchman gives me chills every time. Because of her heart, dedication, and true duality, she is able to understand and act on the conflict with a decisiveness and purpose that none of the other pirates can. She has allegiance to her beliefs unlike the fickle criminals around her. She fights with and for values and a purpose, enjoying the adventure and adrenaline along the way.

In a similar way, Jack Sparrow’s character is fairly consistent through this film. There is justified criticism about Depp’s performance becoming a parody of the original idea as the series has progressed, and I would agree that it has never been as pure as it was in the first film. However, I don’t feel that Sparrow becomes a full caricature until the fourth film onward and I will tell you why.

Sparrow has always been defined by equal parts wit and luck. The details of his plans or the existence of them at all has always been left up to the interpretation of the audience, with rather blatant characterization from British soldiers about if he “plans it all out or just makes it up as he goes along.” While we can assume he gets lucky a lot and doesn’t always win - i.e. the mutiny that is ingrained in his character’s history - there is obvious intelligence lurking underneath all his actions. He’s persuasive and charming in the way a dirty, murderous pirate shouldn’t and doesn’t need to be. For example, Jack spends most of the second film convincing others that the only way to get what they want is to help him first. He weighs their desires and presents ultimatums, using whatever he has as leverage against them. Jack’s long-winded dialogue scenes where he talks someone around his finger function in the same way that deduction scenes do for Sherlock Holmes.

What makes this most impressive, or the laziest writing ever, is that the people around him are often not unintelligent people. Elizabeth, Barbosa, and Will have all outsmarted Jack on screen by the beginning of the third movie, Elizabeth’s trickery even proving fatal for him. Because of this, Jack’s character is only half what’s written for him. He is also half Depp’s performance, which does not feel strained in the original three films. Some classic Jack Sparrow moments you may have forgotten actually take place in this film include the canon firing springboard onto the pearl with Beckett’s toy figure in the mouth of the barrel, the discovery and following flipping of the ship to return home, and the manipulation of the Bretheren court to approve a vote for pirate king and subsequent battle with Beckett.

Also, if your argument is that Jack became the main character when he should only be a strong supporting character, HE DOESN’T EVEN APPEAR ON SCREEN UNTIL THIRTY-TWO MINUTES INTO THE FILM. He is a supporting character in this movie. That is tremendous restraint considering the major draw for most viewers, which was heavily capitalized upon by Disney, was Depp’s performance as Captain Jack. And when they finally do show him, it is a lengthy eight minute sequence of him arguing with himself, eating peanuts, licking rocks, and rocks becoming crabs that roll the Pearl over sand into an ocean. Not necessarily the audience-catering character re-introduction you’d see in a Marvel film. Jack is in a mythological purgatory or hell that represents the silly and truly odd essence of pirate lore, and the filmmakers honor that. From the moment Jack is back with the crew on the Pearl, his comedic moments hit every time - with the exception of the angel and devil shoulder Jacks. His interactions with everyone from Barbosa to Will to Davy Jones to Beckett are spot on. Jack is witty, wily, and wondrous as ever while twisting the desires of those around him to spare his life time and time again.

But it’s not just the comedic moments this film gets right, it also nails the emotional and dramatic ones. Particularly Will’s final moments after being stabbed by Davy Jones and Jack’s confrontation with the now dead and beached Kraken hit perfectly. Still, my favorite scene of the whole film has to be Elizabeth’s speech which leads the Pearl into battle with the Dutchman. Dialogue from three male characters plays out in the background as the camera circles Elizabeth, in solemn reflection over the release of Calypso and the impending fight. “Then what shall we die for?” she questions Barbosa. Then she continues with the fiercest fifty second monologue, throwing Barbosa’s words back at him and using them in a way he never could to inspire the pirates aboard the Pearl to rise to the occasion and “hoist the colours” - effectively answering the plea of the chain gang in the beginning of the film.

As with many blockbusters, there is a dramatic scene where the audience typically laughs out of turn. So let me be clear: if you even laugh a little bit during Elizabeth’s desperate attempts to bring her ghostly father aboard, you have no heart whatsoever. It is quite obvious to the audience, who has already been told the people in the boats are dead, that Governor Swann is beyond help. However, to the eye of someone who has seen the mythical Kraken devour the living person beside them, it may not seem so impossible that her father can also be saved. As a matter of fact, why couldn’t they save him?? I am still crying during this scene ten years later. Not because I loved his character, but because I can easily imagine my own parent afloat in one of those boats and my own hysterical attempts to reach them. Take a moment, please, and imagine your parent in this position. Not so stupid now, is she??

And this brings me to my favorite thing about the film: the visual language. Working with supernatural fables and period piece restrictions, At World’s End utilizes an array of solid and effective visuals that stimulate on levels of both the studium and the punctum. An Asian pirate ship floats on still water like glass that reflects the starry night into a mirror image, as they travel into a dimension of suspended time and space at the world’s end to retrieve a dead soul from eternal purgatory. Jack Sparrow gazes into his own reflection in the dead eye of the rotting beast that killed him and contemplates the true nature of freedom in relation to immortality. “The world used to be a bigger place,” says Barbosa and Jack responds, “The world’s still the same. There’s just less in it.” The wrath of a scorned lover materializes into a swirling maelstrom that becomes the setting for the separation of another pair of lovers. Jack holds the heart of a monster in his hand, blade at the ready, and hesitates in completing the task for fear that he faces his own future cruelty. These images as well as others in the film elevate interesting and elaborate themes into dynamic expressions of consciousness. Don’t even get me started on the coloring. And you get all those layers with an amazing dose of action and thrills.

Also, the effects in this movie still look great because they are 90% practical. Wait, you mean the series with skeleton and fish pirates has practical effects? Yes, you asshat, CGI was only used to supplement the majority of the special effects you see. While certain settings and the crew of the Dutchman are obviously computer generated, all the scenes involving ship effects were either done with the built-to-scale, fully functioning set pieces or models before receiving any post-production visual effects aid. The scenes underwater were actually shot underwater with all the lead cast and the final twenty-minute storm battle was shot on the ship decks with manufactured torrential rain for 10 weeks straight. Not cool enough yet? They also actually blew up Beckett’s ship and layered the shots of him and the other soldiers on it. That Singapore set they blew up was indoors with at least four feet of water and an entire series of buildings on stilts. And honestly that’s almost nothing compared to the shit they actually did in the second film.

Okay. I think I have to wrap this up now because if I even get started on Hans Zimmer’s score, this could double in word count. If you can’t tell already, I really enjoy this super under-appreciated film and I absolutely adore this series as a whole. It has flaws, it can be stupid at times, and sometimes moments fall flat. But the code for a “good” film is "more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules." I still feel my love for this series has been well-founded and well-intentioned for 14 years strong (nearly 70% of my life). Now if you remember "Pirates 3” as being a dud, I encourage you to rewatch and rediscover the magic within. If you were waiting for the "opportune moment," this is it!

#pirates of the caribbean #at world's end #potc 3 #film review #jack sparrow #will turner #elizabeth swann #davy jones #cutler beckett

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samtheflamingomain · 7 years

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welcome to death note, where the plot makes no sense and the rules don’t matter

Unless you've been living under a rock the past few months, you're aware that there's a live-action American Death Note movie on Netflix.

I wasn't going to watch it because I knew it would be bad and I am a MASSIVE DN fan. I didn't want it to ruin one of my favourite things.

While I wouldn't say it did that, I will say that it was, without exaggeration, the worst screen adaptation of anything I've ever seen.

I went in with low expectations and knowing they'd have to change the plot around to fit into 90 minutes. The bar was so low and yet they managed to disappoint me at every turn.

So let's get into the details. Spoilers ahead, but who cares this movie is garbage.

I'll break it down into several aspects: acting and characterization, pacing and plot, visuals and sound, and finally, the sheer amount of nonsense and bullshit this film vomited into my face.

Okay. I hated every single character's personality. NONE of the characters were even remotely similar to the characters in the manga/anime. Light is a stupid, naive teenager who thinks with his dick. Mi(s)a is a sociopathic, manipulative cunt, Light's father is EXTREMELY stupid, Ryuk is not a neutral character (which is extremely important), and, finally, L. Oh, lord, L.

L is a cold, detached, calculating super genius detective. In the original. In the movie, he's a ballsy, irrational, emotional mess who somehow knows how to drive and wield a gun - unthinkable of OG L.

And to touch briefly on the acting: Nat Wolff is the only one I really have a problem with. He wears a constant look of confusion the whole movie and acts like a troubled child, not like a fucking serial killer.

Now, to your immense surprise, there is one character that I found was nearly spot-on: Watari.

And finally, the movie lacked in sheer number of characters. The ones I listed are, quite literally, the only ones in the film who speak. I get it, they didn't have time to do the Near, Mello, Takada, or Mikami plots. But I guarentee this movie would've greatly benefited from a Matsuda character, a Rem character, and Light's mother and sister.

Onto pacing and plot.

Again, I know they only had 90 minutes, but within the first ten minutes, Light has the notebook and hooks up with someone he barely knows (Mia), shows her the notebook, and they’re instantly dating and having some creepy murder sex. Within the first 30 minutes, nearly everyone knows Light is Kira.

Now to the main problems with the plot itself: there is no reason to give Light more motive to become a killer. It's his personality and his worldly outlook that causes him to take up killing. In the movie, they sloppily throw in some bullshit about his mom being killed, but they don't make that the actual motivation for killing. How do we know this? Well...

In the movie, his first kill is a bully at school (something OG Light was smart enough to realize is fucking stupid) and when told to add a cause of death, he immediately jumps to "decapitation" - revealing instantly that he's a sick fuck. Sure, bullies suck, but do they deserve to be fucking decapitated? Light Yagami only killed actual criminals (until he has to kill people investigating him).

This might seem petty, but it's actually super important: Ryuk shows up before Light kills anyone. In the original, Light needed no prodding from a Death God to begin his murder spree. In the movie, it's Ryuk that goads him into his quest. This goes back to the fact that Ryuk is supposed to be neutral. It takes away Light's agency and makes it feel like Ryuk is controlling him.

L makes WAY too many guesses with little logic or evidence. It takes a lot longer for L to deduce Light is Kira in the original. Movie L makes some very uncharacteristic leaps of logic just for the sake of driving the movie on.

There's a scene pretty early on that mimics a similar scene in the original with Light and L sitting in a diner together. In the original, it’s not super important. Movie version involved L outright accusing him of being Kira on flimsy-at-best evidence, and then, in what might be the worst event in the movie, Light readily admits to being Kira and taunts him about not knowing how he kills.

After some bullshit about Light mind-controlling Watari (more on that later) to try and get L's name and Watari dies, L goes on a destructive car/foot chase with Light. In the original, it's important for L to figure out how Kira kills before killing him. This movie L doesn't seem to care about anything but revenge and being proven right.

I keep saying this, but another horribly-written thing happens that might be the worst part: L has Light cornered with a gun on him and someone randomly comes and knocks L over the back of the head, the very epitome of a Deus Ex Machina.

Then we get to the climax, which is an extremely long scene where Light and Mia hijack the Seattle ferris wheel, take it to the top and fight over who should own the book. They've both written each others' names down and the pages need to be burned by midnight if they want to live (groan, unnecessary race-against-time). They spend a good 5 minutes dangling from the wheel when RYUK causes it to collapse; something OG Ryuk would have NEVER EVER DONE, because, as the movie fails to explain, Ryuk’s motivation is supposed to be boredom. I’ll touch more on why this happens in a bit. Mia falls to her death, Light falls into the water, into a coma, and wakes up two days later.

Okay, now I do have to give the movie a bit of credit here: it seems at first like a bunch of ridiculous coincidences that lead to Light outliving Mia. Turns out he saw all this coming (somehow) and had quickly used the book to ensure that: the wheel collapses, Mia falls from the wheel and dies, the page with his name is burned so he will live, that he's rescued from the water after his fall, that he's in a coma but murders continue via a random criminal writing in the book before delivering it back to Light just as he wakes from the coma. I'll pick this part apart in a minute because there is just so much wrong with this sequence of events that I can’t even.

And finally, the ending, if you can call it that. The writers were VERY clearly trying to be clever and leave us with a cliffhanger.

L is "proven wrong" about Light being Kira because the murders continued while he was in a coma, and is supposed to go back to Japan, before he suddenly remembers that Mia has a page of the book at her house. He gets there and finds the page she used to kill invesigators behind Light's back. The movie ends with L, shaking in uncharacteristic anger, about to write Light's name. Fade to black.

Finally, one last thought on the plot before I touch on other elements: this is a terrible adaptation, but an even worse movie. As a stand-alone movie, viewers new to Death Note would no doubtedly leave feeling confused and like nothing important was said in the movie. It does nothing to touch on the ambiguity of Kira's actions vs. L's. It has no underlying takeaway besides "Hey look at this cool book!"

Okay, quick thoughts on visuals and sound. Visuals are great (minus whatever bullshit paper mache project that is Ryuk). They dont' shy away from gruesome depictions of murders. I'd cite the incredible series of events that lead to Kenny being decapitated as the best example.

Hated the audio. Random songs start playing where score would've been better.

Okay, now onto the nitty-gritty details that make this movie absolutely fall apart.

Most of them are to do with the mechanics of how the Death Note is supposed to work. The original only has one page of rules and no names in it yet. Movie Book has pages and pages of rules and names filled in. There are rules that don't exist in the original (like the burning of the page to save the life of the victim, the fact that Mia can't see Ryuk after touching the note*, and most deplorably, the rule about "must be physically possible" being shattered into pieces at every turn.

*When Light first shows Mia the book and has her touch it, he assumes she’ll be able to see Ryuk WITH NO REASON TO BELIEVE THIS. In the original, Ryuk has to tell Light about this rule. In the movie, Light GUESSES that that’s how it works. And he’s wrong: unlike the original where Mia would’ve seen Ryuk, Ryuk claims in the movie that only the owner of the book can see him - super convenient for Light, who walks around school with the book in full view.

But there's a lot of other bullshit that ruins this monstrosity. There's a turning point in the movie where Mia tries to convince Light to kill his own father. The prompting event doesn't happen in the original, but I have no doubt that OG Light would've killed him without hesitation, as he outright says in the original. Because OG Light would be smart enough to know that leaving his father alive in that situation would immediately implicate him.

Here's one of the worst offenses (again, I know): Light writes the name "Watari" in the book. And it works. Watari is not his real name, and even if it were, who only has one name?

L does the whole "taunting Kira to kill him on TV" as in the original, but this event leads him to the conclusion that Light needs a name and a face - something that makes absolutely no sense for him to instantly know after one test.

Now, about the ending sequence at the ferris wheel and the hospital. The police are chasing Light and Mia, the two threaten the wheel's operator with a gun to take them up. And then he's later "officially" exonerated because the murders continued while he was in a coma, but because Light killed his mother's killer, his father "knows” he's Kira, which, of course, Light admits. If he's "officially" not Kira, why did he run from the cops and hijack a ferris wheel? L knows the power of killing can be transferred to another, yet doesn't explain this fact to anyone when the killings continue during Light’s coma.

And the biggest shitshow of nonsense? The way Light kills Mia and ensures he lives and ends up with the book again. Waaay too much of it is contingent on luck, along with some great rule-breaking.

Light writes: Mia takes the book, the wheel collapses, she falls to her demise, and the page with his name on it is burned. That's not how it works. There cannot be a passive action in a Death Note murder. He would've had to write: Mia takes the book, burns Light's page, then falls to her demise.

He also writes that he himself falls but goes into a coma, set to wake up in two days. Also impossible. You can't create a sequence of events that affect someone other than the murder victim. And you especially can’t use it to (directly) save someone’s life.

Essentially, Light is writing things he'd like to happen in the book. It's a Death Note, not a Life Note, and certainly not a Wish Note.

He also writes that criminal number one retrieves him from the water and revives him. The criminal would have to know there's a kid in the water, where he is, and how to revive him. Possible, but not foolproof because of the "physically possible" rule. If dude didn't know CPR, Light would've died.

Then, he has criminal number two retrieve the Death Note and continue writing names in the book for the two days he's in the coma, and then return it to him in the hospital. This is less about "physically possible" and more about somehow being able to brainwash him. The events leading up to his death have to be something he could conceiveably do on his own. See also: the brainwashing of Watari.

Let me explain a bit more: in the original, Light experiments with the "physically possible" rule. In one test he writes: (criminal) draws a perfect likeness of L's face on his prison wall before dying. This isn't physically possible because the criminal doesn't know what L looks like, so it's inconcievable that he could, under any circumstance, draw L's face.

Similarly, there's no way that Watari would think of going back to the orphanage to get L's real name, nor is there a conceivable way that a criminal would think to go to Light's specific hospital room and leave him the book. It has to be something they could potentially think of themselves.

Now, I know these are a lot of extremely fine details, but to people who know how the book is supposed to work, it all looks messy and contrived.

Finally, let me leave you with one last gripe/thought. Death Note is an IP originating from Japan. I get that it's a purposely American adaptation meant for American audiences, but something in the movie happens that kind of pissed me off:

Light chooses the name Kira (instead of his fans choosing the name) largely because it means "killer" in Japan, then decides to try and throw people off his scent by focusing his murders in Japan. I have no doubt that this was meant to be a nod to its Japanese origins, but it comes off as... kind of like kicking the original when it's already down. You're taking a Japanese IP, taking it to America, then using Japan as a scapegoat for American Light. Maybe it's just me, but it really made me think, "Haven't they suffered enough just by the fact that this movie exists?"

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I've missed due to repressing the memory of ever seeing this terrible movie, but those are my major (and minor) problems with it.

Don't see it. It's bad.

And DEAR GOD, PLEASE DON'T MAKE A SEQUEL.

Stay Greater.

#death note #death note movie #death note 2017 #movie review #review #sam

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shenmeizhuang-blog · 7 years

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legend of the dragon pearl: the indistinguishable road – midway musings

(This is a 90-episode drama, so at this point, I’m really up to Ep 45. Exactly, right smack in the middle of this show.)

Yes, that’s right – in order to retain the greatest accuracy and objectivity, I resisted temptation with three released episodes left unwatched – all for the sake of this post and you, the readers.

JUST KIDDING! It turns out that in the case of Longzhu (the pinyin of this show’s [shortened] native name, as the full title, 龙珠传奇之无间道, is a bit too cumbersome), wherever I stop to provide “commentary” really doesn’t matter. In fact, in trying (admittedly not very hard) to write this post, it became apparent that the best meta viewers can create for this is either live-blogging or the snarkiest recaps ever. Because let’s be real – there’s really nothing to analyze or synthesize at all (yet? Eh, I highly doubt so.)

So, of course, I’m doing neither. Let’s start from the basics. From what I’ve gathered, the “plot” is something like this (maybe?):

SYNOPSIS: Lots of weird mix-ups happen, resulting in a Ming Dynasty princess with a terminal illness (supposedly curable by the emperor’s tears) with no idea of her real identity and betrothed to a fake Crown Prince entering the Forbidden City to help this secret organization overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Naturally, she and the young Emperor Kangxi fall in love, but, 45 episodes into the show, apparently not yet, because everyone is stuck dealing with corrupt officials both in the palace and in the countryside.

Comments and comparisons on the web have revealed this as essentially really this weird mash-up of Princess Huai Yu (identity and love-line with Kangxi), Mischievous Princess (fallen princess + wild personality & young emperor + attempting to overthrow the new dynasty), and The Duke of Mountain Deer or The Deer and the Cauldron (anti-Qing organization, (b)romance with Kangxi, finding some key treasure, helping Kangxi defeat Oboi). But since I’m a relatively newer drama watcher who hasn’t seen these shows at all, I’ll give the scriptwriter the benefit of the doubt and accredit these plot points and bits of humor to the writer herself (spoilers and lots of roasting below the cut):

To be brutally straightforward: Longzhu is really a visceral mess. If I really bothered to pick out all the show’s flaws and plot holes, I would have more than enough material to write my own 90-episode drama. But from basic things from the questionable costuming (see: our protagonist Li Yihuan’s fugly “prostitute” outfit, the concubines’ hairstyles, or really overall a clear low budget) and shaky execution to ridiculous mistakes such as thinking Oboi’s (鳌拜) last name is “鳌” or “O” (lmao…), even when he’s clearly part of a prominent Manchurian clan under the Eight Banners (I’m especially sensitive about historical accuracy when it comes to the Qing Dynasty), or just the very many plot holes riddled everywhere, I must say I’ve dropped better shows.

(There’s also the matter of watching The Firmament of the Pleiades alongside this, which definitely highlights a lot more flaws than usual. For one, both shows deal with a young emperor trying to assume full power, but the way either show deals with such really speaks measures of the genre differences.)

Another thing that’s been nagging me for the longest time is: why go with this plan – training these kids lots of weird stuff like espionage – at all, instead of mobilizing the masses? Why endanger important people like the Crown Prince in this “dangerpous plan”? If Zhu Cixuan is so smart, why would he so easily display his amazing medicinal abilities, rather than display himself as “good enough to become an imperial doctor, but not the best” to avoid suspicion? Why hasn’t there been suspicion?

So what’s the saving grace? Throughout the sometimes decently interesting “missions” our leads, or the recruits of the secret anti-Qing organization 明珠谷, accept, there are indeed moments of hilarity.

There’s no denying it; it’s a nice show to get a good laugh out of, be it from sheer stupidity or mostly Yihuan’s quirky and adorable persona.

The plot goes by both quickly and frankly nowhere, making each episode easy to breeze past without much thought; given the amount that I fast-forward through, I tend to watch it 5 or 6 episodes at a time. Frankly, the show should be grateful that my Chinese is decent enough/the language is simple enough that I can watch this at 1.5x and 2x speed, because otherwise I’d definitely be dropping this. I think. I guess the producers and promoters really didn’t have high expectations for this, either – they’re actually dropping 12 episodes at once for Premium Youku and Tencent Video users every Sunday, which I find a strange format.

Even so, I’m still not quite sure how this is supposed to be 90 episodes. Although, since Princess Huai Yu was apparently 105 episodes long, maybe, just maybe, it’ll all work out.

Yet already Longzhu is showing signs of some dragginess – I guess out of ideas after the whole initial set-up and Oboi arc, the writer decided to pull a In The Name of the People and have our characters leave the palace in disguise and deal with corrupt officials in the countryside … for the freaking past 20 episodes, and judging from the YouTube thumbnails, it’s not going for a while. (I know the show is trying to depict Kangxi as this super awesome emperor who really cares for the well-being of the common people, and does crazy things like copy Buddhist scriptures with his own blood to end a drought, and honestly this was never going to be a good palace drama, so it’s not too bad, I guess.)

Of course, throughout all this, we have this complex love heptagon thing with multiple “enemies-to-lovers” relationships, as typical when dealing with people from two different dynasties. There’s been lots of tension and character interactions presented throughout the stupid plot, but weirdly it feels that everyone is pretty much still at square one, with honestly little meaningful development. (When was this show ever about meaningful development?)

(Oh wait, I think I was supposed to talk about this show’s strengths and ended up roasting it again.)

Easily the best thing about Longzhu is the cast’s solid acting and wonderful chemistry – given the mostly flatly written characters, actors for the corrupt officials such as Oboi, Liu Dezhao, and Qiu Gui have managed to give memorable, even adorable, performances. Even very minor roles, such as the suffering peasants, are portrayed with admirable nuance, despite some of their really stupidly made-up names.

Of course, I am largely fond of the leads. From real-life couple Yang Zi (portraying protagonist Li Yihuan) and Qin Jun Jie (Emperor Kangxi)’s sizzling chemistry, as well as Qin Jun Jie’s hilarious and intense expressions, to **Mao Zi Jun **(fake Crown Prince Zhu Cixuan)’s charisma (is that him looking ridiculously hot in the Qing hairstyle? I think I under-appreciated his beautiful face in The Glory of Tang Dynasty, but here I’m half-drooling) and Shu Chang’s phenomenal acting in differentiating (probably long-lost twins) Shu Wanxin and Xue Qincheng, this drama easily fits into the “great cast and acting but trash plot” category. (Also kudos to He Zhonghua for masterfully portraying long-lost twins Li Dingguo and Li De Fu (Eunuch Li), characters who frankly couldn’t be more different.)

(And, yeah, Allen Ren cameos in this…for like ten minutes…)

Combined with my fondness for the actors, the characterization is overall likable (Kangxi might be a bit too pushy and clearly doesn’t really get boundaries – typical of royalty – but I like how he’s motivated, though at times (like most characters in this show) prone to bouts of stupidity), with characters from both the Qing and anti-Qing largely rootable. I also adore certain side characters such as 索额图 and his nephew, so I actually haven’t resorted to looking for an OTP cut.

However, as likable as Yihuan is – I like the whole “jack of all trades, master of none” idea – I can’t help but complain about how Yang Zi seems to almost always be typecast into these sort of roles. Lu Xueqi in Noble Aspirations (Chusen) the notable exception, it seems that most of her roles – even Xiang Xiang from the critically acclaimed Battle of Changsha – are largely “quirky, immature, and adorable foodie with exaggerated expressions”. No one is involved in this production is particularly concerned by this, either – the official promotions actually call Yihuan the “ancient version of Qiu Yingying” (Yang Zi’s character in Ode To Joy).

Another problem is: given that the main appeal is Qin Jun Jie and Yang Zi’s relationship and strong chemistry, the show should know to service us with OTP moments, but apparently they’d rather show the characters dealing with corruption and a revenge plot-line that, frankly speaking, no cares about.

Then when I consider dropping this, they serve up fanservice of all kinds on a platter. The experience is something like:

Me: cringes at the off-putting execution

Longzhu: Look! An Allen Ren***** cameo!

Me: Yeah, I’m not relating with this who anti-Qing revenge plan. Maybe it would be better if I skipped these parts

Longzhu: But look at how likable these leads are!

Me: Okay, this is getting draggy

Longzhu: Hey, it’s a flashback featuring 李嗣兴 (re: RJL cameo)!

Me: They’ve been at this stupid corruption arc for so long; maybe I should drop this

Longzhu: K even though the OTP won’t be mutually admitting of their feelings for a while, it’s fine because we’ll drug them with an aphrodisiac! Then they can have an intense make-out scene!

(& etc.)

Despite being a very flawed show, I think I might actually watch all 90 episodes, and not just for the cast – it’s stupid and cliche (remember: based on the premise that the emperor’s tears can cure our heroine’s terminal illness), but somehow inherently likable and decently addictive. I guess…I’m looking forward to the angst and falling-out?

*****Allen Ren is this bundle of talent, cuteness, and extra-ness with super nice micro-expressions who also is probably the closest person to my bias.

#don't get me wrong i still like this show #sort of?#i'm being entertained #legend of the dragon pearl #legend of the dragon pearl: the indistinguishable road #legend of dragon pearl: the indistinguishable road #i'm laughing at how the official youtube channel is translating it to 'legend of the dragon ball'#龙珠传奇 #龙珠传奇之无间道 #commentary #long post #my commentary #a bit more of a roast #cdrama #cdramanet #yang zi #qin jun jie #mao zi jun #shu chang

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