#Critical Ditto

[deepblueink2d]

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*NEW ANIMATION *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ So excited for this one! Join our Pokemon heroes from

@criticalditto fight, flirt heavily and scheme in today's animation "Plotting against the Pokemon League - Critical Ditto Animated" going live later!

[ducksbellorum]

[arogoldpika123]

In other news, I've been binge relistening to Critical Ditto. Even better then I remember.

[moonknightproductions]

Found a new tabletop podcast where it’s a home brew Pokémon narrative called Critical Ditto and I’m so excited to listen to it because it sounds AWESOME

[carboncorvidart]

I've been listening to the Critial Ditto podcast almost every night winding down from work. It's been a delight. I think my favourite moment so far was them yeeting a Slowpoke off an airship. Slowpoke, you know what to do. -toss- They even said he has a little kings rock parachute. It's been living rent-free in my head for over a week now.

[pitotube]

"live action httyd" sounds like a parody made to mock live action remakes i'm like weirdly fascinated by it

[randomnameless]

As you said just war theory isn't really relevant in current international law isn't really relevant anymore and the UN sees no war justified unless it's in self-defence (like Ukraine fighting back). If the person genuinely wanted to use just war theory you would expect them to use sources like Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius, not contemporary sources like the Red Cross.

IIRC the "Just War" theory had a resurgence during the early 2000s, but, well...

As for the sources, that's why I don't think this essay was an academical essay but felt closer to a 10k words redshit "essay", where you cite random sources, no sources, or at times, Wikipedia (Wiki is useful to find sources, but then you should read the article sourced, not the abstract Bob wrote on the wiki article!).

I still think discussing "Just War" regarding Fodlan is as pointless as discussing sewer facilities in Magvel, because the games aren't interested in depicting those topics in detail.

[rotzaprachim]

reading retrospective 2023: extremely thick and unexpectedly gripping general histories 

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

as a kpop politics amateur researcher-yeah thats the interesting thing about hybe (katseyes label) they are so. So into the idea of being the coolest kid in school because of their major success story being Boys That Sing (i refuse to spell that in case it comes up on search) that they end up doing this weird game of neutrality/bragpop that ends up flat a lot.

For my money, I find that the factory-manufactured nature of K-pop is both its blessing and its curse. On the one hand, the visual spectacle of it is incredible in a way that no other cultural mainstream music genre can compete with, from the aesthetics to the sheer inhuman synchronisation from the dancing. Even sedentary shots of soloists in MVs can take on these breathtaking, otherworldly sorts of qualities. A while back I reblogged a side by side comparison gifset of Taeyeon's INVU and Key's Gasoline, and they look like gods of moon and sun. Aespa's got a whole bunch of slick, cyberpunk-type videos, like Drama. The sheer aesthetics. Your eyes want to drink them

But, on the flip side, the music itself is very often on a scale from vapid to completely meaningless. You might get an overall concept, like "I'm so great" or "I love my partner", but the execution is frequently sugary sweet or just plain hollow. That was one of the big criticisms of MEOVV's debut song, in fact - they went with this boastful "I'm so great" through line, but the lyrics had them boasting about how much money and fame and success they have, when they were (1) launching their first ever song and (2) literal children. You're right that Hybe does this a lot, but they aren't the only ones - Blackpink have a line in one of their songs that basically reads "My Lamborghini goes vroom vroom".

And, that's what happens with the 'churn them out of the factory' model. There's no time for artistry when you're making your artists record two albums a year, plus the dance training, plus the touring, plus the extreme diets, plus plus plus. Katseye's Gnarly is actually a great example of all of this. God, it is an empty song. But! Fuck me, it's a spectacle. The choreography is incredible. And, you know, we get treated to them describing Tesla as gnarly lol, though not in the 'clean version', where I note they're carefully avoiding hurting Elon's feelings.

I should say, of course, that a lot of these issues are lessened in groups that write/produce a lot of their own stuff. (G)-idle's Oh My God is an absolute masterpiece and is a song about a wlw awakening, something you frankly do not often get to see in the K-pop world; similarly, they produced Nxde as a critique of the sexual commodification of women AND as a way to make "nude girl idol" into a dead search term that perverts could no longer use to try to creep on young female idols, since you just get their stages and MV in the search results. IU's Love Wins All is a beautiful love song, with an MV that fucking shreds your heart. Similarly, artists who are sort of K-pop adjacent produce some amazing artistic stuff (Bibi, Jackson Wang, etc).

But, it's because they have time to dedicate to the artistry. And, frankly, to give roles to the members that play to their talents and let them actually shine. Companies are obsessed with forcing all members of a group to sing in the same pitch, and that pitch is "high" - regardless of whether or not a low-voiced idol will sound good in that register, or if it's even ruining their voices. They're all forced into a narrow box, so they can produce that same sugar sweet vocal colour, factory-made and ready. I think it's notable that the groups and artists who most often stand out in that arena are the ones that write for themselves - Stray Kids wouldn't be half the group they are if Felix wasn't allowed to let the bass notes roll, ditto (G)-idle with Yuqi's contralto.

Anyway. This got overlong. But you're right - bragpop fallen flat sums up a lot of it!

[liveasbutterflies]

#KDRAMAWOMENSWEEKS

Hitmaker: This is all about giving them recognition and credit. A prompt for the actresses with double-digit smash hits, critical success-makers, those who navigated their way into becoming the headliners, the ones don’t get recognition they deserve.

KIM HYE YOON: Lovely Runner (2024) · Snowdrop (2022) · Ditto (2022) · Girl with a Bulldozer (2022) · Midnight (2021) · Secret Royal Inspector & Joy (2021) · Extraordinary You (2019) · Sky Castle (2019)

[victoriadallonfan]

Let's Talk About the Alien vs Predator Films

Talk about wasted potential, am I right?

I'm struggling to format this in an interesting way, since so much has been covered over the past 20 years since the first film was released. You can read my thoughts on Aliens Franchise and the Predator Franchise as well.

Note that it doesn't include Alien: Romulus, but suffice to say it was a good movie!

I think the best place to start is with covering the themes of Alien and Predator, and the history before these films were created (and the failure of Fox).

My fellow AvP enjoyer @agendergorgon has already posted some thoughts on the topic, giving me a lot to think about, so check out their blog too!

For the purposes of this review, I am not going to include Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, nor Alien: Covenant.... mostly. The AvP films really don't take much of anything beyond the first two films, though I will touch on Prometheus when it comes to religion.

Ditto for the Predator films, but that's because Predator wouldn't get a third film until 2010, 3 years after the AvP duo.

The themes of Alien Franchise:

I'm sure the first thing to come to mind is that the Alien series is about sexual assault, and you'd be correct. The xenomorph is designed to be extremely phallic, the facehuggers quite literally rape their victims, Burke locks his victims (including a child) in a room to be raped, Ash tries to murder Ripley by thrusting a rolled up porn magazine down her throat etc etc.

Some of you might also remember how Aliens was noted by James Cameron to be a criticism of the Vietnam War, Corporate Greed, and the callous arrogance of the US Military. The xenomorphs represented the innumerable "faceless" soldiers that could overwhelm more advanced enemies with ambush tactics and numbers, Burke thinks only in "goddamn percentages" and how this could benefit himself and the company, and the Colonial Marines are not only woefully mismanaged a newly brought on commander but also completely delusional with their own sense of invulnerability, only to break and panic under pressure once they meet a foe who is determined to fight to the death.

(I will NOT be tackling the fucked-upness of comparing people fighting for their independence vs a fucking Xenomorph, because holy fucking shit, it is literally the opposite AND worse counterpart to having the Predators be colonizers)

But, in the broader scope of the series, Alien - and the xenomorph - represent the uncontrollable, unfathomable, unknown. What are they? Why were they there? What are their motives? How did they end up in that ship? Were they built? How do they 'see'? Why did the xenomorph spare Jonesy the Cat? Are they intelligent life? How on earth do they function with their bizarre biology?

We don't get any real answers to these questions in the original films. The whole point of these movies is that there are things that mankind does not understand, and the horrors of space are vast. And equally terrifying is the arrogance of man (and synth kind) to think they can harness this horror for profit at the expense of human lives.

The themes of the Predator Franchise:

There's been tons of articles on how Predator is either a reconstruction or deconstruction (depending on who you ask) of the 80's action hero flick. A team of muscle laden, big gun toting, sweaty men spouting off one-liners as they mow down their enemies in a secret CIA led operation during the Cold War, interrupted by the presence of an intergalactic hunter than treats these badasses like mere toys. The massive Arnold Schwarzenegger is smacked out like a mouse facing off against a particularly cruel cat, needing to rely on tricks - not his brawns or guns - to stay alive and eventually defeat the Predator.

Others might point to its related take down of machismo. The opening scene is rife with characters testing each other's physical strength against each other such as with Dillon and Dutch, Ventura and Dutch have a small face-off in the helicopter as they try to make a pecking order, Ventura makes a whole speech about being a "sexual tyrannosaurus" and then mocked about sticking a gun up his "sore-ass", Hawkins repeatedly tries to make pussy and sex jokes, and they end up with a single woman in the group who is treated more like an object and baggage than a person for much of the movie. All of these men are emasculated by the Predator, some of them not even lasting a single second to its predations (both in tech and physicality), all of them losing any sense of quips and confidence, and the sole woman of the group survives because she didn't fit the movie's (and Predator's) mold of "tough as nails". When Arnold/Dutch is rescued by helicopter, it's not a cheerful one; he's haunted by what he endured and remains silent as the film pans into his thousand-yard stare.

All of this applies to Predator 2 as well, amping up the violence, dick measuring, and rules of the Predator targeting anyone who thinks they are tough shit for carrying a gun or knife. Even Danny Glover's victory is bittersweet, because he is now left in the middle of dozens of officer deaths, and entire subway car filled with corpses, and an antique flintlock pistol that promises the return of the Predators to Earth.

In a much broader sense, the Predator films are about the oversaturation of violence and lack of care for human life. Predator 1's main plot before he arrives is the CIA using Green Berets and then Dutch's special ops team to clean up their dirty work, giving them false information and not even reporting the Berets being MIA in furtherance of their Cold War goals (slaughtering guerrillas who were working with Soviet Russia). In Predator 2, the police are seen as being ineffective because they trample on each other's jurisdiction, with the Federal task force being willing to kill their own cops to keep the Predator existence a secret and letting it hunt people down for a better chance at capture and experimentation.

The Predator creatures are the epitome of such greed and arrogance. They are the General Zaroffs of The Most Dangerous Game, taken to a new height by showing that human lives literally mean nothing to them beyond a trophy hunt. They care nothing about our social lives, our politics, our loved ones, because for them this is nothing more than the equivalent of posh British Elite going on a Fox Hunt: cruel and sadistic, just to placate their egos. They will violate the corpses of the dead and taunt those in mourning, for the thrill of the game. And in that sense, the Predators are very human antagonists: they are not unfathomable nor are their goals beyond our understanding. The horror of the Predators is that they are creatures we can understand, communicate with, and even see similarities in their culture to ours... and that culture is putting us on a trophy rack alongside other skulls of creatures they felt a thrill to hunt.

So, did the Alien vs Predator films cover even half of these topics?

Well... kinda? Just... not well.

Not well at all.

The Build Up

Alien and Predator have a connected history dating back to the creation of the Predator itself. Stan Winston was on a flight with James Cameron some time after the famous director had finished with Aliens, and the director made a comment about wanting to see a monster with mandibles, which eventually led to the creature we know and love today.

Predator's debut on screen was also often compared to Aliens due to the superficially similar premise of a team of commandos going on a mission and fighting an unknown alien threat.

Despite what some people think, the AvP series wasn't started by the films.

Yes, there was a particularly memorable scene in Predator 2, where the City Hunter is admiring his trophy room and a xenomorph skull can be seen mounted on the wall (though, fun fact, it's actually an inaccurate depiction as xenomorph skulls look more humanoid facing), but that wasn't the first time the duo met in media.

And I'm not referring to the 1993 Arcade Game either (since that only came out a year after Predator 2).

The Alien vs Predator comic first appeared in 1989. And there were publications continuing ever since.

Think about that going forward. There was 25 years of content to choose from, storylines they could adapt, interesting forays into the cosmology and interactions between Yaujta, Xenomorphs, and Humanity.

The movies used exactly none of it (barring 1 thing: the Predalien).

Alien vs Predator (2004)

The plot of this movie is that Weyland-Yutani corporation detects a heat bloom under the ice in Antartica that reveals an underground pyramid, and in a race against his competitors, Weyland rounds up a team of elite experts led by Lex Woods to investigate the ruins (and find that the Predators have left them a convenient tunnel to enter the deep ice). Only to find out that this was a trap, as the pyramid comes to life activates a Xenomorph Queen, unleashing a brood of facehuggers on the helpless crew, all the while the Predators hunt them down. After a spectacular shitshow and release of the Xenomorph Queen, Lex and the last Predator (Scar) have to reluctantly team up to escape the pyramid and blow up the xenomorphs, ending in a final battle with the Xenomorph Queen. Scar perishes in the fight, but Lex manages to send the Queen into the depth of the artic ocean, and is rewarded by the watching Eldar Predator with a spear for her troubles. A post-credit scene reveals that Scar had a chest-burster inside of him, birthing the Predalien!

Rewatching this movie, I'm surprised at how good it looks. The opening scene of the satellite in space, several shots of the ship (and spaceship), the frozen tundra, the set pieces like the Xenomorph Queen Prison, and the CGI!

The CGI! Of 2004! I was shocked that they looked so good for something that is 20 years old now, but they did really well for themselves.

But it was the practical effects that blew me away the most. The shifting Pyramid is absolutely iconic and the abandoned whaling station is suitably creepy. The face-huggers look amazing and the xenomorphs are just *chefs kiss*. It's so funny seeing these Xenomorph effects compared to that of Alien:Covenant, and seeing how much work bodysuit and puppetry can do to make a monster look so much more terrifying than a CGI creature.

I know a lot of people didn't like the Predator's bulky appearance in this movie, but honestly... I dig it? It makes sense that not all Predators are literally built the same, and that the ones who would choose to go hunting in the artic would be the bigger ones who could hold more body heat. And the movie does a really great fucking job of making these Predators look badass and distinct from each other, with Celtic having the coolest mask of the whole group.

And the way the movie is shot is really fantastic! There are a lot of wide and tracking shots where the movie lets the atmosphere do the work instead of badgering us with words, taking its time to build up tension and soak up the visuals. One of my favorites shots they did was slow roam through the Predator ship as the systems come to life and we get to see holograms come on-line, feeding information directly into their masks. Equally good was when the Xenomorph Queen is awakened to cackling electricity and ominous lighting, showing us how vast this chamber is and how huge this Queen is in comparison to the one Ripley faces.

The same goes for most of the actions scenes, with a decent amount of cool slow-mo shots for things like Face-huggles launching themselves, Predators leaping across chasms, and showing Scar's impressive athleticism when he leaps 10 meters into the air and stabs a spear through the Queens skull.

And I can always rewatch the first time Alien Meets Predator Fight. God, that score! The music is just so damn good!!! You really feel like you are watching two massive horrors from space finally finding themselves sharing a space together.

Honestly, the Predators using the Xenomorphs as some kind of fucked up exotic pet for hunting trials and training fits the lore PERFECTLY. It’s actually a literal fox hunt not just metaphorical (and of course, in typical Alien fashion, it all went to shit).

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

"Wait, Ridtom/VictoriaDallonFan, are you about to say something nice about AvP:R?!"

Well, after turning up the brightness and hanging blankets over my windows and then watching the movie underneath more blankets... yes!

For one thing, the Alien and Predator effects are spectacular! Some of the best work I've seen in the franchises! The fight scenes are creative and use really cool set-pieces like the sewer and power plant, where we get to see Wolf (the name of the Predator of this movie) absolutely kick ass and slaughter his way through hordes of Xenomorphs. Not that the xenos are left in the dust, as they get plenty of murders on screen and even outsmart Wolf on occasion.

I actually like the Predalien design and the idea that it’s more intelligent than the average Xeno, including holding personal grudges and understanding Predator behavior.

And the Predator tech is really cool too! We got laser grids, land mines, power fists, converting the plasma caster into a plasma pistol And I love the moment where Wolf kidnaps one of the human protags to use as live bait. Such a dick thing to do but so in-character.

Even the bits we get of Wolf mourning his fellow dead hunters was a neat addition.

And to be honest, I didn’t mind the idea of seeing an actual xenomorph infestation in real time, in a small town. I think that sort of setting would be really fun for a one-shot story.

And… that’s it. That’s all the good stuff.

What Went Wrong?

I compiled a list of sources where I got a lot of information on the AvP production: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4

Note that a lot of these are 20 years old so I apologize for the outdated and honestly abhorrent word use that some articles and videos may use. And another apology for using the Xenopedia wiki, it was just a good shorthand for other information.

In short: Fox fucking sucks. They will absolutely self-sabotage themselves in order to make a (perceived) profit. Tom Rothman is the most well known (and he’s gone to Sony as of now), but Fox has had a looong history of being stingy and terrified of any risks for their films.

The sheer amount of drama involving Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection is an insane rollercoaster.

AvP removed pretty much any sense of horror and purposely had the design of the Predators to be more “human” and “heroic” (hence the weird human eyes and bulky physique), with a PG-13 rating for more audience numbers. While the human characters aren’t bad, they are not unique or even memorable (barring the fandom romantic tension between Lexi and the final Predator). Also, it was very weird that the Predators couldn’t kill a single Xenomorph, meanwhile the Colonial Marines couldn’t trip without blasting apart swarms of them. It felt like they really wanted to save money on the film in that regard.

AvP:R was even worse, with it being filmed with such a lack of lighting that people could not actually see any of the movie, and even modern advancements in color grading make it a strain. The human characters are awful, just absolutely boring and unremarkable beyond being veiled callbacks to characters from Alien, and we get a bunch of stupid Dawson’s Creek drama involving teenagers who look like they are 30 years old fighting over a girl who has no personality because she was written to just be “hot girl”.

If the story had focused entirely on the wife coming home from the war and dealing with the fact that her own daughter doesn’t feel close or comfortable with her after years of being gone, there could have been focus and themes and yadda yadda yadda.

Also, while this movie at least has horror aspects, did we REALLY need to see the Xenomorphs eating the fetuses and belly bursting out of still screaming mothers? Like, there is horror and then there is just being gross.

Final Thoughts

I often wonder if AvP took the wind out of the sails of Prometheus. Both play with the idea of humans worshiping aliens as gods, because Ancient Aliens is fucking everywhere, but it’s really hard to take Prometheus seriously when you remember AvP did basically the same setup (with arguably smarter characters).

And these movies have really soiled the idea of the AvP franchise barring the video games and comics. There’s apparently an AvP anime locked up in Disney Vaults and so far, both franchises have kept their respectful distances from each other.

However, with the recent successes of Alien: Romulus and Prey, there’s been a bit of a stir with some comments hinting at a potential AvP future.

Who knows. It’s been 17 years, perhaps 3rd time is the charm.

[bedupolker]

PLAYLIST. @viv13drainbow I think if you like that song in particular you'd also really enjoy Summer Salt, Little Joy, and Babe Rainbow for chill beach-y rock (not included). Commentary below:

The Blue Album - The album to start all albums, the album that launched weezer to success. Many hail this as their best album (I love this album but respectfully disagree) but nonetheless it's an essential for weezer fans and alt rock fans as a whole. Plenty of people who know way more about music than I do have praised blue album at length, and it's a funny meme nowadays too. Of course say it ain't so is an all-time classic, a heart-wrenching look into Rivers's relationship with alcoholism and his parental figures. I dunno if anything on the blue album can be called a proper deep cut, but only in dreams is an overlooked gem, and probably my favorite outro in their whole discography. Hopeful but somber, that slow buildup a the end to the guitar solo. Suzanne is a nice B-side.

Pinkerton - the infamous Pinkerton. Their sophomore album. Their breakdown album. Although weezer's not exactly an emo band, this album is often credited to being influential to the genre as a whole. No two people have the same experience with love or breakups, and one of the beautiful things about art is that we can see an experience through anothers' eyes, but I don't think I can think of a more painfully relatable album than this one. The balancing act of portraying its sympathetically-unsympathetic protagonist as equal parts pathetic and lonely while also entitled and aggressive. Some of the vocals are so raw for a second you see the monster in the five foot six, nerdy, physically disabled, lead singer that he sees himself as. Hard for me to pick a favorite standalone song off this one; the good life is a funky jam that wouldn't be out of place next to wheatus or RCHP's tracks, but that's where all the funk ends. Why bother? is a driving, catchy song that starts to show the cracks of his depression, falling for you is full of emotion, and if you get your hands on the deluxe edition, tragic girl.

Green album - At its time of release, Pinkerton was not received well. Creating such a raw, personal piece of art is hard. It's like the artistic version of getting crazy drunk, pouring your heart out, feeling catharsis for a moment, then realizing you'll have to deal with it all the next day. A lot of people interpret island in the sun as a happy song, but to me it's the tylenol after that night of drinking, a lie to tell yourself just to get through the day. It has a peaceful rhythm and brings to mind a tropical paradise, but there's something undeniably melancholy beneath the sunshine and smiles. You've tried to face your pain and you barely escaped alive, maybe you're better off just ignoring it. (That being said, although the damage has been done, Pinkerton has later been reevaluated and is now as widely praised as the Blue Album amongst music critics, and Rivers himself has made peace with that phase in his life.)

Maladroit - Overall this album is rather overlooked. It leans a bit more heavily into the rock aspect compared to green album, yet the lyrics remain impersonal and goofy. It's still not a bad album, though doesn't reach the heights of the first two. The singles, Dope Nose & Keep Fishing are both solid, but Burndt Jamb is my personal favorite. A little beach-y, probably their Stroke-y est song, (the band, not the medical emergency), it's been a mainstay on several of my chill out playlists for years now.

Make Believe - Probably one of their most hated albums by fans. It has the infamously shallow and poppy beverly hills, but you know what? I'm a Make Believe Defender. I truly think it could've been a great album, maybe even on par with Pinkerton. Not because of the album itself, but the demos. Haunt you Everyday is solid on the final product but rips at my heartstrings in this demo, ditto for tell me what you did (different name on the final product), everybody wants a chance to be alone (I said burndt jamb was their strokiest song but I think it might actually be this one) purple flowers (lyrics are a little rough but the melody, the meloncholy... so good) Actually on that note, weezer has, like, multiple album's worth of unreleased content that's miles better than anything on a published album (Link for one of my favorite fan compilations). Yes, the lyrics sound like something I wrote in my diary after a breakup, but that makes them all the more real. A deep dive into weezer will reveal the terrifying truth we've all been blind to: weezer never got bad.

Red Album - Mixed feelings on this one. It was produced by Rick Rubin, industry titan and famous for bringing bands "back from the dead," he's produced more than one of my all time favorite albums. Red is not one of them unfortunately. It has its fans though. Pork and Beans is fun.

Raditude, Hurley, Death to False Metal - Skipping these bc I don't care abt them

Everything will be alright in the end - To fans, this was their first "good" album since Maladroit, maybe since Pinkerton (12 years prior!) depending on who you ask. Although it wasn't as commercially successful as some others, it's a very strong album. Really, what is it about rock bands forgetting they're rock bands then suddenly returning to releasing rock music and magically being good again?? I'm looking @ you too, fall out boy. I have a hard time picking a really standout song- it's one of those albums that's evenly good throughout, no skips, but no obvious standouts either. Da Vinci is fun.

White Album - A fantastic album. You can hear some pretty heavy beach boys influence in this one. Unlike EWBAITE it has a few skips for me, but the highs are very high. Speaking of high. Do you wanna get high has to be my favorite off this one, Endless Bummer could be a sequel to island in the sun, Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori is just good clean weezy fun.

Pacific Daydream - I'm a Pacific Daydream defender. Check out QB blitz. Weekend Woman is flawed, but fun too, the bridge really makes it for me. Very evocative of Good Vibrations by the beach boys.

Teal Album - Oh god a cover album. No Scrubs is probably the only one really worth checking out if nothing else to hear a geeky white guy say "A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly" like he's reading it out of a dictionary. (TLC, who wrote and performed the original song, allegedly got a kick out of it)

Black Album & Van Weezer - I don't care about these either. Damnit I thought we were gonna be good again!

Ok Human - A good album!! What a relief. Could you imagine how embarrassing it would be to name yourself as a homage such a groundbreaking radiohead album and have it be.... bad??? I particularly love this one because in some ways it feels like it's his most personal album since Pinkerton- only instead of being an honest dialogue from a horribly lonely and isolated 20 year old student, it's a much more well adjusted, happily married, 50 year old father who is subject to both optimism and ennui. And it rocks! In a soft, subdued way. The songs flow into each other so nicely, the first three in the album debatably are my favorite 3-song-run in their discog. Aloo Gobi and Grapes of Wrath especially. The transition from dark and somber Dead Roses to light and upbeat Here Comes the Rain never gets old to me. This album (alongside MGMT's little dark age and The Stroke's The New Abnormal) was also like my essential Coronavirus holy trinity.

Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter - This is a compilation of 4 EP's, one of each released during their respective seasons in 2022. I think it's solid all around, with Summer being the strongest. Records and Blue Like Jazz are both very catchy, Thank you and Goodnight... just wait for the outro, trust me.

[lady-menrva]

The PJO fandom's act of worshipping Solangelo and bashing Caleo in the same breath is some S-tier clownery (which is saying alot). Yes, Caleo's criticisms are all extremely valid, but the same apply very well to Solangelo too.

"Leo is a traumatized teen who needs help, not a lover."

Ditto for Nico.

"Leo's character arc and development were ruined thanks to caleo."

Replace 'Leo' with 'Nico' and 'Caleo' with 'Solangelo'. You've got a rational criticism of Solangelo now.

"Caleo is one-dimensional."

So is Solangelo...

[artbyblastweave]

What's effective about The Superhuman Gambit, right, is that the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist are modelling a very 1950s superheroic paradigm basically to a T. The question of why you need a superhero around- the gag that superpeople do nothing but pointlessly fight each other for the sake of it- has been the number one criticism that basically every non-parodic piece of superhero media published after 1986 has attempted to pre-empt. Contemporary superheroes might encounter and defuse high-stakes crises at a completely unrealistic rate, but within the logic of their stories, contemporary superheroes pull their weight- by authorial fiat, their worlds would constantly be suffering mass casualty events if they weren't out there doing their thing. In the 1950s, though, all of this shit, by editorial mandate, was completely siloed from real stakes, even a lot of forms of real crime that were considered too risky to acknowledge as a thing in that political climate; it was all cops and robbers, themed heists, superdickery, nothing of substance, because the entire medium was declawed by the Wertham Scare.

A superhero isn't any more of an outlandish person to have in the Fallout Universe than the kinds of people that are the protagonists of these games. Moreover the actual powersets on display aren't even particularly stupid. Being able to control giant ants with your mind is the kind of thing that nets you feudal territorial holdings if you take it seriously, stupid costumes or no- ditto for being able to field an army of battle-ready robots. Canterbury Commons is very pointedly the site of the one group of people in the game who are trying to get, like, an actual economy going. They're the economic analogue to Project Purity. If either of these assholes threw their personal armies behind that project, the setting would look very very different by the time you climb out of the vault. But they aren't allowed to be the kind of superheroes who notice that, or apply themselves in that way, or really meaningfully engage with the world at all, because, again, they're specifically 1950s superheroes. And this all dovetails really well with my read that Fallout 3 is largely a game about people burying their heads in the sand, immersing themselves in a nostalgic past as a way to avoid thinking about the horrors of the present.

[mifhortunach]

it's like an hour 20 of this:

followed by this, fhgsdkhgfds:

i dumped most of my thoughts on ltrbxd instead, but just so i can actually recall it later (lol); i rewatched OpAv w the commentary from matt yesterday, and while it was good!, god what a bummer

[rotzaprachim]

ok andor season 2 first arc review under the cut

We’re fucking back baby. I still love this show

I also have a lot of fucking kvetches I did not have about the first arc in season 1, which was also slow but felt profoundly more emotionally realized. that being said a lot of things didn’t hit in this, and there were opportunities to be taken that were not taken at the same time as other stuff was needlessly over outlined in red. I’ve mentioned my issues with the incredibly unsubtle undocumented farm workers plot line, not specifically because of the fact that they’re touching on the issue of undocumented farm workers in the U.S./Western Europe *in space* but because aspects felt shoed into the script retrospectively that did not actually fit so well with what they were doing and showing on screen. It missed opportunities - I wish farm work itself, the entire concept of the harvest Failing or not having workers exerted pressure on the plot - I wish both the rebels and empire and local farmers were seriously concerned with the issue of there not being enough Food, something sw hasn’t yet focused on but that would absolutely fit in with andor’s storytelling (notable too with the issue of not enough food among the leftist infighters.) cassian basically destroys one of the silos - is this going to have an impact? I wish the show had given this more weight. It felt so surface level - rather than a simple chummy dinner I wish they’d shown the tension of everyone working the fields in an oppressive system together, of the power imbalances between farmers of different flavours, etc etc. missed opportunities all around

ditto with. This show is interested in space!latines, and it is interested in women, but when it comes to the intersection of those things in bix, it seems to have so little but violence. I thought the scene where the space cop threatens her was well done, as well as the parallel to Mon mothma being threatened by tay kolma- but the whole sequence of the cop trying to rape her was not necessary.

it was also a waste of bix’s character. I’m a massive defender of bix not being a “traditional fighter” or more simply a survivor and in particular a junket and scrapper in a period where everything is depending on the rebellions ability to hold down junk and scrap, and I actually thought the show was going somewhere with the idea that what sold out the ferrixeans to space!ICE was the fact that she (and the others) had repaired the silos and brought new and critical skills into the community that also sold out that they were from ferrix. That’s an interesting issue and an interesting commentary about the importance of immigration in society! Does she save their farm and also mark them as foreigners? They say the word “visa” so many times but what’s the issue with them being in this planet in the first place? DOES EVERY SINGLE FERRIXIAN HAVE A KILL WARRANT ON THEM? This is such an interesting possible place and it’s so wasted. Idk. 5) ditto with cassian and the leftist infighting. I actually screamed at the start of the first episode because it felt like they were doing something so interesting because he’s been yanked “home” or else full circle - he’s a seemingly imperial pilot whose crash landed on a planet like kenari, and his whole arc on kenari started because of a foreign pilot crash landing and bringing their ship with them. This is interesting territory that starts skirting into what might be one of Star Wars’s largely sidestepped moral dilemmas - it’s totally fine and dandy to kill anyone marked as imperial. But how do you know they’re imperial? Cassian andor is a man who kills imperials, but someone acting exactly as he does would age. Milled him right then and there. I thought that in the scheme of things cassian was going to have to be brought into the space!zapatistas or some kind of local group deeply parallel to who he used to be in kenari who understandably don’t believe his story, I wanted to explore the fact that the empire looks different to different people and that he’s come so far he *is* now a stranger in a land like his own, he’s season 1’s crash landed pilot - and then we did not get that. We did not get that at all. This plot knocked him out of use for three whole eps and showing that it was future yavin 3 felt like a cheap source of hey look at that it’s the starry wars!!!! Justification for two episodes that looked like they’d build up to something and did not

anyway I guess Tony gilroy is still involved, but the directing and writing feels different even if the acting from every character is still spot on, and there were things I loved but 2/3 major arcs feeling like wasted opportunities was not one of them

the writing and worldbuilding just felt thinner too. Everything is a little flatter. The farmers and Kellen’s family didn’t feel nearly as fleshed out as even minor characters in ferrix, despite literally having almost as much time on screen by the three episode mark, and the random leftist infighters are just clueless bozos, and the emotional points they tried to hit felt more saccharine, and it could have been. Sigh