#I would have never imagine cuttlefish being sad

[incorrect-splatoon]

Me too.

I made myself sad with this

[dr-spectre]

What are your headcanons on each of the idols' families?

For example: I headcanon the Squid Sisters to be the daughters of that one cuttlefish idol group; with Marie being the kid of the one in blue while Callie is the kid of the one in pink.

(I'd especially would love to know your headcanons on Marina's family since there's ZERO mention of them)

My headcanons on each of the idols' families? Hmm, that's a very interesting question.

I feel like Callie and Marie's parents used to be idols themselves, and that's why they made them sing at folk singing competitions when they were kids. They probably didn't force them to do it either as Callie and Marie have a genuine passion for music and they never speak poorly about their parents. So it all worked out in the end for them. Maybe their parents were the Idols you are talking about, that is an interesting theory/headcanon.

Pearl's parents to me, probably suck and are just pompous rich assholes. Standard typical rich parents that treat their child as a toy they can put their money into and not their love. I think they might have been the reason on why Pearl decided to become a punk rocker for a bit, because she wanted to rebel and say "MAN SCREW YOU MUM AND DAD!!!!!!"

Now Marina's parents/family? I think they were just never in the picture to be honest. They just raised her to be a perfect solider and nothing more, because Octarian society is always in a state of collapse so... There's no room in their eyes to properly raise a child unfortunately...

Maybe it explains why Marina becomes so in love with Pearl, because she's the only person in her life who has given her any sort of love and respect.... No wonder she fucking freaks out when Pearl even remotely suggestions Off the Hook breaking apart in the Final Fest dialogue.... I'm gonna leave it there before i start feeling sad for my girl Marina.

ANYWAYS! Shiver's parents/family

I feel like they are the very distant and cold type of parents. They probably didn't treat her all that warmly and they disciplined her a lot so that she can become a powerful shark tamer. I don't Shiver's parents were physically abusing her or anything, i think they were just being VERY strict with her and not being the most lovey dovey parents out there you know?

It might explain why Shiver calls herself cold blooded but she still desperately wants to hang out with her high school buddies Frye and Big Man.... She didn't get that warm attention she needed as a kid and now seeks it badly as an adult....

I headcanon Shiver as a lonely person who struggles with loneliness and doesn't know how to properly show her love to others. She tried to set up a hang out plan for FrostyFest as shown by the dialogue but... it didn't pan out as she wanted... It probably destroyed her...

Damn... I'm getting real sad with these huh? HAHAHA! Okay, no more sad shit.

Frye's family is probably amazing and quite large. I can imagine get-togethers to be humongous and Frye loves to see her family. She has such a strong connection to her siblings and i bet her parents too. Frye probably has the best relationship with her family out of any of the 7 Idols.

I mean look at this joyful little fella, she must have had great parents to make her end up into becoming this happy little gal.

Big Man? I'm gonna be honest, i got nothing for him...

He's my least favourite Idol and i genuinely don't care enough about him to come up with headcanons. I'm so sorry Big Man fans. He aint a pretty cephalopod woman so i don't care (I'm joking.)

[opal-owl-flight]

I agree, I love your Neo3, but in like a "wow, I hate that I love them" way atm. Like I get the heirarchy thing, but I seriously would have loved to have seen Neo talk like that with 4 around. Sure, it would have proved part of their point, but seeing 4 defend cap would have been nice ;-;

But also, idk if your Neo3 has a little buddy or not (I can't remember), but she talks a lot of shit from someone who had the most help out of the series if her experience is anything like normal XD

- Required a real salmonid to get through the fuzzy goo

- Had 4 different people giving advice to them

- had to be assisted to even reach Grizz

- had to be saved by an old geezer from drifting into space

- had to use that same geezers robot to even win

- and had a mega fish fighting Grizz, which allowed them to even win that fight. XD

So I imagine your Neo3 had a very different time to be able to talk like that.

(For real, I do love your neo3. Very good character, and I love the cultural difference you made for them!)

4? Oh, dw, shes gonna show up :)

As for her mission -- smallfrys help was something she freely accepted (thats her sibling!) But other than him, she was NOT taking advice from ANYONE. (That was Neo4 doing most of the more puzzle centered missions. Yes Cuttlefish grabbed two fellas.) She was the one doing most of the fighting, managing to beat Deep Cut in RECORD TIME bc of how good she is.

Neo3 was on big fry's back during the Grizz fight. You better believe that she was unleashing all sorts of HELL on that bear considering him being the archenemy of her people. Neo4 and Octavio were a big help too, but in her eyes she did most of the heavy lifting. She thinks Neo4 is a damn chump. (Even if hes the one constantly reviving her after she chomps on flooze!)

She thinks shes a big shot and damn she backs it up. Even 4 was intimidated by her at first. As such, she expects her superior to be better than her. But...no. Cap3s....this sad, sad old squid.

(Btw? Shes NEVER seen that legend fight. She will......eventually.)

[spearxwind]

ALRIGHT I can finally post this! The first of hopefully a bunch of big movie cgi monster reimaginings that I want to do. This was also posted one month ago on my patreon, along WIPS and other stuff, so do check it out!! 

Anyway, this is the full, in-depth rework for the indominus rex that i worked on during April!! There’s a LOT of thought that went into this. and i mean A SHIT TON. I took the time to write a long ass artist/design commentary (under the readmore, bc its long) to explain all my decisions for this, design-wise! 

I hope yall like this :’) I spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting it

Artist commentary - Indominus rex

Okay there’s a lot I want to talk about but let’s start…. at the beginning shall we.

I did this whoooole thing for two reasons: 1. I want to prove that I am at least some good at creature design, and able to do concept art for my things and 2. a lot of movie monsters, particularly ones made by legendary studios, are never…. that great at all. The indominus had SO MUCH promise as a concept, but in the end they wasted her potential and that was really sad; so i took it onto myself to try and make another, wilder take on it.

OH BUT FIRST, DISCLAIMER: The art is in no way meant to be 100% anatomically correct. First bc this thing does not and hopefully never will exist physically, and second because I’m a simple student and can only dedicate so much time to anatomy and such yes.

PART 1. CONSTRUCTION OF THE BEAST

The indominus, according to the movie, is an artificial dinosaur, made from scraps and selected genetics from both a lot of dinosaurs (tyrannosaurus, gigantosaurus, therizinosaurus, majungasaurus, rugops, velocirraptor, carnotaurus and although it is not a dinosaur it also has deinosuchus dna) and some modern animals as well (including cuttlefish, tree frog and pit viper), making it a chimera of sorts.

The first thing you might notice is that.. i gave it a veil! Like a cuttlefish’s swimmy.. fin thing. The whole top part of the indominus is a cuttlefish “cover”, and hence it can do anything a cuttlefish could do (change colors or textures) but only on that part of its body. The movie pulling the ‘yeah it can turn invisible lol’ card was hhhh because we don’t really see it in action (i mean. That’s the point but also not) and it’s kind of wild that it could have just changed its whole body’s color at will so why not put a little more sense into it and just have it be the parts influenced by the cuttlefish? Oh, and a lot of the animals used to make this genetic trainwreck are water dwelling and/or amphibian so…  this monster is ALSO amphibian. It can swim really well, and generally do well in water for certain periods of time (it’s still much better suited for land but I digress). I think it’d have used the camouflage ability especially when going along the surface of the water so it’s stark white body doesn’t stand out horribly.

For the head I went with a much more crocodilian approach since it’s supposed to be heavy and wide, however the original design had a bunch of mistakes that i aimed to fix with that too, namely: the jaw joint being literally In The Neck for some reason, made it look frail as hell and like it’d have no strength, and also it had a horribly frail looking, shrinkwrapped neck, which I also took a stab at. (Speaking of shrinkwrapping, they did the same for the skull which. yikes.)

The OG head also had a ridiculous width to it compared to the eye placement, so it wouldn’t have been able to see much at all, added to the fact that it had a really, really small brain case.

In this new version i tried to fix all those things, and added a few aspects from other animals like the eyes being a mixture between slanted frog/snake eyes, and then the cuttlefish horizontal pupil. Biologically and realistically, this wouldn’t make much sense at all but fuck it, it can’t possibly be the worst thing.

The indo I made also has a lot of spikes on its head (as opposed to just two) and they’re all forward facing (as opposed to the OG’s backward facing spikes ???) AND last but not least it has heat pits right below its eyes. Those are from the pit viper and can sense heat signatures (cause i mean. why would you make a dinosaur and specifically mention pit viper dna but then do nothing with that. oh my god.)

I also discarded all the hard scales/spikes on the back in favor of it being able to make new ‘spikes’ with the cuttlefish texturing.

Next item: the arms. In the movie they’re a big part of the dinosaur’s action for whatever reason, it behaves like a half quadrupedal half bipedal creature. Sadly i elected to ignore that. The designers gave it long talons and then justified it by using therizinosaurus, which 1. had bigger talons, proportionately and 2. had bird wrists. So it could NOT have walked on its front legs and that’s the direction i went. Amped the fuck out of those claws, and i gave it the tree frog pads on its fingers (so instead of having to always spear things, it can hold onto stuff by patting it with those) and put some webbing all over bc 1. frog dna, 2. bird dna, 3. cuttlefish dna. I also gave it pin feathers on its forearms, because yeah velociraptor dna. Whoever did the OG design just said ‘yeah we gave it pin feathers from velociraptor dna’ which is what those weird spikes on its neck were, and called it a day.

The legs and tail don’t have that much more going on for them, same stuff. Frog pads and then a couple feathers. The tail itself i imagine is less rounded like we’ve been reconstructing theropods and more crocodilian looking so it can propel itself when swimming.

PART 2. GIVING IT FLAWS

Of course, being a genetic trainwreck, it’s not a Perfect Organism™, so you can see fuck-ups here and there because this thing had so many dna used for it...,

Let’s start with the head (because it’s where most of the items are anyway.)

The fucked up teeth. Those drove me up the entire wall in the OG design because yeah, they were fucked up bc of dna and that was cool! But they also had them all on the outside for some reason?? and they were stupid sharp and small so they didn’t look like many at all… just frail in general. I changed that to have a couple external teeth (croc dna again, tbh i just went with a lot of croc) and then a LOT of teeth actually inside the mouth. Also asymmetrical because, again. fuckt up.

In the mouth too, it’s got two tongues. One is actually functional, and the other (the snakey one) is fused to the bottom of its mouth. Itd still function as a smell sensory organ like an actual snake’s, it just cannot be thwiped out of the mouth.

The hole in its lower jaw is also the snake dna fucking up, making a not-quite-split jaw. It’s not functional either, it’s just a hole. It’s also got a regular opening to flick the tongue out like a normal snake, it just can’t.

I … did not give it scales (i did give it HINTS of scales, but nothing major) Because. yeah i figured it would be less likely to have them in this scenario haha

Also apparently in the movie they said it could manipulate its heat signature and i just scrapped that entirely cause what the fuck. I mean it’s cool but it didn’t do much, i feel like it’d be scarier if they could have KNOWN where this thing was but just couldn’t zone in on it either way bc it was that good at being stealthy.

The colors. The OG design is white bc of the invisibility thing, and it gives it an overall artificial feel that is great. I wasn’t quite able to emulate that because I went for a more naturally colored look, it’s just an albino bastard. Being this color would definitely be a disadvantage since it’d make it visible to everyone, so rather than just go ‘oh god oh fuck’ [turns invisible] and be done it’d have to curl up and position itself so the veil covers any would-be visible parts of it.

And uhh that’s about all I have! Ty for reading!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Black Panther review

I remember a while back, people were wanting Idris Elba to play James Bond. This stirred up some of the most stupid discourse I have ever seen in my life, but Elba took things in stride and denied being considered for the iconic role. But for me, I had to wonder… what would a black James Bond movie be like?  Considering my love for blaxploitation films and my strong belief in Elba’s acting talent, I could only imagine what a black James Bond film would be like (hopefully better than Live and Let Die).

Apparently someone else – Ryan Coogler, to be precise – wondered the same thing, and so decided to make Black Panther, a Marvel movie that is truly a marvel. Quite frankly, we NEEDED a film like this in the world.

The plot picks up a week after the events of Civil War. T’Challa is set to become the king of Wakanda after his father’s death; soon after he is crowned, an old nemesis of his father pops back onto the radar: Ulysses Klaue, a thieving bastard of a man who steals Wakanda’s greatest resource, vibranium. While tracking him down, things get ever more tangled when CIA agent Everett Ross appears on the scene, and THEN things get even more complicated when a mysterious man known as Erik “Killmonger” Stevens shows up. This is one twisted web of political intrigue, one that could change Wakanda forever; can T’Challa cut through this mess and push Wakanda to a brighter future?

Be warned - there’s gonna be some SPOILERS below:

This might be one of Marvel’s most impressive film in the visual and audio department; Wakanda is such a gorgeous country to look at, what with all of its advanced tech. There are some issues – some CGI rhinos that appear are just really, really bad, and some of the fight scenes overuse CGI on the Panther suits (though the latter isn’t really too bad) – but overall this is a damn good looking movie. The soundtrack is just absolutely perfect and atmospheric, and kinda reminded me of The Lion King, amusingly enough. I was more just impressed that I actually gave a shit about the score of a Marvel film, because the scores tend to be very forgettable.

Now the best part of this film is most definitely the amazing cast of characters. We have Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong’o, T’Challa’s former lover and a badass spy who really pushes for Wakanda to get involved more in helping others; we have Shuri, played by Letitia Wright, T’Challa’s badass tech savvy smartass sister, who gets some of the funniest lines (and DOES quote an outdated meme, though in her defense, it was timely for the movie’s time period and also she follows it up with an actual funny joke); we have Okoye, played by Danai Gurira, the badass warrior woman who is head of the Dora Milaje and takes shit from a grand total of zero people; we have Everett Ross, the CIA agent played by Martin Freeman, who is kinda the ‘outsider perspective’ on Wakanda and reacts how anyone likely would in his situation; and rounding out the major supporting cast is M’Baku, the hilarious and badass leader of the isolated Jabari tribe, who is one of the biggest trolls in the MCU as well as a truly effective combatant. Each and every one of these characters is incredibly enjoyable, fun, and likable in their own way, making this perhaps the strongest supporting cast in the entire MCU.

Then we have T’Challa himself. He is an absolutely excellent hero, building off his grand entrance to the franchise in Civil War. He’s cool, he’s honorable, he has some interesting conflict going on due to his duties as king and then later after he finds out the truth about his father… though all that being said, I DO feel a few things with him here and there were either rushed or could have been delved into a bit more. But make no mistake, this is pretty minor, and he’s easily one of my favorite leads in the MCU.

And now on to the REAL stars of the show, the villains! Let’s start with Klaue, played by the always-appreciated Andy Serkis in his second villainous role in a Disney movie as of late… and much like Snoke, Klaue gets wasted towards the midpoint of the film. HOWEVER! Unlike Snoke, who gets very little to do before he gets killed, Klaue is in several scenes showing off what an effective villain he is. That cuttlefish scene in Age of Ultron? Oh, that was just a small taste of the utter brilliance Serkis brings here. Klaue is delightfully ridiculous, giggling and laughing even as he’s blowing the shit out of his enemies. He’s hilarious, he’s enjoyable, and he is absolutely memorable; as far as side villains go, he’s like Taserface on steroids, and I LOVED Taserface, so imagine how much I love Klaue. Leave it to Andy Serkis to give such an animated performance in one of the few films where he isn’t actually animated. The fact Klaue dies stings a lot less when he’s this much fun, though I am sad because he would have made such a GREAT antagonist for future films… though if they can work out a deal with Sony, Kraven could be a suitable replacement.

And then we have Erik Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan. Remember F4ntastic? Remember how awful he was as the Human Torch? If you weren’t convinced the man could truly pull off a comic book movie, well, he’s gonna make you eat those words. He doesn’t just make up for his less-than-stellar turn as Johnny Storm with his performance here; he makes up for that whole damn shitty movie that he was only a small part of. Killmonger is a villain you can actually understand, one where you can really see where he was coming from, one that has a plan that you can almost see yourself agreeing with. At the end of the day, Killmonger is a victim of Wakanda’s secrecy and isolationist nature; the killing of his father and abandonment by his uncle is what drives him to villainy, and he wishes to use Wakanda’s tech to arm the oppressed all across the world so they can rise up and crush their oppressors. It’s almost a noble goal, but at the same time, it’s pretty bloodthirsty and cruel, and he really couldn’t give a shit how many innocent lives are destroyed so that he can rule a Wakandan empire the sun never sets on. He’s truly an anti-villain for the ages, and I am going to give him the greatest honor I can think of by comparing him favorably to Senator Armstrong of Metal Gear Rising fame. Their goals are similar for one, as they desire to make their countries truly great at the cost of innocent lives, but most importantly… they have NANITES/NANOMACHINES, SON! THEY HARDEN IN RESPONSE TO PHYSICAL TRAUMA! Killmonger is easily top 5 villains in the whole MCU, and continues the trend that began in 2017 of giving Marvel villains excellent characterization. He can sit at the Big Bad Boys Table with Ego, Toomes, Hela, Red Skull, Loki, and Stane. Good work Killmonger.

There have been some criticisms of this film and of Wakanda that are just… really fucking stupid. One I see come up a lot is how Wakanda is such a big, bad nation for being so isolationist and not helping others. This is literally a fucking plot point in the movie. This is a big part of what the plot revolves around. Hell, Nakia pretty much demands T’Challa start helping the world with Wakanda’s tech, like this is not subtext, the isolationist nature isn’t played off as a good thing and Wakanda’s unwillingness to help others and their secretive nature is what fuel’s the villains agenda, so using this as some criticism of Wakanda to bash it is… fucking idiotic. Then there was this one post I saw floating around with a bunch of dweebs saying how T’Challa had to weaken himself to be able to beat Killmonger… no? Not at all? If they’re referring to the final fight, he weakened the both of them. They both had the same level of power, he just took their suits out of the equation, he never technically had an upper hand there. And if they were referring to the fight earlier in the film… it’s ritual combat. Seriously, I think a lot of the criticisms of this film just want to paint Wakanda and T’Challa as Mary Sues for some… fucking stupid reason. The only way you could believe that is if you didn’t actually watch the damn film. I really didn’t want to address these dumb criticisms, but frankly, I had them in mind the whole time while watching the film and rolled my eyes hard when they were blatantly disproven by text, not subtext, not subtle easy-to-miss lines, TEXT. RIGHT IN YOUR FUCKING FACE TEXT.

But let’s not end this all on a negative note. One of my absolute favorite moments was not your typical superhero moments, but a part at the end, where T’Challa has decided to open an outreach center, and he and Shuri show off a Wakandan ship to a basketball court filled with young black kids who are immediately awestruck by the ship. One of them comes up to T’Challa and looks at him like he’s the coolest thing in the world, and god, I just know there are hundreds of thousands of little black girls and boys out there watching this movie and seeing a black hero kick ass and just be goddamn cool. We all know Blade came first, but I don’t think that makes Black Panther any less important or necessary; representation is always a good thing when it’s done well, and boy is this done well. This is giving black kids heroes and heroines they can really look up to and admire and see themselves in, and frankly, that just makes me happy.

This is a damn good movie, one of Marvel’s best. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it really does give off a James Bond vibe, if James Bond was crossed with The Lion King. I definitely recommend this if you’re a fan of Marvel movies, I recommend this if you’re looking for a more serious comic book movie, I just flat out recommend this movie. It’s a damn good film, and I hope that Marvel keeps making more films like this. So many action-comedies with a white male lead… it’s nice to get a more serious action-thriller with a black lead. Variety is the spice of life, and this movie here is just the kind of spice I like.

T’Challa is the king of Wakanda, and as a great man once said: “Hail to the king, baby.”

[vermiculated]

i have three screencaps

here are some words about COLOSSAL.

so this movie! we were talking about it as a kaiju romdram threeway and that is still the best, that's the best for everything forever even if the giant monsters are metaphorical. I mean, isn't most of fiction: person a/person b/person a's problems which are not usually actually monsters yet on reflection are they not? Are they ever not? Ben/Matthew/Ben's past; Thomas/Edward/garbage ideas about who Thomas gets to love fuck you Fellowes; Edith/Lavinia/the constant fear of death even in a good war; platonically Priya/Daniel/Timothy; furthermore May Archer/Newland Archer/Countess Olenska because Michelle Pfeiffer is the living embodiment of a man's fear about a woman.

that went a little bit off on the shoulder there.

anyway: you love somebody, you fuck their problems.

That is not what happens in their movie either! why is this so impossible. SO THE PREMISE is that Anne Hathaway, executive producer of this film, also acting in it, is an alcoholic who likes a good time and Dan Stevens is her long-suffering boyfriend. Their scene together is actually VERY WELL DONE, and worth the price of admission for this film (uh, free, because I got it from the county library, the movie wasn't in theaters here not even the eight dollar ticket theater where I go to see US-made art house gems such as SILENCE, or Starving in Taiwan while Scorsese obsesses over a shot, or Beach Rats, a film that made the mass deletion of dick pics a searing moment of character development. anyway, not even there.) It's well-acted and convincing. Bar the material world it takes place in: is long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens a hedge-fund manager? this apartment is the correct combination of soulless and extravagant in its exposed brickwork and white kitchen to be the sort of place outfitted by an interior decorator and never elaborated upon by the inhabitant because he works eighty-hour weeks and drinks Stella Artois when he means to get wild. furthermore. I mean I have no idea why Anne is wearing Talbots separates to a party? maybe it was an after work function and long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens is justly outraged because it's Tuesday. Anne is woozy and disoriented in this bland 2.4m USD apartment, as anyone might be. Long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens (LSBDS) kicks Anne out by packing her bags for her, it is deeply tragic.

THE PREMISE IS: twenty-five years ago a monster stalked Seoul. Anne, having fled a breakup with a finance bro, moves back to her empty childhood home, which is actually a splendid piece of architecture, it has a wraparound porch and a lovely staircase, it's a pretty beautiful Queen Anne, and Anne is very sad, so much so that even this house does not lift her spirits. Anne, by the way, now that she is no longer in dating-money clothes, is slightly run-down: she wears untucked shirts and low-heeled booties. ( @mimaveil​ just got shivers down her spine.) Anne has a blonde-to-orange dye job that's growing out unattractively, and I have to say, it's a great wig. It tells you what you need to know about Anne and Anne’s problems.(Last week I saw Le Cercle Rouge, which is a good movie for a number of reasons among them Alain Delon's absolutely terrible wig and fake moustache.) Anne has a number of nervous tics, among them picking at the part on her crown, and smoothing hanks of hair at her shoulders. it's enticingly realistic.

okay, FINALLY. the plot begins about ten minutes into the film, when Anne is walking home from the general store and a truck passes her. the screencap below illustrates an important quality of movie-making: a gifted and radiant actress may wear a bad wig, she remains gifted and radiant.

fig. 1: gifted and radiant, even when hauling a sack. she was gifted and radiant even in Tom Hooper's The Miserables, wasn't she.

realism's for fucking suckers.

the dude in the movie (I could tell because he is on the cover of the dvd) is driving the truck and Anne starts fidgeting with her hair, and you can see her remembering that this is a tell of flirtation, and she could stop, but she carries on. this indicates that she has A Problem. a series of problems, really, shortly to become worse.

(my discussions of films may lead the careful reader to believe that I am powerfully interested in hairstyling. I am not, I guess I'm like Ernest Hemingway in that I just like hair? and whiskey, zing. Although I do enjoy scrolling through Pinterest and seeing the 'easy chignons' which require a minimum of five hands and two types of bobby pins to construct. I imagine it's the same kind of interest that leads other people to look at speedboats in catalogues. I don't want it and I can never have it, but it's an interesting sphere of human endeavor.)

Anne and the dude in the movie, hereafter called Beanface because he has a fat jaw and a protruding forehead that make his head seem slimmer in the middle and flatter on the ends, like a broad bean, go to the dude's bar, and holy smokes, yes this is 'Gone Girl.' the bar is partly boarded off because suburban Maine is economically depressed, and also it's a metaphor for feelings. Everything's a metaphor for feelings, cf comments above about monsters. Anne and Beanface and Beanface's friends, Tim Blake Nelson and a dude who looks like Eli Manning, get drunk together. I believe that we are meant to draw the conclusion that Anne is careless of her safety and fixated on alcohol and good times, such that she does not mind being the only woman in company. Ersatz Eli Manning asks her about her work, which is for an "online magazine," and he asks for the address, so that he can read her articles. He seems okay! They all drink together, hail and good fellowship.

Anne stumbles home drunk, and awakens NINE HOURS LATER (this is significant for the plot, even though she doesn't have a clock.) Anne is supposed to be selfish, it is hard for me to discern that based on her immediate and practical response to the next crisis? like so fucking what she didn’t care about a dude’s dead mom? I don’t care about that either, give Anne some real emotional depth. Someone calls her and it is horrible news: Seoul's been attacked by a monster. She follows up on the story, because she's a heroine in a movie, rather than a poor human who can hardly cope with her own life and shivers under the blankets before reaching out a hand like a wary cuttlefish and grabbing her phone to check it under the covers. Anne has substantial psychological resilience, so much so that she is able to recover from more than the mere work of existing continuously. Impressive!

PERHAPS THIS IS BECAUSE SHE IS A MONSTER? real time, we have gone about half an hour since I settled in with a scone and a glass of the finest four dollar sauvignon blanc, and Anne notices on the disaster coverage that the monster scratches her head just the same way that Anne herself does. Anne realizes, admirably quickly, that she is the monster. SHE IS THE MONSTER.

She makes a murderboard up, and the next morning, practices. She does this by stepping in a sandbox and doing semaphore.

Anne gathers up Beanface and his pals for another night of drinking and then she takes them to -- this movie is so wonderfully specific in this observation -- the playground near the woods, and she asks them to watch her on their phones. This is a nice element that grounds the film in 2017: Anne has a rose gold iPhone, and the guys have less-clearly branded screens. They see her on the screen, and they believe her in the flesh.

(this is the most outlandish part of the filme, that men would believe a woman. but they do.)

meanwhile, Anne is working at Beanface's bar, and she and the gang get wasted every night. Slowly, Beanface gives her various items of furniture, about which I got fretful. What if there are bedbugs Anne? Aren't futons terrible for your posture Anne? Anne? She's still drunk one morning when she trips into the sandbox in the playground near the woods, and Anne howling with laughter is intercut with the people of Seoul being terrified by the monster smashing around. And the monster can definitely take down a building. Anne crashes a helicopter, and she's sobered up enough to start freaking out so Beanface steps into the sandbox.

and lo, a giant robot appears!

Anne trips and kills hundreds of people. This is when I got profoundly displeased with this movie. I understand that it is a scifi black comedy, and should have a high body count. I do not like that Anne kills masses of people, and I do not like that the movie shrugs this off for much of its running time. Anne's grief about this is played as hysteria, and when Beanface brings it up, it's only to needle Anne. The movie doesn't really deal with it? which is not the fault of this movie: movies are always destroying large cities, and it's probably not racist to destroy Seoul specifically, but the face is that Anne makes inroads into destroying a city of anonymous South Koreans and this is not discussed? there's no urgent conversation between pokey traffic wardens, and little kids cooing, or any of the leavening that typically accompanies scifi violence. It's just a lot of people no one knows (sayeth the movie, we know there’s more) and they're dead?

WHICH does bring to mind the fact that by this time next month, some people (not me, I will be trapped on a dingus airplane, drinking and trying not to pick fights, travelling to New York) will have seen the next STAR WARS, or "lots of fun stuff happens, also half of the ship that I have helped obsessively curate for the last two years is back to his manipulative crazy lying and war crimes" and how do I feel about that? Not that it really matters; it's happening. It's indefensible, I have no good reasons to offer. It started out as a black comedy and now I am terribly worried that the division we have maintained (an alternative universe! unless we're getting bleak there's no need to discuss canon!) will dissolve and what an individual is doesn't matter so much, the wellspring of the popularly-named Benlouise Organa will choke me like a firehose.

On the other hand, I have still not seen the ACTUAL most important canon for enspacement, which is the comedy clip introducing Matt the Radar Technician, sorry @getlouder as I do generally try to approach everything I do with the profoundest and most glib (where these words mean "several kay of jokes and fucking") ignorance.

the screen goes black and Anne gets depressed. rightly so. (okay, I will cool it.)

Anne and Beanface inquire at the local Korean grocery and there's a very good shot across the dash of Beanface's truck, while Beanface talks about how he got free food, of Anne looking right past him and at the proprietors of the store. ignore Beanface. go on and do it! I am easily manipulated! do it! Anne discusses her plan with the gang, where they mostly make light of what she has done, which is to have a Korean translation of her apology. She goes out the next morning and after clearing the way, writes her apology in the sand.

it's actually nice, and makes me almost take back my earlier thoughts about turning Seoul into a white monster playground. almost.

we are, I notice with apprehension, only halfway through the movie. what is going to happen?

what's going to happen is that is movie is about rage, and futility, alcoholism, and power. Anne has given up drinking, but Beanface has not, and Beanface behaves in increasingly ugly ways.

a. bossing Anne around unduly b. drinking heavily and telling his friends to 'shut up.' c. yelling at his friends d. yelling at Anne e. driving his truck at Anne

Beanface and Anne go to the playground and Anne slaps Beanface, the monster slaps the giant robot, and there is much rejoicing. Beanface, to apologize, dispatches the gang with a truck full of furniture which, if a person had never seen a single schema of the cycle of abuse, might be charming. However, we are all old enough not to trust this. emotionally distant legumeheads are not going to win us over! he has a picture of his ex-girlfriend with the face scratched out, it is time to fuckin' run girl!! Anne confronts Beanface, who is pathetically hung over, and reveals much information about his sad life. buddy, nothing's so sad that you need to frighten the people of Seoul over it. nothing's so sad that I care about it.

meanwhile, Ersatz Eli Manning has decorated Anne's home. somewhere in here the two of them have sex, and it seems okay. The movie somehow resists making a reference to gendered activities here, since Anne has been living in an under-furnished depression-anger-breakup hovel, and the dude decorates with a truly amazing Victorian velvet settee. One of my greatest regrets is not buying a mustard love-seat of the same style. it was four hundred dollars! what else was I going to do with that money that was so important? Once when I had dental surgery under anesthesia, I told the dentist all about my feelings re: Real Eli Manning. He was a Jets fan. (the dentist, not Eli Manning. although maybe! explains a lot.) Real Eli Manning would, I am sure, support me in my passion for furniture. that’s a FACT. a bunch of plot happens next. I'm not going to describe it all, it doesn't really hold together in or out of context. what we need to know is that Beanface is a jerk. He continues to be mean to Anne, and when LSBDS shows up, Beanface tries to intimidate him. (It's actually a fun treat for those of us who have seen THE GUEST, because LSBDS stands in a country-western bar and looks like he wants to start a fight, and I think it might even be the same shot, it's chilling.) They metaphorically compare dicks, so Anne utters the famous line "can you guys stop talking about me like I'm not here?" They do, however, not stop talking about her like she's not there. Beanface blows the bar up with a firework, and then claims that Anne will never leave him. what the fuck! what the fuck!

I thought this was gonna be a fun threeway monster flick! Beanface then BREAKS INTO Anne's house, and we have another flashback to THE GUEST, as he and Anne fight, as people this time, and he jumps out a second-story window into the leaf-clogged pool and she brandishes a stake at him. it's actually pretty great. It's a truly good scary scene. Beanface is behaving erratically, because, as Anne figures, he hates himself, and so she makes a forbidden phone call (he's told her that she must not call LSBDS, or Beanface will create mayhem in Seoul. notwithstanding hating himself, Beanface is a little underdetermined.) to LSBDS that she will leave with him. this makes Beanface very angry. this is, of course, the point. Anne has a flashback to when they were kids (twenty-five years ago!) when she and Beanface climbed into the forest, and Beanface pretended to be retrieving Anne's foamcore model of Seoul, but IN FACT, stomped on it. 

fig. 2: Anne does her best enspacement light body horror look. I haven't seen MIDNIGHT SPECIAL or STRANGER THINGS or LOGAN, I think this is meant to be about that. ("I haven't seen a thing, here are my thoughts about it" is the only emotional register I have.) She gets to be angry, and then the lightning knocks her out, where it is revealed that she has a monster doll in her bag. a monster doll! I like the monster doll, and I like all the anger. I guess that's supposed to explain what's up. Who knows? Beanface is a jerk, LSBDS is a jerk, Anne is wearing dark sunglasses when we next see her. fuck! THE CLIMAX OF THE MOVIE IS: Anne goes to Seoul.

briefly, but enjoyably: Anne is wearing a long black coat, an oversized shirt, and boots. Her looks have been mostly unremarkable during this film, which is nice, she's sleeping on the floor after all and there are threatening men everywhere, but this? the coat looks cool as heck. it begins to rain Thematic Rain, and Anne looks around grimly. 

fig. 3: sorry to sound like I'm trying to describe the Cool Girl in a ya book. she is the Cool Girl though, she has realized that she is more than the fucking nonsense that men put on her, and she's smart enough to figure out that there is no way out if she plays their games. so she becomes a giant monster to fight them and save the world. She talks to LSBDS about how she's really fucked up, more fucked up than ever before, and hangs up on him. (she actually hangs up on him a lot in this movie. it's nice.) She then walks like a hero to the riverside where the robot has appeared. Beanface is still in Maine, and steps into the sandbox, but Anne shadowboxes with him, and the monster appears in the sandbox! The connection works both ways! unforeseen! Ersatz Eli Manning has gone to a non-arsoned bar and cheers for Anne. Anne is among the screaming crowd in Seoul and she realizes what she must do. There's some very nice cutting between Anne and the robot in Seoul, and the monster and Beanface in Maine. really first-rate. and then Anne kills the robot and the monster kills Beanface and Anne meets a cute lady and all is well. I can't believe this movie only made four million dollars u.s.