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140smashedguitars · 3 years

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Something that I love about Cherry Magic is the way it ignores a bunch of tired/toxic tropes in stories about queer people. I'm gonna list them under a read more because this is gonna get kinda long.

No homophobia This is the big one, obviously. Every story about queer people involves the main character and/or the love interest fighting homophobia. You have the character(s) dealing with slurs, mockery, being isolated from people who they thought cared about them and potentially violently abused. Instead, the only thing vaguely homophobic thing we hear is episode 7 when Adachi is worried about the fact that they’re both men, but then moves past it and tells Kurosawa that he wants to be with him. The only time anyone is suspected of being homophobic is when Minato thinks Tsuge is being homophobic towards him and Rokkaku, a (presumably) cishet character, stands up for Minato and is ready to throw hands for him, until the mistake is quickly rectified. Homophobia just doesn’t have a place in this story, and I know that homophobia is rampant in the real world, I’m not saying it’s not, it’s just that so many stories are already about that and it’s nice to see a queer story focused on someone learning to love and accept themself and realise and accept that they are allowed to be happy.

No coming out Someone made a post about how mainstream stories about queer people are about coming about because that’s what affects cishet people and mainstream media wants to cater to them. I am so tired of this; cishet people being focused on/pandered to in stories about queer people. Our stories are not about you. The stories don’t need to be for you. You can enjoy them, but you don’t need to be the centre of them for that. Instead of having literally any coming out in this show, whenever anyone is revealed to be queer, it isn’t made to be an emotional, important scene. The revelation happens, and the other character accepts it and doesn’t make a big thing out of it. When Adachi finds out for definite that Kurosawa likes him, he doesn’t think “Wait, Kurosawa likes men?” He thinks “Wait, Kurosawa likes me?” Again, I know in real life that coming out is a big and terrifying thing for queer people, but it’s not the only part of our life.

No one is already in a relationship Films like Imagine Me & You and Free Fall (both of which I like) have one of the characters start the film in an opposite sex relationship which they seem happy in, until the other character of the same sex as them comes along and confuses them and then they either want to or do cheat on their current partner and then they have to choose who they want to be with and it’s just a mess. Queer people aren’t just homewreckers or need a special person to come along and make them realise they were gay all along. Bisexual people do exist and can have happy relationships with people of the opposite sex. Who knew! Instead, all 4 members of the couples are single until they get together. Kurosawa isn’t trying to avoid his feelings by being with someone he doesn’t really like and then breaking their heart. Adachi and Tsuge obviously aren’t in relationships because that’s the point of the plot and Minato is single as well. It all works out nicely. There’s no going behind a partners back or promising to leave the partner, but they don’t want to upset them. Just 4 single people who find each other with some bumps along the way.

No aggression at realising they’re gay Brokeback Mountain, Free Fall and a bunch of other films about queer men will do this and I HATE it. One of the characters will fall in love with the other and accept that part of themself, and the other character will start sleeping with him and then get angry and then potentially physically violent if not just verbally abusive because he can’t deal with being attracted to a man and the other character will just continue to love him and want to be with him despite that. Just. Why? Queer people aren’t just toxic or drawn to toxic relationships. This is an awful narrative, especially when the films are catered towards cishet people. Instead, Kurosawa loves and respect Adachi so much, putting his needs first, going at his pace, letting him make the first moves. In return, Adachi loves and respects Kurosawa even if he is nervous about it. He’s respectful of Kurosawa’s feelings and wants him to be himself around Adachi. They love each other for who they are. We get constant shots of them smiling at/because of each other. After Adachi reveals his magic to Kurosawa, Kurosawa doesn’t get angry or upset and only interupts Adachi after he starts insulting himself. And when they break up, again, Kurosawa isn’t angry (though he’s obviously upset), but doesn’t take that out on Adachi. Instead, he takes him back literally with open arms because he understands that Adachi’s problem is with himself and that he needed time to work on that. Kurosawa wants Adachi to see himself as a good person, and Adachi wants the reverse. And even though we don’t see much of Tsuge and Minato, we know that Tsuge is so happy to be with Minato and Minato is clearly happy with Tsuge even if he has a harder time communicating. They both respect each others boundaries as well and Minato goes slow for Tsuge their first time in case Tsuge wants to stop. The relationships have clearly made all 4 of them happy and it shows the queer audience that they can be in happy, respectful and non toxic realtionships too, as is what we deserve.

No fetishisation The fact that this show is based around the main character and his best friend losing their virginities yet there’s no gratuitous sex scenes or even a kiss from the main couple is quite astonishing. Most films about queer people (especially queer men) will have so much explicit sexual content, which is probably there for the cishet female gaze. All 4 members of the couples are treated with respect within the narractive and when one of them does get overly sexualised (Kurosawa) it’s seen negatively. It forces us to see all the characters as human beings and focus entirely on their stories. What wer get instead of the fetishisation is better as well. The first time Adachi and Kurosawa hold hands makes my heart swell. Kurosawa grabbing Adachi’s hand nervously is an amazing shot and it’s so wonderfully intimate that no kiss or sex scene could’ve beaten that. And when we do get a kiss (from Minato and Tsuge) it’s there to make a point. Like I said before, it shows Minato cares about and respects Tsuge’s feelings. We know they had sex, same with Adachi and Kurosawa in the finale but they don’t show it. They don’t need to. Also, Fujisaki is very intersting this aspect. She’s the only female main character and not only is she not fetishised, she’s aroace and it’s completely accepted by Adachi. She’s treated like a human being, and she doesn’t fetishise Adachi and Kurosawa.

No one dies and both couples get together and stay together Self explanatory, but how many stories about queer people do we know of where after everything, one of the main characters die, or the couple just simply don’t end up together? I’m sick and tired of watching so many stories where queer people fight to be themselves and be with someone they love only for that fight to be futile. What’s the point? So seeing a show with FIVE queer people in the main cast who are happy and 4 of them end up in relationships with someone they love that are not toxic that we know will actually last is so refreshing. The show takes the bury your gays trope and says ‘fuck that, we’re not about that’ and I absolutely love it for it.

This show all in all is quite fascinating. It’s 5 hours long and takes all these tropes and throws them in the bin. It tells a compelling, beautiful story that I and so many other queer people really needed. It gives us hope that maybe one day we can find someone who loves us for who we are, be it a friend or romantic partner. It shows us that there are other people like us and we can find them. We are not alone. It shows us that even if we don’t love ourselves, we are still capable of loving someone else and someone else can still love us.

I love this show, and it means more to me than I can explain. I didn’t expect this to get mushy towards the end, but honestly, I want to say thank you for everyone who made Cherry Magic the way it is. It’s a truly amazing show and it’s sad that more people won’t get to see it, but I’m glad I did. ❤️

#mine #cherry magic #i just have so many feelings about this show ok

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bowenandjohnson · 4 years

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Elite Season 3 Theories Masterpost

Since it was announced this morning that Elite season 3 will be released on Netflix on March 13, along with a short teaser and a lot of promotional photos, I thought I would put them all together in a large post of my predictions for this season. If you don’t want to be spoiled, I’m putting them all under the cut!

Season Theme

Under the date announcement teaser trailer, one of the Netflix youtube accounts listed a new synopsis of the upcoming season--which claims that another one of our beloved Las Encinas students will die, and yet another police investigation ensues. The last two lines also talk about “the future” and “the past.” Other BTS spoilers have indicated that the students will also graduate from Las Encinas, most likely at the end of the season, and for them to move on peacefully, most of them will have to rectify their mistakes from the past 16 episodes. Possible character redemption definitely seems possible, especially for Lu, Valerio, Ander, Cayetana, and others!

Other Plot Points:

The Polo of it All

It appears from this photo that the murder case of Marina Nunier Osuna goes to some type of judicial court. It appears (at least to me) that Carla and Polo are possibly giving their own testimonies of that night that Marina died. Unfortunately, since it’s a he said-she said situation without the murder weapon, Polo will probably be acquitted of all charges for the time being. Certainly helps that he’s a wealthy, white teenager too.

Even if Polo gets acquitted of all charges in Marina’s death for the time being, it appears that his time at Las Encinas won’t get any easier, judging from this photo where he’s seen choking Valerio. Rebeca looks like she’s having a hell of a time trying to get Polo to let go. Other observations that I have is that Polo looks severely unkempt and rougher than usual--probably another sign of his worsening mental state.

Once Polo gets acquitted, I would assume that Guzman then reaches out to Polo to reconnect. He’s offering him a beer, and it looks like they’re playing video games in Guzman’s room again. However, I believe that Guzman has ulterior motives for doing this. He’s going to team up with other students, including Samuel, to find the trophy, and finally get Polo nailed for the death of his sister once and for all.

A Possible Timeline of Events

Flashforwards: Graduation from Las Encinas (and the Spanish Scooby Gang’s Master Plan)

It for sure looks like this is part of the graduation from Las Encinas. The hallways are decorated, and in the lower right-hand corner by Valerio, it looks like blue and aqua balloons are scattered somewhere. This is where I also became sure that Samuel, Valerio, and Rebeca are for sure going to help Guzman take down Polo and possibly Cayetana for good. Spanish Scooby Gang assemble!

It makes sense that Samuel would help Guzman, as he still feels an intimate connection to his sister, and how he genuinely loved her in some way. While thinking of possible reasons of why Rebeca and Valerio would aid Guzman in his quest, I again circled back to the theme of redemption. Rebe feels guilty that her mother (and by extension, herself) almost got Samuel killed for involving him in the family business. Valerio feels guilty for the fact that he recorded Nadia and Guzman having sex in the locker room. Helping take down a murderer is certainly on the way for redemption for Valerio, and to get Samuel and Rebeca talking again.

They just gotta get a hold of that missing trophy!

Extended Scooby Gang

The fact that we see Nadia and Rebeca smiling and standing with Lu, who has tormented them in the past, is a clear sign of the season’s theme of looking towards the future, letting go of the past, and ultimately redemption. If Lu helps the Scooby Gang (which would include Nadia and Rebe) take down a murderer to try and absolve her past sins at Las Encinas, it would show a true sign of growth for the character. However, I would like to see her problematic behavior addressed and dealt with before she is completely forgiven. Show, don't tell, how the character has evolved over the course of the season.

Flashforwards: Graduation Party at the Club

After the class graduates, it makes sense that the gang would party together one last time at the club. From this photo, we can see that Omar, Ander, Nadia, Guzman, Rebeca, Cayetana, Valerio, Lu, Samuel, and Carla will all be present at some point. Whatever or whoever they’re looking at offscreen in this photo doesn’t appear welcome. Polo perhaps?

Somebody’s Dying Tonight/The Party is Definitely Over Now

From this photo, it is made clear that someone is not making it out alive of Elite season 3, and the mystery of who it is and why will probably slowly unravel across these next eight episodes. If you zoom in closely on Guzman’s hands, you can see blood on them, which factors into my “who’s dying?” list.

1. Ander - Ander isn’t shown in this photo, which made me immediately suspicious. At the end of season 2, Guzman angrily said to him that he hopes Ander falls and cracks his head open on the ground. Possible foreshadowing for his death? Due to his sorrowful look and his bloody hands, he may regret those words. If Ander dies, it would also make sense to why Omar and Nadia are not present in these photos. Omar is Ander’s boyfriend, and Nadia might be accompanying both of them to the hospital where he’ll be pronounced dead. I do find it hard to believe though that they would fridge a gay man, and one who is a part of the fan-favorite ship of the show. Who knows, however?

2. Lu - Lu’s been a tough character for me to get behind throughout the show’s run. While I do like Danna Paola’s portrayal of her, I certainly don’t condone her actions of bullying, islamophobia, racism, or incest in any form. Getting back on track, she also isn’t seen in this photo, and neither is Valerio, her brother. Lu’s death would also explain Carla’s sorrowful expression, as they used to be best friends. Guzman was also one of her closest friends and her boyfriend at one point, so they once had a deep connection. Omar was also a new friend of Lu’s, so it’s possible that he might have accompanied her to the hospital. Lu’s death might also explain Samuel’s, Rebeca’s, and Cayetana’s look of indifference, as she bullied them all at points in the last two seasons, and their relationships with her were often contentious. Lu’s death may be one way to ultimately redeem the character also.

3. Nadia - As stated before, Nadia is also not shown in this photo, which is surprising as in the other club photo, she is seen standing very closely next to Guzman. She is Guzman’s primary love interest in the show, so that is also why he looks so sad, and the blood on his hands might be from an attempt to keep her alive until an ambulance came. Although if she was truly in peril, I believe that Omar, Rebeca, and Guzman (maybe even Samuel!) would probably go with her to the hospital. However, anything’s possible.

4. Yeray/Malick - We haven’t seen the new kids in any photos from the party so far. Therefore, they could also die. RIP.

Despite Guzman having blood on his hands, I don’t think he’s the murderer. Too big of a spoiler to put in promotional materials. Next.

Love Is in the Air

Guzman/Nadia

Considering what happened in season 2 for these two, where they were filmed having sex and then publicly shamed at school, I’ll consider it a win if they’re standing closely together in a promo picture. I believe that these two will eventually find their way back to each other, and that they’re meant to be. They might spend the season mostly apart, but considering that a magazine also leaked these candids of the two actors kissing, hugging, and talking in these outfits, Guznadia is definitely endgame in some shape or form.

Lu/Valerio/Rebeca/Samuel

Since Valerio ended his incestuous relationship with Lu last season in the finale, it would make sense that he would try to move on with a new girl. And who better than Rebeca, who he’s already kissed at the Back-to-School party? If he makes some kind of play for Rebeca, it might make Samuel jealous and admit some feelings towards Rebe--considering the magazine also leaked candids of Samu and Rebe kissing outside of school in their uniforms.

However, considering Valerio’s “connection” with Lu, he may have a hard time moving on for good, as seen in the first picture. In my opinion, the picture of Lu/Valerio only serves to further my #LuDies theory. A sweet forehead kiss between siblings/former lovers at the grad party? Spells one word: doom.

Samuel/Carla/Yeray

Samucarla has become a fan-favorite ship for many in the Elite fandom. So seeing this picture of Yeray (played by Sergio Momo) with his arms around Carla may hurt some people’s feelings. It is clear that at some point in this season, Samuel does kiss Rebe, however in the magazine spread of Elite candids, Samuel and Carla were seen talking at the grad party, and Carla had her hand on Samu’s face. Will the two try to move on from another, but eventually pulled back together? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Omar/Ander

Fan-favorites “Omander” have no solo promotional pictures so far, but both were glimpsed in the party photo. Their storylines this season may be very spoilery and integral to the plot, which is why they weren’t shown as much.

Polo/Cayetana

Like Omander, the two were in promo shots, but never seen together. This also hints at the two’s dynamic being super important to season 3, considering Polo is a murderer and Caye is now his accomplice in covering up his crime.

These are just my theories for the upcoming season based on what is available to us right now, and I will certainly update them as more material comes out! Feel free to let me know your own thoughts, and make sure to watch season 3 when it comes out March 13th on Netflix!

#elite netflix #elite s3 #polo benavent #guzman nunier #lu montesinos #nadia shanaa #guznadia #samucarla #omander #elite spoilers #long post #there are two many characters to tag i'm sorry

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littlemisssquiggles · 5 years

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You know I absolutely adore Yang but I’m the only who’s getting really annoyed with her this volume?

You’renot alone in that regard anon-chan. But at the same time, I’m notsurprised. I mean I think tension amongst the group after the revelation wassomething we all anticipated but even still, what we got still managedto be surprising. Especially the part with Qrow. Speaking of our titular bird dad, I’mactually moredisappointed with Qrow than I amwith Yang. I expected Yang to be pissed. But Qrow… Qrow’s fury threw me for aloop the most especially with the way he struck Ozpin and Oscar.

HittingOscar was one thing but…it left me shell-shocked that Qrow would darelash outat Oz the way he did. I get for him to be peeved like his niece but…Qrow---whatQrow said to Oz was uncalled for.

Ithurt me to see Ozpin’s reaction to what Qrow told him. I wouldn’t be surprisedif Ozpin---or Ozma saw Qrow like a son.

“No onewanted me. I was cursed. I gave my life to you because you gave me a place inthis world. I thought I was finally doing some good.”

“But… youare.”

“Meeting youwas the worst luck of my life.”

Ihated what Qrow said to Ozpin here because you can see how much it stung him. As a matter of fact, Ozpin leaving is becauseof Qrow’s words. Befittingly enough, the guy with misfortune as his semblance wasthe key reason why Oz decided to ups and lock himself away.

Thisis something that I’ve wondered. Ozpin locking himself away---this can’t be thefirst time he’d done this. Is this what Oz did during those lives where hespent grieving and trying to forget the pains of his past?

Did he lock himselfaway inside the deep subconscious of his vessels and just…stayed theirwallowing in his own grief until the vessel ultimately died and Ozma justreincarnated in the body of his next vessel and did the exact same thing again? Ifthat’s the case then that makes it even more disheartening.

Ozmust have suffered from depression (notto actual mental illness but something akin to it) triggered by the loss of hischildren and the former life he had with Salem and he did this for who knowshow many lifetimes. It took Ozpin several years to come out of his depressivestate when he made his duty to the God of Light and mankind his priority togive him a purpose and to distract him from his own misery which I doubt he’sgotten over.

Ittook Oz centuries to come out of his pain while it took Qrow Branwen only a fewshort words to put Oz right back into his depressive hole.

Wow! I’m trying my best tonot be furious with Qrow this episode. I sympathize withhim for being angry over Oz giving everyone the impression that they could stopSalem but…I still think Oz didn’t deserve those words.

Asa man who’s lost all four of his children in a past life, finding Qrow and nurturinghim the way he did. I don’t know what the full consensus of the relationshipQrow had with the version of Oz he met but you cannot tell me that Oz didn’tlove Qrow. Whether it was like a best friend or a proxy son or a mixture of both---you don’t get such a reactionlike this from someone who didn’t care about the person who told them thosewords. What a f***ing mess!

Y’know,as an audience member I had my own fair share of doubts about Ozpin. I alwaysfelt like he was hiding something about his past but I never took it to thepoint where I wholeheartedly thought he was an evil or conniving person likeother fans have done. I mean I’ve toyed with the idea of Oz being different in another life but it always returned to the personhe is currently rather than who he used to be, y’know what I mean?

Ozhas always possessed a compassionate charm about him and it’s the main reasonwhy I liked him as a character.

Evenin doubt, I always held onto the belief that even if Ozpin was revealed to be aliar,there had to be a plausible reason behind his actions and it was those reasonsthat would’ve turned the tides on whether I was in Oz’s court or not.

Needlessto say, after V6 C3-4, I am more in Ozpin’s court than I ever was. When Ozpinheads stand up in favour of the old soul using the hastag #OzpinDidNothingWrong,they’re notkidding. Everything about Ozpin’s actions was justified lastepisode. Anything you could’ve pinned on Ozpin, it all fell back to someoneelse but Ozpin.

Did Ozpindefy the Gods and caused the end of the world? No. That was Salem.

Did Ozpin unknowinglycreate Salem and made her the all-powerful being that she is? No. That was the BrotherGods.

Forfuck’s sake, Ozpin has spent the last lifetimes of his life literally trying torectify the mistakes made by others. And what makes the truth even sadder isthat Ozpin is practically the scapegoat in all of this. He’s the one to getblamed for the actions that Gods and Salem did when all he’s been doing istrying to FIX EVERYTHING! That’s so not fair.

Salem’sactions brought about the destruction of Remnant the first time yet Ozma wasreincarnated in order to help prevent humanity from facing the same fate asecond time when he was practically dead during the first end of the world. Hewas no part of that yet here he is the one being forced to rectify it.

TheGods made Salem immortal and foolishly never thought to revoke her immortalityafter they abandoned Remnant, yet everyone and their mother blames Ozpin fornot telling them this information.

Ozpinhas been shouldering the brunt of these burdens for years. It’s no wonder he chose tonot tell the whole truth. Can you imagine the sheer absolute chaos news likethe existence of Salem and the Gods’ Judgement would cause? It would’ve causedworldwide panic and panic brings forth negativity. And what does negativitybring? The Grimm.

Theone thing that Ozpin was guilty of---the one thing he did wrong was not tellthe whole truth. But in spite of this, I, honestly don’t blame Oz for movingthe way he did. His reasoning behind all of it is justifiable. He did itbecause he didn’t want everyone to lose hope becauseright now, hope is all that humanity has left to thwart thedarkness. It won’t stop Salem but it will keep them going until they figure outhow to stop Salem.

Becauseif they lose hope and give in to their negative emotions, then Salem wins.If humanity loses fate in themselves, it will bring forth the Grimm and theneverything will be lost for good. Salem wouldn’t even need to summon the Godswith the Relics because humanity’s hopelessness would’ve caused their ownextinction for the second time.

Iget why Qrow and Yang would be upset but personally, if I were a character inRWBY and I was with the heroes when Qrow decided to apprehend Oz, I would haveturned on Qrow and smacked some good ass sense into both him and Yang with Yang’sown robotic arm. That’s why I’m happy that a character like Maria is with thegroup.

Mariawas me in that moment. I wouldn’t done the same thing as Maria, albeit I would’vethwacked Qrow for daring to hit a child but I would’ve done my best to remaincalm and think logically in the face of tension. I get that lies and theimplication of false hope without a plan is terrible but…I can’t get mad aboutit not when there was logical consideration behind it.

Iget why Oz never told anyone the truth. I get it which is why it sucks. Ittruly sucks.It truly sucks that even after seeing Ozpin’s past, people still turned on him.Yes I know Oz never told anyone that Salem is immortal and can’t be killed; but…that wasn’this fault?! He didn’t make herimmortal?

Didthey not see everything else?

Didthey not see Ozpin’ssuffering? Did they not see his loss? See his pain? His grief…thefact that he GAVE UP and had to pull himself out of his own grief to focus onthe plan at hand. Did they not see, that even after Oz came up with a plan ofaction to find the Relics and found the Relic of Knowledge, did they not seehis hopelessness afterwards?

Buthere’s the thing that I’m shocked the heroes did not see? Oz knew that Salemcouldn’t be stopped yet…it never stopped him. Oz still came back again and kept movingforward.

Somy curious question is…what made Ozpin regain his hope for a second time? My best guess is that it was the original FourMaidens.

Mindyou, we still have yet to meet the Hermitof Ozpin’s reincarnates. And I’ll bet money that Mustache Ozma, the Inquisitor---theone who discovered the Relic of Knowledge and found out that he couldn’t stopSalem is the one who went onto become the Hermit. Still standing firmly withthat hunch.

I’llbet money right now that it was the original Four Maidens who renewed Ozpin’shope in humanity and inspired him to create the Vaults to hide away the Relicsfor good while creating the huntsmen academies to train the huntsmen.

Ina way, you can also say that it was Ozma who created the huntsmen since hebuilt the academies. Ozma created the huntsmen so that they could give humanityhope in the fight against the Grimm.

EverythingOzpin has done everything in his power to keep hope alive which...makes it’s very sad to see Oz lose hope again.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2018)

#squiggles answers: rwby #professor ozpin #oscar pine #rwby theories #rwby volume 6 spoilers #qrow branwen #Anonymous

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xtruss · 3 years

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Afghanistan and the Haunting Questions of Blame

In Senate testimony, the generals acknowledged America’s “strategic failure” in its longest war, and their differences with Biden.

— By Robin Wright | September 30, 2021

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the end of the war in Afghanistan.Photograph by Patrick Semansky / Getty

After the First World War, a conspiracy theory dubbed Dolchstosslegende—or “being stabbed in the back”— was popularized in Germany to explain its historic military defeat. The myth claimed that the war had actually been lost by weak civilians who had caved to the enemy, signed an armistice, and stabbed in the back a brave German military that would otherwise have won.

“There were echoes of that after the war in Vietnam,” Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor and the author of “Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle,” told me this week, as top U.S. military leaders testified about America’s defeat in its longest war. “The loss in Vietnam was all President Lyndon Johnson and the feckless civilians who wouldn’t let us do it right.” Donald Trump invoked the same conspiratorial idea to explain just about everything that went wrong during his Administration, including his election loss. “Stab-in-the-back myths can be poisonous in all sorts of ways,” Biddle warned.

A month after the Biden Administration completed the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington is struggling to understand how its vast human, military, financial, and diplomatic investment, made over two decades, simply collapsed, with the Taliban sweeping back into power and the United States scrambling to get out. The rancorous debate over blame threatens to further divide the nation. In two days of testy and occasionally snarky questions, members of the Senate and House challenged the three men who oversaw the war’s end to explain it. They were painfully candid. And there were plenty of mea culpas.

“We helped build a state,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate panel on Tuesday. “But we could not forge a nation.” He questioned whether the United States ever even had the right strategy—or, over two decades, whether it had “perhaps too many strategies?” The United States now has to acknowledge uncomfortable truths, he said. “The fact that the Afghan Army that we and our partners trained simply melted away—in many cases without firing a shot—took us all by surprise. And it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s most senior military officer, bluntly conceded failure at an “incredible” cost. “Strategically the war was lost,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The enemy is in Kabul.”

The testimony revealed a chasm between what President Biden claimed came out of a lengthy consultation with his generals and what the Pentagon advised. The military recommended keeping a residual force of twenty-five hundred U.S. troops in Afghanistan, General Kenneth (Frank) McKenzie, Jr., the head of Central Command, testified. The goal was to prop up—psychologically even more than militarily—President Ashraf Ghani’s fragile government and Afghan security forces to allow more time for elected leaders in Kabul to negotiate with the Taliban on the makeup of a transitional government. The rivals had been talking since last September, and the Taliban had refused to make major concessions. Under the plan, U.S.-led nato forces would have been able to hold Bagram (a strategic air base that provided air support to Afghan forces; it was abandoned during the U.S troop drawdown). The timing of a future withdrawal would then depend on conditions, such as a successfully brokered peace, and not tied to an arbitrary date.

The sworn testimony was in stark contrast to the version Biden has offered the American public. Last month, the President claimed that the military never advised him to stay. In an interview, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him, “So no one told—your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep twenty-five hundred troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?” Biden replied, “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.” The White House has been scrambling to rectify the discrepancies. “These conversations don’t happen in black-and-white, like you’re in the middle of a movie,” the White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. Pressed by Republicans about their conversations with Biden, the Pentagon leaders declined to criticize him. “I was present when that discussion occurred and I am confident that the President heard all the recommendations and listened to them very thoughtfully,” McKenzie testified. “That’s all any commander can ask.”

Other themes emerged from the testimony that may prove more important in understanding the scope and consequences of an epic failure by the world’s most powerful nation against a guerrilla insurgency that lacked both armor and air power. The fallout will extend well beyond South Asia. “Our credibility with allies and partners around the world, and with adversaries, is being intensely reviewed by them to see which way this is going to go,” Milley told the Senate committee. “I think that ‘damage’ is one word that could be used, yes.”

A deeper assessment of America’s mistakes, which were many, is still to come. “This is a twenty-year war,” Milley told the House committee on Wednesday. “It wasn’t lost in the last twenty days, or even twenty months, for that matter. There is a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back.”

Milley cited many decisive factors and pivots: he noted the problem of Pakistan offering sanctuary (There were NO SANCTUARIES. These people live on the both sides of the borders. IT’S ALL BULLSHIT. They cross borders freely without any restrictions.) —for decades, and continuing to this day—to the Taliban’s fighters and leadership. The U.S. military was just a thousand metres from Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Tora Bora in the first two months of the U.S. intervention in 2001; the Al Qaeda leader slipped away into Pakistan, where he hid for another decade.The general didn’t get into politics or diplomacy, but none of the four Presidents who waged the war was able to get Pakistan, a nuclear power which sees the Taliban as an ally against its archrival, India, to contain the extremist movement. Did he know why? Because Fascist Terrorist India is an ally of the US now to contain China. It’s quite sure that both India and the United States can’t F*** with China. China will beat the S*** of them and that’s for sure. US abandoned it’s old ally Pakistan because of India. The Pentagon leaders admitted to other mistakes: poor U.S. intelligence; endemic Afghan corruption exacerbated as the U.S. poured billions of dollars into the country; the Doha agreement negotiated between the Trump Administration and the Taliban that excluded the elected Afghan government; and especially the U.S. military’s fundamental misreading of the Afghan military’s lack of leadership, morale, and will. Here Braindead General failed to mention the hidden agendas and dirty tricks of the United States’ “FAKE WAR ON TERRORISM” in the region. Well equipped with modern warfare machineries, WAR CRIMINAL United States and its War Criminal puppets, UK, FRANCE, GERMANY, ITALY, AUSTRALIA and the WEST still got the well deserved deep f*** by the native WARRIORS, THE TALIBAN, and YET BLAMING PAKISTAN for their failure of NON WINNABLE FAKE WAR ON TERRORISM. WTF? Pakistan absolutely did the right thing to take care of it’s own interest first. Pakistan don’t give a damn f*** to the ‘Invader War Criminal United States’ and or to it’s ‘War Criminal Puppet Allies’ when it’s comes to the SOVEREIGNTY of PAKISTAN.

Austin, a former four-star general who served in Afghanistan, was explicit in a stream-of-consciousness list of the mistakes the U.S. made in simply misunderstanding Afghanistan. “That we did not fully comprehend the depth of corruption and poor leadership in their senior ranks,” he said, “that we did not grasp the damaging effect of frequent and unexplained rotations by President Ghani of his commanders, that we did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha agreement, that the Doha agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on Afghan soldiers, and that we failed to fully grasp that there was only so much for which—and for whom—many of the Afghan forces would fight.” A fatal flaw in U.S. strategy, the Pentagon officials said, was trying to create a military that was a “mirror image” of the sophisticated U.S. military in a poor South Asian nation with limited literacy. It was costliest for Afghans. Somewhere between sixty thousand and seventy thousand members of the Afghan security forces died in the twenty-year war, compared to more than twenty-four hundred U.S. service members. An estimated forty-six thousand Afghan civilians perished, too. The United States had the technology to track the Afghan military in its fight with the Taliban, Milley said, but failed to grasp how its pullout would affect Afghan morale. “You can’t measure the human heart with a machine,” he said.

Given past claims by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the testimony was chilling and will offer fodder for historians for decades. The Pentagon spent eighty-three billion dollars to train and outfit the Afghan security forces. Eight hundred thousand Americans in various branches of the U.S. military rotated in and out of Afghanistan, some multiple times. For two decades, top generals repeatedly reported that progress was being made. This week, they acknowledged that it had not. “You wish you’d seen that kind of candor during the war,” Christine Fair, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, told me. “Why were you wrong about ninety-nine things if you’re honest about the hundredth?” McKenzie acknowledged that U.S. military leaders may not have listened to warnings from more junior U.S. service members working day to day with Afghan forces. “I think that’s a reasonable criticism,” he testified. “I’ll be very candid with you.”

The most alarming conclusions from the hearings were about the future of the jihadist threat broadly and Al Qaeda specifically. On the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Milley acknowledged, jihadism got a “shot of adrenaline” from the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power. American credibility was badly damaged. “It’s a big morale boost,” he said. The prospect of a future attack is “a very real possibility.” One of the seven conditions that the Taliban never met, as part of its deal with the Trump Administration, was to renounce Al Qaeda. Under the Taliban, Al Qaeda may be able to reconstitute in as little as six to twelve months and then, again, threaten the U.S. homeland, the Pentagon officials warned. Without U.S. troops on the ground or in neighboring countries, it will now be far harder to track Al Qaeda, isis-Khorasan, or other extremist cells in Afghanistan.

The most unnerving aspect of the two-day hearing, though, was the rank partisan politicizing of a war waged by two Republican and two Democratic Presidents with the goal, in theory, of safeguarding all Americans. Republicans on both the Senate and House committees called on Milley, who was stoic and stone-faced throughout, to resign. “This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we are going to accept and do or not,” Milley shot back at the Republican Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas. The Republican tirades were often ill-informed and politically self-serving. In the House, Representative Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, called the criticism of the military by opportunistic fellow-Republicans “despicable.”

The testimony appeared to signify that the long de-facto alignment between Republicans and the U.S. military is over, Biddle told me: “The Republican Party is turning on them. That’s a tectonic shift.” As the U.S. looks ahead, the threats to national security and democracy will be the rise of hyper-partisanship and the erosion of public trust in government institutions, a trend exacerbated during the Trump Presidency. “The military may be the next institution that gets the rug pulled out from under them,” Biddle said. The Pentagon leaders’ testimony this week—which at times bordered on being a confessional—was striking, but may not be enough, Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, told me. “At some level, it’s inspiring, but anyone who is fair-minded would have to say the ending was catastrophic,” he said. “We’re all still in a state of shock about what happened.” Defeat is defeat. And the judgments and relentless pursuit of political advantage are only beginning.

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armorbirdpress · 6 years

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Armor Bird Reviews: Deadpool 2

If you'll excuse the cringeworthy wordplay to start us off, I've been dying harder than a mook at Wade Wilson's mercy to see the Deadpool sequel, and I finally got my wish last weekend. The first movie is as of now my favorite in the X-Men film canon, and this is coming from somebody who's seen most if not all of the movies over the years and really enjoyed both Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. However, Deadpool topped them both by quite a margin by not only rerailing the Merc with a Mouth, but also using quite a bit of self-deprecation among other humor to blow a mile-wide hole in the fourth wall. So, was Deadpool 2 able to outdo the first film in terms of quality and humor? The spoilerific answer is under the cut!

Deadpool 2 starts off... pretty badly, actually. There is definitely humor and a bit of a jab at the ending of Logan - the film literally opens with a music box shaped like the dead Wolverine, in fact - and we get to see the Merc turn himself to ludicrous gibs literally within minutes of the studio titles. Fine and dandy for an introductory sequence, right? But then we get to see why he blew himself up: someone shot Vanessa while he and his gang broke into Wade's apartment. That... that's not how I wanted to start us off. It was a disappointment to me especially since Vanessa actually gains powers in the comics and I'd have wanted to see that play out in a Deadpool sequel, rather than her getting fridged less than ten minutes in. For reasons I'll get to much later in this review, the impact actually wasn't as bad as Mako Mori getting fridged in Pacific Rim: Uprising - which was in its entirety a bitter disappointment for my taste; I seriously hope a third PR movie does get made after all that fixes what this one made such a huge mess of, but I digress. Having Vanessa's death solely be for the sake of Deadpool's development was an upset I worried would detract from the rest of the movie. I even saw it coming, actually - Wade's narration mentions that like other family movies, which he insists this film is an example of, it starts with "a vicious murder"... definitely not him, but with nobody else significant other than Vanessa and her bringing up an interest in having children early on, I just knew it would end badly for her. Again, I'll get back to her later, but her fate left a sour taste in my mouth and I seriously hoped what followed made up for it.

To my surprise - and to my surprise, to my pleasant surprise - Deadpool's quest to do something decent for once, while undermined a little by his love interest's demise, combined the standard dose of fourth-wall-breaking antics, that continent-wide streak of dark black comedy that only Deadpool could deliver, and an impressive degree of character development while still keeping Wade a demented, murderous flock-head who only endears us because of his deceptively sophisticated sense of humor. Even in-universe, a brief cameo by some of the other X-Men demonstrates that with the exception of Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and the newly introduced Yukio (who I would later find out also showed up in The Wolverine but in a different timeline and portrayed completely differently), nobody wants anything to do with him whenever he shows up at the mansion. And yet he still charmed us all in spite of all of that. I don't know how the heck he does it - perhaps it's his casual transition between talking with the characters and the audience, and vice versa, or maybe it's his self-deprecation and acknowledgement that he's a total a-hole, or maybe it's both at once. But he remains as quotable and memetic as ever in this movie while also learning valuable life lessons about caring for others, which makes him as strong a protagonist as the first time around while still making his character arc here more distinct and special.

By the same token, the film does a good job of making it seem like there's a main antagonist - the spotlight is put on Vanessa's murderer, Cable, that mutant-hating preacher who abused Russel/Firefist, Russel himself, and Juggernaut, in that order - but ultimately having the main conflict being Deadpool trying to do good for both the world and himself without vivisecting people the way he usually does. There's no major threat to Wade in this movie apart from his own inner struggles, including wanting to see Vanessa in the afterlife, wanting to protect Russel from Cable (who is himself slightly mistaken), and wanting to punish those who abused Russel while not inciting him to go down the dark path Cable was trying to prevent in the first place. Likewise, Russel himself wants vengeance against the preacher who tortured him, but if he kills him he'll start wanting to kill more people and cause the bad future that Cable didn't want, so it's down to Deadpool to get him to see sense. Deadpool's ever-present rival, Colossus, also comes to terms with the nobility of the Merc's intentions, and even gets to loosen up and try out his more vulgar approach to life for once. And even Cable himself, who seems like a villain in the second act of the movie, ultimately comes to understand that you don't have to kill people to prevent a dark future and acts accordingly to help Deadpool. The main theme of the movie is that reckless violence only begets reckless violence, and that breaking the cycle can be difficult - it takes a selfless act from Deadpool himself to do the trick in this case - but the act of caring for others, so complicated and yet so simple, is a more sustainable solution than selfishly acting on your own interests. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think the world could learn from Wade's example if only it took the time to listen.

I've rambled long enough about this movie without getting into the supporting characters as well as the blatant (and bitingly subversive) attempt at making it an X-Force pilot. The marketing played up the characters recruited by Deadpool to rescue Russel to the point where some of the trailers even included scenes featuring them that weren't in the final film (and may have even been made specifically to throw off the public). With one exception, not one of them even survives long enough to participate in said rescue - Bedlam gets hit by a bus, Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, Zeitgeist goes feet-first into a woodchipper... Even Peter the memetic ordinary guy dies trying to help that last one, though he and the aforementioned exception are also the only members of the group to make it out in the long term. Only Domino, thanks to her luck power, manages to not only stick the landing but be an awesome character from that point forward. Now, I know that weaponized luck ability sounds Suvian, and if written badly it is. But if a line from Domino when the gang gets to the orphanage where Russel was kept is any indication, she used to live there as a kid - and who knows if she was tortured like Russel was. Exploring the problems of her ability, both in her troubled past and in the present day, could be an interesting avenue to explore in her future appearances. It also doesn't hurt that Deadpool actually throws shade at her luck ability for not being photogenic, even though the Disaster Dominoes she causes allow her to get to Russel with ease. Come to think of it, a further way of deconstructing her luck could be having her eventually become aware of the collateral damage it could cause to others, and try to rectify this oversight before she ends up getting lucky at the cost of someone else's life (Maybe she already has and hasn't realized it? I can't tell). Ultimately, Domino is my second favorite character in this movie aside from the Merc himself, and I hope to see more of her in future X-Men installments.

So, where will the third Deadpool movie go now that Vanessa is dead? Well... Towards the end of the movie, Cable used the one remaining charge of his time-travel device to retroactively save Deadpool, by using the same skee-ball token he'd taken from Wade earlier as a pocket protector for its owner (previously he'd taken a bullet shot by Cable himself to save Russel and demonstrate his hidden altruism). In a mid-credits stinger, Negasonic and Yukio fix the device... and give it to Wade by mistake. Whereupon the Merc proceeds to abuse its power to undo the deaths of Vanessa and Peter (along with two old shames of Ryan Reynolds' that I won't spoil even here), meaning that surprise, Vanessa escapes the fridge after all! I honestly should've seen this coming, but unlike with the Time Stone in Avengers: Infinity War, Cable's device never was played up as a means of setting right what had gone wrong in Deadpool's history, so the stinger was a bit of a curveball for me at least. Still, it was a massive relief in hindsight that Vanessa's death was undone, since that means she'll have more room for development in the third Deadpool movie. I'd still want to see her develop superpowers of her own (I think she had shapeshifting in the comics) and ultimately end up fighting alongside her fiancee, and in fact that could be the exact conflict of the third movie if I were to guess - his coaching her through her new life and the complications that both of them being superheroes (well, super-anti-hero in Wade's case) would bring to their relationship. Fridging her in this movie was a mistake, even if it was temporary, but unlike with poor Mako Mori, there is at least a very good chance that the upcoming third film could more than make up for it, and I really hope Vanessa gets a much bigger spotlight in said third film than in this one, because gosh darn it, she needs and deserves it. On a slightly unrelated note, I'm also hopeful that Yukio gets more screentime, especially considering her lovable personality and relationship with Negasonic (major props to the producers for the same-sex pairing representation!), and as with Vanessa, I hope she gets a bigger role and becomes more pivotal to whatever shenanigans Deadpool gets involved with next time he hits the big screen.

As a re-railing of Wade's character, and as the first R-rated X-Men installment, the first Deadpool already did set a pretty high bar, especially since its production was super troubled and it was only after several shake-ups in 20th Century Fox as well as Reynolds supposedly leaking footage of the movie himself that it managed to see the light of day. So was Deadpool 2 a worthy successor? There were a few bumps in the road, sure, but they weren't as consequential as I feared they would, and it was otherwise a hilarious and awesome romp that matched the first film in terms of quality and, yes, even exceeded it, thanks in part to solid supporting characters (Cable and Domino especially) and a slightly less cookie-cutter plotline. It's not perfect by any means - but then again, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as cinematic perfection, and nobody isn't allowed to gut movies they enjoy nor are they forbidden from providing their feedback on what could be done to make these movies better. All the same, the Deadpool series has thus far been a winner in my book, and I rest my case in the wake of Deadpool 2. I look forward to the future cinematic fourth-wall-obliterating adventures of the Merc with a Mouth... even if the rest of the X-Men probably wouldn't.

Grading Scheme:

96 - 100: A+

93 - 96: A

90 - 92.9: A-

87 - 89.9: B+

83 - 86.9: B

80 - 82.9: B-

77 - 79.9: C+

73 - 76.9: C

70 - 72.9: C-

67 - 69.9: D+

60 - 66.9: D

Below 60: E

Grades:

Writing: 10

Characterization: 8

Pacing: 8

Creativity: 9

Consistency: 8

Cinematography: 10

World Building: 9

Music and Sound: 9

Effects: 8

Engagement: 10

Final Grade: 89 (B+)

#Armor Bird Reviews #Deadpool 2 #Deadpool

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doux-amer · 6 years

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Okay, I have a lot of thoughts on Black Panther and I don’t want this to turn into a humongous essay, so I’m just going to list stuff I liked and thought was so great about it even though it wasn’t perfect (still great and so deep though):

The extravagant and lush visual aesthetics (WAKANDA!!!! The clothes and hairstyles. The colors. EVERYTHING)

The cast is so strong...and so beautiful

THE TECHHHHHHHH OH MY GOD! OHHHHHHH MY GOD! THE SUITS. THE “SNEAKERS” (I LOVE YOU, SHURI). THE NECKLACES. THE KIMOYO BEADS. THE SHIELDS. THE HEALING BED. THE CAR AND PLANE CONTROLLED FROM THE LAB. EVERYTHING!

Such a great score that sets Black Panther completely apart from the rest of the MCU and 99.99999% of studio movies

Inspiration drawn from a rich tapestry of African cultures

Multiple languages (look, some of their accents were...not that strong tbh, but yoooo, they spoke in Xhosa! And Korean! Lupita’s accent made me cringe so hard because it was really bad, but she tried and she spoke a lot more lines of Korean that I would have expected. Ad as someone who always sees Asian people and Asian countries depicted in a certain type of way, I was 1) flattered by what I just said, 2) surprised that the Busan scenes lasted as long as they did (I thought they’d pull an AoU where we saw two seconds of Seoul), and 3) excited that they showed different glimpses of Busan. Ryan picked Busan because AoU got Seoul and he wanted something different and wanted something similar to Wakanda in terms of that balance between being grounded in tradition while being futuristic and thought Busan was perfect.

An African country untouched by white colonialism that’s extremely advanced in every way possible

A discussion about the African diaspora and in this case specifically, the difference between African Americans and Africans? WHAT?!?! A MAJOR TENTPOLE FILM DID THAT! So important because people just lump black people together, but there’s a sense of displacement and loss, an identity struggle, and a lot of generational and historical trauma that a lot of African Americans feel (and Afrolatinos, Afro-Caribbeans, etc.). And Ryan and Chadwick talked about how they thought this movie would resonate beyond black people—and it is, considering how well it’s doing here and abroad (did you see the records they’re breaking? TRUST ME, it’s even more impressive if you go back and see what industry estimates were before the movie came out even when pros were accounting for all the hype and how historic this movie is)—and yeah, this was the part that really got to me and I’m sure that it did for a lot of people who live hyphenated existences because they’re from an immigrant family. Erik being seen as “lesser than” in the U.S. and being seen as an outsider and “not one of them” in Wakanda even though he’s both American and Wakandan...bruh, that was REAL. I mean, thankfully I’ve never had to deal with anything super bad, but if you don’t talk like them and you don’t act like them? I know friends whose relatives frowned upon them because they weren’t ____ enough and they were “too” American when they’re treated as inferior over here. But going back to the African diaspora thing, this is especially important because I feel like people don’t assume African Americans go through this as well (unless they get all racist and shout “Go back to Africa!”). I don’t know. It’s important for black people to see that on screen, for me as a non-black person to see that, and for other non-black people to see that this is a thing too.

The pain that black people suffered at the hands of white people being addressed and more importantly, being shown as something that not only continues to have a massive effect on how black people are treated currently, but also something that STILL continues to be a thing albeit in different forms (so so so brilliant to start the movie off in 1990s Oakland with N’Jobu after the monologue).

The criticism of colonialism, American imperialism (past AND current (Erik is not only a product of that, but he carried it out too)), slavery, xenophobia, and isolationism.

The timeliness of BP when there’s a refugee crisis, racism is running rampant, xenophobia is a big thing, etc. and BP shows that, no, you can’t just shut yourself behind walls because people are suffering and if you can do something about it, then YOU SHOULD because otherwise you’re complicit (NAKIA WAS RIGHT)

GENDER EQUALITY. They don’t make a big deal out of it! The women are equal to the men and it’s just the way it is. And all of those women? None of them are generic Strong Women. They’re all so distinct in their own ways, and they play such big, meaty roles. Honestly, I’d go as far as saying that they actually outshone T’Challa. T’Challa literally “died” for a good while and I didn’t even miss him because the female characters were written so well and were so important to the story that it was their story too. I remember thinking in the theater what it would be like if any of the other solo movies did that and was mindblown because it would be SUCH A BALLSY THING TO DO. Never mind the women thing, it’s super risky to do that to your main character whom the film is about in general. But BP DID THAT. And it was all the more amazing because the characters who carried the film were black women. I’ve never seen such a balanced act before.

SO MANY WOMEN TOO. I’ve never seen so many women in one MCU film before. Same goes for the Netflix side of things (and uh, if you think Jessica Jones is the show with the best female representation, I disagree with you because Luke Cage exists and did better on female representation than JJ, don’t @ me)

Speaking of women, omg okay, I can’t pick a favorite character because is it Shuri? Is it Nakia? Okoye? (And then there’s M’Baku and T’Challa...and everyone....why is this cast so amazing???!?!!?!)

Also, with Shuri, I love how you see the friction between tradition and modernity. What a super young POC experience. Really loved the contrast between her and some of the others who put a lot of value in customs and cultural values. Like the way she got fussy over her traditional clothes, the way she got bored with the ceremony? It made me laugh and think about some people I knew growing up. I don’t think they’ll ever get around to it because it’s not important to the story, but it’ll be interesting to see how the scales go back and forth on that for her.

Speaking of traditions, I love the conversation on respecting them, but recognizing that there has to be change and there has to be progress because the previous generation failed (and it’s on the youth to not rectify the mistakes, but to surpass the previous generation and be better than them) and people got left behind and hurt in the process.

And omg I was worried that Everett Ross would play a bigger role than he actually did, so I’m so relieved at how he was essentially a plot device (same with Klaue). I didn’t think Ryan and co. would want to make him play a big role, but I didn’t know how much Marvel pushed for Ross to be in it. I was surprisingly not irritated by him and ended up liking him enough, mainly because he showed up very little and mainly because of the way he was treated in Wakanda. Lmao forever at “Don’t scare me like that, colonizer!” and M’Baku just shutting him up and judging him at every turn.

LOL I SAID I WAS GOING TO TRY TO KEEP THIS SHORT, BUT OBVIOUSLY I FAILED SO I’M GOING TO STOP HERE. THIS IS THE MOST POLITICALLY CHARGED, DEEP, AND UNIQUE MARVEL FILM EVER AND IT’S SO GREAT! I CAN’T BELIEVE WE GOT SOMETHING LIKE THIS IN THE MCU.

#black panther spoilers

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