#Hollow Victories

[mattpresents]

Happy Pride Month! Who wants to see two queer people and their straight friend discuss two of the most infamous gay movies ever?

[the-woman-upstairs]

It is driving me…cuckoo bananas that Daniel uses his job as a socially acceptable way to chase the high he used to get from drugs and Armand not only is fully aware of this, but he himself then PROVIDES that very high when Daniel beats him and exposes his lies to Louis.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I was thinking about an alternate ending to Furiosa that I would have found more narratively satisfying, that dealt with the two third acts problem without radically altering other parts of the movie.

Imagine if you will:

The climactic action sequence is the one at the Bullet Farm and maybe a bit of the chase after. Same setup. Furiosa has the best chance she's ever had to get home, but she can't make herself leave Jack. Goes back to fight for him. He still dies--not in the same horrible drawn-out way, but Dementus kills him. Furiosa gets caught in a wreck or something with her arm pinned. Echoes of Max leaving the guy handcuffed to the burning car in Mad Max 1. He can live if he chops his arm off. And chop she does. Not in time to save Jack, but in time to kill Dementus. That's not long and drawn-out either but he is very clearly dead by her one remaining hand.

Maybe that's when the backup from the Citadel that they called for when everything went to shit arrives. Furiosa gets brought back to the Citadel, probably without much choice at that point because she's barely conscious due to rapid unplanned disassembly of arm. She is welcomed by Joe as a hero for slaying his enemy. Promoted to Imperator and told she will lead the War Rig crew when the rig is rebuilt new and better than ever. She was Jack's second-in-command after all.

Everyone is treating it like a victory for her but we feel it as a defeat, because she still lost the one person she cared about, and in the aftermath of that it seems like she has given up on trying to get home. Accepted that a high-ranking position in Joe's armada is the best she's gonna get. Maybe we even see her planting the peach tree at the Citadel as a sign that she's accepted she is never going home.

(We know she'll try again in Fury Road, but it doesn't look like she knows that.)

In this version of events, I think Joe would gift her the prosthetic arm. You are part of my war machine now. She has proven herself valuable enough to be taken care of, like the History Man advised her. Valuable enough to be repaired instead of discarded.

I am chewing on the parallels. At the beginning of the movie she has a chance to escape, but she can't leave her mom. She goes back and watches her mom die and gets trapped by Dementus. At the end she has another chance but she can't leave Jack. She goes back and watches Jack die and gets trapped by Joe. It's the kind of dark ending that works for a prequel when we know she is going to have her moment of victory in Fury Road.

I'm imagining the image of her being brought back to the Citadel in hollow triumph after killing Dementus. She's half-dead, one-armed, riding on the front of a car like the end of Fury Road but she's being kind of propped up like a trophy. Versus the end of Fury Road and its moment of real triumph--a return she never intended but this time to a place that maybe can be a real home for her at last.

[oneshotprincess]

apparently optimus has a habit of dying or being near death and then coming back in transformers media and now i'm thinking of a transformers one 5+1 fic...five times optimus prime comes back after megatron kills him and the one time he doesn't

[iridescentscarecrow]

this was the inside of my head at the end of r7 btw.

[mydaylight]

I'm lowkey obsessed with Yongzheng telling Zhen Huan on his deathbed "The entire world was mine, but it will be yours soon" like... it's the ultimate admission that he's been beaten, he knows he will be dying soon and Zhen Huan will have everything, and even worse at this point he's pretty much certain that she cheated on him and Hongyan is not his kid but he's so utterly powerless it's impossible for him to strike back against her in any way... In a way he's partly responsible because he's the one who propped her up for so long in order to live his Chun Yuan fantasy, and he was just so arrogant and self centered he did not suspect her of being duplicitous until the very end. He exploited Zhen Huan for so many years, and it ended up being his undoing. It's such a powerful scene because you have this monarch and the woman he considered his property, and she's turned the tables on him, brought him on knees, and she's about to be handed everything he cared about, his dynastic power and his throne (via her sons), and there's nothing he can do about it. He thought he was using her but no, he was also being used and she doesn't care a wit about him. And also she was poisoning him to death. No drama ending will ever be as cathartic as that.

[interact-if]

Hollow Victory is a short visual novel about visiting your ex in jail after he tried taking over the world. This game was made in 10 days for the O2A2 VN Jam 2023, a micro Visual Novel Jam with strict asset limitations and a 1,000 word limit by Ekkoberry.

Features:

✿ Exactly 1,000 words / approx 10 minutes of gameplay.

✿ 3 endings.

✿ 1920 x 1080 resolution.

[faelapis]

who won eurovision didn't really matter. yes, i'm sure the EBU are glad to avoid the shitstorm that an israeli win would've been. on a symbolic level, it's nice that israel lost - but fascism is about power, not logic. the zionists can spin this any way they want.

zionists lost = they cry about how the world is against them, but they are "strong" and "will win" anyway.

zionists lost, but got 2nd in televote = they call themselves a "silent majority", despite placing 5th and not winning televote. (+ most pro-palestinian folks boycotting leading to an outsized zionist viewership +you can't vote against entries, so controversial ones always do well).

zionists lost TO A PRO-PALESTINIAN ARTIST LIKE NEMO, but get one place higher than another pro-palestinian artist like bambie thug = a million tweets about how they "won" over bambie. nemo, the actual winner, is deliberately obscured.

there is no way to spin this that zionists won't try to turn into them somehow "winning." propaganda is propaganda. they will never concede on anything. they are always "winning" in their minds.

the ONLY way they could've possibly been silenced, is if they were actually silenced. if they weren't allowed to compete. israels mere presence IS a normalizing platform for zionist propaganda, even if they lose.

i understand its fun to dunk on zionists for their copium. they lost. fat L. i understand its fun to rub nemo in their faces, as an artist who was harassed by the israeli delegation both for being pro-palestine and queer. its easy to see that as the "happy ending" to the contest.

but there is never a happy ending to propaganda. you have to pull the plug on it. israel being there at all is a disgrace, and we can only hope many EBU executives are fired for letting that happen.

and while all of this "drama" is happening, palestinians are suffering.

[hurlumerlu]

I was wondering how they would deal with the inevitable symbolism of Jack winning the ladder game (basically how could the writers make him win while avoiding a slew of unfortunate implications), and the fact that he closes the gap by chosing to trust a friend and then wins entirely by chance (his oponent simply. landed on the wrong case) was the most graceful way they could pull it off.

[mattpresents]

For the 25th episode of our show, we finally ask the age old question: Which is better: Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action?

[goodmode]

some tisos from over the last month-ish

[kyluxtrashpit]

Been hearing from multiple people I know and trust in the fandom that apparently people have been botting that hottest man poll that everyone’s been yelling about? And that kylux fandom specifically is the one guilty of it

And honestly I’m extremely disappointed in anyone who thinks that’s appropriate. These are supposed to be fun and you’ve gone and ruined it for everyone participating AND made all of us look like assholes in the process for being unable to be normal about a harmless, just-for-fun poll

Hope you’re proud of yourselves. Genuinely pathetic behaviour. I expected better from the fandom I’ve called home for nearly 10 fucking years

[eaglesnick]

The Emperors New Clothes

Time and time again, as I watched the election results unfold on my TV screen last night, political commentators and Labour MP’s alike praised Sir Keir Starmer for having thrown Jeremy Corbyn out of the Party and for having purged its ranks of left-wing candidates. The massive Labour victory that the exit polls predicted and was played out over the ensuing hours was all down to Sir Keir’s eradication of left-wing policies and candidates.

In the 2019 election Corbyn’s Labour Party secured only 32.2% of the vote, the worst in Labour’s history. That year saw a turn out of 67% with Labour winning 202 seats. Yesterday saw Labour with 33.9% of the vote yet winning 410 seats, in a turnout predicted to be around 60%.

Despite being labelled a “landslide victory", which measured in MP numbers it is, Starmer has failed to significantly raise the Labour Party’s overall share of the vote from its all time low of the 2019 election. In short, the voters have deserted the Conservative Party but have not given their vote to Starmer. Rather they have voted for lesser parties such as the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and worryingly, Reform UK.

Starmer, more concerned about power than policies, has failed to ignite the support of the electorate. His 1.7% increase in the popular vote is derisible, especially given his scathing criticism of Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing policies in the 2019 election. The sad fact is, the voters were totally unimpressed by Sir Keir Starmer’s “new" Labour Party. The 2024 election turnout is on track to being the lowest since the Second World War.

The electorate may have rejected the Conservatives, but they have not flocked to the Labour Party. Keir Starmer’s “massive victory" is hollow. Like the Emperor in the Hans  Christian Andersen fairy tale, Keir Starmer’s obsession with image has been at the expense of policies that matter to ordinary working people and it is only a matter of time before his nakedness is found out.

[alliluyevas]

Kendall ending absolute narrative sledgehammer what’s worse than debasing yourself and destroying all your scruples in service of molding yourself to the image of your father. doing all that and still failing to grasp the crown.

[wonder-worker]

"It is too easy to dismiss [Leonor of Navarre] as an overambitious schemer who would do anything to obtain a crown, shedding the blood of her own siblings and her subjects in order to attain the throne. However, a deeper investigation of her long lieutenancy and ephemeral reign shows a woman who fought tenaciously to preserve her place but also worked tirelessly to administer a realm which was crippled by internal conflict and the center of the political schemes of France, Aragon, and Castile. She tried to broker peace, fight off those who opposed her, repair the wounds caused by conflict, protect the sovereignty of the realm, and keep the wheels of governance turning. Leonor was not always successful in achieving all of these aims but given the background of conflict and the lack of cooperation she received from all of her family members, bar her loyal husband, it is a huge achievement that she survived to wear the crown at all. Many writers have argued that Leonor deserved the troubled lieutenancy, personal tragedies, an ephemeral reign, and a blackened reputation, basing their assumption that she committed a crime that cannot be [conclusively] proven. However, a more fitting description of her would be that of a resolute ruler who successfully overcame a multitude of challenges in order to survive in a difficult political landscape and gain a hard-fought throne.”

-Elena Woodacre, "Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition", Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[acerikus]

The ironic part about that tag ramble I just did is that I actually like vengeance and neutral best in uty. (Neutral>vengeance>pacifist for me lol)

Pacifist is fun and I like how much we learn about the characters and the ceroba fight, but out of the three routes it's the one that captivates me the least. Don't get me wrong, that first run was magical and I still really like it! I think most of that is bc it's clover and flowey's relationship and how it's used that captivates me most about this game.

But even then, clover inherently being someone who didn't immediately lash out at the monsters (be that through wanting to be kind or due to fear/some other reason) is so so important to their character.

We (and Flowey) can make them worse. But they put thought into their judgement when given the chance. It took hundreds of resets for clover to choose violence and even then, it wasn't of their own volition. It's not who Clover is at their core - they want things to be fair and they get easily drawn into caring for people. Hell, martlet in vengeance even calls them out for trying to find reasons to hate her in her memories, because deep down they don't want to at all, and even in flawed/aborted vengeance they're sincere in wanting to live with her, to the point flowey is shocked and angered. Their care for martlet is a constant regardless of route and that's one of my other favourite parts about this game.