#I could make a better Pike - not as an actor but me as a character maker and a writer. I could write a better Pike. (even if he wasn't

[bumblingbabooshka]

Just wanted to say I adore reading through your long, well thought out tags!! You always have such interesting things to say and I especially agree with your opinions on snw. You articulate the issues I have with the show so well. I've tried so hard to love it since it's the only nutrek my dad loves a lot, but I just,,, can't :') I do not care abt any of these ppl or their overtly sad pasts and that's not my best friend Mr. Spock!!!!

Thank you so much~!!!!! This makes me happy to hear, I love rambling in the tags and I'm glad people who take the time to read them think they're interesting <3 Noo it sucks bc when I watched the first few episodes I was feeling positively about the show but then as more episodes came out.....It all went from a scale of bleugh to actively offensive/concerning, to either the characters or real-world issues (The pro-eugenics episode!???? Where they likened being anti-eugenics to being RACIST???? <- This + killing two disabled characters is YIKES YIKES YIKES) T'Pring's the only good thing about SNW to me and I'm sure they'll eventually ruin her too - I'm so sorry you're stuck in there T'Pring!!! I'd get you out if I could, I'd charter an evac were it possible!!! And they turned your best friend Mr. Spock into a two-timing cheater!!! I'm so sorry they did that to your good friend Mr. Spock!!!

[the-return-of-yagamimi]

REVENANT

"Revenant: Prologue" is a 3 part animated indie short series that my team and I are making! You know the drill - vampires, cyborgs, pixels, polygons, awkwardly named gifs, etc. We're hard at work putting this thing together, and we could really use some support!

It’s about cyborgs, vampires, and a world recovering from catastrophe, inspired by the likes of Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding, Berserk. Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and much more

It will be followed by "Revenant", an Action-Adventure-Social Sim indie game inspired by Onimusha 3, Yakuza, Majora's Mask, and more. (Not yet in development)

Meet our crew!

Yagamimi - Project lead, writer, director, art director, concept artist, storyboard artist, character designer, creature designer, mechanical designer, weapon designer, CG artist, animator Bongfish - Writer, voice actor @guysullivan - Writer, co-director, voice actor @caffeinatedartificer - Writer, concept artist, character designer, storyboard artist @pg--animation - Storyboard artist carnage-queen - Fight choreographer, fight scene writer, storyboard artist, weapon designer, concept artist Evie Lepidoptrix - Concept artist, animator, mechanical designer, weapon designer DOMROM - Character designer @demon-dai - Character designer, creature designer, vehicle designer Gobl1n - Concept artist Lisa Mc.Rad - Sound design Cicada Sirens - Composer

Meet our main cast!

Lauren Kong as Nova (Click here to learn more about her) Benji Buckley as Tristan Indigo Ross as Vita funnywes as Quinn TarooiMono as Raul Sean Letourneau as Dunham Vivian Reed as Pike Maganda Marie as Kim Phillip Sacramento as Renfeld (will replace this with a better image once all their models are done)

REVENANT PROLOGUE PART 1 - RAPTOR

Part 1 is currently being animated! Keep an eye out! It stars Lauren Kong, Peter Wicks, Tom Schalk, Heather Nichols, and Guy Sullivan

REVENANT PROLOGUE PART 2 - T.O.M.B

Part 2 has been fully written and recorded and we're gearing up for storyboarding. It stars Benji Buckley, Sean Letourneau, Phillip Sacramento, Guy Sullivan, funnywes, Tom Schalk, Bongfish, and Scott "KaiserNeko" Frerichs

REVENANT PROLOGUE PART 3 - UNDERWORLD

And all details pertaining to Part 3 are going to be kept under wraps until it releases, but you can listen to this track Cicada Sirens made for it in the meantime

If you want to see this come to fruition, you can support us on Patreon for as low as $1 a month

Or if you want to support me personally so I can survive (because I am frequently broke, perpetually on the verge of homelessness, and seemingly no place wants to hire me) you can donate to my ko-fi

You can find more stuff for the project through these links, I'm most active on Bluesky and the 3 Part Prologue will be on YouTube

Sonic Blog | Apron Strings Blog | Patreon

[curator-on-ao3]

Sorry it's me again! 😬

Do you think Una has been sidelined in her own series? She should have been right infront of major scenes as the First Officer. But in almost half of the episodes we see Pike and Una separated barring a few scenes of them having a dinner or a drink in his quarters.

The show feels more like a Spock-Pike show where Spock is the First Officer given how much screentime he gets right alongside Pike. Which is good, I like Ethan!! But in all other Star Trek fleet the Captain and First Officer are pretty tight and share a lot of scenes displaying their bond.

I'd love to see Pike Una share an adventure together. To see how they help each other in their away missions, on ground, what makes them a team not just on the bridge but elsewhere.

Sorry for the rant again. I just feel like the show is direction-less a bit. It doesn't know what to do with their leads.

Hi! ❤️

I’ll start with the disclaimer that I’m biased on this. I could watch an entire episode of Una reading a book, turning a page every so often, and sighing a bit just before the credits roll and I’d be all, “Brava! A masterpiece! Better than The Inner Light!”

With that in mind …

Season one, I definitely think Una was sidelined. Yes, the series opens with her voiceover, but she’s barely in the episode (I know there were plans for more, including an entire bridge set for the Archer built around her in the command chair, but that didn’t happen), then she’s barely in The Elysian Kingdom, All Those Who Wander, and A Quality of Mercy. (I’m on the fence for The Serene Squall.) We did have Ghosts of Illyria, of course, and I’m very happy for that focus episode.

Now, we have an interesting bookending here with Una’s presence critically important for the first and last episodes of season one, both of which rely on Pike searching for her. And that’s nice and all, but can a gal get some screen time? I was so concerned about this that I actually wondered if Rebecca Romjin having last billing (which, for those unfamiliar, can signify greater celebrity than other actors, a reduced role, or both) meant this was purposeful and the series was built to have less Una.

Then season two’s start sidelined her again. However, I feel like her small parts in The Broken Circle and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow make sense given the intense focus and line work needed in Ad Astra Per Aspera. My beloathed Among The Lotus Eaters seemed to forget her once she began to feel effects from the radiation she … canonically isn’t supposed to be affected by? (Look, I’m a Trekkie. Just throw me a Chapel line to Una like, “I don’t understand how this radiation is overriding your immune system,” and I’m happy. But the writers need to bother with such things.) Because Una, like Erica, can fly the ship? But Una is at least featured in that episode, including in command and as both a friend and XO to Pike, as she is in other season two episodes.

Bottom line: Over the two seasons, my take is Una is what a first officer should be in that we see her in personal and professional closeness with Pike — and she’s the connective tissue of the entire ship with a unique friendship not only with Pike but also with La’an, Joseph, and Spock (considering the Q&A Short Trek), plus a … complicated set of emotions with Pelia. Una stood up for Joseph, Christine, and Erica when Pike wasn’t cognizant enough of their pain in Under the Cloak of War. Una was there for La’an and La’an’s fears and heartbreak in Subspace Rhapsody. Una helped inspire Boimler (and who knows how many others) to join Starfleet via Those Old Scientists canon (and I love, love, love everything about Una and Pike agreeing that communicators are better than combadges). Considering Neera, Una even has a critically important friendship off the ship.

Do I want more? Hell, yeah. Because, despite all this, I agree that the vibes are Pike and Spock as central. And while part of me knows that Spock is too huge of a character in this franchise to not be prominent … I want more respect for Pike and as much Una as possible. I’d love what you say — an adventure for Chris and Una (arguable whether we kind of got that with others along for the ride in The Serene Squall) and just more of the two of them together. Give me allll of the “there was only one couch” scene in Charades, and then some. (I wish the early scene when the ensign says a derogatory remark about Illyrians in front of Una and Pike immediately shuts. that. shit. down hadn’t been cut from Ghosts of Illyria.)

(Note: I do agree with you that the show lacks direction and doesn’t know what to do with its leads. My examples here may make things seem better than they are.)

So, yeah, I think Una was sidelined in season one, but season two was an improvement, so hopefully that bodes well.

What do others think about this?

[zalrb]

Saltburn Review (per anon request)

So, I ultimately decided to watch it because I'm working on something with dark academia vibes and I saw people say it was more of a parallel with The Secret History than most contemporary books, and some peers of mine said the movie was very literary-coded and compared it to The Talented Mr. Ripley (which I didn't actually care for that much, tbh, but it's been years since I've read it) and Brideshead Revisited and I know the director said that Rebecca was a huge influence. So, I watched it.

I can see what they mean; I can see how it's literary coded, it's definitely got the vibes, there were definitely shots that had me like this

this

is what I want to capture when I write so on an aesthetic level, I appreciated the vibes. I appreciated the irony of certain scenes

because it brought me right back to being in my program at columbia and the rich, white boys fist pumping to rap and beatboxing during the party portion of our program's events and me just turning around and walking away and being like, I'm not nearly drunk enough to endure this, I'm going to the bar or I'm going home.

So, that was cool.

When it comes to movie's topic or themes, to the portrayal and exploration of obsession and yearning and the dark places those things can take you, it made me wonder if I'm ever convinced by movies about obsession.

Because Barry Keoghan is a great actor (The Banshees of Inisherin!!!) even though I think he was ... not miscast but he looked too old for the role in my opinion -- and we definitely see things that showcase Barry's obsession -- he literally had sex with Felix's grave (which apparently was improvised??), all the other weird sex stuff, the lying, the manipulating, the stalking

he wants to be Felix, he wants to be the Cattons,

I get that in principle.

And yet I didn't feel what I find to be necessary to drive home the consuming nature of obsession, which is the sense of being consumed? It was too cold, too removed/distant, and part of it is because it's supposed to be sort of a reveal but it's also not, like the lengths he'll go to sort of unravels throughout the movie but we're supposed to see from the jump how enamoured he is and then sort of how creepy he is and then sort of how unhinged he is and then ultimately how violent he is and that progression is there, for sure, but again, I don't really feel aligned with Oliver for me to really live in that progression.

Like, I think the movie actually does it better with Farleigh and maybe it's because as the American character, we're more aligned with his emotions as opposed to Oliver where we kind of just see what he does and his actions alone are meant to showcase his obsessive nature. With Farleigh, we see the desperation, the way he needles at and bullies Oliver, and exerts what little power he has over making his life miserable, the way he's at the centre but also on the fringe

like when Venetia calls Oliver a moth, I think we actually see what that would feel like and what that would look like with Farleigh more, they toss him aside, they bring him back,

and I get this is supposed to be another avenue to show the class dynamics (while at the same time, the sort of nod to the racial dynamics of the whole situation felt more perfunctory than an actual acknowledgement but frankly, I don't really expect more from white directors so I just kind of shrugged) but I thought it was done with more immediacy and passion than the central plot.

My favourite parts of the movie were definitely Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike, they were peak comedy. I could not stop laughing at these scenes

and my favourite part is probably the lunch after Felix's murder

all in all, I liked it better than I thought that I would but I didn't find it to have the depth or the gravity that people would lead me to believe it had, it felt a tad too ... superficial is harsher than what I mean but it's not memorable for me, I'll forget this soon.

[aspiringsophrosyne]

Episode 6: Into Rimecleft

Fairly simple episode this time. Feels like it's been a while (been awhile) since the last show. So let's get right to it.

The Good.

Ah, Critical Role and dreams. Is there a better combo out there? Campaign 2 says: NEIN!

We get a nice little action scene to start things off. And we're really starting to build off the groundwork from the last episode, where Craven Edge, frustrated at the Fire Plane creatures' lack of blood, lurched in Pike's direction.

The implication was clear then. Here it's no longer a mere implication.

Getting to hear Ralph Ineson as Kevdak here for the first time is...Mm! A voice like rusted hinges, years of tobacco, and something dangerous awaiting the opportunity to strike. So good. The CRew really lucked out with their guest actors.

Speaking of which, Tony Plana acting as the second Sphinx is a wholly unique but equally joyful addition. While he's just as slow to warm to Vox Machina as Osysa, he brings a different energy that keeps things from getting repetitive. While she was lofty and dismissive, Kammie was more playful. Even when he doesn't see much in the group, his barbs don't cut as deep even before his moment with Scanlan.

I am a little sad we didn't see the whole thinking with portals puzzle from the original stream (which could've looked incredible in a visual medium) however...

Sam Riegel can strike the perfect balance between absolutely head-in-your-hands ridiculous and sincerely, heartbreakingly heartfelt. And it's a skill I have no shortage of envy for. You keep listening to Scanlan's song and expecting it to be too stupid to make you feel for the Sphinxes....but it never is. And that's just amazing. Still waiting for Seasons 2's OST to drop.

I do like the idea of a spell taking a significant amount of time to cast. It uses spells we've seen a million times to make for one hell of a nail-biter. And it's true to the game in some ways. While Plane Shift wasn't one of them, in-game, some spells take minutes, even hours. Or longer. And that can make things tense if you need every second to cast before something gets close enough to eat your face. 

The Grog Umbrasyl fight was hype. We got first blood drawn on a dragon, and as Marisha says in the watch-along, it'd been a hot minute since Grog got to flex. But you can also see really fast why this is a problem. Not only do the rest of Grog's squishier teammates have to get out, but you could also easily see him killing himself fighting Umbrasyl alone to feed Craven Edge.

And then....well, we'll talk about it next episode. 

I liked some of the little things here too. Percy giving Vex his coat, blushing up a storm, and Keyleth's reaction in the background. Likewise, Keyleth suggesting Vax could ask the Matron for help is a nice bit of setup for later things. Even if it is a little funny in hindsight; stream-Keyleth was almost a flat-earth atheist.

It's interesting to see what the cast has done to change up their characters from the stream.

The Bad. (Or at least not great.)

This is another episode that suffers from some poor pacing. After Grog's dream, little happens until they reach the Sphinx's lair. This is frustrating for me.

Remember how I said in the last episode that the time VM is traveling would be a good place for banter? Not just because it makes sense for them to do because they've got nothing else to occupy themselves while they walk, but because it would also help with character and world-building? All that is just as true here as in the last episode. But it'd also help with pacing.

There's a little bit here, but it's mainly bouncing from one two-to-three-sentence conversation to another. We could do more with the time.

Something that could help draw up suspense, for example, is having the crew talk with each other about how hard things have been so far; what's meeting the second Sphinx going to be like? Do they think they can convince them the way they did Osysa? Do they think they have a chance to get the other Vestiges? Do they believe those weapons will be enough to defeat the dragons?

That kind of thing makes for a good through-line for the Chroma Conclave plot that keeps things interesting even when the characters are just traveling and not doing much. The way things are now, it's like the writing team is just killing time until the action starts. And the banter was one of the best parts of the original stream.

I have...mixed feelings about the Sphinx's death. The Kaiju fight helps establish Umbrasyl as the boss of the season. It was also just really cool to watch...

But I can't help but worry this will be the writing CRew's go-to when they need to portray something as a threat or when they want to surprise stream watchers: just kill a character that survived in the original. And...yeah, nah. I'm not into that. I'll admit to being sentimental, and usually, I'll gravitate more toward happy endings than tragic ones, but I can enjoy the latter if it's earned and set up well. This death doesn't bother me as much as Archie's, but it does bother me a little. 

Nitpicks:

This line is...kind of awkward:

Vex'ahlia: Hard to believe we're gonna find a Sphinx in this forsaken place. (shivers) I'm as cold as a corpse, and I'd rather not repeat that experience.

Maybe something like this?

Vex'ahlia: Hard to believe we're gonna find a Sphinx in this forsaken place. (shivers) Wouldn't it be hilarious if I died and was brought back, only to freeze to death out here before we found the damn thing?

And this:

Keyleth: The entire range is eternally cold. Well, except for Pyrah. There's a myth about it, actually. A thousand...

Scanlan: Uh, m-maybe we just save the myth? My balls are ice cubes.

Me (tearing my hair out): AH! Maybe a myth will help take your mind off your balls for once, Scanlan!? Give me my damn lore.

And this line is just...I know it's Scanlan, but what does one have to do with the other??

Mostly a set up episode for what's to come. Overall not bad, could be better. But I think things really start to ramp up in the next batch.

[lanasangels333]

Ask game!! <3

I have seen tng, tos, the animated series, all films also aos, voyager and snw (I’m currently at season 2 of ds9)

Janeway or data, I can’t decide

I didn’t really enjoy snw that much it felt kind of empty at times. I also think that they mischaracterised Spock and chapel and they’re my favourite characters from tos soo a no from me

I really want to be some one non human, maybe tpring, jadiza or troi (idc as long as I’m still read as a women and not human)

I absolutely adore that you can see data change so much through tng, in the beginning his quarters were barren and he didn’t really connect to people and in the end he was loved and respected and he got a cat, had hobbies and his quarters were filled with personal items, I love that so much omg

I really love how supportive and outgoing the fandom is. The lgbt+ headcannons, the fan art and fanfic everything is so cool and unique;; I love being a part of it! I mean look at threshold day every year on tumblr: it’s the coolest thing ever imo

All the cis white 50+ men who don’t enjoy anything besides tng and tos, that are constantly complaining about Star Trek becoming too woke and political (wtf btw) and that are soo focused on other fans making mistakes, so that they can feed their superiority complex

Janeway obviously I mean I’m a lesbian

Probs pike (snw) cus I’m just a silly little girl and he’s just a silly little captain

that tuvok was the most emo/punk teen who would wear emo Vulcan clothing and smeared eyeliner

Tbh earth still I think from what I’ve seen in the series earth looks pretty fire

Human idk I like being human, Bajoran maybe because they look fire

The optimism, its openness to new ideas and its ability to tackle social political issues through sci-fi metaphors and obviously the gayness and the silliness

A more detailed backstory to Janeway because there is nothing

I think they’re great for their time and few things could have been done better obviously but I mean a lot of things in the world could’ve been done better so

Rick berman. I am going to personally break your nose if I ever have the chance. Yeah and I mean Shatner and chakotays actor (forgot his name) deserve a slap

Wesley, La’an (sorry), Chakotay (sorry again) and neelix when he got jealous that Tom was fuckinf talking to kes

Acceptance, patience and openness to new things and love

Voyager or tng I can’t decide but ds9 is getting there aswell

No not really haha sorry

Pike (snw) sorry guys but he’s seriously just a silly little optimist dude, who’s also captain and he loves his crew like a family

Vulcan edition :) Fuck: tpring, marry: Spock, kill: tuvok (I love you tuvok but I could never allow you to cheat on your wife)

No one sorry, I’m not into self-inserts (Janeway 100% would want to be banged by her)

Data/Geordie, j/7, Harry/kim, belanna/7, Janeway/crusher, data/natasha, data/bashir, Spirk (obviously), Spock/Chapel (tos), Janeway/kashyr

Probs tpring; I really like Vulcans and since tpring is literally perfect I would love to cosplay as her

✨Star Trek Ask Game✨

Give Worf some tea 😉

Whose your favorite character throughout all the series? In The Original Series? Next Gen? Voyager? DS9? Enterprise? Discovery?

Is there a series you can't stand, why?

If you could be a character for one day who would you choose and why?

Tell us your favorite scene or memory from the series or fandom

What are positives of the fandom?

What are negatives of the fandom? And ways you would change it

Whose your favorite captain?

Settle the debate____ (asker asks their own question)

What character do you most emulate?

Headcannons on a character

If you could choose what planet would you live on and why?

If you could choose what species would you like to be, why?

What's an aspect of the fandom, series that resonates with you?

If you could write a episode or book on the series what characters would you pick and what would be the plotline?

What are your views on the politics in star trek?

What are your views on the actors in the series, is there something they do that demotes/promotes the representation of the series or characters?

Character you can't stand?

What has star trek taught you?

What's your favorite series?

Do you have any fan art, fan fiction that you would share with followers

The most realistic character?

FMK 3 names

Who do you ship yourself with?

Top 10 ships

If you could cosplay as someone from the series who would it be?

[almalvo]

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY | S1E6 "Lethe"

[I will react to each episode individually and in full, raw reception and then post as is unrevised here onto my tumblr for the full span of every and all NuTrek episodes and series that have been and will be released. If this falls under your field of interest - I welcome your company in joining me. Enjoy the ride.] -------

oh this city is so pretty vulcan? yah oh pretty ship design they do the environments and ships suich glorious justice in this show lmao shirt that says "disco" on it only trekkies would understand ;) man this will be so interesting to see burnham rise to captaincy also aw i love her smile dang the way the phasers dissolve its targtes aww these horizontal lens flares gets me in the AOS lorca might have been happier were he born a klingon. oh my god this hologram animation was fucking GORGEOUS oh my god i LOVE the detail in the costuems gorgeous i like the overall tone of DISCO - but i think it gets nearer perfected in SNW injection why wow suicide bomber. spock. where are you. so much sarek. ugh the cooking up to it is just ughh oh my god space is gorgeous ugh this intro pleaseeeee

its very simple feeling but also so effective its so classy. sylvia. so brave. these meld sequences are so god burnham is so beautiful is that amanda. i am so confused what in the world what the fuck is happening that was such a weird meld scene mmm i feel like it couldve been cut a little differently imo "humanity's potential" and then she eventually meets spock though right like… oh my god what the HELL HAPPENS???? oh my god i want to take my time with this series but also want to just binge all of it i kinddddd of dont like the cinematographic style in the show

it feels so fast? i feel like we dont get a lot of time to just lets things settle and sink? could just be me but i still feel the pacing is a little odd in this series so far you break your fortune cookies like that lorca? messy. handcracker lorca over here. i love how clear saru's voice is through the prosthetics ok stamets. ok. we get it. we know what you like.

lorca's butt. that is all. this conversation is kind of cute when burnham lorca and stamets are all talking about sending DISCO into a nebulae hahah ugh space travel in humanity. imagine. ugh they did the composite editing so well in this. one thing though i LOVE the colourgrading its so saturated sometimes even overblowing the colours - i aint mad though in this case after many, many, many. episodes of trek that are in that old washed-out film (minus the remasters) - this is absolutely visually DELECTABLE. i feel like DISCO could better use a little bit more steady flatter moments in pacing

the show just never stops feeling so… antsy?? a little too much shakey cam ohhh fascinating that facial accessory in the exact position of hte meld spots since this is all retconned to the prime trek universe, it just makes me wonder how fleshed out a modern TOS would be from all this. at least i mean a "modern TAKE" ofc. ugh the urge to draw more spock in sex;y ass everyday wears on vulcan…. cough cough ok ok sry. ooo this is so odd to see all this happen its a big move to try to retcon such a major character into sarek's life i wonder how burnham's story ends. i mean. i know s5 is in the making j- but honestly where is this all GOing… and how does it relate to future Captain Pike and future First Science Officer Spock… i like lorca's smile. his dead eyes ugh. is this the space sexy time - i dont think i need it like this rn bruh not sure if im into lorca lorca time i cant lie the feeling of this series is kind of off i wonder if its because of the actors' delivery?

or maybe even more specificially sonequa's delivery?? idk why it feels a litttttle off since the first episode she feels like a more fresh actor i meant to say this since the first episode but i just wanted to see HE SAID SPOCK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA but yeah sonequa (burnham's actor) feels a bit on the fresher side as an actor. not meaning to insult no no. she just feels younger/not as matured yet as an actor theres just soemthing slightlyyy amiss in her acting im not sure ugh these colours interesting bit of lore ugh this calligraphy wow lorca nice one u keep that under ur pillow ok im very intersted to see lorca's lore though hes a strong actor so far as well curious ok i dont like the cut-to-cut style of the filiming in this show its too whiplash fast no time to really breathe but more so no time to really just take in and appreciate the scene, if that makes sense? its almost disorienting i wish it was steadier SNW definitely did not feel like this in its filming style it was steadier, as i think is necessary imo

that was so fast. burnham is grateful to serve under a captain like lorca? where did THAT come from? it feels so sudden?? and feels very un-burnham. ok guys, its odd cuz it almost feels like Seven-of-Nine had more… life than Burnham?? these scenes arent allowed to mature and soak- why?? why do they pace it like t his? it almost feels like im seeing the fact thers a thousand words in this book, but the pages are turning before i can digest its story? its like there are sectillions of water droplets moving together, but yet are somehow not allowed to flow as the river it should be. thats what this show feels like. its so odd. i think its less that there is an "oddness of delivery" from the axtors, but more so the cinematography is just so flighty and impatient. and some is bc of a not-too-terribly-fantastic-screenplay visuals are def the best this show has demonstrated so far to me in its attributes i almost read "United Klingon" as "United Kingdom" lmao Saru and his twiddly fingers ugh i love his face his fucking heels though his heel feet heel stilt feet.

mmm captain battle-happy lorca. ok - well, i think this show so far couldve been filmed a little better - or at least editing direction couldve been different and more lax. if even a tad. its almost frustrating sometimes how WHIPLASH it is. a great example is that lorca x cornwell scene like you can almost acctually SEE shots that are so unnecessarily cut. i dont really like it - the camera-cut editing style takes away from the experience imo. it also makes certain deliveries worse than they are from actors' performances cuz the pacing is so whack sometimes even visually and audially. its still only season 1. ill see.

[villainousshakespeare]

It's been a hell of a year for you, darling! So, please answer any or all of the following, if you would?

End of the year Asks

Song of the year?

Album of the year?

Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year?

Movie of the year?

TV show of the year?

Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you?

Favorite actor of the year?

Game of the year?

Best month for you this year?

Something that made you cry this year?

Something you want to do again next year?

Talk about a new friend you made this year

How was your birthday this year?

Favorite book you read this year?

What’s a bad habit you picked up this year?

Post a picture from the beginning of the year

Post a picture from the end of the year

A memorable meal this year?

What’re you excited about for next year?

What’s something you learned this year?

What’s something new about your place of residence (room, home, or general location) now vs the start of the year?

Favorite place you visited this year?

If you could send a message to yourself back on the first day of the year, what would it be?

Did you keep any New Year’s Resolutions?

Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

Fun ask game from the wonderful @caffiend-queen!

Song: I mean, it has to be "Running Up That Hill" doesn't it?

Album of the Year: Selfish choice - hubs recorded his first album of original songs that I helped produce!

Musical Artist: Kate Bush resurgence for the 80's crowd!

Movie of the Year: I didn't have a lot of time to go to the movies this year. I liked Glass Onion.

TV show of the Year: Andor! I was late to the party, but it was so good! (Honorable mentions: Stranger Things, Severance, Succession)

Episode that defined the year: season finale of Succession. Even when you think you have all come together to win, someone or something unexpected fucks you over.

Actor: Tom. Always Tom. sigh. Otherwise, Fiona Shaw and Andy Serkis in Andor were stupendous.

Game of the Year: Nathan Chen winning the Olympic Gold Medal

Best Month: July. Got my first royalty check for a theater company performing my play!

Something that made me Cry: My father-in-law dying

Something I want to do again next year: get a show published. Editing my next play for submission to my publishers. Fingers crossed!

A new friend this year: I adopted my new kitten Hermia, and she became the light of my life and bosom friend and companion. She is fierce and sweet and playful and I love her.

I don't even remember what I did for my birthday this past year. In 18 days I have a big one though, and I will have to do something special.

Favorite book read: The Lost Queen by Signe Pike

Bad Habbit: I already had a lot, can't think of a new one

Pic:

Pic:

Memorable Meal: Had a dinner party with my closest friends where I made homemade pasta, pork tenderloin in Chianti wine and rosemary sauce, and chocolate sausage for dessert. It was yummy!

Excited about: possibly going to Europe for a month or more for a writing sabbatical!

Something I learned this year: professional off-broadway producers are just as flaky and unorganized as off-off-Broadway producers, if not more so. Give me the contract to sign and I am on board to direct, if not call me when you have it ready because I cannot put my life on hold for a "maybe" repeatedly.

Place of Residence: Everything is new!!! We have a new home and I love it. The neighborhood is friendly and convenient, I have a kitchen I can bake in, and it's all ours! No more subletting to friends to make the rent!

Favorite place visited: St. Augustine, FL. We didn't travel much this year, but I love visiting the ocean and being rejuvenated by the waves. Closest thing I have to religion.

Message to past self: Just keep going. This year is going to suck a lot and there will be a high level of stress, but you will come out stronger and in a better place.

Did you keep New Year's resolutions: I don't think I made any

Created characters: In fics I created Caroline, the feisty shrink who I love in Therapy Fit for a God; In my new play I created four idiosyncratic sisters who are all based in part on myself and my sisters written for actresses who will knock them out of the park if I can make myself finish the play.

Play along my dears! This was fun and made me think. Didn't have as much time for either creating or consuming content this year, but there were definitely highlights that I had almost forgotten about. Anyway, happy to have made it out of 2022 and hoping for a more tranquil and creative 2023!

[hakka84]

I was about to reply (in private) to the ask, but since you also replied through a reblog, I'll do it publicly. :)

I think we already "crossed swords" on the "Uhura actress" theme on someone else's post, so allow me to refrain from getting into it again. Let's agree we will never agree on it.

To be fair, as I might've said already in the post mentioned above, I too fail to see Celia Rose Gooding as a younger Nichelle Nichols. The issue never crossed (and still doesn't cross) my mind with Zoe Saldana because with AOS there isn't such a close link with TOS. Sure, they are the same characters, but everything is so different that they could even be genetically different and just have the name and surname and general birth decade in common (at least two characters are hinted to have born earlier than their TOS counterparts, to be able to be there on the bridge together!). Cho's Sulu could be the son of Mr.Sulu and a different woman, for what we know (and that could explain why he's played by a South Korean actor, when Takei is Japanese, and also why Takei didn't agree with Sulu being gay which would mean that, at least for him, TOS!Sulu isn't gay I guess?).

With Strange New Words, though... I'm supposed to watch, say, Paul Weasley in S1 last episode and believe that he's the very same guy, same stardate, same events, different ship chair of Shatner's Kirk in Balance of Terror. I know, prequels - you're supposed to oversee the different actors and all. But usually you get prequels set ten, even twenty and more years before the "main" material. You get prequels when the original adults are still teens, or when original parents are still children (or the original adults are barely newborns and the story is about their parents/families - see Star Wars Prequels Vs Original Trilogy). You usually don't get prequels that are set like 5 years before the "main" material.

My beef with Strange New Worlds is that... they didn't even try to make the characters similar/coherent to the TOS ones. Let's not talk about Spock and the inconsistencies with his relationship with T'Pring - he's an alien, we can pretend at some point something happened to change him so drastically. Besides, he was less stunted and definitely more smiling in The Cage anyway. But the others TOS-original characters? Meh. We don't know much of doctor M'Benga, besides that he's now CMO under Pike but isn't under Kirk - they'll have to explain why he was demoted at some point. Other than that, he's blank, they can make with him everything they want. Same with Una. She's as emotionless as a robot in The Cage, and Rebecca Romijn's is a fresh update to the character. Then we have Pike and Uhura - they are as physically and in nature/attitude distant from their TOS counterparts as they could. No harm done with Pike, since you can't not love Anson Mount's Pike, while Jefffrey Hunter's swings from bland to annoying, depending on the scene.

Uhura's, on the other hand... I think it's the Cumberbatch's Khan effect here at play - the character works, and is well written and charming on its own, yet it would've been better to make it an OC instead. They really wanted to force Uhura in Strange New Worlds when it wasn't necessary (as she wasn't part of Pike's crew in The Cage). Not only did they had her have a training run on the Enterprise that lasted all a season, but - judging from promo material released so far - she gets promoted/included to stable crewmember in Season 2. IMHO, it would've given them more freedom by casting Celia Rose Gooding as a brand-new character. Ortegas is, and she's a wonderful character - we're not missing anything just because she isn't a TOS-character, right? Why then force Uhura in this? With characters from The Cage that never got used again, why pick one of the "Five Non-Main"? The more you include characters from TOS the more you have to be careful with the canon to not break anything. Same can be said for objects/things, plots and alien races.

And so we're back to the topic with Chapel. Chapel could be named Kristina Snapel at this point and you wouldn't miss a thing. The only thing in common with Majel Barrett's, is the feelings for Spock and that she serves as nurse. That's it. Character wise, is a total different person. A good character, actually! Just, not the Christine Chapel we know.

As for the pairing(s).

When I discovered AOS it was early 2010 (I think). I was suggested to watch Star Trek, and I watched it in chronological order (TOS->TOS Movies->ST 2009). You have no idea how much I hated Spock/Uhura back then. Like VERY MUCH. I didn't write them, but I did play in my mind with the (now I understand stupid and harmful and narratively wrong) trope of "evil jealous Uhura who hates Kirk". I just couldn't stand them (to be fair, it was because of how poorly they had been introduced, making them both look unprofessional with the timing of the romantic scenes, and the way they made Uhura act, bordering on clingy!girlfriend stereotype material). I've come accept the pair with Into Darkness, as they were painted as a more healthy and mature couple, and by Beyond I'm fine with it, so much that I've jumped on the whole "Beyond ignored ID" so to elaborate a theory that ID and Beyond are two divergences of 2009, so to keep both Spuhura and have a chance at Spick. One direction goes straight from ST XI to ID and develops into Spirk (or Kirk/Spock/Uhura) and another fork heading straight toward Beyond and established Spock/Uhura) but that's me getting offtopic.

It might be me being in a niche, or not following the "right" people, or Tumblr might just be the wrong place (I follow on Twitter an artist who is here on Tumblr as well: on TW they are soft-key complaining about "recent Spock developments" but they haven't said anything here on Tumblr), but I don't see much backlash. After I made the original post, I went into the Christine Chapel tag here on Tumblr and there were literally only two/three Spock/Chapel enthusiasts posting and no complaints? I have nothing against the pair either - I ship hard Spirk so I can't really judge other non-TOS-canon-ship shippers. And good for them fans if they already shipped Spock/Chapel in TOS. Me? I was already annoyed by the closeness between the two as per Season 1. Frankly this is the nail on the coffin. If I didn't already stick to my "Burnham mother's as the Red Angel unwittingly created a time divergence so Disco and SNW belong to another timeline" headcanon, I'd be foaming from the mouth by now. But, since I do, I'm not here, being all zen and waiting for Season 2 to drop and give me some good entertaining with brand-new, alternate version of the characters I know.

Said all this. While I still don't agree on your opinion on Celia Rose Gooding, I can understand where you come from, for it's how I had to face the original X-Men movies trilogy. I don't know if you're familiar. But my fave - like favest comic book character, possibly my favest character ever - is Angel/Archangel/Warren Worthington III. Who is, by Marvel comics canon, handsome - like, very, very handsome - the kind of guy that would make everyone''s head turn and droll, in an angelic way though. The comic version of 90s Brad Pitt-status? Get it. Almost 17 years later, and I still can't swallow the casting for his character. Because the actor picked (Ben Foster), while certainly talented, is bland and not astonishingly handsome.

(I'm tired and have an headache so this ramble might not make sense)

Here, I can offer an old Spuhura manip of mine to raise your sour mood. Enjoy. ;)

Strange New Worlds S2

I don’t get how Strange New Worlds can still be sold as a TOS prequel at this point. Just admit it’s an AU and so be it. I swear.

People who spent the most part of the recent 10s shitting on the Kelvin Trilogy for changing the characters, insulting J.J. because he didn’t stick to TOS characterizations and relationships (despite the movies being officially marketed as an AU from the start)… have nothing to say on Strange New Worlds retcons and blatant ways of ignoring TOS-canon?

More behind the cut, in case you haven’t seen promos/trailers.

Keep reading

[gender-snatched]

Hey so I want you to tell me every single thing I could possibly want to know about Star Trek

OK YEAH. under cut because. well. you know me.

So, in the 60s, Gene Roddenberry started a sci-fi series. This was Star Trek. It's about a starship named the USS Enterprise, which is part of Starfleet. Starfleet is the exploration branch of the Federation of Planets, which is basically the UN of the galaxy. The USS Enterprise is, at the time of the show, captained by James T Kirk, although it was previously captained by Christopher Pike. Kirk is an extremely traumatized nerd who is doing what he really wants to do. His First Officer (and Science Officer) is Mr. Spock, the only alien on the ship. Spock is (half) Vulcan, a species that values "logic" above all, yadda yadda. His Chief Medical Officer is his bestie, Leonard "Bones" McCoy.

He also has: Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Communications Officer), Lt. Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (Chief Engineer), Lt Hikaru Sulu (Navigator), Nurse Christine Chapel (Nurse), Ensign Pavel Chekov (pilot [?]), and Yeoman Janice Rand (Yeoman)

All these characters are MASSIVELY important for the time. Uhura was a black woman in a major position on the ship; Chapel, Uhura, and Rand were all strong women; Chekov was Russian during the Cold War; Spock was a metaphor for xenophobia and was also Jewish; Sulu was Asian in a time where anti-Asian racism was super high (and his actor, George Takei was Japanese and was raised in internment camps).

Importantly, Star Trek was so so amazing for a show from the sixties. It had one of the first interracial kisses on TV, and had multiple episodes with all sorts of metaphors. Yes, it had problems (misogyny and a fair bit of racism), but for the sixties? It was so incredible.

And the second season started with the episode "Amok Time", which was written by a queer man and focuses on the idea of Spock going into heat and going to die if he doesn't fuck. Somehow, writhing in the sand with Kirk cures this.

And that's the start of slash culture! Almost all slash culture is the fault of either Star Trek or X Files.

So Star Trek: The Original Series got 3 seasons and became a cult classic. And then in the 80s (?) it got the movies. The Motion Picture (bad, but tolerable), Wrath of Khan (pretty damn good), Search for Spock (bad and questionable), Voyage Home (aka The One With the Whales and fucking AWESOME), and then two others I didn't care about whatsoever.

And then, after the movies, The Next Generation came out. It takes place a bit later, with better cameras and effects. The spaceship is smoother, and it's also incredible. Its cast includes: Captain Jean Luc Picard, First Officer William Riker, Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher, Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, Lt Cmr Data (what is his role I can't remember), Security Officer Tash Yar, Worf (also can't remember his role), Dr. Pulaski (I don't like her), Guinan (bartender), and Wesley Crusher.

Terrible confession, but I only finished TOS. I still know TNG pretty well tho.

After TNG we got: Deep Space Nine (my BELOVED), Voyager (wish I had watched more), Enterprise (good if you ignore the misogyny), and then all the nuTrek I haven't been paying attention to because I can't watch it.

Deep Space Nine is the other one I never finished but know, and it focuses on a space station near the planet Bajor. Bajor just threw off the rule of Cardassia, an empire. The Federation, with questionable motives, is helping them rebuild. They send a captain there, and then a wormhole opens, making the space station super super important. Then a war happens but I didn't reach that.

It focuses on Captain Sisko, his son Jake, his first officer Major Kira Nerys, his CMO Julian Bashir, his science officer Jadzia Dax (trangender worm), his engineer Miles O'Brien, a cop Odo, a bartender Quark, a "simple tailor" (actually an exiled Cardassian spy) Garak, and later, Worf.

It's really good, because while TNG pulls a full utopia, DS9 contradicts it and also has just amazing characters. Shame I didn't finish it before Netflix lost it. It also has the first CANONICALLY bisexual character in Star Trek.

There's a LOT of Trek, and I can probably give vague overviews about all of them and also answer any and all questions about it. Please. Please have questions.

[sixth-light]

I have come to the disappointing conclusion, as someone who backed the Kickstarter and who has listened to/watched the Briarwood arc multiple times, that The Legend of Vox Machina is going to be a show I experience through gifsets for maximum enjoyment. Which is kind of a bummer, and I want to work through why that is, exactly, for my own peace of mind. (This is not intended as a declaration about the show's objective quality and it isn't in the relevant tags for that reason. Rest assured there are no plot spoilers below for the first three episodes, which is where I tapped out.)

First off, stuff I did like: the animation and character design is all absolutely fine, I have zero problems with the CGI dragon, and there's a lot of little vignette moments that I enjoyed a lot (the guards and Trinket, Matt's coat-check character). I also thought the fights/use of spells and checks was translated pretty thoughtfully to a narrative story, esp one where they presumably couldn’t use trademarked D&D things.

On the level of things that simply are not to my personal taste: the regular hyperviolence and heavy reliance on jokes where the punchline is that a subject or act is taboo (e.g. Scanlan peeing on someone, most of the sex jokes, 'ball tag'), plus the equally heavy use in the episodes I watched of cringe/'fish out of water' humour. I am fully aware all of these things were a part of the original show; they were just a much less concentrated part of it. Some of the material also lands differently for me in a visual medium than in theatre of the mind, particularly the violence.

It also makes a huge difference to me when these kinds of jokes or scenes are being told by people I am watching play roles, for each other's amusement, vs by characters in a fully fictionalised story. A lot of Sam's Scanlan stuff I never liked but clearly the other players did, and that smoothed it out. It doesn't get that smoothing in an animated show. Same with all the bits where VM are completely failing to read the room/act like adults - in Critical Role you can see Matt enjoying it. In TLoVM, absent that context and with characters in-story disapproving/annoyed, it comes across as much more puerile. To a degree I think it flattens out the characters too, because they ARE pretty broad stereotypes and when you’re not seeing the actors construct them, it’s less obviously a Choice to make them that way, and at least for me it renders them less interesting. Biggest case in point: Grog.

(Additionally, my golden rule is Some Of These People Have To Like Each Other and three episodes in, I don't believe ANY of these people like each other, aside from Vax and Vex I guess. And they did at this point in the original work!!!)

On the level of things I think there's an objective argument could have been done better...the pacing, oh MAN, the pacing. This is a fanservice show first and foremost, and it means they're trying to introduce fourteen named, important, recurring characters as well as cram in a bunch of in-jokes. In three 22-minutes episodes. There isn't time and it means the action frequently pauses for funny 'bits' which don't contribute to the overall plot, and character arcs are...not really visible. I think the only way it could have been less disjoined is if they had bitten the bullet and picked a couple of members of the cast to focus on as leads, and gradually built up the others. And killed some of their darlings in terms of funny one-off scenes. I also understand that they're apparently having Pike leave the same way Ashley did in CR even though obviously that constraint does not exist here, and like - this is completely inexplicable to me. How hard would it be to write around her presence??? Not that hard! 

There's also a defensible though likely not universally accepted argument that because they're leaning so much on a fairly crude form of comedy while trying to tell a very serious story, it's tonally incongruent in a way that works better in improv than in a traditional narrative.

All up I feel like, if this story was going to exist as a coherent narrative that would attract non-CR watchers, it needed to be worked up by people who were familiar with the genre but NOT big fans of CR. Instead what's been made is a show that is aimed at people who are intensely familiar with the source material and have a particular view on which parts of it make it great, i.e., the parts I liked least.

Which, again. This was a fan-funded project originally, there's some logic to this. And I will freely admit that if the bits that hit my personal buttons were toned down, I'd probably be a lot more forgiving about the writing.

But it turns out that when it comes to adaptations, especially when I think about my reaction to WoT, or how I feel about comics!TOG vs TOG-the-movie...I'm not actually very interested in one-to-one adaptations or adaptations that largely exist to create visual representations of an original text. I want to see adaptations that stand alone as coherent stories within the confines of their new medium. So, for example, this REALLY changes my expectations about what I might enjoy in, e.g., a Rivers of London tv show if one ever happens. TBF that's a bit different in that the original author started as a scriptwriter, but still; I think I'd actually want to see a lot more change than I've discussed in the past. This goes all the way back to LoTR twenty years ago, so it’s pretty clearly now a part of How I Enjoy Stories. 

Anyway, like I said: clearly TLoVM is working out for a lot of people, good for them, I'm going to stick to gifsets or maybe curated highlights when the first season is done. The bits I like don't outweigh the bits I don't like and sometimes that's how it goes.

[rouge-fox-expanded]

Book of Boba Fett: Scapegoat Thoughts

Warning for spoilers for the Book of Boba Fett, also my opinions  so read underneath if you understand and accept this.

I very much enjoy the character Boba Fett and his father Jango Fett. Some of my favourite star wars media for these characters is Star Wars Bounty Hunter (Ps2/Ps4), Star Wars Open Seasons, Star Wars Blood Ties and Blood Ties Boba Fett is dead (he isn’t). Also the recent star wars comic event War of the Bounty Hunters was fun, it was a larger scale event and Boba wasn’t the only focus but for what he got to do in it he was pretty good. 

Now when the Book of Boba Fett was announced I was kind of hype, Tem Morrison had showed us all he’s still got it in his scenes in the Mandalorian so him getting his own show seemed not only right but also a brilliant opportunity to explore the character and with the actor from ATOC reprising the role of sorts the potential was there. 

Now I’ve watched the whole season: here are my thoughts.

I will admit I enjoyed the book of Boba Fett but I am fully aware it had my bias of liking the character and loving the legends material to fall back on. Boba's return had started out promising and him taking over Tatooine with the motivation that he was tired of his kind (bounty hunters) dying because the ruling powers that hired them were idiots, greedy and by and large corrupt and evil. Couple this in with his character development with the Tuskens and it's a transition that makes sense and if executed properly it could have become something brilliant...and on reflection it wasn't executed properly.

This gentleman explains much of what didn’t work for season one of the book of boba for me and whilst I don’t agree with everything, his points do have validity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWPJJq8gfiU&ab_channel=FullFatVideos

The Book of Boba had good concepts and ideas but the execution and build up or lack thereof is what lets this first season down. If we’re watching Book of Boba it’s safe to assume we know Boba and Fennec are partners and have some good chemistry so we don’t need as much focus explaining how that came to be, like wise given the series only had seven episodes devoting two of them to the OTHER characters not wholly plot revelant feels like this series exists as filler to keep us engaged until Mando Season 3 comes out and the Ashoka show is ready. 

If I had creative control over the Book of Boba here is how I would have run it.

Episodes 1/2: They can stay pretty much as they are. As far as opening set ups go it works for the larger picture I have in mind. Yes even the hutts being fake out antagonists work

Episode 3:  Episode three is where we need to shift gears, the mods being taken in by Boba and Fennec? Give us a training scene or montage of him putting them through the ringer, tempers can flare and maybe Boba nearly loses his temper showing despite it all he's got much of his old hostility within him but he stays his hand. Here is what should have happened...Cad Bane kills the tuskens, the pikes hire him to do it because it's a cheaper option and dealing with Bib Fortuna and his skeleton crew is more conducive for their drug trade. Cad could kick boba's ass in the past but decides he's not worth finishing as he's not really Boba Fett. This is the core problem with Boba through the series, Who is Boba Fett in this new star wars set up. In the OT Boba was the best bounty hunter that the Empire went to when Darth Vader didn't have the time/patience or know how to do a job, in the age of the Empire/Rebellion Boba was the best Bounty Hunter just like his father was the best during a time of the Republic's slow descent into destruction. Now that the Empire is dead and the remnants are trying to survive into something else and the Rebels are now the ruling power trying to make things sort of better but also too much like the old ways...what does this mean for Boba? Black Krssantan fight still happens, they stop him, Boba lets him go because it's not personal. He gets it and he gets a Rancor out of the bargain. Now we shift to him talking to Fennec and expressing his doubts. He's not sure he can do this but more to the point he's not sure who he is...and this leads to the build up to the next episode where Boba starts telling a story about Jango.

Episode 4:  Jango episode. Jango is hunting down someone who wronged him in the past, a link to the mando civil wars (for much of this use open seasons and bounty hunter as canon) and based on intelligence he got from Dooku or Zam Wessel he's managed to track down the guy. Let's say the guy worked with Visla and was part of the plot which ultimately lead to the Jedi and Mandos fighting on Galidran and he goes through a john wick for Star Wars battle to get to the guy only when he does the dude is crippled and hugging a baby, his child. The man has very much abandoned the old death watch ways, is a shell of his former warrior self and has tried to start something new and he begs Jango not to end his life for the sake of his son. Jango however tells him to put the baby down and as soon as he does, he blasts the guy in the head. He then takes the baby off world and drops him off on another, more peaceful and much less corrupt one, puts him in an orphanage where he's assured he will find a loving family. Jango then goes home to Kamino and as he does he reflects on what he just did and if he is a worthy father figure for Boba. He wonders what it means to be who he is in this new time and era before he hides it all and has some good quality time with young 5 years old Boba. We then go to the final scene where Boba comes out of the bacta tank and Fennec tells him it's time for the sit down with the other crime families.

Episode 5:  Much like how Episode 4 was done, only more time has past. The Pikes are now on Tatooine and maybe they approach one of the families only for the Mods to point them out and Boba comes in and kicks their arses, not lethally as he's sending them back with a message and it's a show of strength. They've captured the Mayor's majordomo and he's talking, maybe we have him scared when he hears the rancor yawn and we have a scene of Boba doing some rancor training and care before we have the sit down with the families. After that we then spend at least ten-fiteen minutes showing the mandalorian Din Djarin and end it with him coming to help Boba with the promise that what he went through will be explained in mando season 3 in the first episode. (Yes I know the Mando episode in Book of Boba Fett was awesome and yes I love it but that love is tainted by the knowledge that it’s in the wrong show).

Episode 6:  Din and Boba both go to freetown to speak with Cobb Vanth, plenty of opportunities for friction and rapport either way and whilst Boba is gone Cad Bane comes to the palace representing the pikes and beats up the mods, before Fennec and Cad have a rematch. It's a tie and maybe Cad has to cut through the Rancor enclosure to make his escape and when Boba returns he has to calm it down further showing the bond between them. Cad now knowing Boba went to freetown does his bit to put them off the idea whilst the pykes attack Mos Espa only the mods intercept and they have a fight that prevents the total destruction of the sanctuary (this bit is important) and some of the mods die before Boba steps in and taps into his old Bounty Hunter mentality and kills the squad of pykes. The people in the sanctuary see this, as does Mos Espa. Cad Bane is told by the pykes that there is whispers in Mos Espa that Boba has inspired the people, Cad then demands more money to kill Boba and secure them Mos Espa.

Episode 7:  The finale only now we have some proper build up. The Sanctuary is fortified, Mos Espa has rallied with Boba to fight the pykes and the other familes are remaining neutral because now...Boba has an army and he's showing strength so it's a clean Pykes vs Boba faction and Cad Bane is co-ordinating it (which we know he can because he was apex during the clone wars). We can maybe have some small flashbacks of Jango and Cad interacting from Cad's POV and some of Young Boba and Cad from Boba's POV before the final battle). The final battle can remain mostly intact, but the rancor should come to Boba's aide on it's own accord (obviously the trainer let's it out) because we should establish Boba can't get to Slave 1 and long range comms are down so the Rancor is his ace in the hole. Fennec still gets to kill pyke leaders only she brings the mayor back alive and the Boba vs Cad Bane fight you can keep the same except you make the author saving throw that Bane is alive revealed through the post credit scene and that Cobb is alive in the epilogue. The mayor is brought back alive and Boba shows to his surviving followers the man that sold them out to the pykes and ask them what his punishment should be, they vote death. Boba kills the mayor saying his people have spoken and thus his status as lord fett feels earned as well as maintaining his badass nature. More to come in Season two would be like dealing with the larger criminal network, black sun, hutts, crimson dawn but you've set up the foundations.

...I am not a professional writer as of now (aspiring) and yet I am fairly certain what I have written here will be considered in the comments by some as a better plot outline for the first season of Book of Boba than what we got. What we got was sort of good star wars but not good boba fett, and when you compare it to the story in star wars bounty hunter this hurts a little more. Star Wars bounty hunter is 20 years old and from an age when Star Wars was it's own thing rather than another feather in Disney's cap. Tem put so much into boba when he came back in the mando and yet when he got his own show the best episode of the season was the one where he wasn't in it...that is not right. So if they do a season two which I want, Boba needs to be the main character for all episodes, character focus needs to be key, as is rapport with his supporting cast. Cad Bane needs to have survived and fortunately they have reasonable grounds to make that happen and take the story off Tatooine, now that he's a boss he can deal with the black sun, hutts and others and maybe carve up a little mando criminal empire and also JANGO flashback episode. Tem deserves to be the star and the best thing in a show about Boba fett, he deserves to be the REAL boba fett and that doesn't mean Boba can't evolve but that evolution needs to come from a place where Boba truly was.

I did enjoy the Book of Boba but if I wasn’t a fan of Boba Fett I’d probably have enjoyed is less than I did. If he gets a second season it needs to be done right. 

[protectspock]

Okay so I've firmly established my new trek (discovery, Picard, lower decks, snw) wishlist basics

more filler episodes

more insane costumes

more levity

less overarching plot more overarching character development

(Lower Decks actually has most of these and Discovery is showing some signs of improvement. Picard needs a LOT of the above, and SNW remains to be seen.)

But I'd like to add to the list:

CROSSOVER EPISODES

Granted, we didn't get a lot of these between TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, but it was very nice when we did! Obviously, there's the issue with all of them taking place in different time periods, but if I had creative control, this would be my proposal:

Ideas for Discovery

A historical holodeck episode. Either they're trapped within one or they have to search for the answer to a problem by observing historical events (like "Flashback" in ENT or "These are the voyages.") This would work best for a Discovery/Picard crossover or a Discovery/SNW crossover. Discovery/LD would be harder in this scenario for obvious reasons.

a hologram or other lifeform with the preserved likeness/personality of a character from Picard makes an appearance, similar to the Voyager episode with the EMH. This would work best for a Rios hologram, but it could also work for Soji, if she was somehow preserved for ~750 years.

Ideas for Lowerdecks

Lower Decks has INCREDIBLE crossover potential because of its format. We've already had some trek characters appear without having to worry about their age since all we need is their voice, and the more of this we get, the better. Lower Decks takes place only 19 years before Picard, 10 years before Rios is discharged, and 7 years before the Romulan Supernova. So what I'm saying is, any Picard character (with the exception of Elnor and Soji) could show up in Lower Decks. Actually, Rios would be about the same age as the Lower Decks crew. Give me Ensign Rios. Raffi would be about 35, so also no reason she shouldn't show up.

Lower decks also has a good set-up for a time travel episode. Why shouldn't they travel back to SNW, or forward to Picard or Discovery? If it's Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford we're talking about, they probably did it on accident while doing something they shouldn't have, and may therefore be reluctant to tell anyone with real authority about it when they get back. (Mariner: Spock had a SISTER? Did anyone else know about this? Geez, how many secret siblings can one dude have?). Also, then we get to see those crews animated and also in a light-hearted one-off which would RULE.

Ideas for Picard

I could see the Picard crew incidentally traveling forward to Discoveries period or back to SNW, although there may be some narrative hurdles. Imagine Elnor getting to see Ni'Var, experience the reunified Vulcan/Romulan state, and find out that the Qowat-Milat is still going strong! <3 Or imagine a Trials and Tribbleations style ep where Picard gets to bump elbows with Pike and interact with Spock when he was young!

Picard could also pull off a "historical holodeck" episode with SNW or S1-2 Discovery characters.

Ideas for SNW

Granted, we don't know the exact tone of SNW yet, and because all the other shows are happening in the future and unlike LD we can't bring on younger versions of the characters without scary CGI, the only way they could host a crossover episode would be through traveling forward in time. Now, this would take some classic star trek hand-waving to pull off, but they've done it before and they'll do it again. I would personally enjoy young Spock on La Sirena or getting to see Michael again :')

Final thoughts about Lower Decks

One nice thing about the main Lower Decks crew is that the voice actors all convincingly resemble the characters they play. So while it wouldn't be practical to have a live-action episode in which the deck of the Cerritos and every character would need to be live, having one of them, or just the four of them show up in SNW, Picard, or Discovery as time travelers or as holograms could actually be pretty easy to pull off.

[scientific-tricorder]

So. Initial thoughts on "Spock Amok":

It's probably just the fact that I was watching this episode in very different circumstances than I've seen all the others, but a lot of it felt... just slightly off, I guess? Like maybe there was something a little weird about the editing. The biggest one would be the Number One and La'an Noonien Singh storyline, which really felt almost there, but like it would be better if it were snappier.

A relatively light shore leave episode was nice. I actually think it might have been better if the stakes for the R’ongovian storyline were lower. Being critical to the future intergalactic stability of the Federation is kind of a big thing. Now, I absolutely understand wanting to have real stakes for how well T'Pring can play Spock, but more humorous, lower stakes might have worked better and given the episode a more consistent, more comedic tone. Maybe making an alliance the R'ongovians is essential for trade in some sort of relatively minor good, like fancy apples for Pike's horses or something like that. Setting it up as a big important thing for an end reveal of the actual relatively low stakes would add humor. It could also play into the conflict with Spock and T'Pring and Human v. Vulcan: human emotions making the negotiation much more important than one would expect from a purely logical point of view. T'Pring might question what Starfleet (and by extension Spock) considers of top importance.

I was a very big fan of the key to the negotiations being radical empathy, and how it appeared that the R'ongovians were merely imitating whomever they were negotiating with, but said imitations held the deeper meaning of greatly valuing the other side's point of view.

Pike's green wrap-around was nice to see, but it had this weird plastic-y looking fabric on the sleeves and top of the shoulders? It looks uncomfortable, which is the last thing I would expect from the more casual captain's shirt.

I'm calling it that Chapel is bi (as is half the fandom from what I've seen). Chapel's in a weird position for me. I really don't see the continuity with TOS!Chapel, but I absolutely see why they'd give her much more personality, given the lack of it we see in TOS, and how that might inherently push a continuous throughline of character to the side. The dorky, enthusiastic scientist is the type of character I'd normally love, but something's just not clicking for me. I just don't know what to make of her.

I'm a pretty big fan of body swap stories because I love seeing how actors embody each other's roles, and Gia Sandhu and Ethan Peck did a nice job of showing the subtle differences between their two characters. Some of the accidental referring to others by the wrong name/title (eg. the "Captain, er, Chris") felt a little overdone, but it wasn't overly egregious. The solution also felt very TOS-silly, what with the mud with crystals sticking out of it on the forehead, waving a funky-looking medical device, and a resulting ta-da! problem solved! Not sure why it had to involve screaming (and thus presumably a good amount of pain), but okay.

Dr. M'Benga's hat is A+. He's just a fun dude who I want to see more of. Ditto Ortegas and Hemmer.

I've also been thinking that it'd probably be good if they cut the per episode budget in half, and then doubled the number of episodes. Not the most original of thoughts, I know, but I really think the increased budget constraints and more opportunities to just do crazy stuff would help the show really embody that classic feel it's going for.

[fostersffff]

Finished Season 4 of Castlevania: the Netflix, and thus the whole series! And I’ve got a lot to say!

Here’s the biggest observation for this season: I get the impression that they didn’t originally plan for this to be the final season. It feels like, at the start of Season 3 they believed they were going to have two more seasons, and then maybe by the time they started wrapping that up they were told they’ve been cut down to just one more, so they had to speed of the pace of Season 4 dramatically to make sure they could still hit the ending. I have no actual evidence to support this- I haven’t read any interviews or official comments to that effect- just a gut feeling based on aspects of the plot:

Biggest support of this is how quickly Saint Germaine is just like “ok I’m evil now”. He immediately submits to the random woman who tells him he’s gotta be evil to find his lady love, there’s one scene of him murdering a guy, and then he’s all-in on being a villain, complete with “I AM A GOD WHO FUCKS” monologuing.

In addition to Saint Germaine’s heel turn feeling half-baked, the Dracula’s resurrection plot in general really doesn’t feel all that important until the finale. Varney is a comic relief character, which in hindsight was completely intentional, but Ratko and Draken are just huge fighter dudes who weren’t involved with Dracula’s court during Season 2, but are very into bringing him back for reasons that are never clearly explained besides the assumed “it’s Dracula so we gotta”. Additionally, the way major characters like Hector and especially Isaac treat the resurrection plot don’t help, although it makes perfect sense that they both do what they do.

The things that happen in Targoviste, and the way they happen, also contribute, especially because there’s no satisfactory resolution to it. Trevor and Sypha start to help the people organize and rebuild, and then get whisked away to the Underground Court. They barely have time to react to the fucked up shit going on down there before they teleport to the castle to kick off the finale. More time to let hostilities between them and Zamfir bubble up before the reveal of the Underground Court, along with a more satisfying build-up to Trevor collecting the components of the Super Holy Dagger would have been good.

Season 3 ends with Alucard in Hector in very bad places: Alucard has just been betrayed by the twins vampire hunters, which has brought out a misanthropic streak, including him leaving them on pikes, and Hector has once again been duped into an even deeper submission than he was in as Carmilla’s prisoner at the end of Season 2. Trevor and Sypha’s vignettes establish that roughly a month and a half have passed, which was apparently enough time for Alucard to basically get over his trust issues, enough to help the villagers, and Hector to not only cope with the reality of his situation but also finally develop into a character on par with every other major character in terms of competence.

Carmilla and Isaac’s stories didn’t feel rushed like everything else I’ve mentioned, but following the train of thought that there was originally going to be more episodes, both of them could’ve stood to have more time and events to get to their final forms.

So, Death: I don’t know how I feel about Death as portrayed in this series. On the one hand, this interpretation technically not being Dracula’s right hand as he is in the games, and instead being an independent actor that stands to benefit from Dracula’s rampage and thus serves the same capacity as a right hand, is incredible. On the other, the fact that Death’s true personality is actually just Varney fucking blows. The design for Death is also not my favorite, because it reminds me just a bit too much of Castlevania Judgment, but Malcolm McDowell being the voice actor is really cool. In conclusion, Death is a land of contrasts.

On that note, “no it’s not Death Death, it’s an entity that calls itself Death that feeds on death and is an elemental spirit- or force of nature in other words- but is distinctly different from the personification of the concept of-” just fucking say “yeah for all intents and purposes it’s the Grim Reaper”. Coming up with a semantics explanation for why vampires get fucked up by crosses to explain the cross subweapon is fun, don’t undercut your final antagonist by trying to rationalize it into something less fantastical.

I already said that I liked the motivation behind Death, but also the execution of “I’m going to bring back Dracula wrong on purpose” and the way he accomplishes that is the best it’s ever been.

I thought Varney hopping over the stream of holy water was a fun cap on the argument about whether or not vampires can cross over running water from Season 2, but was in fact clever foreshadowing, since Death isn’t a vampire. Good stuff!

I think it’s just because I’ve been focusing a lot on animation quality over the last few months, but I noticed they started using 3D models a lot more this season. I imagine it was a matter of practicality considering that there are more action setpieces in this season than the other three combined. I think this is ultimately a good thing, because they do a very good job of masking the fact that they’re using 3D most of the time because it still looks very good, unlike some of Netflix’s other 3D action projects, and if it makes life easier for the animators without sacrificing quality then that’s a win for everyone.

Didn’t think much of it at first, but I’ve really come to appreciate the term “night creatures” as a catch-all for monsters in this series. It’s generic enough to encompass everything regardless of design difference, but more unique than just ‘monsters’ or ‘demons’.

I had heard someone make a joke about a character wearing Artorias Dark Souls’s armor for a scene because fuck you, but holy shit, Striga really does just wear Artorias Dark Souls’s armor for a scene because fuck you.

When Saint Germaine first shows up, his lines sound really low quality compared to Alucard and Greta, and then that issue goes away after that episode. I imagine that it was pandemic related, but clearly Bill Nighy was either able to get into a studio or eventually got a better home setup- couldn’t you just have him re-record those lines?

I’ve talked so much about how Carmilla’s design in this series is The Best™ because they masterfully adapted a single sprite with no animation from a 1987 video game into a fully realized design, and this frame in particular struck me as perfect. This is the best this character has ever looked and likely will ever look.

I love how optimistic and positive the tone of everyone’s ending is. Ranging from the unexpectedly beautiful and uplifting resolution to Isaac’s story, to the foundation of a town that fundamentally accomplishes what Lisa hoped for at the very beginning of the series, it’s all nice way to go out. Even Lenore choosing to commit suicide, while not necessarily optimistic or positive, is at least on her own terms.

Dracula and Lisa also having a happy ending is nice. It doesn’t really make any sense, and it makes me wonder what Richter’s call to action is going to be in the next series, but I think they were right to have the series end with the same two characters it opened with.

AYY SOMEONE THREW A WINE GLASS!!!

Unfortunately, I’d say Season 4 is the weakest of the series, but they did everything they could to make sure they provided an explosive finale and a solid ending. This was a damn good show and without a doubt the best thing to be associated with Castlevania in over a decade. Not that it had much competition there, but still!

As a final note on the nature of Castlevania as an adaptation: I can certainly understand why certain people don’t like this series. If you’re looking for Castlevania: The Video Game: The Animated Series, you’d walk away disappointed because of how many things were changed in adaptation, how much they were changed, and that so much is just made up from whole cloth. But an animated series isn’t a video game, and while an eight episode series where each episode is a different stage of non-stop fight scenes, complete with a big boss fight at the end sounds like it could be cool, if that’s what I really want I’d probably be better served just playing a game.

[lu-does-things]

Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett. A rant.

Look, I'm a big Star Wars nerd, so bear with me cause I want to review The Book of Boba Fett and I'm going to do that here.

Overall it was an entertaining show (7,5/10 imo). It started off quite strongly with the first two episodes. I loved watching Boba's journey with the tuskens and how creative and emotional those first two chapters were. I also loved the scenes with Mando and Grogu cause I'm basic, but that's a whole other thing that I'm going to talk about later on.

However, from episode 3 onward it grew into another show completely. Killing the tuskens just for shock value and to deepen Boba' story felt cruel and unnecessary (I got attached to the tuskens, okay?!?). I also feel like the conflict with the Pikes and the whole "this planet belongs to me know" were plot devices that felt too cheap and a bit overused in media, but I was okay with them because they were entertaining in the end.

A thing that a lot of people mentioned in a bunch of other posts is the lack of Boba! You can't have a show called the book of Boba Fett and have the main character be missing for two whole episodes just to have the main characters from another show (Mando and Grogu), be the stars. I guess it's an easy eye-catch cause fans like them, but it somehow felt wrong to me and to the main actors of this particular show.

The other thing about Mando and Grogu is that, as sweet and cute as their relationship is, it sometimes feels a bit off and unrealistic with how the characters develop around each other. And with this I mean I don't really like how, to develop Grogu's jedi powers, they paint Mando as "the damsel in distress" for a moment, just so that Grogu can save him using his powers. Are you seriously telling me that strong, resilient and stubborn Mando wouldn't try to protect Grogu from danger even when he's lying powerless on the ground? I'd get it if he were unconscious, but this man would crawl and bite and fight back just to make sure that his kid isn't in any danger. But that scenario obviously wouldn't work for the writers, cause they want Mando and Grogu to protect each other, even if it doesn't make sense sometimes.

On the technical aspects, the characterization was good, even the CGI/deepfake of Luke got a lot better from season 2 of The Mandalorian. However, the fights felt cheap and too long and slow for my taste. I don't know if it has to do with the age of the actors, the budget or if the directors don't know how to shoot fight scenes. But I remember watching the last episode and thinking "wow, this is taking forever". I don't mind long battles as long and they're entertaining to watch (ie. Rey vs. Kylo in TROS or Qui Gon vs. Darth Maul in the Phantom Menace), but these fights were kinda slow on movements and the way they were shot and sometimes they didn't even make sense?? Why did they keep uselessly shooting at a droid with its shield up when they could clearly see it wasn't working??!?

Anyways, I have a lot of thoughts right now and I need time to process all the new information. I'll still be waiting for The Mandalorian S3 with anticipation! But I hope something changes a bit so it's not just more of the same things we've been seeing these last seasons.