#I’ve never seen more than the original sequel and the new trilogy

[kissingwookiees]

my nap time dream today was a sequel of a previous dream set in a Halloween alternate universe where I’m the niece (???) of michel myers and running for my life with a rotating cast of characters (two of which are YouTuber reactors) in what is seemingly a several story sports bar mall combination that serves Italian food also…?

[turboacek-blog]

Fans don’t know what they want: Star Wars edition

Don’t know if I’ll make this a recurring type of post but just something I always think of when watching series that’s been on for a long time from Marvel to Pokémon to Dragon Ball etc

So I finished the live-action Ahsoka show and overall I thought it was pretty solid, the thing was I have the benefit of watching most of Rebels and the Clone Wars so my connection to these characters is different from someone who’s never watched them or not a lot as this series was very much a follow-up of Rebels with the Ahsoka clone wars connection as the connecting aspect

Not going to talk too much about the show as it’s still new as I’m posting this

But one thing I kept seeing online and even since the sequel movies was that the lightsaber fights have been slow and boring etc…

And while I agree in a certain sense that they don’t look as fast as animation or the prequels

The problem is that one of the big complaints of the prequel movies was how they were using lightsabers back then

Like people hated how flashy and speedy they were swinging their lightsabers

And I think that has shaped how they have done Star Wars since episode 7/the sequels aired

The basis of the action standard has been the original trilogy and the closest real-world equivalent in sword fights

Where sword fights aren’t about the flash and the blades are mostly heavy let alone how sharp and deadly they are so when there’s a sword fight it’s not about the clashing etc It’s about if you get one hit it’s over

So ever since I’ve noticed that they treated the lightsabers more like heavier swords vs these lighter laser blades

But now whether it’s from the prequel kids and enjoyers are now more of the vocal majority or the choreography hasn’t been the best but now people are calling out that the modern lightsaber fights have been slow and boring

So fans went from don’t make the fights like the prequels to make the fights more like the prequels hence fans don't know what they want

Even if it's more than preferences and audience changes over time

For myself, I’m mixed

Like I think there’s definitely a balance, as you can say that some moments in the prequels they were spinning that deadly blade super casually, and those extra moves showed some openings making people act like oh there was the kill shot, but also light sabers aren’t swords, like lightsabers have the inherent benefit of having the clashing and being able to swing more casually given their size, cut metal and other things, and let alone using the force as an excuse for the movements

I understand the want or need for realism in products such as Star Wars it helps keep things grounded and believable but there’s also the fantasy aspect that I do think needs to be embraced more as yes the choreography of the lightsabers needs to be seen as swords so we have a concept for what’s going on but you also have to be creative with it in a way that shows a lightsaber isn’t just a glow stick sword

I think in some cases it’s a choreography thing as without spoiling too much Ahsoka herself isn’t as fast in her series compared to her in animation, part of the reason is that she’s older and they even comment on that as she’s like 50 in the show and was like 16 in the clone wars a pretty big difference but it’s also they aren’t choosing to make Ahsoka acrobatic or fast since they want Rosario Dawson to actually be the character they even have a moment showing that Ahsoka was faster when younger, and they have moments that give that sense of speed and such but mostly lightsaber fights are just sword fights now

I think there’s definitely some work around like the light trail effect of the light sabers is practically gone now and I think that added will give a better sense of speed and effect

And if you’re going to choreograph essentially a sword fight then get stunt doubles or whoever to help make it feel faster and more fluid, and have fun with camera direction to get more excitement from the critics that think it's boring

Overall it’s funny to me that people used to hate (some still do) the prequels but in terms of things like action people now would prefer that to what we have now

And I do think the rise in things like anime has raised standards for how to perceive action as there has now been some anime influence in even things like Creed 3

Not my most formatted post but oh well

[megafreak400]

2024 Media Thread - #31

Crash Bandicoot (N Sane Trilogy) (8/19/24) -  Score - 1/10

So far this year, i’ve mostly played really good games. Last year I tackled more games on my backlog, to mix quality. This year i’ve played more new games or games on game pass so most of the games I've finished tend to be ones I’ve liked. There have been a few exceptions like the disappointment that was Ufouria 2, but overall I was starting to think I wouldn’t have any really bad games on this year's tier list. ENTER THIS FUCKING GAME! So let me give you a little bit of background. I was mostly a Nintendo kid, with a splash of Sega genesis. But my youngest brothers during the GameCube era were given a Playstation 1 at some point. So occasionally I’d check out what games they had for that and found a few I really gelled with. Jigsaw madness was a ton of fun playing against my brothers, Spyro 2 was a blast and then there was Crash Bandicoot Warped. I remember it being somewhat tough but having been a kid that preferred 2D platformers and missed them on the N64 and Gamecube, it was cool playing a game with a similar energy. Fast forward to college and while I never beat Crash Bandicoot Warped, the game stuck in my mind. At some point one of my college friends was selling some Playstation One games, and I had recently purchased a used PS2. They had a copy of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex strikes back. I remembered fond memories of Crash, so I bought it from them. I had thought however that 2 was the game i had played in the past. So when I looked things up in more detail and I realized it wasn’t I was slightly disappointed. I did later play Crash 4 and overall enjoyed it (though i’m never 100 percenting it), but I never got back to Crash 2 for one reason or another and so it just sat on my backlog. That is until GamePass added the N sane trilogy to game pass. I was like “ok awesome this is a good excuse to mark another game off my backlog and I also get to finally play Crash Warped again. However I didn’t just want to jump into Crash 2. I could have, and probably should have, but if I’m playing 2 of the 3 Ps1 Crash games I might as well play them all right…….HAHA… WRONG!!! I finished this game out of spite. I finished this game to write this blog post because Crash Bandicoot 1 is by far the worst game I played this year, and might be the worst game I’ve beaten in a long time. All of this mind you is multiplied by the fact that the game has 2 sequels that are basically the same thing but better. It’s like how people don’t really talk much about Sonic 1 because Sonic 2 is just better in every way while also being basically the same thing. Mega Man 1 is also talked about in this fashion. But I don’t see too many people (more than I thought though after I lambasted this game in my Discord server) hating on the first Crash game. I’m shocked this series even took off because this game is just frustrating and mocking the player at every turn.

To start with, yes I’m playing the remake. From what i’ve been told by friends the physics are the same as what they were in the original. I’ve also seen conflicting accounts online that it uses Crash 3’s physics, and then other sources say it uses Crash 2’s physics. Ultimately, i’m willing to believe some of the precision isn’t nearly as awful in the original, but on the other hand, some of the easier difficulty aspects like being given masks after so many deaths or extra checkpoints were also added which balances things out in terms of which version is worse. On top of that apparently if you wanted to get every boxes in the original you had to do every level with zero deaths. I’ll get into how awful 100 percent is for this game in a bit, but fuck that. Also the original was programmed for the D-pad, but ultimately i’m going to tell you playing the remake with a control stick is still ass so I don’t think that’s a mark against the original. Ok where to begin? Well to start with as I mentioned above the physics in this game are ass. It’s possible it’s because a different momentum system was applied to overly precise levels but even if the momentum is the same, some of the precise jumps they ask you to do in this game are insane at times. There are so many 2D levels that have several vertical jumping sections that one wrong move sends you plummeting back to the bottom. Or a few horizontal sections with multiple small platforms or enemies you need to jump on. It reminds me of DKC Tropical Freeze when you only have DK, you pretty much have to be spot on with your jumps or you’re screwed. And while the many 2D levels are annoying, the traditional Crash Style hallway levels are also to blame for my rage. Those stupid bridge levels can go jump off a cliff, they’re horrendous, asking the player to land on a tiny plank multiple times while dodging WILD HOGS. It got to the point where I said screw it, found out you could walk on the railing of the bridge, and cheated my way to victory. Don’t get me wrong precision platforming can be very fun, but it never feels rewarding here. If I fail it’s because the level is a long ass gauntlet or because of the weird perspective at points that throws you off. Or again, because if you don’t jump at the last possible moment you will fall. Add into this the fact that like most bad old game it has a lives system and a game over sends you all the way back to the start of the level, and you can see why it just gets tedious. Maybe if other aspects of the game felt rewarding I wouldn’t be too annoyed by the platforming, but no the game is the opposite of rewarding. So the big thing with Crash is that you need to smash all the boxes in a level to get a gem. Can be a fun time in theory, though more often than not they get it wrong. In Crash 4 the levels were also long slogs, with some boxes hidden in a way that if you missed one you had to do it all over again. Long levels and the box mechanic don’t really go together, and unfortunately most of Crash 1’s levels are overly long. That would be fine though, if it wasn’t for the fact that 90 percent of the time YOU CAN NOT GET ALL THE BOXES ON THE FIRST RUN OF THE LEVEL. Why? Because multiple levels lock a few boxes behind a colored gem….that you will not be able to get until a future level in most cases. This means wasting your time until you realize this, and even after if you do want to do 100 percent it means slogging through the level again. And keep in mind I didn’t have fun the first time so there was no way in hell that I was going for a 100 percent. But that’s not good enough for the game. You didn’t get all the boxes? Well shame on you, how could you be so bad at games. Because of your crimes against gaming we’re going to proceed to smash a billion boxes that you missed on your head to make it hit home how awful you are at this game. Like seriously, you couldn’t get all the boxes? 

No game I couldn't because LITERALLY I NEEDED A GEM FROM A FUTURE LEVEL. This aspect of the game just infuriates me because I hate it when games feel the need to mock the player. 100 percent doesn't even feel that important in the game, so making a big deal out of it just rubs me the wrong way here. The box crashing animation is so bad, in Japan it was taken out because it was making kids cry. So ok the levels are mostly unfun slogs, 100 percent is a fool's quest, what about the bosses? Surely the bosses are a good time? Ha…Ha..ha, what do you think? The first boss is easy enough, but the second boss requires you to jump over small platforms above water to hit TNT boxes that will hopefully be timed to explode when a deranged kangaroo is jumping by to damage him. Sounds easy enough, but instead of flowing constantly through the water, the TNT boxes stop at each platform for a bit. When you stomp on them they stop moving for good so that they can explode, but while in theory the waiting is good to allow people an easier time to jump on them…they just take forever. So it causes this battle to drag. On top of that, small platforms and Crash 1 = precision jumping meaning I died a lot. Ripper roo sucks, and it’s hilarious because his battle in 2 is a joke, but here it made me want to pull my hair out. Most of the other bosses aren’t as bad but they all have elements of just…taking forever. Koala Kong is easy enough but he just takes so long to do anything. Other bosses like the weird gangster rat and N Brio aren’t horrible but also aren’t really fun either. Ultimately just get rid of the bosses, you already have stupid long levels we don’t need the bosses dragging this game out any longer.  Other negatives are the overuse of really bland locals, like dank tombs, dank castles and dumb bridges. I will say the Levels in Cortex’s lab are generally ok, feeling more like something you’d see in crash 2 with less precision, but overall most of the levels just felt like they were wasting my time. Music is whatever, it’s fine but for having to re do these levels over and over could you give me something catchy to listen to? Crash himself is ugly, but at least the remake let’s me play as Coco instead, and she functions basically identical to Crash himself.

I honestly don’t know how this series got popular. Maybe it was the novelty of the more 3D style levels but if you want precision platforming there are much better games. Crash is at it’s best when your collecting stuff in short levels and trying to do the levels fast (something Crash Warped would be perfect) and none of that exists here. Could I have 100 percented this game? Sure but why if i’m not enjoying myself? I never felt rewarded finishing a level here, I just felt relieved it was over. Anything good Crash 1 does is just done better in the later Crash game or is done better by a different platformer.  If you like Crash 1, more power to you, but to me it’s going straight in the trash.

[rottenbrainstuff]

Star Wars rant:

Oh you guys

I watch documentaries while I do stuff - I’ve been watching Disney documentaries recently. The things I’ve just seen! You guys! You guys! You are not going to rewrite history that I still remember.

I am hearing people say all kind of crazyass things about what Disney did with Star Wars and where it made mistakes. You guys this wasn’t that long ago. I have heard someone say the reason that the rise of skywalker was bad was because the last Jedi went so weird with the writing that the third movie had nowhere to go - what! I don’t buy that for five seconds. As soon as TLJ came out, fans were discussing ideas for what we thought was going to happen next and no one had trouble creating outlines and ideas that all sounded a million times better than the shit we ended up getting. Please don’t blame TRoS on anyone but JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio! I even saw the Trevorrow script and look, it’s not amazing, but even that is better than what we got. (Slightly)

I heard someone say Star Wars fans were disappointed in TFA when it was released and we were just waiting to see what the next movie was going to be like. Y’all are trying to act like you knew what was going to happen in the end and you were smart and skeptical. That is completely fucking wrong. There WERE some hardcore gatekeeper fans who were disappointed it wasn’t down to their exacting checklist of things they wanted, and some folks wanted the new trilogy to follow the EU books. (And guess what happened when they made a movie to try and please the gatekeeping fans? We got TRoS) By and large, the fans were NOT disappointed. Are you kidding me??? We were ecstatic. Everyone at the cons wanted to talk about that movie, and everyone suddenly loved Star Wars again.

And I have actually heard with my own two ears some say that ohhhhh George Lucas had an outline of ideas for the sequel trilogies, but Disney threw them in the bin and didn’t use them, if we had just followed George’s master plan, we could have had a good sequel - my god - I knew it was only a matter of time before I heard someone say this. You are either: absolute goddamned hypocrites! You are the same people who sang “George Lucas Raped my Childhood” after the prequel trilogy came out! You cried louder than anyone that George Lucas ruined Star Wars, and NOW you want to walk that back and pretend like you actually liked him this whole time? Or else: you are too young to remember the absolute franchise killer that the prequel movies were, how utterly scorned they were at the time, you never read George Lucas’ original script for a New Hope (and btw that movie was a mess - the only reason it is as good as it is is because he had a great editor), you have never read any of his other outlines for things and realized how fucking stupid they are and how lucky we are he did NOT end up making anything more. The whole problem with the prequels was that George had too much control and not enough input from other people to keep things sensible. Oh my god no. No, no, no. Can we not say that? Ever? That’s like being served a dog turd for supper and saying that instead we should have eaten the moldy month old Kraft dinner in the forgotten Tupperware. Let’s not pretend the moldy Kraft dinner isn’t also nasty.

I can’t believe I’m hearing this, people just making up junk years later. Did you all seriously forget already? It wasn’t even that long ago!

[endpoem]

Stuff I liked in 2022

‘Saul’ good (and other TV)

It’s not easy to say goodbye to Better Call Saul, the supposed end of Vince Gilligan’s Albuquerque cycle. I bought my dad the complete Breaking Bad on DVD for Christmas in 2014, and we watched the entire thing together, back before I had kids or a real full-time career. Jesse Pinkman, Nacho, Jimmy and Kim—these characters have meant the world to me for the better part of a decade, and Saul was absolutely the pinnacle.

El Camino, Saul season five, and the two halves of season six have been such a gift of flawless storytelling these last few years; sometimes they were the thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Logging into work on a Monday ain’t so bad when you’ve got more of Kim and Jimmy’s mischief to look forward to. Peter Gould, Gilligan, and company stuck the landing. If one of your favorite characters must die, you can’t ask for a more beautiful sendoff than “Rock and Hard Place.”

Bob Odenkirk’s book, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir, was a great way to spend a weekend, as well, deepening my appreciation for an actor who’d already won my heart in the first couple seasons of Saul. (I’ll admit it: The character was never my favorite part of Breaking Bad. It took the Jimmy dimension to win me over and sell me on the idea of a spinoff. Mission accomplished, I guess.)

It’s a nice treat to see Odenkirk back in his home country of comedy, and it made for a good excuse to watch Mr. Show season one while I was waiting for Better Call Saul to come back from its mid-season break. Bob and I have a shocking number of things in common: five-nine, Irish-Catholic, Illinois guys, a cynicism born of trauma, severe impostor syndrome, et cetera. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I loved Atlanta season three; “New Jazz” was my favorite episode by far, probably because it focuses on Al (Paper Boi) and is weird even by Atlanta standards. I also enjoyed Stranger Things season four, which was a definite high for that series—Joseph Quinn was brilliant. And as a Halo fan going all the way back to 2001, I mostly dug the TV adaptation’s first season, though the finale was a bummer.

I’m a couple seasons into a Mad Men rewatch, trying to fill the void left by the Gilliverse, and it’s a different show now that I’m a father with two kids and more of a career. Unbelievably good.

‘The Rings of Power,’ classic Tolkien, and other fantasies

This was the year I got really into epic fantasy outside of, say, the Elder Scrolls games. The Rings of Power came along just in time to cure my post-Saul blues, and it certainly did the trick. It’s a gorgeous (and expensive) spectacle, with a rich, expansive world, mythic stakes, and some really great performances. And have you seen how beautiful that cast is? I’ve been known to develop the occasional TV or movie crush, Your Honor, but Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel is in a league of her own. My God. She’s great in Saint Maud, too.

After Rings of Power, I rewatched the extended cuts of the movie trilogy and bought a stack of books for good measure—The Hobbit, Rings, The Silmarillion, The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I just finished Fellowship of the Ring, which is exquisite, and I’ve been reading The Hobbit aloud to my daughter. We’re about three-fourths of the way through that one.

I finally saw the original Willow and Legend (1985) earlier this year, and thought both were excellent. (The Legend Blu-ray from Arrow Video looks stunning.) House of the Dragon was pretty fantastic—as good as Game of Thrones in its earlier seasons, only more focused. And the Disney Plus Willow series is probably my second-favorite fantasy work of 2022; it’s playing around with the same kind of Lovecraftian terror as John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, and I can’t help but see it as a riff on the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

‘Andor’ and more

There was some good star stuff on the tube this year. “The Tribes of Tatooine,” the second episode of Book of Boba, elevated that series above the disposable feel of Mandalorian season two (“The Believer” notwithstanding). And Deborah Chow’s Obi-Wan Kenobi gave those of us who grew up on the prequels a magnificent bookend to the Obi-and-Ani relationship.

Light & Magic, the six-part docuseries on ILM, offered a phenomenal overview of special-effects history beginning with the inception of Star Wars and ending with the biggest breakthroughs of the CGI era. You could easily do a second season on the last couple decades of blockbusters and stuff like StageCraft, but maybe that’s a series for down the road.

But of course no Star Wars discussion this year could pass without addressing the main event, Andor, which can safely be called the best Star Wars story since 1983. Tony Gilroy is a masterful writer and showrunner, responsible for much of what people loved in Rogue One, and he brings all his intelligence and rage and love to Andor. He and his crew ought to be very proud. Who knew that all Star Wars needed was more Andy Serkis and Diego Luna? Gilroy, evidently.

Shadow of the Sith, a 496-page novel by Adam Christopher, was another Star Wars highlight in 2022. If you’re looking for a good Luke Skywalker book, or a good Lando Calrissian book—or some spooky Sith magic—you’ll find all of that and more in this moving Rise of Skywalker tie-in. For those curious about Rey’s parents, this is largely their story, as well, and it’s beautifully done. My favorite Star Wars book in years.

Always gamin’

I’m not a full-time games journalist anymore, so my gaming habits are a lot more relaxed than they used to be. Which is to say I play to have fun, now, and I can’t recommend it enough. I buy far fewer new games these days, for one, though I did love Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, and several games I’ve started but not yet finished.

One of my biggest games this year was Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I finally finished on the PS5. Hell of a game—if any video game can be called a masterpiece, that one comfortably belongs in the category. I also rolled credits on Mass Effect 2 and 3, and thought the latter was far superior to the middle chapter in spite of the general consensus. Regardless of how you feel about the very end, that game is quite an achievement for BioWare, and I hope Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is even half as engrossing.

I spent a lot of time playing Fortnite and Call of Duty online this year—something I plan to do a lot less of in 2023—but had plenty of fun doing it. I replayed a lot of familiar favorites: Skyrim, Halo Infinite, Fallout: New Vegas, Miles Morales. Most of my hours on the Nintendo Switch were spent with KotOR and KotOR II, and I’m currently struggling through an attempt to replay Morrowind on the Xbox, which is both painful and rewarding. I’m rediscovering a lot of the reasons why I fell in love with it twenty years ago.

At the movies

I didn’t go to the theater much this year, but I did watch 209 movies—most of them at home on my 65-inch TCL 5-Series. My top ten films of 2022 were The Fabelmans, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, del Toro’s Pinocchio, Watcher, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Pearl, The Batman, Nope, and Hellraiser. Fabelmans and Top Gun in particular made my heart soar; it’s nice to see both Spielberg and Cruise still delivering career-best work a full two decades after Minority Report, which was my favorite movie for a long time.

Outside of those ten, I also loved Kimi, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Revealer, and Confess, Fletch.

As far as new-to-me classics, I had a very fulfilling year working my way through the gaps in my Carpenter and Mann viewing, if nothing else—They Live, Prince of Darkness, Elvis ’79, Big Trouble in Little China, In the Mouth of Madness, Cigarette Burns, Ali, The Insider, The Keep… I spent a lot of time studying my favorite Carpenter flicks last year as I wrote the treatment for a horror script that’s lived in my head for a while, but I didn’t want to watch Prince of Darkness till after I’d finished a detailed outline of the story. In 2022, I logged fifteen Carpenter films and seven from Mann.

I saw Citizen Kane, F for Fake, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather, Part II, Solaris (2002), The Meyerowitz Stories (every bit as good as Marriage Story), Twin Peaks season two and The Missing Pieces, Killing Them Softly, Jaws, Your Name, The Gambler (the one with James Caan, not Marky Mark), Bonnie and Clyde, Near Dark, The Hidden, Silent Running, the original 3:10 to Yuma, Joe Kidd.

It’s been a hard, stressful, scary, transformative year. But I’m grateful for the strides I made, both personal and professional, and for the media and stories that inspired me along the way.

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[crisis-aversion]

I feel the need to elaborate on this. Mostly because it’s kinda funny

Of the theatrical releases (that I am aware of) I have seen:

The Phantom Menace 1 1/13 times

Attack Of The Clones 1 time

Revenge Of The Sith 1/7 times

A New Hope 2 times

Empire Strikes Back 1 time

Return Of The Jedi 0 times

The Force Awakens 2 1/13 times

The Last Jedi 2 1/3 times

The Rise Of Skywalker 2 times

Rogue One 2 times

Solo 1 time

The main reason I never finished the OG Trilogy is that the first time we tried to watch SW through, when I was like. 12. We started at the beginning

Chronologically

So with two movies before we got to ANH (we didn’t own ROTS at the time, and in fact I don’t believe we do even now), we got distracted before we actually watched ESB

This is how movie marathons usually go in the family. We make it a few movies in and get distracted, so usually we never make it through the whole series. Or at minimum I’ve lost the ability to pay full attention to the third in a trilogy

To be fair we did watch a trilogy that time. It just wasn’t the correct three movies

Dad found ROTS at the library, but I had also borrowed the Marvel Encyclopedia at the same time (12 year old me loved Marvel). So I was too busy reading that to pay attention to ROTS. I only actually paid attention to a small handful of scenes

I didn’t have the same problem of not finishing the trilogy with the sequels, but it may have been because I didn’t watch them back to back because the dvds came from different christmases (I don’t remember whether I got them all at once or roughly in the same years they came out in). I half shipped Reylo after the first time I watched the sequels, mostly bc I love enemies to lovers and liked Kylo

Solo was one I got on dvd for Christmas roughly the same year as release

Rogue One is one of the few movies I’ve seen in theater when it was originally playing, and I own it on Blu-ray so I’ve seen it twice (though I wasn’t paying too much attention the second time, dad wanted to watch it and I was distracted by something I don’t remember)

The second time we attempted to watch the og trilogy we made (technically) more progress then the first time. We started on ANH so we wouldn’t have the series burn out but we still never managed to make it to the third movie

The second time we watched the sequels was bc I randomly found some sequel fics while reading SW stuff in AO3 and realized I barely remembered who these characters are and declared an impromptu binge. Somehow we made it all the way through for once, but that was mostly because I had somehow obtained a hyperfixation on Hux from fanfic despite not remembering who Hux even was other than a vague memory from the first time I watched the sequels of going “he’s hot” *not that long after* “oh no”

I found Reylo (and especially Rey) boring the second time around and have come to actively hate it due to the inability to kriffing find sequels fan content that doesn’t have it unless you manually filter it out

Not that long after that I rewatched approximately the last ten minutes of TFA and 50 minutes or so of TLJ because they were on Cable when I was visiting my grandparents and I still had a hyperfixation (why my SW fixation is specifically on the sequels, one specific book probably no one has heard of, and a parasocial relationship with the clones through my one friend and fanfic is beyond me. No one ever said I have taste)

I’d finish watching the og trilogy, but the tv and VCR aren’t compatible and the DVD player we connected them through died. So I physically can’t until we either find dvd/blu-ray copies thrifting or get to the library

For reference, the copies we own are as follows:

Phantom Menace: a VHS recorded off (presumably) a tv broadcast (incidentally how I came to rewatch the first ten minutes of it during our Matrix binge in 2020, because it was immediately after the first one and dad wanted a nap before we started the rest of the trilogy)

Attack Of The Clones: thrifted dvd (somehow, twice. Presumably mom or I forgot it was ROTS not AOTC we didn’t own yet)

Revenge Of The Sith: none, to my knowledge

A New Hope/Empire Strikes Back/Return Of The Jedi: VHS, in a box set. I don’t know how or when dad came into possession of it

Sequels and Solo: dvds, brand new

Rogue One: blu-ray, brand new

[lil-tachyon]

Hey logan, i'm trying to get into sci fi more, do you have any media, movies or otherwise you'd say it's a must watch for someone starting to get into it? Thanks

Super broad question! And precisely the thing I love to talk about. Although unfortunately I really don’t watch a lot of movies or TV so the best I can do for you is list some stuff I like and hope that you find something you enjoy. If we were talking sci-fi literature, that’s something I would probably write a full essay on- if anyone’s interested in reading my thoughts on that and getting my really long list of recommendations, just let me know. I might even do it on my own anyway, just for fun…

I guess if we’re going to talk about “must-watch” sci-fi movies then we have to talk about Star Wars first just to get it out of the way. I’ll keep it brief, far too much ink has been spilt regarding this franchise and you can find more in-depth opinions somewhere else. The original trilogy is great- there’s a reason it launched one of the biggest media franchises of the past 45 years. Endlessly rewatchable, somehow still looks better than basically any other big budget SFF popcorn movie and just plain fun. If you somehow haven’t seen the OT yet, get to it. 

You don’t really need to watch any other Star Wars stuff aside from the OT. The prequels aren’t exactly essential and they’re unquestionably worse in terms of dialog, acting, pacing (i.e. the nuts and bolts of storytelling.) If you’ve never watched Star Wars before you won’t have any nostalgia for them so you can skip them. Don’t even bother with the Disney sequels- pointless and incoherent. If you DO for some reason want more Star Wars in your life I can give you two recommendations: 

First is the masterpiece that is Genndy Tartakovsky’s (creator of Samurai Jack) Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) (no, not the CGI Clone Wars show you’re probably thinking of). Split into 25 episodes ranging in length from two to twelve minutes, the whole show is only about two hours long but boy is it sweet. There are no main characters and not much in the way of an overarching plot. Instead the show is composed of a series of rapid-fire vignettes that take place across the entire Star Wars galaxy and tell dozens of unique microstories. It’s pulpy and fun and never takes itself too seriously and the whole thing is on YouTube because for some reason Disney actually hates everything that made Star Wars good and hasn’t taken the time to copyright strike it.

Second recommendation is the Mandalorian. I didn’t believe it when people started raving about it, but it really is great and tells a poignant, self-contained, original story. It’s not perfect and it definitely suffers from the Disneywars curse of really obnoxious references to the OT, but it’s absolutely worth the watch.

Damn that’s so much more time than I wanted to spend on Star Wars. I always forget how much of a SW geek I am until I start talking about it…

Quick list of the other big “essentials” that I’ve seen and can recommend before I get into more personal stuff (in no particular order):

Alien (1979) - Weird and creepy and gross and with impeccable visual design in every single frame. I need to rewatch it, only seen it once.

Akira (1988) - Massive, groundbreaking, unsettling, beautiful. Brought cyberpunk into the visual realm, brought anime to the West in a whole new way. I could rewatch it a hundred times. 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - A foundational film that moves at a foreboding crawl and leaves you feeling unsafe and unsure of what you just watched. (Also my dad’s band referenced the monkey scene in their big-label debut music video, so that should be reason enough to watch it)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - UFOs, the American West, and the most 70s-looking cast imaginable. It feels more a product of its time than most of the others on this list, but I love it for that and it does nothing to make it any less impactful or engrossing.

The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) - I waited waaaaaay too long to watch these. I only got around to seeing them this past year in fact. I had always just written them off in my head as nothing more than cheesy 80s action flicks but my God are they good and so much different from what I expected. The first one is basically a sci-fi slasher film and the second is probably the best sequel film I’ve ever seen and takes everything in a totally different direction that still manages to build on all the groundwork laid by the first. Please watch, don’t be like me and wait until you’re twenty-six. 

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) - My favorite Ghibli movie. For being a film about people flying airships and fighting bugs in a giant toxic jungle, it really has a lot of important stuff to say and says it very well.

Castle in the Sky (1988) - Hits a lot of the same plot beats as Nausicaä and, imo, suffers a little bit in comparison but still a great anime sci-fantasy romp. 

The Thing (1982) - Disgusting sci-fi horror in the glacial Antarctic wastes

The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) - The first, the best. Sure, it’s inconsistent in terms of quality, but it’s at least consistently weird and inventive and the good episodes are really damn good. Also something I love about it is the acting- it’s very over-the-top expressive and exaggerated. Feels more like it’s meant for the stage than for the small screen. You don’t see a lot of TV like that these days. 

The X-Files (1993-2002, 2016-2018) - Absolutely in my top 5 TV shows. It was great to watch as a 14-year-old because I was still young enough to find it scary, and it’s great on every re-watch because I can really appreciate how much chemistry Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny have and how fun, goofy, and overall weird it is. As I recall it starts to decline noticeably in season 8. Season 9 you’ll have to grit your teeth to get through. The 2016-2018 revival is half composed of unwatcheable “storyline” episodes and half surprisingly good-to-great “monster of the week” episodes.

Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) - My number one favorite anime, I love everything about it. So much effort goes into small background details and characters that only appear for a few seconds and it really goes a long way to making the whole universe of the show feel so real that you could see yourself living in it. Also the soundtrack is top-notch, I listen to it regularly. 

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996) and End of Evangelion (1997) - Another one that I took too long to get to and to be honest I probably would’ve been more into it had I watched it when I was younger, but it’s still great and I recommend it. Features a classic “inflation suit” episode

Stuff that’s less “essential” but I really like it:

Planetes (2003-2004) - My second favorite anime. Starts off as a workplace slice-of-life and slowly builds into a really, really emotional conclusion. Can’t recommend it enough.

Forbidden Planet (1956) - A sci-fi adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (I’m an illiterate piece of shit so I can’t tell you how good an adaptation it is). It’s slow-paced and eerie, and way more atmospheric than its decidedly 1950s visuals would lead you to believe.

Digimon: The Movie (2000) / Summer Wars (2009) - A short story: as a kid I probably watched the Digmon Movie about a million times. It was huge with kids my age and was probably an entire generation’s first introduction to ska-punk. It’s a great movie. Anyway, fast forward about a decade and a half and at some point I sit down to watch Summer Wars with my brother on no other information than that we heard it’s good. And it is! But pretty soon into the movie we both notice something odd- it seems to feature almost the exact same plot as the Digmon Movie. After a bit of digging we find out that they were both directed by the same guy and it seems he just had this idea in his head for a story that he really wanted to make for over a decade because Summer Wars is basically a more mature and less merchandisable remake. Watch them both!

Samurai Jack (2001-2004, 2017) - the first cartoon I saw as a kid that really made me say “finally, something for me!” I wouldn’t get another TV show aimed at me that was “cool” and “epic” and “badass” until ATLA came out. Nothing beats watching a samurai fight a million robots and bounty-hunters on an endless quest to go back to the past. Also the season 5 revival is great and I genuinely don’t get why a lot of people seemed to really hate on it. 

Moon (2009) - It’s been a LONG time since I watched it, but I liked it quite a bit. A lonely lunar miner runs into what seems to be his double and things get spooky…

Prospect (2018) - More space miners running into trouble! Really great costume and prop design on a super small budget (but you wouldn’t know it from how good it looks). 

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989) - Listen- I’m not a gundam guy. I don’t care about all the different robots and I’m not about to watch 40 years of TV to try and figure out the story. Which is why War in the Pocket is great because it’s six episodes long and it just tells a really touching story punctuated by cool robot battles and you don’t need to know anything about Gundam to enjoy it.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987) - A story about a space race set on an alternate world. What really sets it apart is the visual design- every detail from books, to currency, to texts to vehicles, to architecture is unique enough to feel totally alien but also grounded enough to somehow feel familiar. It’s quite an achievement. Trigger Warning: there’s a very uncomfortable rape scene in the middle of the film that seems to come out of nowhere. I’m still not sure why they chose to include it.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999) - Military police get up to some real nasty stuff in alternate history fashy 1950s Japan. Very depressing, all my friends complained to me about how sad it was even though they went into it knowing what it was about and agreeing to watch it with me. You just can’t win sometimes!

That’s about all I have for now. I know it’s all kind of basic bitch stuff but like I said, I don’t often watch movies/TV. Hope it helps and thanks for the great question!

[jooniens]

Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag

Hello and welcome to the blog! This will be both a tag and an introduction to me and my reading style/taste. If I don’t have an answer specific to this year, I will substitute it with a general answer. 

As of June 26th, I have read 18 books this year. According to Goodreads that is still 1 book behind schedule (I’m never good enough for you am I Goodreads?) Despite Goodreads attempting to gaslight me, I am very proud of my reading progress this year and I can’t wait to share it with you! 

BTW: My Goodreads account will be linked at the end of this post. 

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Best book you have read so far in 2022? 

Definitely Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It was my first Sanderson book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a lot more developed than other fantasy books that I have previously read. 

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2022?

Well, I have only read one sequel in 2022 (more to come) and that was Well of Ascension, the second book in the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. This book felt mostly like filler but the last 100-150 pages were a whirlwind that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

New release you haven’t read yet, but want to?

There are two that come to mind, one being Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. I’ve been anxiously waiting for this release and when it was finally released I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE! Now I can find it but other books just catch my interest first.

Most anticipated release for the second half of 2022?

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I have absolutely loved everything I have read by Reid, she is such a talented author and I can’t wait to read another one of her books. I’m not the biggest fan of the cover (and honestly if the UK version is better I may just wait for it) but I’m nevertheless excited. 

Biggest Disappointment?

A full review for this is going to be on my Goodreads (It does contain spoilers so beware) but my biggest disappointment was All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. For being a Pulitzer Prize winner, I had high expectations for this book that it did not meet, again my full review is on Goodreads. 

Biggest Surprise?

My biggest surprise this year was American Panda by Gloria Chao. It wasn’t the best thing I have ever read by any means but it was pleasantly surprising and a comforting read. 

New Favorite Author?

Brandon Sanderson by far. Ever since I have finished Mistborn I have wanted to start the Stormlight Archive. 

Newest Fictional Crush? 

KELSIER FROM MISTBORN!!!! I love that man with my entire heart. 

Newest Favorite Character?

Kelsier(Mistborn), Vin(Mistborn), Gansey(The Raven Cycle), Darius (Darius the Great Is Not Okay).

Book That Made You Cry?

Ladies, Gentlemen, Theydies, and anyone else, take another shot for Mistborn by Branson Sanderson.

Book that made you happy?

Dumplin’, American Panda, Darius the Great Is Not Okay, and Scythe (My only re-read this year). 

Favorite Book to Movie Adaptation you have seen so far this year? 

I’m bending the rules on this and I’m just going to say which adaptation I am most excited about which is The Summer I Turned Pretty Amazon Prime original series. The book is not a literary work of genius but it was a comforting read and I hope the show will provide that same level of comfort. 

Favorite Review you have written this year?

I’m new to the review game but the only review I have written this year that was in-depth was for All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. My tone was critical in it and possibly a bit rude but I was really upset after I had finished it. I might need to go review that soon....

Most beautiful book you bought this year?

I was on a book-buying ban for most of the year but I have to say it is a tie between Spin The Dawn by Elizabeth Lim and The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Honorable mention goes to (you guessed it) Mistborn and Well of Ascension. The artist did such an amazing job on those covers. 

What books do you really need to read by the end of the year? 

I have so many that I want to read this year. Up on the list is Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, The Unhoneymooners, The Poppy War and These Violent Delights. 

This concludes the tag! I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you stick around for the next half of the year!

Much Love, 

June <3 

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/87465579-emma 

[kinsey3furry300]

A very confused Star Wars Fan desperately tries to justify their belief that “Caravan of Courage” shows the way forward for the franchise. No, really.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved Star Wars. And I mean, all of it. The books, the games, the Lego, the spin-offs: I even enjoy the Holiday Special in a The Room so-bad-you-just-need-to-see-it sort of way.  But particularly the films. But here is when we run into the big problem: I’m just the wrong age. The original trilogy launched before I was born, the prequel trilogy hit cinemas when I was already a teen and while I went and saw them and enjoyed them, I was at that age where I was self-conscious about seeing a “kids” film, and hyper-aware of how silly and cringy those films were in parts. So my indoctrination, my inoculation with the Star Wars bug didn’t happen in the cinema, and it didn’t happen with any of the main franchise works. It happened on home video, on a skiing trip in the French Alps in the early 90’s. I’d have been about 6, and this was the first time I’d ever been abroad other than to see relatives in Ireland.  And I loved it: to this day I love skiing, but more than that, I have very, very fond childhood memories of this trip. This was shortly before I lost my biological mother to cancer, she’d have received her diagnosis just after we got back from the trip. This was when my younger sister stopped being an annoying screaming thing and became and became an actual person I could talk and play and share ideas with, this was before the combination my mothers long illness and my father having just launched his own IT start up meant I didn’t see him or her any more, despite the fact they were in the same house as me. This was this wonderful, nostalgic child-hood bubble when my family was intact, and nothing could ever go wrong. I skied all day with mum and dad, and would come back to the chalet in the evening. It was an English speaking chalet, I met my first real-life American there, and having grown up in the 90’s in the UK nothing was cooler than making friends with an actual American my own age. He had a hulk Hogan action figure with springs in the legs so if you put him on a hard surface and punched his head down, when you let go he’d jump really high in the air. We used to play with it together in the bath, back in that weird 90’s time-bubble when it was possible to convince two sets of parents that this kid you’d just met was you best friend in the world and of course shared bath time was, somehow, normal and appropriate. And fresh from bath time, tired from the day, the parents would give us some hot coco, dump us kids in front of the tv and grab the first shitty low-budget VHS they could find to keep us distracted while they went to the bar. In this particular time, in this particular place, that shitty low budget cartoon was the  complete set of the 1985 Lucasfilm/ABC Ewoks cartoon, plus the two spin off movies, and to this day that cheap, kitschy, kind of bad series has a special warm and cosy place in my heart. I remember being enthralled by the world, in love with the characters, applied by the bad guys and the injustice they caused (to this day I’m still irate about that time Wicket lost his set of beads documenting his progress towards becoming a full warrior and the older Ewoks basically said, tough, you need to re-earn all those merit badges from scratch. This struck me as exactly the sort of bullshit an adult would pull, and pissed me off) and on tenterhooks about what would happen to the characters.

It was also, by a coincidence, the first ever Star Wars media I was exposed to, and the above combination of events probably explains a lot about me.

So I was surprised, the other day, when scrolling Disney+, to find they’d added Caravan of Courage AND Battle for Endor to the roster in my region. Surely Disney wouldn’t want their slick, cool brand associated with this old trash? Surely there could be no place for this in the post-Mandalorian Star Wars cannon? Surely this is a horrible mistake some intern made, right?

Unless…. What if I’ve miss-remembered? What if it’s not just rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, and it’s, in fact, secretly really, really good?

I rushed to my comfy chair, got a blanket, dimmed the lights, made some coco (with rum in it, because why the hell not?) and sat down to re-examine this lost gem.

And wow: it’s every bit as shit as you’d expect.

It has aged exactly as poorly as you’d expect a cheap, mid 80’s direct to video spin-off to age. Caravan of Courage? More like Caravan of Garbage, am I right?

And yet… I still enjoyed every moment.

And it was sitting there, in my pyjamas, watching a cheaply made direct to video cash-grab from just before I was born, seeing it again for the first time in nearly 30 years, and I realised something.

It doesn’t really matter if this film is bad, so long as I enjoy it. And if it doesn’t really mater if this is bad, then I, like many Star Wars fans, wasted a huge amount of time and emotional effort on being butthurt about stuff I didn’t like about the Rise of Skywalker and it’s ilk. Because somewhere, right now, a tired and frustrated parent is putting Disney+ on to keep their kids quiet for two hours. And they won’t think too hard about what they put on, so long as it keeps little Timmy busy for a bit. Somewhere, right now, a kid is watching Rise of Skywalker, and it’s the first Star Wars media they’ve ever seen.

And that’s okay. Because we don’t know what that kids home life is like. We don’t know if it’s good or bad. Maybe it’s great, maybe it’s about to take a dramatic plunge like mine did, and this moment here will be the cosy, warm memory they look back on in 30 years time, and that’s beautiful.  They’re getting introduced to a fun, wonderful fantasy world that could be with them all their lives, through good times and bad, and as fans we should be happy about that.

Star Wars will never, die: it’s too darn profitable, Disney will never let it. And while I hope they learn from their mistakes and make sure every future Star Wars is a timeless gem of story-telling, statistically, if you keep making enough films, some of them will be bad. And while I’d like them all to be great, it’s still okay if they’re bad.

Because nothing can take away my memories of that week in that chalet. Nothing can take-away my memories of when they put the original trilogy on in cinemas for the special edition and I had my jaw hit the floor with how good it was on the big screen, not knowing or caring who shot first. Nothing can take away you memories of the Original Trilogy, the Prequels, or the Clone Wars. Nothing can tarnish the bits of the sequil trilogy that you like, and there are good bits in there.

But wait, what about continuity? What about the sacred, perfect written time-line that used to exist?

Well, what about it? Have you seen any other big, epic fantasy universe before? They’re all a mess. A work of fiction, particularly fantasy, can be extensive, or tightly written, but not both. Harry Potter is only seven books, and the last two feel, tonally, like they’re from an entirely different series. I love them, but the grim-dark kicked in so fast you’ll get whiplash. The Hobbit is a perfect written self-contained novel, and LOTR is *The* big boy high-fantasy trilogy: fast forward 50 years, and Christopher Tolkien is desperately squeezing every last drop of money out of his father’s corpse by finishing and publishing every unfinished note JRR ever wrote right down to his shopping lists. Even Dune goes of the rails with sequels. I can only think of four fantasy works that are both extensive and consistently tightly written, Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time, Malazan: Book of the Fallen and Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. And even then, the prequels and spin-offs mess with the timelines: the Dunk and Egg novella’s change some character’s canonical ages and timelines, Wheel of Time was going slowly off the rails even before the Jordan died, Forge of Darkness made what was a good metaphor for the creation of it’s world into a literal war deep in the past, and Sanderson’s first Novel Elantris got a re-write to bring it more in line with the rest of the shared universe. The MCU, oft held up as the modern example of tightly planned, well thought out ongoing storytelling, is a lie: it was never as pre-planned out as Disney wants us to think; the first Iron Man, apparently, barely had a script, with Downey ad-lib-ing most of his scenes. None of the MCU films are direct sequels to each-other other than Infinity war and Endgame. There are three Iron Man films, and Three Thor films, and none continue an ongoing story line across multiple films, and the Cap films barely continue an arc, but only where Cap’s relationship with Natasha and Bucky is involved.  Much like these, Star War’s cannon is a complete, nightmarish, confusing, tangled, illogical mess. And it has been since 1984, as Caravan of Courage proves. It was never consistent and well planned.

And that’s okay.

I used to care about plot holes. I used to care about which works were cannon in Star Wars lore. I’m over that now. I’m happy to imagine the books, films and games not as a blow-by-blow historical account of a galaxy far far away, but as campfire stories from within this fun, imaginative world that we’re all invited to listen to. Stories that are in-universe myth and folklore, that we can all snuggle up and listen to while drinking highly alcoholic rum and remembering better times, knowing that wherever the future throws at us, no matter how the world goes to hell around us, we’ll still have the memories, and the ability to make our own new stories in the wonderful Star Wars world we all share.

And that’s okay. No, more than that: that’s beautiful.

Also Star Wars is completely unambiguous on the fact we’re allowed to kill fascists no matter how many times they keep coming back with a new logo, so that’s timely I guess.

So, there’s my hot take two-years after everyone else stopped caring about this stuff, as per bloody usual. Tell me why I’m wrong below, and does anyone else have any truly awful spin-off shows that they kind of have a nostalgic soft spot for?

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

ohh i saw your answer about the sequels of star wars. id love to read you tear through the whole trilogy

Well, I’ve avoided this ask long enough. Part of the reason is this is really a huge topic, far too much for one ask, so I’m going to have to do this at a very high level.

In short, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is what one gets when you slap together the goal of selling merchandise and making tons of money, being as risk averse as humanly possible, adding a handful of warring directors with incredibly different visions, and having virtually no imagination when it comes to the imagining and writing of characters.

And we get this beautiful, awful, franchise that for reasons beyond me people seem to actually like (though interestingly, no one seems to like all of it, they may actually like one or two of the films, but no one says all three are actually in any realm of good).

With that, let’s begin.

The Force Awakens

For me this is easily the most tolerable of the sequel trilogy: it’s not great, it’s not terrible. It’s thoroughly watchable, you can be taken along for the movie’s journey and not raise your eyebrows too much at the action and leave the theater feeling this maybe wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

There’s a good reason for that. That reason is called the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen in cinema in my life.

“The Force Awakens” is just “A New Hope” wearing a mustache. Only, it’s one of those cheap mustaches you get from a party store that, if you stare at it too long, just looks like the most false and awful thing you’ve ever seen. The mustache actively makes it worse. “The Force Awakens” is “A New Hope”, but worse.

Seriously, every major character, every major plot point, every major scene I can go directly back to “A New Hope”.

Our story begins when the Resistance, at great cost to our valiant heroes including torture at the hands of the Emperor’s second in command, sends a file out into the wilderness to be received by his people. This file contains plans for the Death Star.

The film then focuses on Luke, er Rey, getting involved in the Resistance, boarding the Death Star, and successfully destroying at the same time even at the lost of a beloved mentor that she just met (trading in Obi-Wan for Han Solo). 

Our evil empire is run by an evil emperor who is so evil he sits in a chair, is served by very Moth Tarkin-esque human storm troopers, and has a second in command who revels in the Darth Vader get up (for no other reason that it makes him feel cool but we’ll get into this).

It’s “A New Hope”. Rey is Luke, Han Solo is Obi-Wan, Poe is a kind of Han Solo, Kylo Ren is Vader, Snoke is Palpatine, Hux is Tarkin, BB-8 is R2-D2, etc.

“But that’s not terrible,” you say, “I liked A New Hope?”

First, it is terrible, it gives a very bad sign of where the sequel trilogy is headed and is just lazy writing. It means that those who produced this franchise were so terrified of taking risks, of possibly ending up mocked as the prequels were, that they will deliver exactly what the original trilogy was. And what’s that? Uh, evil empires, scrappy desert kids, AND MORE DEATH STARS!

That brings us to point number two, the world of Star Wars after the events of the original trilogy shouldn’t support such things. And, if it does, my god what a bleak existence this place has turned into.

The First Order being able to rise easily from the Empire’s remains means that Luke accomplished nothing. Anakin sacrificed himself and had his moment of redemption for nothing. There was no happy ending to the Original Trilogy, our heroes failed miserably, and there is no indication that our new band of heroes can possibly succeed in their place. (More on this as the movies progress).

We now are in a galaxy where this new Republic is so pathetic that Leia doesn’t even give it the time of day and builds her own private army to battle the Empire. The First Order is able to not only rebuild a massive army by raiding villages on many different worlds and stealing children and do so successfully for at least ten years but is able to build a Death Star bigger than any we’ve ever seen before. 

And the movie tries to convince us these are completely new problems, that Luke Skywalker is a hero (remember this is TFA, not TLJ yet), and that somehow these things just sprung up out of nowhere. BUT YEAH, RESISTANCE, WOO!

As for Rey, she’s like... a worse version of Luke. Her only motivation through the entire series is her trauma at being abandoned by her parents. That’s it, there’s nothing else to her, nothing else she ever wants or feels conflicted by. She struggles with the dark side because... the dark side? Genetics? Unclear? She’s absurdly, ridiculously, powerful in a way that’s acknowledged but never that acknowledged (we’ll get into this) and the movies just fail to sell me on her in any way.

Honestly, an easy fix for me would have just been making Rey a much younger character. I could believe a fourteen-year-old having stayed in the desert, scrounging for scraps, believing her parents are coming back every day now. As a twenty-something year old... It starts getting hard to believe she never left. (Also, this gets the benefit of getting rid of Reylo, which is always a plus for me).

As for Kylo Ren, I legitimately walked out of TFA thinking he was supposed to be comic relief. He’s what happens when someone desperately wants a likable, redeemable, villain and we get... Well, as a reminder his opening scene is one of genocide: he pillages and destroys a town with no regret and brutally tortures a man for information. We’re told he’s like this “because evil evil Snoke” and that may well be but throughout the film (and the series) it becomes clear that Kylo Ren’s main motivation is he deseprately wants to be cool. He wants to be a badass like Vader, he dresses in Vader cosplay (either ignoring or not knowing that Vader only dressed like that because his body was completely destroyed), he has these huge temper tantrums and nobody respects him because he’s a toddler in a Vader suit. 

He murders his own father, his parents who (at least in the films themselves) show every willingness to take him back and forgive him what he’s done, so that he can fully embrace his own “evilness”. In other words, he commits patricide to feel cool about himself, then it doesn’t work. 

And the movie series really banks on me feeling conflicted about Kylo Ren or at least wanting him to be redeemed. Granted, the wider internet seems to love him, I just can’t.

Oh, before I forget, the other thing I love about Kylo Ren is that the movies insist he’s a) strong in the Force b) is equal to Rey. Rey consistently beats the shit out of him with 0 training. Kylo Ren has been training in the Force for years. Guys, they are not a Dyad, Rey is far far far stronger than he is and for whatever reason the films never want to admit it. Because I guess we like things coming in pairs now.

But yes, “The Force Awakens”, at a distance not great nor terrible, but a rip off of a movie we’ve already seen that left me going “Welp, the next one’s probably The Empire Strikes Back then I guess we’re getting Ewoks”. I was sort of right on that and sort of wrong.

The Last Jedi

So, JJ Abrams clearly had a vision of where he wanted this sequel trilogy to go. He set up these big questions such as what’s up with Finn, who are Rey’s parents and why was she left on this nowhere planet, will Kylo Ren be redeemed and how, who is Snoke, etc.

Now, I’m not saying these aren’t stupid questions. To be frank, they kind of are. Finn being Force Sensitive was the most inconsequential thing I’ve ever heard of, Rey’s parents should not have been used to drive the plot the way it was, as spoken above I’m clearly team gut Kylo Ren, and that Snoke was actually just Palpatine being the world’s largest cockroach is a beautiful but hilarious answer.

That said, what Johnson did was he decided, “You know what, I’m going to take every trope of Star Wars and completely flip it on its head and absolutely doom the sequel to this movie.”

And by god, he did.

We get a weirdly pointless movie in which Poe, SINGLEHANDEDLY, completely obliterates the Resistance. He first obliterates their bombers by failing to follow command, then goes and bitches about how he’s not put in command when he clearly shows no ability to understand how a military works, actively subverts orders which in turn obliterates the entire Resistance fleet until the only survivors can fit on the Millenium Falcon. They have no ships, no weapons, barely any people, and are ultimately doomed doomed doomed.

We have Finn’s weird subplot with a suddenly introduced character Rose in which the pair aid in Poe’s blowing up the resistance (they send sensitive information using the communication equipment of a guy they do not know, who fully admits to being shady and out for his own skin, and are flabergasted when he betrays them). 

Rose herself is this weirdly sweet person who seems forced into the plot to a) provide a love triangle for Finn and Rey b) provide this forced sunny outlook that I didn’t really need in the film.

We get Rey never really being trained, going into the Cave of Wonders for a few seconds, falling in love with Kylo Ren over weird Force Skype calls (where I did not need to see him shirtless, thank you film) and being horrifically betrayed when Kylo Ren turns out not to be a great guy. Never saw that coming, Rey. 

As for Kylo Ren, well... God, we get Emperor Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, the Emperor. I’m not even that upset about the anticlimactic murder of Snoke (that was kind of funny, especially in the context of Palpatine going, “Bitch, please, you’re in my chair” immediately in the next film) but just Kylo Ren being emperor. And also that the Resistance only escapes at all because he’s so dumb he made their dumb plans seem smart (i.e. concentrates all his firepower on an illusion for ten minutes while Hux goes, “Emperor, sir, we could actually destroy the Resistance right now.”

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t complain about Luke. A lot of people are upset he became a grumpy, miserable, old hermit who sits around waiting for death. Frankly though, in this universe, that’s exactly where he is. He left “Return of the Jedi” thinking he’d saved the world, he’s resurrected the Jedi Order, and all is well. Only a decade later, his students are all murdered by his nephew, the Empire’s back, and he accomplished nothing. He’s an utter failure as a Jedi (though Luke never realizes he knew jack shit about the Jedi Order and was in way over his head but I guess that’s beyond him). Why shouldn’t he go sit on a rock and wait to die? 

Now, did he have to drink that blue dinosaur milk? Well, I guess it was funny, gross but funny so... Sure, I guess he did. But I do like that he gave Rey 0 training, they had one meditation session and then he whined about how Obi-Wan was such a stupid asshole. And then Rey ran off to be with her boyfriend, who then told her that her parents were gutter trash (which again, was funny, but I don’t think that was supposed to be funny).

Of the characters introduced in the movie, the only one I really liked was the hacker, and it was for the actor/the beautiful way in which he gracefully exited stage left with zero shame going, “You all knew I was going to betray you!” You beautiful man, you.

Rise of the Skywalker

First, when something is called “Rise of the Skywalker” you know you’re in for a rough time.

But anyways, TLJ was filled with a controversy Disney didn’t want (half their audience hated it, half loved it, but at least they sold those penguin dolls) so they desperately get Abrams back. Only, what he clearly wanted from his series has been shot to hell, and now he’s left with Emperor Kylo Ren, a completely obliterated Resistance, a dead Luke, a love interest he never planned to introduce for Finn, Rey’s parental crisis being solved with trash people, Snoke just suddenly dead, Hux planning revenge, and then some.

And so, Abrams goes the brave and hilarious route of shouting “PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED”

We open to a fully functioning Resistance (their bomber fleet is back, their fleet period is back, they have all their fully trained personnel). We have Rey getting the Jedi training she needed this time from Leia, who is now a Jedi, because yay feminism rammed down my throat to make the audience feel better. Rose says “It’s cool guys, I don’t want to join the adventure this film, I’m going to stay here and work on robots” so that she can gracefully exit the entire plot. Kylo Ren is demoted from Emperor in two seconds when we discover that a) Snoke was apparently Palpatine b) for unexplained reasons Palpatine’s alive (and I am now convinced that man will never die). Kylo Ren tells Rey at the first opportunity that he lied about her trash parents AND REALLY SHE’S A PALPATINE! THIS WHOLE TIME, REY! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I’M SUPER SERIAL THIS TIME, REY.

Basically, in the course of an overly long movie, Abrams desperately shoves in everything he was trying to get out of the series, while sobbing, and sobbing even harder when things like Finn being Force Sensitive or Lando having a secret daughter get caught. I actually agree with the Producers on this, by the way, the Finn trying to tell Rey something scenes were weird and indicative of a love triangle but him being Force Sensitive instead... It says a lot that the movies did not change when it was removed, at all. And Lando was just this strange cameo who was in the film to make us feel nostalgic.

And this isn’t even getting to the ridiculous 24 hour time limit (which made me think there should have been some video game style clock in the corner letting us know when Dawn of the Third Day is coming), Palpatine’s other secret army on a secret Sith planet that can be easily taken down by taking out one navigation tower, Rey’s hilarious struggle with the dark side in which she has a vision of herself in a cape hissing, Kylo Ren’s hilarious redemption in which the movie in the form of Leia and Han Solo says, “Alright, Ben, it’s time to stop being evil” and he says “okay”, the fight with Palpatine in which I’m supposed to believe he dies for reals because... I have no idea why I’m supposed to believe he’s dead. The Reylo, god the Reylo, and Kylo Ren’s tragic, hilarious, death.

And then, of course, the ending where Rey decides she’s a Skywalker now.

I actually did laugh all the way through “Rise of the Skywalker”, you can’t not, I mean it’s a hilariously awful movie. The only thing that might have made it more hilarious was if we actually did get those Ewoks.

TL;DR

They’re all bad movies, if you want more specifics than this, you’re just going to have to ask me questions.

[beybladefanboy]

Beyblade Seasons Ranked

Here is my personal ranking, from worst to best, of the seasons of Beyblade Metal Fight: Metal Fusion, Metal Masters, Metal Fury, and the awkward spin-off Shogun Steel. Yeah, let’s get into that:

4 Shogun Steel

Honestly even if I did like Shogun Steel for what it is, it would still be at the bottom just by default. It can barely be considered part of the Metal Saga. The main characters in the last three seasons are either absent or reduced to supporting roles in favour of new characters who aren’t nearly as interesting or likeable. It is by definition a spin off. It feels very disjointed from the rest of the series because of these factors along with the lighter tone, the changes to the Beyblade system, and even some continuity errors particularly with Fury. Bringing back Doji again was also the biggest leap in logic this whole series made and feels downright lazy. The whole story just feels like a watered down Fusion with many of the story beats being similar and some characters never growing past mere echoes of the old characters. Some of the bey battles are fun and Ren and Takanosuke are decent characters but there’s a reason this show doesn’t get much attention. It falls into the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy trap of being overly dependent on original series sucker punches for its appeal and not putting as much effort into the new stuff. So as a result, the new stuff, some of which has potential, isn’t as fleshed out as it should be. This show is honestly fine on its own but awful when compared to the Metal Saga and it is comparing itself to the Metal Saga. This show intentionally put itself in the Metal Saga’s shadow and seemed content with being just that: a shadow of greatness.

3 Metal Masters

Okay, this is where I’m gonna start pissing people off. Don’t get me wrong, Masters is great and I don’t think it’s clearly worse than the other two seasons or anything. I think the main three seasons are very close in quality and putting them in any kind of order was incredibly difficult. However, I do think Masters is slightly weaker than Fusion and Fury. First off, it introduces Masamune. I don’t like Masamune. I find his whole “I’m the number 1 blader” shtick incredibly obnoxious and he’s everything I don’t like in real Americans: self absorbed, disloyal, big mouthed, entitled, and just annoying in general. He did have good character development over the course of the season but I personally can’t stand him. The pacing of this season also isn’t the best. With the exception of the Dark Tsubasa arc (which I’ll get to!), the season is just a normal world tournament until they get to America, which I don’t find very interesting. Kenta is also criminally underused. In Fusion he was basically a second main character and there are some episodes specifically following him. Then in Masters, he’s pushed aside in favour of side characters. People say Fury underused characters, and I’ll get to that, but holy crap, Masters gave Kenta no room to grow. Aside from him though, the other characters are used really well. I particularly like how Kyoya and Ryuga are incorporated. This is actually the season where I grew attached to Ryuga during my viewing in December. I was starting to like him in Fusion but this season cemented my newfound attachment. This season also gave us the dark Tsubasa arc, which is one of my favourite plot points from the show overall. It’s a fascinating look into the mind of a character I already really liked and it allowed Tsubasa to develop a lot. I love the conclusion that you cannot drive out the darkness in yourself, you have to accept it as part of who you are in order to properly control it. It’s brilliant, and I can personally relate this message to my own life. The dark Tsubasa arc is probably the strongest part of the season overall as the rest of it until we get to the HD Academy conflict kind of drags for me. However, when we do finally get to the HD Academy conflict, it is very fun. The whole “spiral energy” thing was actually pretty creative and while brainwashing isn’t a new concept for this show, I think they went more in depth with it in this season and it was pretty interesting. So yeah, still a really good season.

2 Metal Fusion

If I was ranking based on nostalgia, this would be number one. In fact, it probably deserves to be number one. However, I do have a few problems with this season that hold it back and it’s not the pacing. Actually, out of all the seasons, Fusion probably has the best pacing. The main villains, Doji and Ryuga, are introduced early in the season and all the characters are developed throughout the season, building up to the final tournament: Battle Bladers, which is also set up fairly early. The story is predictable but very well-structured. My biggest problem with this season is the plot twist with Gingka’s dad. Not only is it painfully obvious, but the reveal of the twist drags the plot to a screeching halt for nearly an entire episode, hurting the pacing and making an entire episode an exposition dump. It also made Gingka’s dad a terrible character. You can argue that him abandoning his teenage son and making him believe he was dead was for the greater good, although I personally still think it’s messed up, but breaking Gingka’s point counter like that was a step way too far. That moment serves to further the story by forcing Gingka to work harder to get into Battle Bladers. But did it have to be his dad who broke the point counter? I argue it didn’t. Gingka’s dad was flat out abusive to his son on that occasion and was pretty cold to him in general as Phoenix and yet the plot and even some of the characters praise Ryo for doing this. Why?! The way the story is structured puts Ryo in the right for abusing his son which disgusts me. That is my biggest problem with this season and possibly the whole series to be honest. I hate it that much. However, apart from that and those random filler episodes with Sora that in my opinion were boring, this season was really solid. Like I said, the story is told well and the characters are all introduced and developed well. Battle Bladers is definitely the highlight of this season, having the most intense battles and hardest hitting moments. Those episodes are exhausting to watch, because of Reiji and Ryuga. Reiji was randomly introduced in Battle Bladers and decided to try and rival Ryuga in how much he could traumatize the characters (and younger me). I have no idea why they decided to do that, but it worked. Ryuga in this season is the best villain in the whole series. He has such a presence to him: his (dubbed) voice, his sadistic expressions, his abilities, the music that plays when he’s onescreen. He’s over the top but in my opinion, Ryuga is the perfect balance between entertaining and intimidating. He’s even slightly sympathetic by the end of the season when he gets taken over by dark power and is seen trying to fight its control. They managed to both make Ryuga an irredeemable psychopath and found a believable way to redeem him. I love that in the end, Gingka isn’t fighting to defeat Ryuga, he’s fighting to defeat the dark power, which came from the greed and hatred of humans. Basically, the problem isn’t humanity, it’s humanity’s greed/hatred and being consumed by these feelings lead to evil. That is genius. This season also had two of my favourite battles in the entire series: Kyoya vs Ryuga, and Gingka vs Ryuga.

1 Metal Fury

Yeah, I said it. Fury is my personal favourite season. It probably has more wrong with it than Masters and Fusion but honestly, Fury’s strengths more than make up for its weaker parts for me. The only problem I have with Fury that actively hinders my enjoyment is Kyoya’s poorly handled arc, which I’ve been over multiple times and wrote a whole fanfiction rectifying. To sum it up briefly: it was rushed and weakened Kyoya’s character when it had the chance to develop him. I will admit this season also had too few episodes. I don’t think it was rushed per say, it just feels like parts are missing. There should’ve been more leading up to Nemesis’ revival and an actual epilogue episode because as it stands now, Fury ends really suddenly without much actual confirmation of where the characters we know and love ended up. It’s kind of jarring. Overall however, I really love Fury. I love the adventure style story and there's so much variety to the bey battles this time around, both in terms of the beys themselves and the stadiums. It’s just more interesting to watch. It also did a great job giving all the major characters victories, not just Gingka. This is something Masters also did well and a gripe I have with Fusion: Gingka gets all the major victories in Metal Fusion and pushes the other characters to the wayside. Well, Masters and Fury fixed this issue in my opinion. The very final fight of Fury against the shadow Nemesis could’ve been executed better in my opinion. However, it hits all the right emotional beats for a final battle and still grabs my attention rewatching it, so I can put aside my criticisms of it while watching it. Also, I like that “destiny” is something these characters are controlling themselves and can go either way rather than being some unstoppable force that they will all give in to eventually otherwise they’re villains. Because that’s how Yugioh does it and it’s probably my biggest problem with that show. In that series, it feels like the characters are all just blindly accepting “destiny” and those that don’t, Kaiba and Marik most notably, are deemed villains for wanting to take control over their lives and not be governed by some invisible force. Yes, I know Marik went to some horrible extremes using this logic but it still bothers me that the only characters in that show that don’t throw their lives away blindly following someone else’s whims are deemed villains. It’s just kind of messed up. Fury thankfully subverts this. “Destiny” is not an unstoppable force in Beyblade, it’s the will of the characters and those characters are allowed to make their own choices. It makes the story more interesting and the characters more likeable because the characters are the ones driving the story, which feels so much more natural. Yeah, I really like the characters in Fury. Honestly, I’m more attached to Yuki, King, and Chris than anyone introduced in Masters and the other legendary blader characters all bring something different and interesting to the table that I don’t think older characters could have. I also like how the old characters are used. Sure, Tsubasa and Yu are underused this season. But guess who also got a lot of focus last season? Tsubasa and Yu. And some of the characters who were underused in Masters, Kyoya and Kenta, get more focus in this season. They did mess up Kyoya’s arc in my opinion but the effort is there and I appreciate his presence before and after that. Kenta especially was severely underused in Masters so this season decided to make him relevant again and they did it in such an endearing way. You all know how much I love Ryuga and Kenta’s friendship. It’s one of the things that should have gotten more focus but what we do get is good enough build up. This season was the one that drew the most emotion out of me during my most recent viewing and that was because of Ryuga and Kenta. I was devastated by Ryuga’s death (even if he may not actually be dead, that’s certainly what it felt like in the moment) and the scene where he gives Kenta his power was the most touching moment in the entire show for me.

Well, that ranking probably pissed some people off. Again, I love the classic three seasons. (I’m not a fan of Shogun Steel but it has its moments.) Choosing between the three of them like that was incredibly difficult, especially Fusion and Fury. In the end, I just had to go with my gut.

[minettestan]

Do you have a tag for games you recommend? I'm always looking for new games and my experience with point and click or 90s computer games is sorely lacking.

💕My favorite question💕 I took one of my old posts and updated it, so here!

💕 Personal Favorite

💀 Scary Content

👧 Female Protagonist

✨ Important to the genre’s history

📚 Tricky for new players, look up controls or a walkthrough to get started

❕  Difficult

👿 Potential insensitive content

The Colonel’s Bequest (1989) $5.99 💕✨👧💀❕📚

“It is the year 1925, and the roaring '20s are well underway. As Laura Bow, young college student, you've been invited to visit the Colonel's isolated estate. Watch as the Colonel announces his intention to bequeath his millions to all present!”

The classic Sierra murder mystery game, developed by the mother of the genre Roberta Williams. Laura Bow is a sorely overlooked female protagonist. The game works by navigating Laura and typing in commands, kinda of tricky at first. Tons of game overs are a hallmark of a Sierra adventure game so save often! If you play the GOG.com version you get the benefit of autosaves. This game runs a timer, the events of the night will unfold with or without you so stay on your toes and keep moving! The game can be found for free here, but imo the $5.99 is worth it for the easy of access.

The Dagger of Amon-Ra (1992) $5.99 👧✨❕📚👿💀

“Laura Bow, intrepid heroine of The Colonel's Bequest, is back! This time she's trapped in a huge, imposing museum in the dead of night, surrounded by socialites, miscreants, thieves...and a cold, relentless murderer.“

Roberta Williams is back! Iconic game, iconic heroine. It’s still a Sierra game so like TCB there are tons of (iconic) game overs, so save often. Solving puzzles in this one gives me a great serotonin rush. Unfortunately, this game has some racism issues, particularly with the characters Lo Fat and Ramses. While an important game in the genre take it with a huge grain of salt and maybe turn of the (kind of awful) voice acting and enable text-only mode and you’ll avoid some awful accents.

Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1993) $5.99 💕✨

“Sam (a canine shamus) and Max (a hyperkinetic rabbity thing) are hot on the trail of a runaway carnival bigfoot across America’s quirky underbelly in this deranged animated adventure!“

Sam & Max are truly my favorite characters in all of fiction. I have the box art to this game as my phone case. I have Sam & Max action figures, a plush Max on my bed, a print edition of Sam & Max Freeland Police Special #1 framed on my wall. From comics, to games, to cartoons I love these guys. Sam & Max: Hit the Road is a classic of the Lucasarts adventure games. That being said, it’s the least user-friendly of the Sam & Max adventure games and the slowest. I still love it to bits and it’s important to the genre’s history imo.  

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993) $5.99 💕💀👿

“The adventure of Gabriel Knight starts with gathering materials for his new book, and ends up becoming a fight for his very soul. He must now face countless dangers in New Orleans, Africa and Germany, each bringing him ever closer to unraveling the mystery behind suspicious voodoo murders. Haunted by nightmares, he won't give up until he reveals the truth. “

Another Sierra game directed by a woman, Jane Jenson. Gabriel Knight, voiced by Tim Curry, is one of my favorite adventure game protagonists of all time. This game is scary and gory so enter at your own risk! I love the gameplay in this one, I love the narrator, I love the puzzles. But it seems Sierra games have some problems with the representation of minorities. The game is set in New Orleans and focuses on a voodoo cult. Which means consequently the game's major antagonists are all black. Unlike the Dagger of Amon Ra, Sins of the Fathers actually employed black actors to play black characters. There’s a lot to be said about the ways in which white media demonizes voodoo and those who practice it. If you play this one, remain critical. And for the love of god, don’t play the 20th anniversary version.

Day of the Tentacle: Remastered (1993/2016) $14.99 ✨👧❕

“Originally released by LucasArts in 1993 as a sequel to Ron Gilbert’s ground breaking Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle is a mind-bending, time travel, cartoon puzzle adventure game in which three unlikely friends work together to prevent an evil mutated purple tentacle from taking over the world!“

Another classic LucasArts game! This was the first game co-headed by Tim Schaffer who would go on to make the outstanding Grim Fandango! This one is exceedingly wacky and the remastered version has made it more user-friendly than ever.

Toonstruck (1996) $9.99 💕

“Drew Blanc is a cartoon animator and the original creator of the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show.. Drew's boss, Sam Schmaltz, sets him the task of designing more bunnies to co-star in the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show by the next morning. However, the depressed animator soon nods off, suffering from acute artist's block. He wakes early the next morning to inexplicably find his television switched on, announcing the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show. Suddenly, Drew is mysteriously drawn into the television screen and transported to an idyllic two-dimensional cartoon world populated by his own creations, among many other cartoon characters.“

If you’re a fan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? you’ll love this. Christopher Lloyd is Drew Blanc (ha) trying to save a cartoon world through inventory item puzzles. Truly wacky, zany, and ani-mainy. I played Toontown as a kid so I’m predisposed to like this one. This is also the only game with Full Motion Video I’m putting on the list because FMV games can be an acquired taste.

Grim Fandango (1996/2015) $14.99 💕✨

“Something's rotten in the land of the dead, and you're being played for a sucker. Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. But there's trouble in paradise. Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation.“

Yesssssssss! I LOVE Grim Fandango! The iconic game directed by Tim Schaffer has received the best remaster I’ve seen a point n’ click receive. I cannot recommend Grim Fandango enough! Stick with it through the forest section, trust me.

The Last Express (1997) $5.99 ❕ 📚

“Paris, 1914. The world is on the brink of war and this train could push it over the edge. You are Robert Cath, a young American urgently summoned by your old friend Tyler Whitney to join him aboard the Paris-Constantinople express, departing from the Gare de l'Est on July 24th. Arriving late, you discover something has gone terribly wrong. Now you must untangle a complex web of political intrigue, suspense, romance, and betrayal. Every move you make could bring you closer to the truth or your own demise. Bon voyage! “

Ooooh I love a murder on a train! This game features rotoscope animation, which I love. Like The Colonel’s Bequest this game runs in real time, meaning the events of the game will unfold with or without you, depending on where you are at what time you’ll receive different information or see/miss different events. Very replayable with several different outcomes.

Sam & Max Save the World (Remastered) $19.99 💕

“ Sam is a six-foot canine detective with a love of justice. Max is a hyperkinetic rabbity-thing with a taste for mayhem. Together, they're the Freelance Police. And they're about to save the world.”

Sam & Max Save the World, originally released in episodes from 2006-2008 has been remastered and looks AMAZING! After LucasArts was shut down their game devs formed Tell Tale Games and produced three seasons of Sam & Max sequel games, all of which are great. But TellTale was shut down (and screwed over their employees) in 2018. Since then some of their devs have formed Skunkape Games and are currently remastering all of Tell Tale’s Sam & Max series (I’m thrilled). They’ve also adjusted some aspects of the game to make the game more inclusive and less **offensive. So imo it’s worth it to wait for the release of the other seasons to experience Sam & Max in pristine condition. Save the World is the only season out now, but you can get the non-remastered versions of Beyond Time and Space, and In The Devil’s Playhouse, here and here.

 **I should note the “offensive” material in the original is not as egregious as say, The Dagger of Amon-Ra, but it’s just a nice change to see especially in a game I hold dear.

Emerald City Confidential (2009) $9.99 👧

“Explore the underbelly of Oz as Emerald City's most cunning detective! As Petra, you'll be lured deep into mysteries involving new foes and familiar faces; Scarecrow, Lion, and Toto included! This is Oz as you've never seen it before! Solve the mystery and unravel a conspiracy of magic and intrigue! Follow a case through five chapters full of puzzles, witnesses, suspects, and allies in this twist on a timeless classic! “

We’re moving out of the 1990s now. Emerald City Confidential is the Wizard of Oz meets film noir. I played this as 13 year old and have revisited it as an adult and I still eat it up. Wadjet Eye makes consistently good adventure games so check this one out!

The Blackwell Series (2006) $14.99 💕👧

“Meet Rosangela Blackwell, an embittered writer who just found out that she is a medium and that it’s her mission, whether she likes it or not, to assist tormented spirits and investigate other supernatural goings-on. She is assisted by the sardonic Joey Mallone, a ghost from the 1930s.”

Another Wadjet Eye game! I’ve seen these games recommended amoungst the Clue Crew before and I’ll just throw my own endorsement on the pile. Yeah I’m in love with Joey Mallone. What about it?

The Charnel House Trilogy (2015) $5.99 👧💀

“Witness The Charnel House Trilogy, the chronicle of one fateful night aboard a train bound for Augur Peak. Three thrilling, horrifying adventure games in one, from the depths of the Sepulchre.”

Plays like Blackwell, has a Blackwell reference at the beginning, okay you got me. This is a good, if kinda short, game. It’s very creepy, involves murder and has some gore/violence so watch out! I’m still waiting on the sequel Owl Cave!

Thimbleweed Park (2017) $19.99 👧

“A haunted hotel, an abandoned circus, a burnt-out pillow factory, a dead body pixelating under the bridge, toilets that run on vacuum tubes... you’ve never visited a place like this before.“

Made by Ron Gilbert and  Gary Winnick the creators of the classic games Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island Thimbleweed Park is a love letter to the classics of the point and click adventure genre. Features 5 different playable characters, ala Maniac Mansion, who and how many you play is up to you! This one also has stand alone DLCs!

Unavowed (2018) $14.99 👧

“ A demon possessed you one year ago. Since that day, you unwillingly tore a trail of bloodshed through New York City. Your salvation comes in the form of the Unavowed – an ancient society dedicated to stopping evil.”

Okay I haven’t actually played this one, but I want to. Its a Wadjet Eye so you know it’s good. From the reviews I’ve seen this is the Blackwell Series meets Dragon Age. A point and click that incorporates RPG elements, I love that.

I also have a love of the more, strange, and unusual adventure games that I can't necessarily recommend with good conscience. So if you want bizarre 90s and early 2000s games of dubious quality hit me up.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

the old guard: loneliness, connection and immortality

APPARENTLY I am writing a thing about The Old Guard today.

(Bear in mind that I haven’t read the graphic novel, although I’m eager to now, so this is solely based on the movie and some things I’ve read about the comic in articles about the movie.)

Under the cut for spoilers, although the discussion is fairly general.

The Old Guard is an interesting take on immortality for a whole bunch of reasons. The immortals aren’t invulnerable. They feel pain; they can be injured and experience dying. They just know they’ll come back. (Until they don’t, which is another interesting twist.) They have super-fast healing and regenerative powers, but they don’t really have any other superpowers, so they still experience all the needs and vulnerabilities of regular humans. Which is a very interesting twist, and made me realize just how often I’d seen fast healing paired with super strength or other superpowers. But these characters, other than not being able to die, are basically just humans with a lot of combat experience--hundreds or thousands of years’ worth. This might make them more skilled than most mortal humans, but in a fight they don’t have any advantages of superhuman strength or speed, which makes the fights feel a lot more interesting and grounded than your standard superhero fare. (I love that the older immortals all fight with bladed weapons as well as guns, and in some cases prefer them, because they’ve been using those weapons way longer than guns, but writing about the action style in The Old Guard is a whole other post.)

A lot of the things The Old Guard is meditating on are about the price of immortality--about watching the whole sweep of human history and not knowing if anything you’re doing has had meaning, in terms of making the world a better place. It manages to be a lot more existentially melancholy than your standard mainstream superhero fare, but without slipping into completely dour grimdark territory, and I think a lot of that has to do with how much it has to say about human connection and loneliness.

There’s the inherent isolation of immortality: any mortal you have a relationship with will eventually realize that you’re not aging, and every time, you know they will eventually grow old and die, while you will not. There’s the isolation of keeping your secret, since the film makes clear the many ways immortality can get you in trouble. And there’s the psychological isolation of just knowing you will live your life on a profoundly different time scale than everyone else around you.

In this context, the few connections that are possible, with other immortals, become desperately important. (They literally dream of each other, even before they know each other’s identities, and even when physically separated for a long time.)

When death is off the table as an option, it’s clear that isolation is the worst punishment an immortal can face. “She was alone for a long time,” another character says of Andy, and it’s clear that that was terrible. Quynh’s fate (alone, trapped, and suffering indefinitely) is a horrific extreme version of this, and it’s clear Andy still feels guilty, hundreds of years later, that she stopped looking for her. Dying together, even painfully, is something they can have a dark laugh about, but being separated is a trauma that haunts the whole group.

It’s notable to me that of all the immortals, Nicky and Joe are the ones who seem most well-adjusted and at peace with their relationship to life, death and humanity. Still in love after something like 900 years, they can banter about relaxing in Malta even while held prisoner in a medical lab, with a confidence in their shared future that doesn’t feel fake. (And boy am I glad the narrative reinforces that confidence.) And it’s notable that in the heat of the moment, none of them is willing to leave Booker behind in the lab, even though he betrayed them and led them into the one thing they’ve said they try to avoid at all costs, captivity. Even Booker’s betrayal comes from a desire to make them less alone, although he certainly picked the absolute worst way to go about it.

Nile’s arc is all about her integration into her new found family of immortals--even more, I think, than it’s about realizing and gaining mastery over her superpower, in the way that most superhero origin stories are. She is given the choice to leave, and chooses to go back because she thinks Andy, specifically, might be in danger. (The whole arc of her relationship with Andy is great and deserves its own post.) But it’s clear that severing her ties with her biological family is painful to her; the other immortals understand this, and the narrative doesn’t treat it lightly. Booker’s loss of his children; Copley’s loss of his wife (which is planted in literally the first scene we see him in)--family and human connection are all over the motives of protagonists and antagonists alike. (Even Merrick--it’s his obsession with profit over human life that distinguishes him as the narrative’s true villain and makes other characters turn against him.)

Given all this, Booker’s punishment at the end of the film seems particularly cruel and like the kind of narrative device set up to backfire. It seems obvious that the final scene is setting up Booker and Quynh as the antagonists of a sequel, which I hope we get to see. Booker is wounded and not handling it well; Quynh, I’d imagine, has an extremely understandable desire for some revenge. Given how much we know of their backstories, they could make an extremely sympathetic pair of antagonists.

I don’t know what a potential sequel would bring and if/how it might diverge from the plot of the comic. But what I would love to see is some ending that re-integrates Quynh and Booker into the family (and probably unites them against some new threat in part 3; it’s purportedly a trilogy). It’s the only ending I can think of that wouldn’t be unimaginably cruel to both Quynh and Andy. Even if they’re never explicitly portrayed as being romantically involved (although...I would certainly not complain if they were), I really want to see a resolution to their relationship arc that doesn’t leave them as the unspoken tragic parallel to Nicky and Joe, and doesn’t involve one of them killing the other. It seems like this would be the most thematically resonant option too. I suppose one can hope. (And if not, that’s what fic is for.)

[andorlorian]

ok because I am mad at star wars: here's what I consider to be canon in star wars, in order from most canon to least canon, based on how much I like it and vibes. I won't be including things that I haven't seen or haven't come out yet. 

(lol this got really long and i want to keep it pinned so i can find it easily to edit so the actual content is going under a read more)

obviously the original trilogy is #1 on this list. it was the Blueprint. and aside from being the first it’s also the best. comfort movies i love them so much

jedi: fallen order (YES it is this high on the list I just finished the game three minutes ago and I'm fully deceased this is probably my favorite star wars thing ever)

rogue one is my personal favorite star wars movie. point blank bar none beautiful wonderful incredible movie. the moment with cassian and jyn at the end, just content to be in each other's space.... I'm in awe. CINEMA. perfection. beautiful.

andor is directly after this because it was absolutely incredible and everything i’ve ever wanted from star wars

revenge of the sith novelization by matthew stover. he invented literature idk what to tell you

2d animated clone wars. it is so fun everyone in that show is girlbossing to the extreme & i love it sm

the mandalorian season 1. stunning spectacular wonderful that’s everything i needed

the clone wars (2008-2020). this show single-handedly saved the star wars franchise which I find fascinating and incredible, and is the reason I now have star wars brainrot. ahsoka is and always has been my favorite out of all star wars ever

the book of boba fett episodes 1 & 2. forever riding the high of boba fett dancing with the tuskens. also i don't remember if boba's rancor was in the first two episodes but he's up here too

master and apprentice. really really good book, claudia gray knocked it out of the park. I love getting to know more about qui-gon and his relationship with obi-wan. also pax and rahara my beloveds

the phineas and ferb star wars special (i'm being 100% serious here)

I'm just going to do all the books at once unless I really like one. (this is also in order.) lost stars by claudia gray, kenobi by john jackson miller, queen's shadow by e.k. johnston, leia princess of alderaan by claudia gray, ahsoka by e.k. johnston

the prequels, but only in the sense that the big overarching plot points are canon to me. like for example anakin and padmé absolutely fall in love but in my heart they way they interacted was much different because george lucas doesn't know how to write romance

star wars rebels (ezra come home I miss u)

tarre vizsla origin story. it doesn't exist yet but I'm manifesting it. I want it so badly tarre vizsla my beloved

the original episode ix script: duel of the fates. while i am aware this is the script for a movie that will never exist or be acknowledged, i just love it so much. rey solana journeys on

solo: a star wars story! I think this movie is really fun and I enjoy it a lot. I really like han's characterization, especially the contrast between where he was at the beginning of this movie and where he was at the beginning of a new hope.

kenobi: meh it was alright. tiny leia was cute

the mandalorian seasons 2-3. now what was all that

the book of boba fett episodes 3-7. haven't watched the most recent episode but holy fuck how did it go off the rails so fast!! I love boba fett sm tho so anything with him has to be higher than the sequels at least

about 70% of the force awakens. this is probably my personal second favorite star wars movie. I love rey and I love finn and I love poe so much

the lego star wars christmas special

about 40% of the last jedi (i actually love this movie but it is very deeply flawed, i would change massive pieces of it if im being honest. it's the new moon of the star wars franchise)

absolutely none of the rise of skywalker except for the scene where rey, finn, and poe are hugging, so relieved to be back together and safe.

the bad batch

honorable mentions include every single thing tumblr user husborth has ever said or written, incorrectdisasterlineage's quotes, and that padmé didn't die in rots and helped to found the rebellion

[thefilmsimps]

The Matrix Resurrections (dir. Lana Wachowski)

-Jere Pilapil-

God bless the Wachowskis. I know this is just a Lana Wachowski joint, but I mean, just, in general. They never give you quite what you expect, even here.

The Matrix Resurrections is the third Matrix sequel, and it spends much of its time sending you off balance (my fiancé wondered out loud multiple times “I’m still trying to figure out if this is a remake or a sequel or a reboot or what”. “All of the above”, it turns out). It starts by remaking the iconic opening of The Matrix and things just get different. That’s kind of this movie in a nutshell, but it’s also a continuation of the themes and world established in the original trilogy. It’s a smaller stakes rescue story, though, ultimately not as concerned with the fate of mankind as with providing a bit more of a satisfactory coda to a couple of the series’ main characters (all my muscles are tensed trying not to spoil things).

And, like every Matrix sequel, I can see how this can be divisive and vehemently disagree with a lot of criticisms I’ve seen so far. Maybe because I’ve recently rewatched all of the movies (except The Animatrix, which I ought to rewatch soon), but I’m unfazed by the meta commentary on reboots and sequels. I’ve seen other reviews accuse this movie of hemming and hawing before getting around to being a proper sequel, but the justification is the movie. It’s baked into the premise and the entire meta nature of the Matrix movies. It has us once again asking “What is The Matrix?” As the original movie’s tagline asked, though this time it’s interested in making us also ask the same questions my fiancé was asking (so, mission accomplished there, Lana). For the first half, it misdirects us in all directions until we wind up in a place that feels familiar but is not.

In some ways The Matrix Resurrections is in conversation with the current generation of sequels to old properties, where the new one continues the first one and everything in between gets ignored. There are times early on where it feels like maybe this movie might be doing that, but eventually it says “fuck you”. The Matrix is a perfect crowd-pleasing blockbuster. It’s weird enough to require a little thought but cool and action-packed enough to enjoy it even if you don’t get it (but it goes to great pains to explain everything to you). The sequels, though, are for the nerds. They’re for people like me who like their sci-fi up its own ass, and this movie bravely chooses to double down on the ideas, probably to a fault.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that the action this time is merely adequate. I do miss the ambition of the action from the original trilogy, but I’d liken the progression here to an innovative band: eventually the fresh thing they brought to the table is absorbed, and they become the elder statesman more dependable for craft than thrills. That’s this movie, where some of the effects that blew minds in 1999 are still here, but they’re hardly noticeable because they’re just part of the modern action lexicon. It’s a wise decision, from a filmmaking perspective for Wachowski to focus on the story and what she’s trying to express here, though it’s still a little disappointing that so much of the action, even the stuff I like, feels truncated.

I read awhile back that the idea for this movie came up as part of Lana Wachowski’s process while grieving her parents. From that prism, a lot of this movie makes a lot more sense, but even when I watched it having forgotten that knowledge, I was thrilled by this movie. It is a return to the original Matrix in the sense that it is a bit of a house of mirrors where what’s “real” isn’t a given. It gave me the feeling that maybe the carpet isn’t being pulled out from under me, but I’m balanced on the carpet, which is mysteriously a half inch above the floor. Like with the other Matrix sequels, I’m excited to jump back into this one because there’s probably stuff I’m forgetting and stuff I didn’t get the first time. My kind of sci-fi.

8.5/10

[fanfoolishness]

Star Wars Confessions

Tagged by @lastwordbeforetheend to post 5 confessions about Star Wars!

1. I first remember seeing Empire Strikes Back when I was 4 or 5, and by the time I was 10 I was thoroughly hooked on Star Wars. My mom used to see ESB WEEKLY in 1980 with her friends for a year, and both she and my dad were always huge Star Wars fans. I've had periods in my life where I'm more or less interested in it, but have always counted it as an interest. However, The Mandalorian is the first SW property that's ever nudged me into full-on fandom.

2. As a kid I got $5 for allowance every 2 weeks, and every 2 weeks I would check for new Star Wars figures at the store, which were $4.99. I had over 30 of the classic 90s 3.75" SW figures, including weirdoes like the Rancor Keeper in addition to Luke with Yoda in the backpack and Lando with his lovely cape. Sadly out of all of them I only had one Leia, dressed as the bounty hunter, and no other female characters. Now that I've gotten into Mando, I've been accumulating a small army of newer 3.75" figures and the Black Series 6" figures, which now include both versions of Din Djarin, the Armorer, Cara Dune, Greef Karga, Kuiil, IG-11, and Bo-Katan, not to mention favorites from the original trilogy and the sequels. It's nice to not really grow up. XD My Tatooine-dust-smudged R2D2 still beeps with his original battery, more than 20 years later.

3. This is my first fandom I've been really prolific in yet haven't written a single romantic story for. Most of my Steven Universe fanfic was gen but there were smatterings of Connverse and Rose x Pearl and Rose x Greg, but the only things I ship Din Djarin with are sleep and friendship. I admit to being truly baffled by the Mando x Reader/Pedro x Reader genre and not getting the appeal at all. I'm glad people are enjoying themselves with it, but it doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't understand why people have chosen that instead of making OCs or self-inserts; maybe I'm just getting old! I'd never seen it really before this fandom (after writing fic for the past 20 years in several different fandoms). Definitely one of those cases of different strokes for different folks. More power to anyone who enjoys it but I'll be in the gen corner :)

4. I wrote an extremely hilarious and dorky friendfiction with my friends and I as Star Wars Phantom Menace characters in high school. Anakin was played by the fetal pig we had in biology class and I was the Jar Jar character because I knew my friends would probably be mad if I made one of them Jar Jar.

5. Pre-Covid, I loved going to Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland dressed as either Rey or a Resistance pilot, and would often spend an afternoon or evening in Batuu, sketching my surroundings and just soaking up the atmosphere. It was so incredible walking in and truly feeling like I'd gone to another world beneath a different star, and seeing so many details that really made me feel like I was in a galaxy far, far away. Looking forward to returning later this year hopefully, and recapturing some of that joy, this time in a Din Djarin outfit with a Grogu at my side <3

Tagging @art3mys, @fake-starwars-fan, and @thecagedthestral if you would like to play along, or anyone else who wants to post their confessions!