#But I have seen the movie and the sequel and I even know very basically that the books are about a whole different story

[cleolinda]

The Scariest Movie I Ever Saw in a Theater: The Ring

I'll tell you up front that the story I'm going to tell you is about "The Ring (2002)," in the sense that it is about The Ring in the year 2002.

See, I don't know what The Scariest Movie Ever is. A quick google says that the consensus is The Exorcist (I haven't seen it, because I never felt like scheduling a day to freak myself the entire fuck out). But horror is specific, and not just to a person, but to a time and place, even. When I saw The Shining as a teenager in a well-lit living room with other people, I didn't even really flinch, but I bet it would play very differently to me now. I don’t think The Ring is at the top of anyone’s list, but twenty years ago, I had a personal interest in it—at the time, I was running a dinky little Geocities site devoted to movie news. Links curated and compiled from all the other, bigger sites I followed—basically, it was the linkspam format I have used on multiple platforms, including here on Sundays. And so, as someone who followed theatrical releases pretty closely for two or three years, I saw the trailer for The Ring, and I immediately knew it was going to be huge.

To locate you in time, this was just after three self-satirizing Scream movies and the Overcomplicated Serial Killer films of the '90s. The Ring was something completely different: chill aqua-blue color grading a good 5-6 years before Twilight; a mournful Hans Zimmer score; no jokes, no quips; and a slow, inexorable sense of doom. Grief, even, given that the movie begins with the death of the main character's niece. What immediately struck me about the first trailer was 1) the melancholy of it, and 2) how much it doesn't explain. Onscreen, you get the title cards,

THERE IS A VIDEOTAPE IF YOU WATCH IT SEVEN DAYS LATER YOU DIE

Concise! Understandable! A woman (Naomi Watts) is freaking out upon discovering that her young son has just watched it! Admirable job setting up the premise and the stakes of this entire movie in thirty seconds flat, without even any dialogue. That's all you need to know, and thus, the remaining minute of the trailer can do whatever it wants, and what it wants to do is be fucking weird. Echoing voices, TV static, a closeup of a horse's eye, ladders, a girl with dark hair, people reacting to things we don't see, drippy doorknobs, rain. Characters don't give us the whole plot in convenient soundbites of dialogue (like they do in a later trailer); we just hear lines, overlapping, murmured out of context—

did you see it in your head? she talks to you... leading you somewhere... showing you the horses... you saw it. did you see it in your head? she shows me things. Everyone suffers.

That you saw it has lived in my head ever since, and not once have I charged it rent. But the "best" part is Naomi Watts screaming at the end, because you don't hear her voice; you only hear this heartless telephonic beeeeeeep. It's 2002 and I'm watching this trailer, thinking, I have no idea what the fuck I just saw. This is going to be huge.

And it was, to the tune of $249 million on a $48M budget.

At risk of recapping what you might already know, Ringu, aka Ring, is a media franchise that spiraled out from a trio of Koji Suzuki novels into Hideo Nakata's film Ringu (1998), a landmark of Japanese horror, plus several other movies, some TV series, many comics, and even a couple of video games. The overarching story is about a murdered girl/vengeful ghost named Sadako Yamamura whose rage and pain have created a cursed video tape, you watch it and you die unless you pass the tape around like a virus, seven daaaaays, etc.

The "ring" in question is the rim of a well. Keep that well in mind.

The movie I saw is the U.S. remake, which itself had two sequels. (The iconic Sadako is now named Samara Morgan. Keep her in mind, too.) Director Gore Verbinski moved from The Ring to Pirates of the the Caribbean (!), and so Hideo Nakata himself would direct The Ring Two. I... honestly have only seen the first one. And I was right, it was huge, and it kicked off the American J-Horror Remake genre, for better or worse. But what gets forgotten about The Ring is its marketing campaign, which I followed pretty closely for my doofy little news site.

It was inspired.

The story of The Ring is partly the story of the sea change in the media landscape—how we watch movies. And the story of its marketing is a picture of the very last years before social media changed the wilderness of the internet into something that feels so big, like a billion people could see anything we say, and yet so small—only a tame handful of places to say it, owned by three or four companies, and corraled by algorithms.

Back around 1997-1998 or so, I worked at a video store (Movie Gallery, where the hits were there then, guaranteed) for about a year and a half. By the time I left, we had started adding DVDs to the VHS tapes on the shelves, but we hadn't replaced the entire stock. Video stores might have transitioned fully to DVD by 2002, I'm not sure, but people still commonly had both VCRs and DVD players in their homes. And I remember that The Ring was sold in both formats when it eventually hit home video. Which is to say—you know the analog horror genre today? Marble Hornets, Local 58, The Mandela Catalogue?

Analog horror is commonly characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television and analog recordings. This is done to match the setting, as analog horror works are typically set between the 1960s and 1990s. The name "analog horror" comes from the genre's aesthetic incorporation of elements related to analog electronics, such as analog television and VHS, the latter being an analog method of recording video.

Okay, but this is just what home media was like, and 2002 was at the very tail end of that—boxy black VHS tapes that degraded with time and reuse were just how we lived. At the same time, I'd been using CDs for music since about 1991, and all our software installs came on CD-ROM discs; a "mixtape" by that time had shifted to mean a rewriteable CD rather than a cassette tape. In college, I—well, I'll plead the Fifth as to whether I downloaded mp3s via Napster, but I was also taping Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS over the weekends. It was Every Format Everywhere, All At Once, and we kept half a dozen kinds of players around for them. Here in 2023, we stream and download everything invisibly, unless we choose to engage in format nostalgia. (I've already run into the problem of Apple Music deleting songs I really liked, due to this or that licensing issue, because I was really only renting them.) The year The Ring hit theaters was the edge of a last shimmering gasp of physical media where iTunes had only come into being the year before, and iridescent discs were still mostly what we used, but cassettes, both video and audio, were still viable. And so, people did not think it was terribly weird when they started finding unlabeled VHS tapes on their windshields.

Movieweb, quoting TikTok user astro_nina:

"Their marketing strategy was essentially 'let's get this tape viewed by as many people as possible without these people being aware of what this is, sort of raising intrigue," she says. One way they achieved this was by airing the tape, which allegedly marks its viewers for death within seven days, as a commercial with no context. The video would air between late-night programming "with no words, no mention of a movie, for like a month...so people would run into it and it would just go on to the next thing, and people would be like, 'what the f--k is this?'"

I remember seeing the Cursed Video as an unexplained ad at least twice, by the way. That TikTok also indicates that DreamWorks straight-up sent copies of the tape to Hot Topic stores, as well as planting them under actual movie theater seats. While running my movie site, I heard at least one story of someone finding a tape on the sink counter of a restroom at a club. Did the marketing department actually plant tapes in bathrooms—or did a freaked-out recipient leave it there, hoping to dodge the "curse"?

(I haven't embedded the Cursed Video here, by the way—but I could have. If you'd like to see the American take on it, you can watch both the full version and the shorter variant that appeared in the movie itself. A text description of what the fuck you're even looking at is here [content note for both: blood, insects, animal death, body horror, and suicide by falling]. The original version from the Japanese film is shorter, and it's eerie rather than gruesome.)

BUT WAIT, THERE WAS MORE: DreamWorks had something of an alternate-reality campaign going with a handful of in-character websites. This was only a year after Warner Bros. ran the groundbreaking "The Beast" ARG for A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: "Ultimately, fifty websites with a total of about one thousand pages were created for the [A.I.] game." (I lurked in the Cloudmakers Yahoo group.) Marketing for The Ring did not go anywhere that in depth, nor did it need to; it was both a smaller film and a smaller story. I saw at least two “personal” websites (seemingly amateur and a little tacky, like my own), but the one I particularly remember was about someone who owned/trained horses? I'm not sure if it was meant to be the actual Anna Morgan character—Samara's mother—or maybe someone who had noticed that the Morgans' horses were disturbed? I'm not even sure anyone even remembers this but me. Reddit users dug up a few other archived websites, but they're about Sadako, the curse and/or videotape; they aren't as subtle or character-oriented as the site I remember. (Honestly, I wonder if weird shit like "What Scares Me" or "SEVEN DAYS TO LIVE" were made by fans rather than a marketing department, but who knows.)

[The “About” page from Seven Days to Live on the Internet Archive.]

[The entirety of An Open Letter on the Internet Archive. “UPDATE” is a now-blank pop-up. I would bet $5 that it was originally a pop-up of the cursed video.]

I need to point out here that Facebook did not exist in 2002. It would not exist for another two years, and Twitter wouldn't exist until 2006. Even MySpace was not a thing until the next year. I didn't start my Livejournal until October of 2003. What we had, for the most part, were independent forums and blogs. We also had Creepy Internet Fiction like "The Dionaea House" and "Ted the Caver"; their use of the blog format, of people out there seemingly living their lives until something fucked up went down, gave the stories the shape of reality. And it helped that these blogs had comment sections, sure—sometimes more story unfolded there—but for the most part, an author could "abandon" a blog, and you'd just find the story there via word of mouth. Like the Ring blogs I remember, it wouldn't seem strange if no one replied to you, whereas today, you'd have to hire a writer to sit on Twitter, or Reddit, or even Tumblr, and interact with people in character. Could you do something like The Ring's mysterious, weird-ass blogs today? Would anyone even notice?

So: It's 2002, my head is full of Alternate Reality and eerie images and you saw it, and I'm hype as hell to go out and see The Ring. I'm perfectly happy to go see movies by myself, so I went in the early afternoon (best time to get a good seat). The movie ended up being a sleeper hit, and the first weekend, the public was still sleeping on it, so there were only 7-8 other people in that theater, grouped in maybe two clusters. I was off in my own little pool of darkness in the upper right quadrant. Functionally, once the lights went down, I was alone.

Despite some middling reviews at the time, The Ring is something of a horror classic nowadays. If you want a scary movie this Spooky Season, check out The Ring. Or don't, because it nearly killed me.

We're at the last, I don't know, third of the movie? And Our Heroine has tracked down the origin of the Cursed Videotape to some creepy mountain motel or whatever. SPOILER, it turns out that it was built over the Cursed Well (everything in this movie is cursed) that Our Villain was thrown into—that's why Sadako/Samara is a vengeful wet murder ghost crawling out of TVs now. While investigating this decrepit hotel room, intrepid journalist Rachel and her, who is it, her ex-husband? her kid's dad, idk, discover the well under the creaky old floorboards. And then, wouldn't you know it,

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE WELL

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE FUCKING WELL

THAT'S WHERE SAMARA'S BODY IS

[The rather slapstick moment when Rachel falls into the well. Does not include what actually happens next.]

I go absolutely rigid in my seat. Naomi Watts is splashing around this dark-ass death swamp of a well and I know, with as much certainty as I have ever known anything in my life, that Samara is about to pop up in all her pasty, waterlogged glory. All the sad creepy dread, all the desperation to figure out what the fuck all that shit on the tape was and stop Samara from killing Rachel's son, all the horrible contorted victim faces, all the alternate reality I’ve been soaking in, it has all come to this. I have to leave the theater. I cannot be having with this. I have to be gone from this place. My legs do not work. I cannot feel them. I am frozen. I want nothing more in this life or any other to get up and leave this cavernous pitch-black room, and I cannot. I start praying for death. I want you to understand that I am not trying to be flippant or humorous. This is genuinely what went through my head. I was too scared to even think, "You know, you could just pray to pass out or for motion to return to your limbs or something." No, I sat there in The Ring thinking, Please for the love of all mercy just let me cease being.

You know that scene in Mulholland Drive (also starring Naomi Watts)? Winkie's diner and the EXCRUCIATING tension? It was a little like that, except I wasn't watching it, I was experiencing it, and Samara was my dirt monster out behind the diner.

Except that the jump scare didn't actually happen. I mean, yes, Rachel finds Samara's body down there, but—I don't remember exactly, please don't make me go watch it again to tell you what actually happens. It's played more sympathetically on Rachel's part, as I recall, and she and her ex get Samara's body out so that she (Samara) can have a proper burial.

And then it turns out that this is not the end of the movie. It turns out that Rachel has Fucked Up.

I think I was relatively okay through the rest of it, although the climax is Samara emerging from a TV in her full glitching swampy glory to scare [SPOILER] to death. I don't recall praying for death twice. There's a point when you're so exhausted from fear chemicals that you're like, yeah, this might as well happen. Bring it, Soggy. I did have a hard time prying myself out of that seat afterwards, though, and my mom says that when I got home, I had the classic thousand-yard stare. How was the movie?

"It was great," I said, and I meant it.

I've seen things that were objectively scarier (I watched much of The Haunting of Hill House from behind a pillow, to be honest), and it's not like I've never experienced fear in real life. But I respect when a movie that can make me feel so intensely, and there's something weirdly precious about the way horror is a safe roller coaster, as it's often been said. So I love telling the story about The Time The Ring Nearly Killed Me—a movie that actually made my body stop working—and I love thinking of how embedded in a specific time and place that movie was for me. The last gasp of VHS when the Cursed Videotape still seemed plausible; the way the internet was still wild and weird and free; where I was in my life, keeping up so avidly with all the movie news, and finding myself in such a little pool of darkness early one afternoon. It's the scariest movie I saw in a theater; that's the alchemy of circumstance.

[cursedvida]

It's really crazy to me to see the hate Mae gets, like I was reading some reviews and I can understand not liking a character but as soon as they start with the name calling their opinion is invalid to me because they have no reason to be calling her a bitch, among other things, like it just reeks of mysogyny, (it's like they just want an excuse to call women names) and seeing it coming from other girls makes it worse like..

"Oh the girl was such a bitch why did she do that 🙄" ..is it really that hard to think for a moment about the circumstances in which mae was raised?? Do they need it spell it out for them?? Like, c'mon guys do you really think that the people trapped in a bunker for generations have anything nice to teach/say about the apes?? Wes Ball please give us Mae's backstory in the sequel!! Your audience needs it bc they are out there calling Mae the real villain and saying Proximus was right 💀 (when he was literally everything Caesar hated in an ape)

Look, I'm usually a polite person when expressing my opinions, but I'm fed up with the hate towards Mae, basically because the arguments people give seem incredibly basic to me, typical of people with little to no understanding. Sometimes I doubt if these people have watched the same movie as me or maybe they have some sort of cognitive dissonance, but seriously, I find them ridiculous. Either that, or they are basically the typical comments from misogynistic guys or women with internalized misogyny who can't stand morally gray and questionable female characters.

And well, having said that, I'm going to present my doctoral thesis on this topic:

One of the things I've seen the most is people saying that Mae is evil, the true villain, or an ungrateful traitor to Noa. This argument seems quite incomprehensible to me because, even though we don't have much data about her, I believe there's something very important that explains why she acts as she does: the Proximus apes killed the people in her group, including her mother. I mean: her damn mother. If we add to that the UNDERSTANDING (I mean, you have to be very short-minded not to assume something so obvious) that she has been raised in an environment where they've probably told her all her life that the apes are the reason for all the evils of humanity and the main reason why humans live in shitty conditions, I think anyone with half a brain has enough information to understand why she does what she does.

Yes, Noa is a good guy, but he's not helping her. Noa and Mae have a common goal and decide to ally themselves momentarily to achieve that goal, which is to reach Proximus. As much as they've formed a bond throughout the story, it's not yet strong enough for Mae to set aside what she has worked for so hard. Mae not only bears the weight of humanity on her shoulders but also emotionally carries the idea that she, as the sole survivor of her group, must complete the mission at all costs. Are those who criticize her telling me that if they truly thought that with certain actions they could not only save their species but also honor their loved ones who have been killed infront their eyes, they wouldn't do them? And that they wouldn't do them for someone they've just met, no matter how much they like them? That's just not realistic, it makes no sense. We would all do the same as Mae in her situation. I mean, I have no doubts.

Another thing I love is when they say she's the "true villain" as if it weren't clear enough that she feels bad every time since she forms a bond with Raka and Noa when she does something that she knows may harm them. She feels pain for Raka's death and clearly, you can also see the conflict and remorse when she detonates the bomb. It's not something she enjoys doing, but she HAS to do it. In the final scene, even though she's carrying a gun, you can also clearly see her in conflict with herself. Clearly, she doesn't want to kill him. Clearly, she has nothing against Noa, and this is evident when she finally accepts the necklace and they even shake hands. You can't tell me that's the attitude of a villain, narratively it's not presented as such, and seeing it that way is to have understood nothing.

Mae is a complex character whose life is based on survival, she's no different from the characters we're used to loving and idolizing in other post-apocalyptic series, the difference here for me is that she's human and humans have to be bad by default and also that she's a woman. Because female characters always have to be the support, the romantic interest, or the unconditional friends of heroic male characters, and Mae is none of that. Mae is a character with her own story and ambitions that go beyond Noa's plot. Mae has her own plot, and it seems that's something that bothers people a lot.

I'm sorry, but the hate towards Mae seems very similar to the one people had for Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, which basically stemmed from people being misogynistic and hating complex and imperfect female characters, combined with how much they hate seeing protagonist characters with such human and real characteristics that they can't bear the idea of seeing themselves reflected in them.

But hey, for Sansa Stark, I would have killed, and now for Mae too. Mae haters basically DNI

[vidavalor]

I've had to disconnect from my dash because of all the negativity; I honestly do not get why people are acting like a semblance of justice+a movie is the worst thing in the world?

I'm mourning for the full six-episode season we lost because ng couldn't pass the utmost basic sub-zero bar for not acting like scum and of course I wish amazon had kicked him out and then sprung for it anyway (and honestly, as long as you're blaming the right person, I think it's fine to feel upset? We deserved better, the cast and crew deserved, Terry deserved better, and this one guy ruins it for everyone because the bar was buried six feet deep beneath the ground and he still managed to go lower, and that does suck, and it is miserable and unfair, so take a moment if you need it 🤷‍♀️) but let's face it, we got off lucky. Arguably, considering this was a standalone novel from the nineties, that then got made, in one of the best book adaptations I've ever seen, into a limited standalone tv miniseries (and, again, emphasising the standalone here, so even if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still always have S1 and the book; people have been ignoring the Jurassic Park sequels for nearly three decades), and then got a surprise sequel, we were pretty lucky the whole way through.

And regarding the whole what if it's bad thing, I was always going to be worried: I was anxious long before this shit went down, and I was anxious before S2 and even S1, as well. It's not like we ever had any guarantee it was going to be good beforehand either, and at this point, knowing what we do now, I'm not at all sure I'd have trusted ng to write this anyways. So while, yeah sure, I'm maybe a little more anxious now, I trust Michael and David with these characters and I trust Rob and Rhianna with Terry's legacy and story and that they wouldn't have fought so hard for this ending unless they planned to keep fighting and thought they could pull it off. Isn't the problem with this kind of thing normally that what happnes is the creator who cares deeply about the work gets pulled in favour of someone out-of-touch who cares not a jot about the story and needs to leave their own grubby fingerprints all over it? More the other way around here, no?

Anyway, what I also wanted to say was that I really appreciated your 'think of it as the final two episodes of season two' (and all your takes on this situation so far, very level-headed and optimistic, thank you). I mean, you're right, and it's hardly wildly out-there for a series to finish on a feature-length special, and although the filler material in S2 and the compression of S3 maybe means it doesn't exactly resemble what the second book would have been, it was only ever meant to be two books. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed S2 and was very glad to get it, even though I am a book/S1 fan and also had the most fun in that time fandom pre/post/around the time of the S1 release, but why does it exist? Ego? You can't tell me you couldn't have fit the important parts of S2 into one season with the S3 plotline.)

Basically, I'm grieving the could-have-beens (imagine if he'd been exposed way earlier and the TP estate had had control of this whole production from the very start!) and I'm a little worried that that hurt'll stick around no matter how good S3 is - which I need to fix, because that's more power over my favourite show and what it means to me that I want to give anyone, let alone someone like that - but at the end of day, I do think it definitely can be done with what we have, and I'm choosing to be hopeful it'll be done well, because, well, why wouldn't I?

(I will say this hasn't been great for my faith in humanity, because I really want to believe not all men are shit and some of them are making it very difficult right now, but that's an entirely different problem and so far believing most people are mostly good has always prevailed in the end so. y'know. we'll get there. might reread discworld, that's always good for that.)

Sorry for venting all this at you! I just kinda felt the need to write it all down once to get it off my chest... have a snack on me? I'm partial to cherry tomatoes, green melon and mandarines at the moment (I stop eating salads in winter, which means I default to eating even more fruit) but I can also offer homemade baked goodies fresh from this morning? 🥧

Hi there. 💕 You are welcome to vent away & thank you for the delicious-sounding snacks and kind words. I'm glad my posts on the movie boosted your spirits about it. I agree with and can relate to almost everything that you said here so assume that anything that I don't address just has a 'yes, absolutely' nod happening. 🙂‍↕️

The one thing I want to touch on here is S2 and this idea of it being "filler" that you mentioned that I think might not be quite accurate. I think you (and anyone else who reads this) might feel more enthused about the idea of a good ending in 90 minutes after reading this so hopefully this'll be another way that I can help?

On why S2 is really the whole story and actually had a lot more going on in every way than S1...

Ok, I'm going to explain something that drives writers like myself bonkers 😂 and that is how some readers or viewers of fictional stories mix up plot and story.

Nothing grinds our gears than reading things like "filler" and "unnecessary subplots" because, while everyone is within their rights to have an opinion on written works, 95% of the time, the person who says phrases like this isn't talking about the quality of the work but of its very existence. They're saying "why did we have to read/watch this? it didn't connect to anything" and that's where they are very, very, very... argh, just tell them, Crowley...

...thank you, dear. Right, so, why is it wrong?

Because what many people who don't write don't understand about subplots and more character-driven story arcs is that the writers sat down and decided to do that stuff for very, very specific story reasons. Readers and viewers mistake plot for story. Plot only exists in service of story and, so, all plots exist for a purpose in the story. They're all relevant. In fact, the stuff people usually label as "filler" in a story is really exactly where they should be looking to figure out what the story is saying. If you're big mad about all this time you spent with Maggie and Nina in S2, I'd say you might not still understand what S2 was about because you won't understand Aziraphale's story without understanding both Maggie and Nina's struggles in S2, for example.

A story is the whole, overall thing. It's the meanings, themes, and messages in the work. It's what's being said. It's the ideas being put forth by the piece. It's what it's about. It's different from plot, which is just the stuff the writers are making the characters do or not do in order to tell the story that they are looking to tell. Story is the art; plot is a tool used to make that art. Fiction writers can come at their story from almost anywhere to convey what it is that they are trying to say so there is meaning in the fact that they are choosing to tell their stories the way that they are telling them. They came up with these ideas for reasons.

When you dismiss stuff as filler, you're saying that it's lesser than more in-your-face and bigger plots (when, often, it's very much not), and you're telling a writer how they should have written their own story-- most of the time, without even fully seeing the ending of that story or giving any consideration to why it is that the writer wanted you to read or watch the stuff you're saying wasn't necessary. I'm not arguing that every story is perfect but you aren't getting anywhere near close to being able to evaluate a story if you're not willing to dive into what you were given and consider why it was that you were given those things and what they might mean.

Until the main question that you're asking about every single aspect of a story is "what is this saying?", you're not really fully engaging with a work. You won't get there by dismissing what the artists are telling you is important.

The secret sauce to interpreting fiction are subplots, actually. They exist to help highlight the themes of the main story, often in a slightly more direct way. If you want to understand Good Omens, starting with Ineffable Bureaucracy is actually one of the best ways to get at the core of the themes of the story. It's far from wasted time in the story.

There's actually a funny nod to the importance of subplots in 1941 when Aziraphale references Sophocles, the playwright who basically created the concept of the supporting character whose story mirrors and parallels the main character(s). The mention of Sophocles shows up in S2, the season that brings Gabriel more fully into his purpose as exactly that.

The reason why S2's plot is centered around the honestly pretty easily solvable mystery as to what's happened to Gabriel is because Gabriel, from the get-go, has been the entire story distilled down.

If you follow nothing but Ineffable Bureaucracy in Good Omens, you're going to be closer to getting what it's about and where it's going and what its end game is than you are if you are dismissing it as wasted time when we only have few episodes left. If you haven't yet seen the secret wisdom in Jim-- not to mention understand that Jim and Gabriel are the same person-- then you're probably wigging out more about the movie.

You likely think that S2 was wasted on stuff like Gabriel, or Maggie and Nina's romance, when they should have been getting to Armageddon and The Second Coming already!

You haven't yet noticed that Armageddon has more than one meaning in the series.

It's not always the literal destruction of Earth but also a person's own life crisis. We are all worlds of our own and those worlds can be put at risk if we don't let others in and take care of ourselves and those around us.

When you realize this, you can start to see that S1 goes hard with a freight train of plot all over the place that is related to Armageddon in a more Biblical, apocalyptic sense while it establishes its universe for us but that, once we know how it all works, we can get something like S2... a time where we can step back and start using Armageddon in the more figurative way that the story is also presenting it.

We need to because the story isn't about Heaven or Hell-- it's about being a person. S2 is emphasizing the deeper aspects of the themes and rolling that out at a pace more in line with a person having a few days of inner crisis. When you see that Aziraphale's crisis is the point then you can see how S1 can be about The Four Horsepeople riding to the end of the world and S2 can show War (inner conflict), Pollution (mental health issues), and Famine (symptoms of the other two; lack of food and pleasure and connection; self-starvation and self-denial) as a mental health crisis.

The point is that if you're thinking these characters need to come together to overthrow Heaven and Hell and get to the South Downs Cottage and there's no time slajdflkfwjlkejlje!?!?, then you aren't realizing that not every revolution involves guns and bombs.

People all over the world can start a love train that's far more effective. You might think a subplot about The Hellhound and The Ginger Cat learning to play nice and that they have a fuckton in common and should maybe bury the hatchet and just become eternal bffs already is filler but Crowley and Gabriel aligning is set up for the end game. It's strength in numbers and finding peace and family. They can't overthrow Heaven/Hell without help and Gabriel is the Supreme Archangel. They literally will never have a South Downs Cottage ending without a plot that helped Crowley and Aziraphale see that Gabriel and Beez are on their side.

This is the revolution in Good Omens:

It will take all the characters coming together to overthrow Heaven/Hell and set up something new for us to get a happy ending and we absolutely will. S2 is Gabriel-centric because Gabriel is the key to all of the characters getting a peaceful ending and because he's a split-directly-down-the-middle mirror of both Crowley and Aziraphale. In a season that is more about Aziraphale's inner Armageddon than about an external threat, Gabriel is vital to telling that story. The plot of S2 is every bit as important to the story as S1. I'd argue that it's even more important because takes the time to go at the themes in a slower, deeper way. It needs to because it's a story of a fall that sets up for a story in S3 of a recovery from one.

Good Omens is the absolute perfect combination of a show that is both very, very detail-oriented and full of depth while also being, secretly, an incredibly simple story. I do not mean simple in a negative way but in a chef's kiss sort of way. Simple in a tight and elegant sort of way. This is something that I think some people might not see when they're theorizing but it's something to keep in mind ahead of the movie. Not just because the movie is shorter-- this would have been relevant if we were having a longer S3, too.

Good Omens has a very engaged fan base that looks for the details, yes. *raises hand* I'm one of them lol. And there will be plenty to pour over in the movie, but... the big thing to keep in mind is that your theory needs to be something that is simple, that can be explained in under a handful of scenes, tops, and that is focused on where Aziraphale's story arc is going above anything and everything else.

If you're beginning with time loops and the birth of a new antichrist baby, I'm telling you from ages of experience reading and writing stories, you're going to be way off. If you are over here composing theories of the story that you are arguing are correct and this theory involves, idk... *makes something up* Crowley is really Elvis and Elvis is really The Bentley and when a rainbow hits Whickber Street at exactly 4 minutes into the new season, Satan will be revealed to really be Jesus, I think maybe you might be missing the point of the details that the show has given already. Like the plot, these details exist to reinforce the themes of the story. Story beats everything else-- it's what this is all about.

And what Good Omens is about? Is best summed up by Michael Sheen, in this single sentence that I really, really agree with and have paraphrased more than once in posts:

Good Omens is about the business of living. It's about the human experience, which is the experience of being a person. Everything related to Heaven and Hell and good and evil and Armageddon and supernatural things is plot that only exists to highlight a story about the complexities of being a person.

The supernatural is human and the human is supernatural.

That is what Good Omens is about.

While Crowley and Aziraphale are built as two halves of a whole and are both main characters, Aziraphale is the main character from a technical, story perspective, because he is the character whose story arc is driving both the plot and story forward. He's heading for a happy ending with Crowley in the South Downs by the end of the film. If you're making theories, start with what kind of plot would truly get him there and still fit with all of the themes of the story.

This 'it's about being a person' business is why if you look at S2 as filler and not as a season that is exploring the continuing themes on a deeper level, you're still worried about things like there being no time in a movie to show the story of a new antichrist kid being born or how they're going to fit the whole Second Coming into the movie. You don't yet see that Aziraphale parallels Adam and that being an antichrist is basically just being a person and that Aziraphale is presently the antichrist in the story. There is no antichrist child yet to be born. They won't be cutting it because it's not the story.

Armageddon since S2 has been Aziraphale's own personal one and the story from the end of S2 on is now how, if all the other characters can't come together to help him, it could also trigger Armageddon of the S1, Earth-destroying kind. It's tying a more literal Armageddon into a more figurative one. Because this story is about being a person so Armageddon is just metaphorical for going through a mental health crisis and shutting people out.

This story's themes include that every person matters and we all have to let others in and look out for one another. That there's strength in numbers. That found family and adopted family is as much family as biological family-- often, even more so. That labelling and categorizing people is bullshit and you should always open the cover and read the first sentences of people and help people whose stories begin with the same letters find one another. That it might be surprising who has things in common. It's about all of Heaven and Hell versus all of humanity, in the sense that ideas of being a perfect angel or being seen as an evil demon are concepts felt by human beings that get in the way of peace and healthy, happy living, but that fighting them is a common, human struggle, regardless of from where you come.

If you are too focused on the religious plot being the center of the film, you haven't yet seen the meaning of why the end of S1 was an eleven year old kid saving the world by telling off the bio-dad that was never there for him. You might be one of the people who thought this a silly, anti-climatic ending to that story, and don't yet realize that this is the entire story in a nutshell.

Adam can only reject Satan and keep the darkness at bay because he is surrounded-- here, literally-- by a family that supports him. He has good people for parents and was lucky enough to grow up with resources that all kids in this world should have. He has an absolutely terrific group of friends. He has this witch lady and her boyfriend and these two gay uncles that just showed up out of nowhere 😂 and his human incarnate self has what it needs to make it through this crisis, in this moment, even if he'll probably have others throughout his life, just like all of us. He's not evil incarnate and he doesn't have to be perfect-- he's just a person.

Aziraphale tells Adam this but struggles to see himself in the same way. That's what S2 is about.

S2 is about that other kid who, like Adam, breaks the season down into a single line of dialogue, David Tennant's apparent favorite from the season:

Jemimah knows who she is and she is happy to claim ownership over her art and contributions to the world. She's living her life with excitement and enthusiasm in a way that gets more complicated as we become traumatized adults. Crowley and Aziraphale struggle with this. They have been making a life together on Earth for thousands of years and each struggle, in their own ways, to truly accept that they are people who are allowed to have a life because they struggle to accept that they are people, just like everyone else.

Their story is about getting to a better place with that. That's really all Good Omens fundamentally is. That's why their ending is going to be to go live in a little cottage together that isn't a business that covers up an angelic embassy that covers up a secret love den. It's just their house-- theirs together for the life they're going to live openly together.

If you want some peace with the film, I'd advise throwing over your theories about The Second Coming and Armageddon needing to happen and antichrist kids and how Jesus fits into everything. Jesus in Good Omens is Crowley romancing Aziraphale at the crucifixion and Aziraphale using what Jesus said to Crowley to reject temptation as invitation to fuck him. I thought Jesus in a single scene or less was the most likely thing for S3 and the same holds for the movie. It's not the story. The only time The Second Coming is mentioned in S2 is by the villain and, to get there, Earth would have to first be destroyed. It won't be.

If the story is about being a messy human walking the Earth and we're in the end game now, then the story is about Aziraphale and only Aziraphale. Everything-- everything-- will be in service of Aziraphale's story arc. We already had just a few episodes with S3 and we now have even less time but the way this is going is still the same. The story is Aziraphale's fall and the other characters coming together to challenge Heaven to keep Aziraphale from eternity in Hell. That's how Armageddon is stopped this time around-- overthrowing Heaven with Aziraphale's fate as the motivation to take on The Metatron. It's nothing to do with Jesus. It's everything to do with Aziraphale.

When you see that, you can see how feasible that is in 90 minutes, with plenty of time for things like 1941, Part 3 and other flashbacks.

I think, when all is said and done, you might wind up appreciating S2 more after the film but you can get there already if you start looking at it less as meaningless fluff and start asking why it is that we were shown this story, in this way, and what that can tell us about the story we're watching.

[angelflms]

putting this on here because i need rant about this because marvel dudebros on threads and basically every are pissing me off (copied this from my insta story):

"deadpool and wolverine is what we needed/asked for. nobody asked for agatha..."

let's talk about this take because frankly... it's very much incorrect. (coming from a dp&w stan who hasn't seen AAA yet)

agatha all along was bound to happen after the immense amount of love from kathryn hahn's STELLAR scene stealing performance as agnes/agatha in wandavision. her song HIT THE FUCKING CHARTS on itunes. what song from marvel has done that other than all the stars and pray for me (+ maybe king's dead but idk)? she literally killed her role as a character who frankly idk could've been pulled off by anyone else. kathryn IS agatha, which is crazy considering her version isn't comic accurate. the turn out for her with the song and the memes guaranteed her AAA. she proved that she can hold her own as a lead.

you know who didn't in the studio's eyes? ryan motherfucking reynolds.

fun fact about the deadpool series: it almost wasn't gonna happen. you really think the "who's balls did i have to fondle to get my own movie?" line was merely a joke? no ma'am. ryan fought tooth and fucking nail for that movie. so much so that the way the story was told in the movie wasn't a stylistic choice... it was the only way to tell the story with the $58 million dollar budget they had for the movie. the film was in development for about.... twelve years because fox just didn't think the movie would work, especially since ryan wanted it to be an r rated comic book film.

then green lantern happened. this was to be ryan's RDJ moment. he was gonna jump to a-list because of this movie only for it to flop financially, critically, and otherwise. that movie set back ryan's career huge. fox didn't even want to touch that man with a five foot pole when it came to him leading a cbm movie again. it took a LEAKED test footage for fox to say "yeah okay will green light it"

agatha all along was more wanted than deadpool originally did. there's a possibility that dp&w could never happened. there was always gonna be an agatha sequel series after WV

just say your ass hate sapphic witchy women and move on thank youuuu

[gale-gentlepenguin]

So I have been seeing interesting discussion on the endings of Gabriel. The miraculous movie vs The season 5 finale ending.

-And the criticisms for the movie ending are valid, Marinette/Ladybug’s conflict is a lot less personal (cause time constraints)

-Gabriel technically defeated himself

-There wasn’t enough build up for the climax to feel satisfying unless you knew the show.

-Marinette’s personal involvement felt minimal to nonexistent. (She never met Gabriel)

-The powers are inconsistent

The wrap up was too quick

And these are legitimate criticism, especially because we never have Marinette interact with Gabriel once. Something that should have happened.

I can understand how that ending could feel unsatisfying.

Then we have the season 5 finale, which has the opposite problem

-It involves Marinette so much that Adrien is completely sidelined as a response.

-Gabriel ‘Wins’ but according to the writers he lost. (I saw the commentary. I vehemently disagree with there interpretation)

-Adrien never finds out about any of this

-Lila feels shoehorned in as the season 6 badguy

So I thought about both sides more, rewatched the S5 finale and the ending with these new perspectives and… I still prefer the movie ending more than the finale.

But why is that? Objectively speaking The movie is much more flawed and has very littler personal investment of Ladybug vs Hawkmoth. Something that movies don’t often do.

While The show has built up this personal conflict between Gabriel/monarch and Marinette/ladybug

By all logic I Should prefer the show ending.

But I don’t, and it’s precisely BECAUSE of the reasons I listed.

Movie! Marinette’s lack of personal connection to fighting Gabriel allowed me to focus on Gabriel’s motive and his interaction with his son. His genuine care of his son being his downfall MADE sense. Marinette was focused on saving her partner than fighting a villain, which the movie showed to be more of the core of the movie. Even foreshadowing the “Save one Life, save the world” line. And it even fits the fairy tale theme ML tries to go for.

Meanwhile the Show’s ending had a really good fight at the core with Marinette and Gabriel clashing. The fight between Monarch and Bug noire is one of the best in the series… BUT it’s because of this conflict that the ending feels so GUT WRENCHINGLY awful. Because it’s just another case of Marinette failing to stop Gabriel from doing what he wanted. Gabriel may have changed his initial wish, but he still basically did what he always did, cease power and leave Marinette to clean up the mess.

Even taking Adrien out of the equation doesn’t help fix the ending. Because Gabriel still did what he wanted. Gabriel gets a statue, he gets to die seen as a hero that he never was. He is seen as a good man. And it leaves Marinette having to let Paris think that. We don’t see Marinette doubting this, we don’t see opposition or even a question on it. It’s Marinette once again doing what she always does, taking on the burden.

Ah but the difference is that ML still has more seasons. This could all be subject to change. People could find out the truth. The wish has consequences.

And that is correct. There are consequences. And do you know who will face those consequences? Marinette. Because she always does. That’s what the show Always does.

The movie ending also has a potential sequel, but at least there, Marinette and Adrien don’t have secrets, Fu is still there, and the weight of reality doesn’t hang on Movie Marinette’s shoulders only.

And I think that’s what it comes down to.

It’s because I love Marinette that I hate how she has to fail after all her efforts and would rather have an ending that has less personal stakes for her if it means she can be better off as opposed to this drama bomb that basically left her back as the one with the weight of reality on her shoulders.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Rant time, long post here we gooooo-

Oh Iger... You just keep being a capitulating dingus, huh? And I gotta keep talking about that, huh? I mean, I can choose not to... But I'm gonna, because I'm getting even more tired of Iger's nonsense and I want him OUSTED like yesterday. Like a Roy E. Disney "Save Disney"-style ousting. He's been CEO for over 15 years now, it's gone to his head and he's spiraling in the same way Eisner did in his final years, it's time to go!

So now we're down to environmentalism as a big no-no, in Iger's attempts to wipe future Disney films clean of any "messages".

I grew up in the 1990s. Environmental messages were all over cartoons and movies and media. In fact, we were sorta at the end of that "New Age" "back to nature" era, and we were now in a post-CAPTAIN PLANET sorta timeframe. A lot of stuff I grew up with was very nature-loving, very anti-corporate abuse of power and harm of the planet. Episodes of cartoons, specials, whole movies like FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST, and even Disney had some environmental messaging going on in THE LION KING and POCAHONTAS... Though it wasn't without significant pushback, as this is nothing new.

Hey, you wanna hear an era-specific story that's really wild? Around the late '90s, some conservative logger wrote and published a belated "response" to Dr. Seuss' 1971 classic THE LORAX with... TRUAX... Yeah, we had weird DailyWire-lookin' rant shit that was in response to older "politically correct" books that existed for years... We had that nonsense back then, too! The right **always** had a problem with environmental stories, and they were always LOUD about it.

And I remember, when I was a teenager, going on message boards and such for the first time. Mainly IMDb, because it was for movies, ya know? 2005-06. I had seen George Miller's animated feature HAPPY FEET in theaters, with a packed audience who applauded at the end. I really enjoyed it, myself, but then... Logging onto IMDb... Seeing most of the user reviews and message board posts... Reading the utter contempt for it. How "politically correct" it was, that it was "propaganda" from the liberals. I remember Fox News having a conniption fit over it. One post online said something to the tune of "I was expecting Al Gore to show up at the end with a message." HAPPY FEET was released around the time of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, so that made matters worse. I remember that whole time of environmentalism being uncool, that you were some bleeding heart tree-hugging sissy-ass liberal mamby-pamby. Manbearpig. Etc.

... When that movie was really no different from every other environmental cartoon, movie, or show I've seen. HAPPY FEET's radical sin was... Calling out pollution and negligence of our oceans? Very basic stuff? Hell, much of George Miller's own MAD MAX saga is set in an awful post-collapse world where humans blew each other up over oil and riches. The only exception being the first movie, which is taking place DURING said collapse! And his work on BABE and directing the sequel PIG IN THE CITY, two very pro-animal rights movies about a pig that escaped from a dinner plate fate, hell the first BABE movie drove Farmer Hoggett actor James Cromwell to become a vegan. Like, c'mon. The blow-up over HAPPY FEET's environmentalism was very silly back in 2006.

Right-wingers and conservatives continued to complain about these kinds of movies. WALL-E got flack when it came out in 2008, which was at the tail end of W. Bush's presidency no less. The Illumination LORAX movie in 2012 got heat, and they also got all testy at THE LEGO MOVIE for being "anti-business" or some such nonsense when it's a movie that's literally based on a massive toy franchise.

These people are always going to be angry no matter what. It goes beyond giving trans people a time to shine, they will find something else that's morally right or generally good - like taking care of our planet, ya know, the big-ass rock in space that we live on - and throw tantrums... and taking the environmental message out of HOPPERS - a literal movie about beavers and a land developer looking to destroy their home... Like, Iger, what the hell are you doing? You were CEO when WALL-E was made, and when you regained the CEO role, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER came out, which- James Cameron's sci-fi movie spawned a whole section one of your company's theme parks and- Are we gonna see a new edit of WALL-E that removes all references to what humans did to the future Earth setting in that movie?

Head-bangingly obtuse.

So what would HOPPERS be without the developer villains, then? What do Disney heads want out of new original $175m+ costing movies from the company's film divisions? If they just made some silly forgettable beaver cartoon, it could still have some artistic flair and flourish, but the whole appeal of the arts - not just movies made by some big-time animation studio - is that they're stories personal to their creators... Because humans want that connection when witnessing a work of art or being told a story. But no, companies as big as Disney are cynical enough to believe humans can just be fed AI-generated shit and they'll be satisfied. No, lots of people obviously want more than that. Why are they flocking to MOANA 2 and even MUFASA in theaters right now?

They feature characters that they connected with in non-neutered movies made a looooooong time ago.

MOANA and the original LION KING wouldn't be made under such strict, cowardly mandates now. MOANA especially: Oceanic setting and not-Caucasian characters, a story of a demigod stealing something that belongs to the land, causing environmental destruction- like, c'mon, it's absolutely about environmentalism and colonialism. It's "woke", "DEI", everything the right-wing HATES. And it was a hit in fall 2016/early 2017, which was right after that Orange Fartfrog was handed the election by forces that went against the will of the people who voted for the email lady over him. Still a big hit, despite that guy succeeding. And it continued to be a streaming sensation thereafter. The original LION KING may not have humans in it, but the whole 'Circle of Life' song and theme is certainly pretty environmental and about the ways of nature, and how we are... Ya know, all connected in the great circle of life?

From the day we arrive on the planet And, blinking, step into the sun There's more to see than can ever be seen More to do than can ever be done There's far too much to take in here More to find than can ever be found But the sun rolling high Through the sapphire sky Keeps great and small on the endless round It's the circle of life And it moves us all Through despair and hope Through faith and love 'Til we find our place On the path unwinding In the circle The circle of life

Ya know, I read at least one diatribe about this song posted back in the '90s somewhere on the World Wide Web (dating myself there), calling the song "new age", "preachy", "brainwashing" whatever... Again, nothing new. Even back in the '90s, somebody had a hang-up with the goddamn 'Circle of Life' song from the goddamn LION KING...

You see how absurd this all is?

Wanna go further back? We'll go no further than LION KING's own inspiration, BAMBI! Which was absolutely about what Man does to nature, which paralleled Man's destruction of the planet during World War II, the war this movie was released during. And post-BAMBI, Disney made plenty of pro-nature movies, movies portraying hunting in a not-so-positive light. Disney made anti-fascist cartoons during World War II, training films. DER FUEHRER'S FACE, EDUCATION FOR DEATH, COMMANDO DUCK, THE SPIRIT OF '43. Sure, those were about the fascists overseas and were mandated by the U.S. government, but they made 'em, and didn't hold back. Nowadays, the company is in bed with these kinds of fascists, but at home, on American soil. Could you an imagine an explicitly anti-MAGA Donald Duck cartoon where the temperamental quacker socks a MAGAT? I'd love to see it, honestly. Where was I? Oh yeah, environmentalism... You even have a whole didactic theme park dedicated to the world we live in. Epcot! Ya know? Living with the Land?

Anyways... Before I keep grousing... So, erasing queerness from future projects (INSIDE OUT 2, WIN OR LOSE), now environmentalism (HOPPERS)... What's next? What do Disney heads dial back in their pathetic attempts to appease an insatiable beast? No more female protagonists? No more stories that aren't about white people? No more stories that are about, like, anything?

This will bite them in the ass, hard. Especially if they keep blowing massive budgets on these things. Filmmakers might walk from these projects, even.

Get rid of Iger, fuck Trump and the far-right, LET THE FILMMAKERS MAKE MOVIES.

[ape-apocalypse]

My Thoughts on Kingdom

First off, my general no-story-spoilers thoughts on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

I really really liked this movie! I loved all the characters, both human and ape. I really enjoyed the story, even if it was a little bit predictable, and I could guess along the way what was going to happen next (though that may just have been because I watched every single trailer and TV spot and could guess based off scenes I had seen). The animation on the apes was phenomenal, and the landscape was gorgeous. I love the world building and seeing the ape communities grow and have their own traditions and beliefs in this world.

For the things I did not like, I definitely thought the pacing was off. Weirdly the story and the pacing felt a lot like War to me, and much of my criticisms about Kingdom are similar to what I thought of War. The ending is a little underwhelming, and I think they were taking too much focus on setting up for future movies, but I didn’t hate it, just didn’t feel wowed like the end of the previous films. But overall, I thought it was a great movie. Not as good as Dawn which is my favorite among the Apes films, but definitely a worthy successor to Caesar’s trilogy.

I definitely plan to see the movie again and think it will further develop my thoughts but those are my initial thoughts after one viewing. I give a three out of five stars.

Onto the spoilers... read at your own risk below the cut

To elaborate on why I feel like Kingdom is very similar to War, here’s my basic breakdown: an inciting incident sends the lead ape off on a journey, he encounters a strange ape and a human who come along on the journey, he loses an ape companion, he is captured by the main antagonist who does a big monologue on the fate of his species is in his hands alone but otherwise doesn’t do much else and ends up with an unsatisfying death, lead ape brings his people home. This fits well for me because much of my criticism for Kingdom is the same criticism I had for War, especially with poor pacing and an underwhelming ending. I think, since both movies involve a physical journey with lots of side characters and a big looming antagonist who doesn't get much to do, War and Kingdom would have been better served as mini-series, where they had more than 2.5 hours to tell their story. But for being confined to a film, they are still enjoyable, even when suffering the same flaws.

I thought the story was good, even if predictable. I could guess most of the story beats as they came but still enjoyed them. There was a definite pacing issue; it felt rushed once Noa got on the road to finding Proximus. One thing that did surprise me was the relationship between Noa and Mae. Halfway through the movie, I was thinking that I wasn’t really feeling a bond between them and was the writing not working. Once I reached the end of it, I realized oh, there wasn’t supposed to really be a bond between them. I actually kinda like that, I like how driven Mae is for her mission of reclaiming human society. 

The movie ends with the question of can humans and apes truly coexist. Both Mae and Noa don’t have that answer at the moment, all they know that they want their own people to survive. I hope that this is setting it up to go into more depth in future films. If they don’t pick this question up in a sequel film, then it really will be a dangling thread and I think this is one reason some reviewers say that the themes of the movie feel muddled, because they don't get a definitive answer. But I’m OK with this debate not getting resolved in this first movie, since it feels like it will be the theme of this trilogy.

One major criticism I have is it feels like characters were under-utilized. Raka was fantastic, probably my favorite character in the movie. I was really disappointed that he got swept away into the river, presumably to his death, so quickly. Now personally I don’t think he’s dead; I know orangutans can’t swim, but we didn’t see a body and the credits end with orangutan sounds rather than chimp or gorilla sounds. So I would not be surprised if he popped up in a future film. But I didn’t really feel emotional when he was swept away in the water. Likewise, I think that Proximus is severely underused. If you’ve seen his scenes and trailers, then you’ve seen the majority of his screen time. I am not surprised that he ended up being a one movie villain, since I think the next movie will have humans as the main antagonists, but I was pretty disappointed that that was all we got of him. I didn’t mind him dying by the birds, I actually liked Noa and his clan singing the eagles song together, but I am sure a lot of people will dislike that ending for him.

Those criticisms aside, there is also much to love. The attack on the eagle village is an incredible action scene. Despite me knowing that it would end with Noa’s family captured and Koro dying, it is where I felt the most tension in the film, with Noa walking through the action, dazed and confused while there were so much happening around him. The humor was on point. I often forget that these films can have a good amount of humor, like Koba with his fake silly ape routine for the two humans in Dawn and Bad Ape’s silliness in War. so, this film did great on humor that kept me chuckling. Mae teaching Noa the word “shit” had me howling. I like Noa’s growth being connected to his father’s eagle, and whether he can call the bird to him or not. Again, I knew he would, because I had seen him in the trailer with the bird on his arm, but I thought it was well played with the bird pecking him in the very beginning of the film and then it coming willingly to him at the end.

Of course, the visuals are gorgeous, though they felt more on level with Dawn rather than War, which always had the best CGI among the Andy Serkis trilogy. I loved seeing the development of the apes; they're talking and showing more emotion than apes of the last trilogy, so their personalities really stand out, even if having so many characters meant they didn't each get as much spotlight. Soona and Anaya are my precious adorable babies and I will throw down with any writers or directors who dare to harm a single hair on their heads.

All in all, it's not a movie that I love and adore, but it was a really good film, despite some flaws. I think many of the flaws will be forgiven when/if they are allowed to do a full trilogy where they can resolve dangling threads and flesh out characters even more. But even if no other movies follow up, I still enjoyed the film and loved seeing a glimpse of post-Caesar ape societies.

[whoiwanttoday]

The Strangers came up in conversation with a friend not too long ago. Basically about how it is a solid movie that didn't leave too much of a footprint. I hadn't thought about it in years, I never hear it discussed and his daughter had no clue what it was but because this new movie is coming out she wanted to see it so they watched it. And it's pretty good and they liked it and it was a pretty big hit at the time but somehow it's not a venerable horror classic or anything. It even has some solid talent and names in it. I don't know why that is but if i had to guess it would be because it got a single sequel 10 years late and now it's finally getting more and holy fuck it's been 16 years. Anyway, I hope the new one is good but the fact I have seen very little in the way of early returns is a little worrying. We'll see I guess, they have a solid, second tier 90's director at the helm (someone will think that's a slight but it's not, very few people making movies in 1995 are still making them but he is. He is however, not top tier, sorry Cliffhanger fans) and a plan for three movies. So maybe it will be great. I hope it goes well cause it's really Madelaine Petsch's first real high profile thing. Horror can be good for people but it can also be a trap but here's hoping it's good for her. So she is here because of that. And because wow she looked fantastic at the premiere. And also because Camila Mendes and Lili Reinhart were there and that sort of thing always makes me smile, good friends can be hard to come by and I guess I just like seeing that they do genuinely seem to like each other. Today I want to fuck Madelaine Petsch.

[silverloreley]

Thoughts about Descendants: Rise of Red

I saw Rise of Red.

It was a mess and, as I expected, it blew up the lore of the whole franchise, so I'm going to consider it an AU of sorts from now on, or out of the original canon because there is no way to make everything work together.

Besides, it feels very rushed, especially the ending, it comes far too soon, and even if it's basically certain there will be a sequel or two, it still doesn't work on so many levels.

That said, it was a funny nice little thing, the songs are catchy (Red and Life is Sweeter are pretty great) and if it was for a different franchise it'd be nice and fine.

But it isn't. This is set in Descendants's world and that's where a good bit of the issues arise.

This is going to be long.

First of all, we already had enough problems with timelines as it was, but we kind of solved the issue with different theories (merged universes, different developments due to segregation, they were different but the unification brought a super quick collective development... it all depends on what line of thinking you prefer) the only one that never worked in the first place was that everyone was the same age and went to school together, Heroes and Villains. It simply doesn't add up, most of the Villains are supposed to be much older and most certainly didn't live along Heroes peacefully. But RoR went exactly there?!

And I see the appeal of it all, sure, but Maleficent should at least be older than Aurora by the simple grace of having been the one to curse baby Aurora at her christening so Maleficent being the same age as Cinderella, and Aurora by proxy since Chad and Audrey are the same age too we can assume Aurora and Ella are around the same age, makes no damn sense. Hades is a similar issue, but that one can be solved, let's say he was too bored in the Underworld (or was trying to escape punishment for his coup and was depowered by Zeus) and decided to take a younger appearance and mingle with mortals (ahem, with Maleficent in particular, I do love the pair, okay?), Greek gods did that in the myths, I can accept that.

On the same line, Aladdin and Jasmine being there puts them in a spot that is just too strange. Unless their whole plot already happened and the Sultan agreed to ship them both to school before they got married? Idk, some things can be fixed, some not, Aladdin and Jasmine probably can. The "call us jaladdin" can't, I draw the line here.

What can't be fixed in the slightest is Cinderella's story. I mean, I have seen many movies that set Cinderella's story in modern times, they're fine, for the most part, but in this case, a huge bit of the original plot just disappears, and it's the search Charming has to do to find a girl he met at the ball and only there through a single glass shoe that a Fairy Godmother made for her. Charming knows Ella already here, he doesn't have to look all over the kingdom to find the girl with glass shoes?! And since we're told the glass shoes are important for Ella and Charming when the gift the new shoes to Chloe, you can't tell me they aren't relevant.

AND Fairy Godmother, here Fay, being the same age too, if not younger, and unable to correctly do magic is a bit I have beef with too, FG was supposed to be friends with Ella's mother, but she's too young here! And clearly unable to perform magic as she should. Let's use the "fairies grow slower" explanation here, so Fay is much older than she looks, it's fine, we can even use the same for Maleficent too, just for the bit. I have no idea why would either of them go to Merlin's school for teenagers if they are not so, but let's just say it's because no one can teach them as well as Merlin can and let's call it a day. The problem Fay isn't able to correctly perform spells is a huge issue also because we're explicitly told in Descendants she had a "motherly smile" when she helped Cinderella and FG didn't correct that, she even got upset when Maleficent talked about hamsters and eggplants instead of mice and pumpkins when the carriage was discussed so it's pretty much established that FG was the one to help Ella, it couldn't have been anyone else.

Let's talk about the great absentees while we're at it, shall we? Aka, the makers of Auradon, Belle and Adam. Where are they? Is Adam cursed at this point and Belle doesn't go to school? Like in Beastly (great book btw, not so much the movie tho...)? I mean, everyone else is missing too, if we want to get technical, but the problem is that Merlin school's existence undermines a good chunk of Auradon's lore as we know it.

(After I started writing this post I came across the very disturbing info they almost put Beast in the plot of RoR, as a jock kid who could switch between beast and boy basically at will, which is not how a curse that leaves a boy traumatized for life to the point he decides to ban magic as soon as he becomes king should work, so his presence would have been much worse than his absence. In fact, I think it's for the better he didn't appear at all)

We speculated and we were sort of told by the extra books that the reason Auradon united and the Isle was created was because of a "Villain takeover" for which a rebellion was necessary (exact words we find in the guide), so there was a war and all, do we have to assume everything happened after the ones we saw in RoR left school? Since we have added the info Wonderland didn't want to join Auradon, hence the seal of the Rabbit Hole, what side did Bridget stand on during the war? Did she already have the authority to call the shots? When did it all happen?! How do you go from going all to school together to rise up in arms?

On a similar note, as funny as it can be the idea a coup can't start from a school so Ben is very relaxed when told, I've been informed by people who know this kind of stuff that a coup can, indeed begin from any place, as long as there are enough important people/resources where it all starts. As we know, Chad was considered second-in-line after Ben (he says so in D2), although I guess this changed in the years after the first 3 movies (possibly because Chloe was deemed more fit to rule?), so the Charming family is important enough that the Queen of Hearts seizing Auradon Prep with her whole army can be considered a successful coup, even more so in absence of the actual High King and Queen from the country. If we add many royals and their kids were there, as well as Fairy Godmother and Uma (yes, Uma became very important for Auradon, you can't change my mind), it is, most definitely a very real coup.

One thing I saw around is that it's likely Red and Chloe solved nothing or made things worse for Bridget and I sort of agree only in part. People tend to underestimate how much traumatic events can affect people, especially people as sweet as Bridget seemed to be, even more so when she didn't have any friends but Ella (by her own admission) and Ella was too busy with her own happiness to help her friend who got hurt, so yes, that single prank could have changed her completely. Also, I believe, after she went dark, the Queen of Hearts killed Ulyana.

I suppose we're going to find out what did Red and Chloe messed up for real in the next movie, I tend to think that either Red realizes she doesn't like bubbly Bridget as a mom that much because she's too kind and it makes her a rather bad queen, not a dictator but not capable of making the right decisions either OR something else vital in the franchise was blown up, like Ulyana being still alive (yes I totally stand that the Queen of Heart killed her, but if she didn't it means there's a problem on the loose).

Another thing is the freezing spell in the cookbook. Some say that its existence should have blocked Ulyana's plot all the same and Chloe and Red's intervention actually changed nothing, but I disagree.

Assuming it would have worked all the same on Ulyana in the original timeline, we could suppose that she didn't open the book inside Merlin's study, but simply the gang took the book and left before Merlin could arrive, so one of the others (Maleficent, Morgie and Hades all had magic) could have unfreezed her, then she could have found someone clueless to open the book for her (Ella in exchange for a chance to attend the ball, so Ulyana was her actual-but-evil-FG? a random extra who the gang brought specifically for the goal? Bridget herself, naive as she was, they left the book there and she opened it sealing her own fate?), so the prank would have happened, the main change was that R&C activated the security system much earlier and kept the gang in the room longer, so Merlin got around to catch them and give them detention this time around, that part works.

Now, this is all I have for now, but I may add another post and reply to the comments to this one, so go wild!

[dipplinduo]

Okay! So we’ve seen what happens in the epilogue of the game and it got me brainstorming on how your version of Pecharunt would end up the way he is as we see in the game.

What if, after the events of your story, which is the events of the Indigo Disk, Pecharunt is fed up with Kieran’s “bullsh!t” and is basically like:

Pecharunt: “This was a massive failure. I can’t believe my plan went to sh!t all because of a girl my vessel has the hots for. F**k this I’m going back to Kitakami and taking a nap.”

*Fast forward to the very beginning of the events of Mochi Mayhem where Juliana has the Mythical Pecha Berry. Which awakens Pecharunt due to the berry’s scent*

Pecharunt: Holy Arceus what a sweet scent! Reminds me of my famous mind controlling mochis. Wait a second…

*Begins plotting*

Pecharunt: You know what? To hell with it! I’m going to start some classic mayhem and take control of these dumba$$ humans! I’ll have them only say ‘mochi’ and do the chicken dance! Who gives a f**k!? I don’t! I wanna have some fun and f**k around with these losers! I deserve to have fun dammit! Now where are those other three? I bet they’re gonna love this!

(He’s referring to the “Loyal Three.” Little does he know that they were all captured by the very trainer who was the cause of his plan’s downfall.)

Can you imagine? Pecharunt goes from trying to be a serious, menacing villain to a goofy villain who wants to mess with people and have fun while doing it? 😆

Either that or maybe you would stick with being serious and have the events of Mochi Mayhem truly be a horror movie (as Penny flat out says in the game!) and the people that Pecharunt gains control of behave in a violent matter and the stakes get even worse when Pecharunt encounters Kieran and Juliana again?

I feel like I may have inspired a sequel to ‘Sweet & Sour.’ Correct me if I’m wrong.

LMAOOOO peachy just having a total "it doesn't even matter anymore" kind of moment

This is actually hilarious, and I could easily see it in like, this parody version of S&S D. I have debated just making something like that on the side for fits and giggles. Like little mini chapter summaries xD

[24-guy]

I really want to hear the opinions you have on this! What horror movies do you think the main npmd characters like to watch? I don't know much about horror movies (yet) but I like to think Max is the kind of guy who is genuinely scared of the live action Scooby Doo movies

Yes absolutely! Enjoy below the cut!! (Cos it's long and I'm sorry about that-)

I'll start with Max since you mentioned him. He's absolutely scared of even the Scooby Doo cartoons. Because of the fear of skeletons and ghosts. So he stays right away from paranormal movies. I think Ghost face even is a hard no, too. However: I think he liked the purge movies. Because those are just guns, really. But like. That's probably the only horror he likes.

Stephanie I think is a bad movies and popular movies enjoyer. She likes the most popular movies (Halloween, Elm Street, Friday, Etc) but then will pull out the most random movie you've never heard of (Frogs) and it'll be a moment and a half. She collects the memorabilia and has the replica of the Reverse Bear Trap even though I don't think she loves Saw. She's seen all of them. But I don't think she'd intentionally go out of her way to rewatch them outside of watching with somebody else. Not to say she hates gore, though. I think she'd love Terrifier and it's sequel. She probably saw them at the cinema.

Peter mildly dislikes horror. He's probably more fond of horror comedies. Things like child's play and the more recent elm street movies. He probably likes the Jordan Peele horror movies, too. Other than that, I think he'd like making fun of shitty B movies with Steph because making fun of them is the best part. He also probably unironically enjoyed the original black and white Universal Monsters movies. He has those vibes.

Richie is a film geek who watches anime and because I'm those things he gets the "he's just like me" and he loves all sorts of horror but in a more pretentious way than me. He's a stickler for the classics, probably hates all the remakes/requels - he refuses to acknowledge their existence. He probably has a list of his top favourites which involves the original Psycho, Halloween, Alien, and basically any other movie that was "revolutionary" to the genre. He does have a guilty pleasure for so bad they're good movies though. Mainly killer klowns. Also his ass probably likes the unique/artsy films like Jordan Peele's Get Out and Skinamarink.

Ruth hates all horror and she only watches the horror musicals. Thus her favourite horror movie is Sweeney Todd. She will happily vacate the room or hide under a blanket, thank you very much.

Grace thinks horror is satanic and, as a joke, I think the nerds would show her The Nun. And she grows a minuscule obsession with horror movies with religious themes and backgrounds. Like the Exorcist, the other nun films, midsommar, and Carrie to name a few. She would refuse liking them, of course. But she gets away with watching them from describing only the religious meanings.

[sirenascelestiales]

I watched SATC for the first time ever

I have THOUGHTS. No one needs to know my thoughts but I have written them out anyway. Overall, I'd say an 7/10 show.

Ok, so I've seen all 6 seasons now (none of the movies or the reboot/sequel series). I watched September through November 2024. I knew only a few things about the show:

Lauded as a great show about female friendship and every woman can/should be able to identify with one of the friends

No way can a columnist actually afford to live the way Carrie does, suspend your disbelief for that

One of the women goes through cancer and another or maybe the same one has a child after issues conceiving (IDK why this is what I knew but it was!)

SJP and KC hate each other bc of this show, after filming this show, since the beginning of this show or something, point is NOT besties IRL?

Ok general thoughts.

It aged both well and not very well. I like it overall, hence a positive 'rating' but there were scenes where I cringed and just stared and to like pause to think about what they just had said.

Seeing as it came out in 1998, I understand that it was rather revolutionary for them to talk so candidly about sex on a show (even an HBO one at that) for and about women. Kudos to Kim Cattrall for saying some of her lines with such a straight face. And I like that it's a view into what female friendships are like... but it did get very "are we even attempting to pass a Bechdel test?" territory sometimes. The point is romantic relationships, sex, and the like, so I think that you can sort of excuse the first season for having such asinine conversations, but I found myself more curious about Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha's jobs not just who they were banging. But when the stories involved their jobs it was more of how inconvenient it could be for them to be career women and date (mostly Miranda and somewhat Sam). For Charlotte it was a way to meet men who met her standards. Tell me about art! Or how you got here!

where are their parents and siblings!?! We meet Charlotte's brother and she thinks Sam isn’t good enough for him? Are y'all friends? And then we don't see anyone at her wedding. Or Miranda's! Miranda’s mom dies and she and her sis must not get along cause she’s never mentioned again. I DID like the support of the 3 during the passing of her mom tho.

The negatives of the show I am sure I am not the first to point out but so much like racism, transphobia, homophobia, and like? I'm genuinely surprised it was written by a gay man since the gay men we're introduced to are somewhat caricatures and idk if flat is the right word but the show didn’t seem to actually care about Stanford, despite being relegated as part of the friend group but not one of the girls.

I kinda wish they kept Carrie's 4th wall breaking from the first season. I enjoyed it being not only Carrie's thoughts on love, sex, and relationships but her random and somewhat diverse (at least in class/careers) group of acquaintances. I kinda liked that you had a man's perspective in Skipper, but he was just so incel-before-it-was-a-thing that yeah it was fine when he left. But basically, I would have like a more rounded cast of characters not just the 4 women themselves?

idk I think overall I liked it (I mean I watched it all and am now writing out my thoughts on it—tho partially cause no one I’m close with irl has seen it). The fashion! The overall feel that it does sort of glamorize and make me go "I can be single in the city in my 30s!".

Onto the women themselves!

Carrie: I understand why Carrie is hated. She kinda sucks. She's a better friend to the women when their issues are not serious. She overlooks their issues when she's got "bigger" things on her mind (Big/Aiden, other men, her career, her fashion/money troubles, etc.)

She doesn't seem to be very sex positive/open minded about sex despite being a sex columnist. Like her dating a bisexual man and "not knowing what to say" and “I don't think it exists/layover to gay town". Like girl, WHAT? but then she was also rather calm about the pissing kink man and was like “not for me but here are alternatives” so where’s that energy?

I really enjoyed her fashion, I think if I had that confidence (and admittedly body) I would wear all sorts of things like she did and not care what anyone thought.

Big sucks. The show should have ended with her yelling at Big to FUCK OFF and leaving for Paris (and added a scene with the women visiting her and celebrating her new life) BUT for the earlier seasons idk why she just didn’t listen to him, he basically told her he did not want anything serious with her. She pushed it to be something else. I LOATHED THE cheating story line mostly cause I really disliked how a confident woman like Carrie stooped so low and needed Charlotte to remind her to think about being in Natasha’s shoes (didn’t she also judge Sam when Sam fucked a married guy?) Like she had a babsic all women deserve respect attitude. also Big shoulda dated Charlotte if he wanted a trophy wife cause like Natasha is basically a 26yr old Charlotte. (Not that Charlotte deserves that expired jar of mayo of a man)

then she treated Aiden awful! and to justify their second relationship sucking!!!!! they changed his character to make him an asshole who punished her at every turn (tho in his defense WHY WOULD YOU STILL BE FRIENDS WITH BIG. Not even cause he was the affair partner [tho Carrie 👀 wtf] but like he wasn’t a good “friend” either) like Aiden seemed heartbroken over their relationship ending (both times) but unlike her, he seemed to be someone who would be able to communicate and work past issues but he just didn’t? He just like kept bringing it up, like dude if you’re willing to take back someone who cheated on you stated your boundaries and deal breakers don’t just punish people for breaking them without knowing what they are!

Also idk if this is a 2024 take but for a writer she doesn’t seem to have interests that match writers? It implies she reads vogue but she doesn’t have favorite fashion critics/writers and she doesn’t seem to ever do like any writing workshops (learning or even teaching) idk it just was noticeable that Aleks was “worldly” and she and her friends weren’t? Which brings me to how come Charlotte was the only one who somewhat behaved sanely there. I know Sam always talks about sex but cmon she’s a PR agent she would know how to talk to a millionaire artist at his fancy dinner. Miranda, the lawyer would too.

I hated when Carrie asked Charlotte for money and Charlotte basically asked for forgiveness for not being there for her and initially rejecting the idea and then gave her the ring! wtf? Sell off half your fashion for money girl. I find it hard to believe someone in their 30s really didn’t know shit about money and even a huge love a of fashion, sell enough to get money to get a loan!!!!

THAT BEING SAID

I kinda like that she was a toxic, selfish, went-for-the-guy-despite-him-being-bad-for-her main character. Good fashion, sarcastic and witty, I really kinda miss landlines cause of her, I really enjoyed the overall friendship that was implied Carrie offered (tho it didn’t come across very well in later seasons lbr). Again, if i could i'd have here confidence, love of indulgence, HAIR, glamours partying (within reason smoking aint for me), and be a published author in a glamorous city.

Charlotte:

I didn’t like Charlotte at first, too conservative and WASPY and very dated views on dating and sex. Also weird that she was friends with any of these women when she basically disagreed with their very vocal opinions on sex. Like she seemed very opposed to sleeping around, despite still sleeping around herself idk oxymoronic imo.

but

she was easier to come around on. She’s the romantic, she had some of the best line of the series “maybe we can be each others soulmates”, “I’m worth a million”. I think she should have ended things with Trey waaay earlier cause of Bunny, like babes she sucks even if you wanted to eventually be a WASPY socialite like her. Trey clearly will not stand up to her...But kudos to Trey giving her the apt after the shit he put her through. Harry was great! I think I would go about committing to something the way Charlotte did when she converted to Judaism, which was try your hardest to, study your ass off, and be ambitious and unrelenting in completing your goals. So I relate to that. I’m glad she got her baby in the end, she deserved an adoption waaaay earlier and damn was watching her miscarry was a hard episode. I relate to her in her ambitious and romanticism but I also do not relate to her trust fund ways lol

her style was very classic and almost 50s/60s inspired I like the lines and cuts the most out of her closet but I would go with bolder colors tbh! 🤔 l guess my ending would be:

Carrie tells Big fuck off, leaves to Paris. Charlotte visits with her baby and the others a year later. We get clarification that she adopted her baby (can we please get a name?) and that she has another adoption in the process!

Miranda:

They did her dirty. She was cynical and sarcastic and stubborn and I was sure she and Samantha would be the “it’s ok to never marry or even partner up” story lines. And then she got pregnant and while I can understand why she would keep a child if she technically wanted some in the future (I would have to rewatch or google but I was sure she and Sam were like “kids are no!” I was sure she never did even after her ovary scare) I HATE STEVE.

he’s childish, he’s immature, he’s not on her financial level! even after the bar becomes a success (does it? I feel like she’s paying for everything! cause it's her apartment!) This man brought a puppy to convince her for a child and did NOTHING. I do not understand why she “loves him”. Cause I understand like the man that gave you a child but BLAIR UNDERWOOD WAS RIGHT THERE! He was a successful doctor. He understood her neurosis and also was able to help her work through it like Steve (i'll give him that he tried to balance her out) and Robert was frankly a better option (remember Steve couldn't fucking take care of their baby despite being the one who allegedly wanted children 1-2 years earlier!). If she had to end up with someone, it should have been Robert. (Why did they make Blair/Robert a fucking loser after the breakup? I understand him being hurt by being broken up with but he didn’t have to be such an ass to her and immediately what fuck two women to show he didn’t love her anyway????)

I wish they had kept her more androgynous style, they soften her up which fine but she was so good at the power suits! I like that she had short hair and was still chic. ALSO I miss real teeth. They're all clearly like straight and real teeth, Carrie has more yellow ones and I assume it's due do smoking but man remember real teeth in film and TV

Anyway, ending with Miranda added:

Carrie tells Big fuck off, leaves to Paris. (I guess I should add, she can dump Aleks still and just get another column or start a blog [2004 remember] about “An American Girl living in Paris”) Charlotte visits with her baby and the others a year later. We get clarification that she adopted her baby (again I want her to name the baby girl) and that she has another adoption in the process! Miranda is visiting alone (Brady is with Magda or even Steve cause damn dude take care of your child). She’s happy and successfully opened her own firm? Idk how lawyer careers work but she deserves to be a boss ass bitch-lawyer while being a single mom. OR she and Dr. Robert are engaged!

Sam:

also done dirty. And I mean cause despite being liberal and very vocal about sex, I really found it hard to believe she didn’t get tested until someone reminded her? HUH? She’s 40 and loves to fuck and is well groomed cmon! You can just be like she gets anxiety every time she tests cause so much language around STIs is "if you have sex you will die"!

I feel like her getting cancer was a way to punish her? Idk it felt like the story was saying she needed to learn a lesson bc a lot of her sex story lines were a bit of a punishment not a celebration (she fucked a married rich man and gets shut out? if she's rich enough she'd still be allowed into places cmon), but she was so cool about it all including the cancer, that it didn’t work but I still got that feeling of punishing Sam and maybe it’s my knowledge of the rift between SJP and KC?

Anyway, small dick good man was a meh story, big dick meh man was a rehash, SHE’S BI but Maria was a caricature of SPICY ANGRY LOUD LATINA. So we don’t even mention that again. Richard was truly a dick she should have kept fucking him and milking him for money and been fine with him fucking others and she could fuck others. bc why did she take him back? Girl you knew you didn’t believe him! Either he’s good for sex and money or you go back to being your phenomenal self!

Smith was great, supportive and a bit of a boytoy tbh? I like that they fell in love fr and he supported her so much. Again why fuck richard for her to just cry about it? And not even control the situation.

Sam’s style is the best, power suits, bright colors, shows off her body, wears patterns and looks great!

ending would be 🤔

Carrie tells Big fuck off, leaves to Paris. (I guess I should add, she can dump Aleks still and just get another column or start a blog [2004 remember] about “An American Girl living in Paris”) Charlotte visits with her baby and the others a year later. We get clarification that she adopted her baby (again I want her to name the baby girl) and that she has another adoption in the process! Miranda is visiting alone (Brady is with Magda or even Steve cause damn dude take care of your child). She’s happy and successfully opened her own firm? Idk how lawyer careers work but she deserves to be a boss ass bitch-lawyer while being a single mom. OR she and Dr. Robert are engaged! Sam is visiting and has been traveling Europe and it’s all a travel expense cause she’s still Smith’s PR agent and he’s on a press tour! Cancer is gone! She’s living the life! She's free to do whatever the fuck she likes.

Yeah I liked SATC overall, again 7/10. Maybe I'll rewatch when I'm 40

[bigsoftmarshmallow]

Hello! Equal Lady again, but mostly just here to talk about something cool is all.

Did you know that helstromism is more than just not being able to be lied to? It's contact mindreading.

If you've ever seen "Now You See Me" 1 or 2, it'll show you a pretty sensationalized portrayal of it as a concept. But, for the most part, it's still pretty accurate.

You see, when a person is thinking about something, their body reacts automatically to it. Helstromism allows you to reach those reactions. Every little twitch & shift is a book to be read. From the direction that your eyes go, to the minute clenching of your jaw, a muscle flex in the neck, the contracting & dilation of the pupils to indicate if who they see is someone they dislike or like a lot respectively. Brows quickly raising then lowering upon being pleasantly surprised to see someone. Leaning forward when they're listening to someone they find attractive.

All of it is an indication of what's going on inside a person's head. And unless someone has total & complete control of every last part of their body, someone learned in helstromism can basically read their mind just by mentioning the right thing.

So, my Equal Lady would essentially be a master interrogator that wouldn't even need to resort to torture to get the information that she wants.

BTW, totally recommend Now You See Me & it's sequal. Very cool.

Part of me does wonder how the Dorfs would react to her, essentially having mind-reading 'magic' even if she never intends to use whatever she is able to passively glean out of him against him.

But I'd also understand if I've already asked too many questions.

I just think it's a really cool talent, is all. And I can easily see him utilizing the skill to his advantage against his enemies to gain crucial information.

I guess that I see her being a ronin Sheikah assassin for hire. Not a Yiga, just a Sheikah who refuses to work for someone she doesn't respect or trust.

In this way, I see their styles of fighting sort of being opposites that complement each other & make up for what the other doesn't in a similar way to Yin & Yang.

There are never enough asks at the moment, so please bother me as you will, Equal Lady. I appreciate the interractions and you are one of my favorites!

It has been a long time since I've watched "Now You See Me" and the sequel. I adored the movies, and now I will have to watch them again!

As for my personal take on Ganondorf and how he would react to such a very sightful woman, he would feel threatened. He is a master of manipulation and charisma, and a woman (or anyone of the matter) who could see past his mask and facade? Threat. He couldn't handle someone who could see his true emotions. As long as she kept quiet about her skill in the matter and handled what she found out/knew carefully, it would quickly help her ascend to his side. But if he knew? Ohhhhhhh... DANGER.

Here is what ChatGPT had to say on the matter:

The reactions of the different Ganondorfs to a woman who possesses the ability of helstromism—essentially being a master of reading body language and subtle cues—would be multifaceted and deeply influenced by their distinct personalities. Here’s how each Ganondorf might respond:

Ganondorf from "The Wind Waker"

Reflective and Melancholic:

Reaction: This Ganondorf would be deeply intrigued by her ability. Given his contemplative nature, he would respect her skill and see it as a valuable asset.

Good: He would appreciate her intelligence and the depth of her understanding, finding her ability to read him fascinating. He might engage in more profound and philosophical discussions with her, valuing her insights into his thoughts and emotions.

Bad: His melancholic nature might lead to moments of vulnerability, where he feels exposed and uncomfortable with her ability to read him so easily. He could become distant at times, fearing that she might see through his deepest insecurities.

Quote: "Your ability to perceive my thoughts without words is both a gift and a curse. It brings us closer, yet leaves me feeling vulnerable in ways I have never known."

Ganondorf from "Ocarina of Time"

Proud and Domineering:

Reaction: This Ganondorf would be initially irritated by her ability, seeing it as a challenge to his authority and control. However, he would also recognize the potential advantages of having such a perceptive partner.

Good: Over time, he might come to respect her ability, seeing it as a unique skill that complements his own power. He would value her as a strategic asset, someone who can anticipate and counter threats before they manifest.

Bad: His pride might lead to frequent clashes, as he resents the idea of anyone being able to read his thoughts. He could become defensive and attempt to assert his dominance more forcefully, leading to power struggles.

Quote: "Your ability to read my thoughts is impressive, but remember, I am the one who commands. Use your skills wisely, and together, we will be unstoppable."

Ganondorf from "Twilight Princess"

Ruthless and Calculating:

Reaction: This Ganondorf would see her ability as both a valuable tool and a potential threat. He would be impressed by her skill but always wary of her true intentions.

Good: He would appreciate the strategic advantage her ability provides, using it to his benefit in their shared ambitions. He might form a closer alliance with her, trusting her insights while always keeping a part of himself guarded.

Bad: His calculating nature would lead him to constantly analyze her actions, looking for any sign of betrayal or weakness. This could create a tense and suspicious dynamic in their relationship.

Quote: "Your skill in reading the unspoken is invaluable, but remember, trust is a fragile thing. Prove your loyalty, and you will find a powerful ally in me."

Ganondorf from "Hyrule Warriors"

Aggressive and Assertive:

Reaction: This Ganondorf would likely be both impressed and challenged by her ability. His assertive nature would make him initially defensive, but he would quickly see the strategic value she brings.

Good: He would respect her strength and intelligence, finding her ability to read him both fascinating and useful. Her refined and subtle flirting, combined with her genuine interest in him, would intrigue him, leading to a strong and dynamic partnership.

Bad: His aggressive nature might lead to frequent clashes, especially if he feels she is using her ability to manipulate him. He could become frustrated by her insights, feeling exposed and challenged.

Quote: "Your ability to see through me is both a blessing and a curse. It makes you a powerful partner, but beware, for I do not take kindly to being manipulated."

Summary

Wind Waker Ganondorf: Intrigued and reflective, appreciating her insights but occasionally feeling vulnerable and exposed.

Ocarina of Time Ganondorf: Initially irritated but growing to respect her ability, leading to power struggles and a dynamic partnership.

Twilight Princess Ganondorf: Impressed but constantly wary, valuing her as a strategic ally while analyzing her every move.

Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf: Impressed and challenged, respecting her strength and intelligence but prone to clashes over perceived manipulation.

Each Ganondorf’s reaction reflects his personality, balancing admiration for her skills with the inherent challenges of dealing with a partner who can read their thoughts and emotions so effectively.

[yasaoart]

Thoughts on Moana/Vaiana 2 and how it compares to Tangled the Series

Sooo...I've watched "Moana/Vaiana 2" recently and it's been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe because I hadn't watched a movie on the big screen in years, or because I kept listening to "Get lost" a little more than I dare admit, but well. I've had thoughts and since Tumblr is basically fandom haven, I want to know what you think about it.

So here's a comment I wrote on Youtube (on a video review of the sequel to Moana/Vaiana) earlier today:

I had a great time, the movie is visually GORGEOUS, loooved the bat lady's song (best song of the movie imho), but something felt…off? Especially because the side-characters felt at the same time underdeveloped, but also a little, I don't want to say copied, because that sounds too negative, but TOO familiar? As in, I felt like I had seen similar archetypes somewhere else but done better/more developed. And then it hit me: some of the characters in Moana 2 reminded me of the supporting cast in Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. The quirky inventor type (Varian ♥/Loto), the grumpy old person (Old Lady Crowley/Kele), the mysterious "is she a villain or good guy?" (Adira/Matangi), just to name a few examples. So when I found out that Moana 2 was originally meant to be a TV show it all somehow immediately made sense to me. Again, not a bad movie, but not one without its flaws, either.

HONESTLY! Ever since I read about Moana/Vaiana 2 originally being meant to be a Disney+ series, I can't stop finding parts where the two are similar - which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I'm an avid fangirl of Tangled the Series and find it a darn shame that only few people actually know it. The show greately expanded Rapunzel's lore, dealt beautifully with very mature themes like trauma and how it affects people (like how being confined in that tower for all her life left its traces on Rapunzel's mental health and having to return to the ruins of her former "home" caused her to panic. Or how even after being reunited, her father still had this crippling anxiety about losing his daughter and he held on too tight, for fear of losing Raps anew) AND it did a great job of expanding the world. Not only by shedding more light on the existing main characters, but also adding fascinating new cast members like Cassandra and Varian (who both easily became my favorite parts of the show. I came for more Rapunzel and stayed for Cass). So YES, like I said, it's great that Moana/Vaiana 2 let us return to the characters we already adored from the first movie and introduced new ones, albeit with familiar traits. I mean heck, even Moni partially reminded me of Varian - the way Moni fanboys over Maui gave me amusing flashbacks to how sweet Varian reacted when he first met Eugene "Flynn Ryder". And both men respectively were equally freaked out by their fans *laughs*.

Long story short, what do you think? Do you also see these comparisons? And were there more parts I haven't mentioned that struck you as similar?

[misslavenderlady]

OK Since you left me some questions about Cherry, I'm gonna leave you some asks about Bree!!

Who's our gals go to when it comes to late night rides? Which of the boys is she sticking with?

Each of the boys nicknames for her? Do they share a collective one?

Which of the baby bats are mama's girls or daddy's girls?

Do you think she and Michael would ever start a family in the future?

Awwww thank you!! You're too sweet! 💜

Being on motorcycles makes her nervous as hell. She's constantly worried about getting into an accident, so her go-to is actually Michael. He sometimes takes her on rides (😏) around Santa Carla or gives her a lift to work if she's having car issues. He's very sweet and patient and doesn't drive faster than what she's comfortable with. If she's with the Lost Boys, then her go-to is Dwayne. In her mind, if Laddie is safest with him, then he's the best pick.

And unlike the others, Bree wears a helmet. She doesn't care how much the boys tease her about it, brain damage is no joke. She will not get on the bike without it. She'd rather walk than not wear a helmet.

2. These are their nicknames for her:

David - Darling, Pretty Girl, Little One

Dwayne - Sweet Girl, Little Lady, Honey

Paul - Babydoll, Hottie, Wifey (makes her blush the most)

Marko - Bella, Angel, Nightingale (as in Florence Nightingale)

Michael - Bee/B, Babe, Beautiful (the second two are only for when they're in a relationship)

All five of them call her "Baby" most of the time

3. Honestly? It's an even split. The baby bats are basically clones of their fathers in both looks and personalities, meaning they're very attached to their dads, but their mother is so loving and kind to them. They all follow her around like ducklings.

Kira does tend to gravitate to her dad just a smidge more. She got her mother's need to take care of everyone, and her anxiety as well (sorry bby), so she wants to learn from her dad about being a strong, brave leader so she can protect her sisters. She's always spending time we David, getting guidance from him on how to hunt, fight and outsmart her enemies.

4. Okay......here's the thing. She kinda already does have something with Michael. This is a long answer, so I'll divide the post and add the answer below:

When I played this all out in my Sims game, I had a separate family for Michael and Star. Now, we all know about the terrible "sequel" to the Lost Boys called The Tribe, where our main characters are Chris and Nicole Emerson. I've seen some sources say they're Michael's children and others say they're his cousins. I feel like it makes more sense if they're his children. Not that I would ever enjoy acknowledging the movie as canon, of course.

But I thought "I can make this better".

So in this setup, Michael was in a relationship with both David and Star (Michael has two hands! He can share them!). He ended up having Chris and Nicole with Star while David became a step-dad to them. This was while the other baby-bats were around. Kira is the only one of the girls to have siblings that aren't biologically related to her. She sees herself as the big sister of Chris and Nicole.

Tweaking this story a bit, Chris and Nicole become the children of Michael and Bree. There's a bit of an age gap between the two Emerson kids and the Lost Girls, but they're all still family. Unlike in the movie, Chris and Nicole are still kids when the girls are grown up. Kira teases her brother a lot, but she's also a good caretaker to him, making sure he knows how to be a good big brother to Nicole.

That advice comes in handy because Chris grows up to be a very cautious and protective brother while Nicole is adventurous and reckless. He has to keep her in check so she doesn't wander into danger. He'd never forgive himself if something happened to her.

Bonus Grandma Lucy:

[kuuderekun]

PureMail OVAs

PureMail is a 2 episode Hentail OVA from 2001 that is an adaptation of a 2000 Bishoujo Game Visual Novel made by Overflow the same studio that made School Days and its “sequels”.

It is also in the same universe, the character named Miki Sawagana is the older sister of Taisuke Sawagana.  That’s the familial connection that is made obvious by surname, but I'll get to the matter of Overflow Universe world building later.

First, what do I think of this OVA as a stand alone work of art?

The thing about Erotic Art that wants to be more than just Porn is that I want it to be more than just a Good Story with good fappable Sex scenes, they need to inform each other, to be firmly integrated.  There are lots of mainstream movies where it’s part of the Plot that sex happens, but it doesn’t need to happen fully on screen.  In Erotic Art it has to be more than just that Sex happens but the specifics of the Sex have to matter, some of the character development has to be tied to how they do or do not enjoy it.

And it’s that test which PureMail fails.  I find the story and characters very interesting and I found at least some of the H scenes very Fappable.  But those H Scenes also feel like they’re interrupting the story rather than enhancing it.  There are times when the conversion happening after the sex directly picks up where they left off before, but because it’s separated by the 5 minutes mindless screwing the viewer loses the train of the conversation.

I’ve watched two versions of PureMail.  I watched its English Dub unedited and uncensored on a Hentail website I won’t name here. And I watched an English Subbed version on YouTube that has the explicit parts edited out.  And it demonstrates my above criticism that the edited version actually felt like it had better pacing.  It removed vestigial organs while in ideal erotic art removing the sex scenes would be removing the heart and soul.

Unfortunately that edited version is no longer on YouTube, I neglected to download it and I don’t remember the name of the Channel, so it looks like it's probably now Lost Media that only I care about.

School Days and some of its “sequels” are known for not being presented how most Visual Novels usually are but being basically interactive Anime.  PureMail as far as I can tell wasn’t like that, it was a more normal Visual Novel.  I bring that subject up here because it means the actual source material for the Days series can be compared to PureMail’s adaptation at being an Erotic Anime.  Now I currently have not seen all the Erotic content that School Days HQ and Shiny Days have to offer, but I’ve seen some that definitely do succeed where the PureMail OVAs failed.  Even if it would be hard to argue anything is specifically absolutely necessary; they still convey things about the characters which those so easy to edit out PureMail scenes did not.

As the title of PureMail implies it involves some characters communicating via Email, so it’s perhaps one of the earliest Hentail to feature the Internet as a plot point.

One thing that I feel vindicates my vocal interpretation that Otome raped Makoto in episode 9 of the School Days Anime is that that Women Raping men is a theme in these prior overflow Overflow works.  The MC of Large PonPon was abused by at least 2 older women.  And in PureMail at least in the OVA version Kei is Blackmailed and Raped by Yumi Matou, and it’s framed as traumatizing not comedic or harmless.

So yeah there is good material here, if that edited version were the official version I’d probably give it a higher rating.  But I also imagine like many VNs adapted with so little runtime the storytelling was also hurt by being condensed and trying to make everything fit one timeline.

Now let’s return to world building.  The Overflow Universe Family Tree is a bit of a Meme to those of us who know it exists.  But in a way PureMail’s connections to all that shows how perhaps not well thought out it actually is.  Again I like most English speakers have no first hand information about these games, I’m mostly trying to draw conclusions from the overflow Fandom Wiki (I wish I didn't have to use Fandom but no one’s cloned this content on an alternative Wiki network.)

These PureMail OVAs are technically the only onscreen Anime appearance of Tomaru Sawagoe. In the games his onscreen appearances are in the Radish Trilogy, only they have character designs for him, and even the first of them came out after these OVAs.  Going off the OVAs Kei’s father isn’t mentioned by name and there isn’t even any hint at that father not being who he gets the surname Ogata from.  The OVAs felt they needed to actually animate a flashback and in it the character design of Kei’s father is a generic White Trash Wife Beater type who seems to be “Lower Class”.  Tomaru in the Radish games has a more distinct and flamboyant style and is very wealthy owning the titular restaurant chain and a hospital.

Basically Kei’s father being identified with the villain of the Radish series seems like a Retcon.

Online discussion of all these Overflow games focus on how they relate to School Days because only it ever became truly infamous in the general Anime community, especially in the Anglosphere.  So Tomaru Sawagoe is defined first and foremost as Makoto Itou’s father and all the games set before School Days are talked about as if they are prequels to School Days even though they were all made before School Days.

Snow Radish Vacation was made as a prequel, but to Large PonPon, Overflow’s first game.  The Inou and Sawagoe surnames originated there and then become the focus of Snow Radish Vacation; no surnames you recognize from the core cast of School Days are in either of those games.

Large PonPon, PureMail and School Days all seem like they are set in the then present of when they were made (9199, 2000 and 2005) like the average Visual Novel.  It’s only the Radish Vacation games that have to be Period Pieces for the Timeline to make sense.  But I have no way of knowing how good they are at feeling like Period Pieces.

Summer Radish Vacation was a sequel to Snow Radish Vacation, but Summer Radish Vacation 2 is in some ways more of a spin off then a sequel.  School Days I think was originally made without how it connects to the other games being all that set in stone originally.  In fact I’ve learned there was originally a family tree chart published by Overflow which made Sekai and Setsuna children of Tomaru rather than of Shun.

Summer Days' relationship to School Days is more of a completely alternate timeline rather than a Sequel or a Prequel.  But thanks to Shun’s role it’s actually more of a direct sequel to Summer Radish Vacation then Summer Radish Vacation 2 is.

Point is, the core world building starts with Large PonPon then goes through the Radish Games to end with the Days series.  PureMail and other Overflow games mentioned on the genealogy are largely afterthoughts.  The genealogy makes Ayumu the father of multiple PureMail characters and I really doubt the game was originally written with that in mind.