#I’ve rewatched the trailer like a hundred times

[gay-stuff-is-happening-here]

jesus has risen once again in the form of this gay ass firefighter

[total-drama-takes-takes-2]

tta finale (original)

“Last time, on Total Takes Action: our final three competed in an all-out, extra dramatic laser tag challenge with a few… twists. Alliances were formed, friendships were broken, and it was Peter who took the fall to give Scruffy a chance at the finale. With just one exciting challenge left, I’m sure you’re all wondering who will win- and there’s only one way to find out: right here, right now, on Total! Takes! Action!”

The sky is clear and blue, the pigeons are cooing, and the smell of breakfast sausage is filling the air as Scruffy and O wait in a very short line for their complementary “final two breakfast” in the craft services tent. 

Chef heaps a few sausages, eggs, and waffles on each plate and shoos the players off, both of which immediately gravitate towards the opposite ends of the picnic table and eat in silence. Scruffy paces around their end of the table, swiping forks, knives, and spoons, just in case. O draws a little smiley face on his plate with syrup. 

---

O: “Well… this is it,”

---

SCRUFFY: “Today’s the big day,”

---

O: “I can’t believe how far I made it,”

---

SCRUFFY: “I can’t believe how far O made it,”

---

O: “I’m not exactly winning material… but then again, neither is Scruffy,”

---

SCRUFFY: “He’s a big softie. Not nearly as well-trained, unless you count psychology- but then again, I’m an expert at that, too. He’s just gone to- ugh- “therapy”. Who has therapy helped?”

---

O: “I’m thinking that once I get back, winnings or not, I might cancel my sessions with Dr. Anderson. I feel like… I don’t know. Pathologizing my problems has made them worse, somehow. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The… Scruffy approach, I guess,”

---

SCRUFFY: “Still, I can’t help but wonder if all of this dedication- all the hours I’ve spent rewatching the original show, all my community college classes, all my reading and training- has really helped me get here. I’ve been missing an obvious pattern. If only I could figure out what that is…”

---

 O looks up from his syrup smile and waves at Scruffy. “Hey, bro. Good luck today,”

Scruffy blinks. “Um… okay,”

“Attention, campers! Your final challenge starts in five minutes out by the trailers. Time to bring your A-Game!”

---

Scruffy and O stand an arm’s length apart as Chris paces between them, humming to himself. “You’ve lived. You’ve loved. You’ve laughed. And most importantly, you’ve lost. Today is the final test of strength, wits, smarts and endurance- both of you will enter, but only one will emerge a hero. And with a big fat check,” Chris chuckles. 

“Today’s final challenge is a multi-part rendezvous across the set. You will start here and make your way through the city,” 

Scruffy immediately jumps into a running stance, ready to take off. 

Chris grins. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The first leg of your race to the finish line was inspired by your very first challenge here- the birdocalypse. Thousands of territorial birds are having their afternoon nap on the city set. Wake them up, and you might have a problem,” he goes on. “After that, you’ll make your way through a ghost-filled maze, inspired by the video game and period flick challenges. Once you’re out, you’ll run the final stretch to Lot B- a functional studio next door. The first to arrive wins the prize. Ready?”

Scruffy and O exchange nervous glances. 

“Go!”

The two don't run, but awkwardly walk off in the same direction, as if taking a pleasant afternoon stroll. 

O’s eyes drift over to Scruffy and he winces. 

---

O: “Is it weird to ask them for advice? I feel like it’s weird, but…”

---

“Hey, dude,” O says, looking over. “I know we’re competing and all, but-”

“Shh!” Scruffy interrupts him, holding a finger to their lips. They point ahead, where a black mass is covering the city set- it’s almost like an oil spill, but instead of the viscous glimmering liquid, it’s hundreds of sleeping crows. 

Scruffy goes first while O hangs back, looking ahead nervously. The former moves through the set, stepping over birds on the road and ducking under birds on the street signs and lamps. They delicately step, roll, and skip through the set with expert agility while O watches on. 

---

SCRUFFY: “This isn't so hard! Just a little yoga moves and some spatial awareness. Maybe I haven’t lost my zing after all!”

---

Scruffy reaches the other side and turns to wave at O- in a clearly taunting way. O crosses his arms and glares. 

---

O: “Yeah- no chance of friends there,”

---

Scruffy reaches the mouth of the maze and chuckles. “Easy. Is this all you got, Chris?”

Chris rolls his eyes and pulls out a large remote. His thumb hovers over the big red button on the surface for a few moments, taunting Scruffy, before he slams it and the maze lifts off the ground and begins rotating on a large metal plate. 

Scruffy watches the ground disappear beneath them and sighs. 

---

SCRUFFY: “WHY would I say that? That’s the easiest mistake to avoid on this show!”

---

Back on the city set, O tip-toes over the birds, nearly stumbling over each one. He’s breathing heavily, and almost falls over at least ten times. 

But, he reaches the end and sighs before jogging off. O reaches the entrance of the rotating maze and gawks at it. 

“Yeahhhh,” Chris grins. “Don’t worry, though, we’re prepared for this.”

Chef wheels out a canon. 

---

Scruffy wanders through the maze, dizzy and unbalanced as it spins around itself. They’re about as green as their hair, but still pressing on nonetheless. 

---

SCRUFFY: “I’ve been trying to improve my gag reflex since island. I’m usually pretty good, but I have… a thing about other people getting sick in front of me. As long as that doesn’t happen, I’m set,”

---

O’s screams echo, growing closer and closer before he slams into the concrete of the maze behind Scruffy, leaving a hole in the ceiling. He coughs. 

“Don’t throw up!” Scruffy shouts. 

O stands, rubbing his head. “Wasn’t gonna. Don’t worry, man, I’ll leave you be,”

Scruffy nods and the two run in opposite directions. 

---

O: “I get it! Scruffy has nothing to get from me, so why would I bother them?”

---

Scruffy steps through the maze, scratching their head as it spins. “This isn’t good. I’m all turned around,��

Chris’ voice blares over the intercom: “That’s the point, Total Drama Genius!”

They sigh and hold onto the wall while stumbling along. The maze suddenly lurches and begins turning in the opposite direction, sending Scruffy tumbling to the ground. They groan and sit up against the wall. “It’s hopeless. I keep lying to myself and telling myself I can do this, but I can’t! I don’t know what I’m doing,” they turn to the camera. “I’m sorry, Jules.”

---

O walks along, faring much better than Scruffy. A light breeze tussles his hair and he turns to where it’s coming from- and just around that corner, a beam of sunlight filters through. He grins and jogs forward. 

As he rounds the corner and sees the exit, though, he hears a loud cry. The sound of Scruffy’s wailing carries through the maze, and it stops O in his tracks. 

He hesitates. 

---

O: “I know I shouldn’t go back. I mean, what if it’s a trap? What if Scruffy is just trying to get my help and then dump me after? But…” he sighs. “I’m not like them. I’m a nice person, and there’s nothing weak about that.”

---

O turns and jogs off into the dark. 

---

Scruffy, curled into a ball on the floor, cries in anguish. 

“Hey? Dude?” 

They whimper loudly. O sits down next to them and sighs. 

“Listen, I’m not gonna try to fix your problems, ‘cause I know that’s not what you like,” O says. “But you should know that… well, you don’t have to win this. You’re not a weak person for not being mean and conniving like the people who get far on this show…”

“But I want to be!” they whimper, eyes full of tears. “I want to be Heather!”

“But you’re not… Heather,” O looks around awkwardly. “You shouldn’t want to be, either?”

“I’ve been studying this show since primary, I’ve taken all the classes, done all the research, trained to perfection- why am I so bad at this?”

O pats Scruffy’s shoulder. “You’re not. You’re good.”

“But not like you. You didn’t even try and you made it to the same exact spot I got to! I don’t get it. Were you a pawn? A twist villain I didn’t see coming?” Scruffy rocks back and forth. 

O raises an eyebrow. “Um… no… I don’t know, man, I’m just nice,”

“You can’t win just by being nice, I mean, that’s… that’s improbable! The nicest contestants always get got!” Scruffy says. “I’m nice! I’m not mean!”

“Yeah, man, but you’re kinda… uh, you know… you’re not the easiest to be around,”

Scruffy’s eyes water again. “Wh-what do you mean?”

O sucks in his breath through his teeth. “You’re… kind of intense, dude. All you talk about is the show, and, I mean… you’ve got some serious walls up, man,”

“I-I do not! Ask Jules, she’ll tell you! Julia knows!”

“Saying that one of the meanest contestants on the show knows you more than anyone is… not great, Scruffy. Haven’t you made any other friends?”

“Haven’t you?”

O frowns. “I guess not. But… I mean… I dunno,”

“When you say you’re nice, all I hear is that you’re a pushover. You let people use you!” Scruffy says, crossing their arms. “I’m not like that! I don’t like being pushed around!”

“Says the guy who went nuts cause they thought a girl would like them more if they won some dumb game show,”

“Says the guy who hasn’t had a single steady friendship since the show started!”

“Says the guy who needs to impress everyone with how great they are!”

“Says the guy who does the same thing, Dr. O!”

Both huff and turn away from each other. The intercom crackles to life and Chris’ voice sounds slightly peeved. “Hey, guys, this heart-to-heart has been great, but you are IN A CHALLENGE! Now get to it!”

The maze suddenly starts spinning faster, throwing Scruffy and O to opposite sides of the hall they were seated in. Each grab on to a corner of the black walling and hold on for dear life as they’re thrown around like they’re getting flushed down a toilet. 

“I- can’t- hold- on!” O shouts. 

“Take my hand!” Scruffy throws out an arm as O flies off the wall, catching him just in the nick of time. “Maybe I can be… nice after all!”

O smiles gratefully and nods. “Let’s get out of here!”

The two fashion makeshift ice picks out of the forks Scruffy had swiped from the craft services tent and rake their way up the wall as the maze spins even faster. 

“This way!” O instructs, retracing his earlier steps to the exit of the maze. The two reach the door and look to the ground below, where only a tiny kiddie pool was left to break their fall. 

“Ready?” O shouts. 

Scruffy nods. “On the count of three!”

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

The two hold hands as they jump, both screaming and flailing their free arms until they land in the shallow pool below. 

“We… we made it!” Scruffy shouts with glee as O coughs up a mouthful of water behind them. “We did it together!”

O stands. “We did, didn’t we? Together,” O puts an arm over Scruffy’s shoulder. “No strings attached.”

“No expectations,”

“No value!”

Scruffy nods. “Let’s wing this,”

The two start off on the final track, throwing the doors of a large set building open and running through it, approaching a final set of double doors. 

“Hey,” Scruffy jogs up to O. “May the best man win, right?”

O salutes them. “May the best man win!”

---

“And that’s the story of how I lost my first tooth,” Staci says. “And no one ever found the hammer.”

Caesar massages his temples. “Another fascinating story from Staci. Anyone else have something to add?”

Luckily, before someone else can add on, Bonnie runs on stage. Caesar sighs with relief. “Bonnie, here to save the day again! What’s the news?”

“They’re coming!”

Caesar squeals, and the peanut gallery turns to the double doors backstage in anticipation. “Can we get a countdown?”

“Five!” Ass and Courtney both lean forward, then notice each other and glare. 

“Four!” Sha-Mod and McLovin are busy giving each other crudely drawn stick ‘n poke tattoos of each other’s faces. 

“Three!” Julia shoves Patrick out of her face when he gets to close. 

“Two!” Mal blows a gum bubble and texts something on her phone. 

“One!” Bonnie takes a seat and Caesar puts a hand on their shoulder. 

The doors burst open, and O runs in. 

“The winner of Total Takes Action, everyone!” Caesar shouts. “O!”

A shower of confetti and balloons fall from the ceiling and the crowd cheers. A group of former contestants- Kelly, Al, Michela, and Peter- run from the stands and hoist O into the air, carrying him in. He laughs merrily.

They set him down in the hot seat and Caesar grins. "So, O, you've just won a season of Total Takes- what are you going to do next?"

"I think... first, I'm gonna split some of the winnings with my friends. Then I'm gonna take a long, long vacation,"

"You don't have to do that," Peter states. "We're just happy you made it back in one piece."

McLovin pipes up in the background. "Did somebody say One-"

"Anyway," Michela interrupts. "We were kind of planning on taking you out for a celebratory-or-consolation dinner, anyway. On us."

O smiles.

“What a season, what a cast!” Caesar says. “And here’s our runner up, Scruffy!”

Scruffy jogs in behind him, breathing heavily. Julia stands and runs to the doors, hugging Scruffy. “I missed you!”. The peanut gallery continues whooping and cheering, and O gives Scruffy a big thumbs up as Patrick storms over and tries to pull the two apart. 

Scruffy waves as the crowd cheers for them, then collapses as soon as Julia lets them go. 

Caesar turns to Bonnie. “Thoughts, feelings?”

“Not many. I’m a little hungry,”

“Oh, God, me too. Those finger sandwiches are three parts air, I swear,” Caesar says. “Dinner tonight?"

"You're on. Maybe we can tag with O's crew and eat free,"

"I like the way you think," Caesar winks.

“Well, this has been Total Takes Action- The Aftermath. We’ll see you all soon for- what’s this?” Caesar presses an earpiece, and then bursts out laughing. “Oh, my God- no- really, you’re joking? You’re not?” he turns to the audience. “Chris McLean has been arrested and is currently in custody for illicit activities!”

The crowd cheers even louder, the big screen rolls down and displays a live newscast. Chris is being led from the Action set in handcuffs, Chef and the interns watching from behind a police barricade.

"You CANNOT do this to me! Do you know who I am?!" Chris shouts. "Chef- call my lawyer- call the producers- call my mom!"

"You should've remembered our anniversary,"

"CHEF!"

The police drag Chris into the back of their squad car while he screams. The wind picks up and his hair detaches itself, flying away in the breeze.

"MY TOUPEE!"

Chef rolls his eyes. A white van pulls up just as the cops slam the door of their cruiser on Chris, and a team of hazmat-suited scientists hop out of the back. The broadcast ends and turns back to the studio, where a blonde woman with a tight face reads off the happenings to new viewers. The monitor turns off.

Scruffy sits up from the floor and raises an eyebrow. “What happened?”

“No official reasons yet,” Caesar says. “In due time, I suppose. In the meantime, we’ll-”

An intern runs over to the host and hands him a letter. He huffs and opens it. “It’s from Scary. It just says “told you so”,”

Bonnie rolls their eyes. 

“Well… if this is the end of the show, I just wanna say I'm glad we met. I'd be nowhere without you guys,” O says.

The former contestants turn to each other with warm smiles. 

“And yet… this can’t be the end,” Scruffy interjects. “We haven’t had a musical season yet!”

“Woah, woah, let’s save that for the Gemmy’s,” Caesar chuckles. “We’re about out of air time, but… I want to say that it’s been a hell of a season, everyone! See you all soon!”

[sweet-evie]

what’s your headcanons about the duo? recently i’ve rewatched the resurrection movies and cant help build various scenario in my head.

here’s mine though. Sorry it’ll be super long

• Lelouch found that CC’s hand was always cold so he likes to hold it all the time.

• During their early journey, they’ve decided to bought a trailer. But lelouch cant drive, so CC teach him one.

• CC’s were sensitive to cold but too proud to said it. One night, Lelouch realizes that she’s shaking in their tent and silently takes her in his arm

• He hates when CC talks about the mindless state he was. Not because how useless he is, but because it reminds him of how much a pain she suffers for him. It breaks his heart.

• Lelouch found a woman in desperate need of labor at the forest one day. CC’s expertly help her and deliver the baby successfully. That night, he told her that when CC names that baby girl, he felt like wanted to pick her up and told the entire world of how proud he is for having CC in his side.

• He’s blushed like a pig whenever CC’s mention the word ‘bath’ for he knows she’s seen it all.

• Lelouch good at singing, and CC’s could play ukulele. One day, nunnally visits them in their hideout and found the immortal duo lovingly sang a song together while holding each other close.

• They dont says ‘I love you’ to each other, instead lelouch once declared “If i had to choose one to spent eternity with, I’ll choose you. Not because your loyalty but because i knew life wouldnt be so bored with you”

• Lelouch takes various jobs over the years. He started as a writer for many good years to sponsor their endeavors. Then he learns from Jeremiah to farm. A teacher, doctor, programmer.

• Lelouch found it hard to express his affection towards her so he always opted to talk about their fragment endeavors.

• Until they settle down in a secluded house and found himself the pleasure of sex.

• CC secretly dying for lelouch to kiss her. Not like that she cant, she just want him to be the one who initiate it.

• At one point in their life, CC’s longs for a child they could never have. one day, there’s an orphan baby borns in the hospital he works for and he told her they could adopt him.

• Lelouch would never said it but he could start another rebellion for CC.

• Sometimes during the next movie timeline, CC’s were captured and tortured. She doesnt wakes up for several weeks due to they tamper with her code. When she wakes up, CC found Lelouch kills hundred of them to avenge her.

This is a fanfic all on its own. 🤩 You're tempting me to write things or start stuff I shouldn't because there are other stories that need writing. 🤣 Reading and imagining this made me want to cry because I can totally picture everything in my head.

As a fact, most of yours parallel with mine, mainly these:

He hates when CC talks about the mindless state he was. Not because how useless he is, but because it reminds him of how much a pain she suffers for him. It breaks his heart.

Lelouch takes various jobs over the years. He started as a writer for many good years to sponsor their endeavors. Then he learns from Jeremiah to farm. A teacher, doctor, programmer.

CC secretly dying for lelouch to kiss her. Not like that she cant, she just want him to be the one who initiate it.

Post Re;surrection, here's my headcanons 😉

C.C. is the one making the living during the early days of their Geass hunt, mostly because Lelouch needs to stay hidden.

C.C. is the one who reminds Lelouch to call Shirley or at least see her...

They travel mainly by sea or land. No airfares here, considering the nature of airport security.

As well connected to shady people as I think C.C. is, I doubt she has top-level clearance to even sneak into an airport undetected... They could, but it's too much work for their current circumstance and is more trouble than it's worth. One day, they will. But in the beginning of their search, nah.

Lelouch will make sure to procure fake passports, IDs, and everything else.

Wait... On second thought, Lelouch has a Geass. I almost forgot... 🤣 FUCK! I guess they can travel by plane. (I still think it's impractical). But they can only do it if they successfully tie up loose ends along the way.

Lelouch picks up online ghost writing or proofreading as a career once they settle in Switzerland.

All the online money he earns goes to C.C.'s bank account, because he hasn't established a fake one yet.

It bothers him that C.C. is in-charge of their funding.

Lelouch does a financial audit every month. He used to do it bi-weekly, but C.C. told him that over-obsessing about budget is never a good thing.

On a more serious note, I think C.C. cuts back on her pizza eating for the first few years.

C.C. has a subdued personality for the first few months or the first year together with L.L...

Lelouch spends discreet time trying to coax C.C.'s mischievousness out again. He kind'a misses it.

He asks C.C. about his mindless state once in a while, when it's necessary. But he avoids it because he hates how useless he was, and he hates being reminded that he burdened her so.

It takes a while before they end up actually kissing.

They're open to talking about their deep thoughts, but are still a teeny bit hesitant to cross the line to romance. (Even if they're practically married at this point).

They have matching rings. (Not engagement or wedding rings or promise rings. Just matching jewelry -- according to them anyway).

They're fucking married.

Lelouch caught C.C. singing lullabies to him once, because she thought he was falling asleep.

C.C.'s multi-lingual skills will shine.

Lelouch is beginning to think world history on the internet is unreliable. Mostly because of C.C. (That girl is a walking encyclopedia, literally).

C.C. loves surprising Lelouch with random facts about her involvement in some events during history. She does it at the most random times, but mostly when they're on a Geass hunt.

They mouth "I love you" once in a while. They don't say it out loud. Just mouth it... 😍🥰

Hugging... Lots of hugging.

Lelouch eventually replaces Cheese-kun. 👏 It's his greatest achievement yet.

Lelouch and C.C. will cease to exist one day. Especially when all those spare body parts from C's World run out, because Lelouch broke that place. (CG creators, please explain the lore behind the Code and the Geass).

[shewholovestoread]

Fear Street Trilogy Review

Beware, spoilers ahead.

I love horror movies but good horror movies are so hard to come by. Fear Street grabbed my attention as soon as they released the first trailer, it looked like a call-back to the slasher films of old, back when they were still good. And the best part was the apparent presence of lesbians, count me in!

Fear Street is based on the books by the same name by R. L. Stine, a lot of us remember Stine for another horror classic, Goosebumps. The Fear Street novels were aimed at older audiences and were way more bloody than Goosebumps- lots of teenagers dying. The films don’t adapt any particular book but rather the tone and rough setting and I think that works to its advantage.

The Setting:

Fear Street is based on the fictional town of Shadyside, the poorer and more unfortunate twin of its sister-town Sunnyside. Sunnyside is sunny, wealthy and where nothing bad ever happens. Shadyside in contrast is poorer, the homes more run-down and where, every few years, some resident snaps and goes on a murderous rampage, killing their own friends, family or whoever they can get their hands on. There are those who believe that Shadyside is cursed by Sarah Fier, a witch who was hanged in the 1600s when she cut off her hand and used it to curse the town.

Fear Street Part 1:

1994 functions like the introduction and set-up for the trilogy. It introduces us to the characters, Deena (Kiana Madeira), Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger). They unwittingly trigger the curse when they stumble across the bones of Sarah Fiers, soon killers are chasing them, killing-machines powered by the curse and who can’t be killed. Deena, Sam, Josh, Kate and Simon have to put aside their differences and work together to survive the night.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978

1978 opens with the survivors of 1994 going to C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), the lone survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre. It provides insight into the massacre that saw dozens of Shadyside kids being killed. 1978 takes us back to the day leading up to the bloody night. We meet the Berman sisters, Ziggy and Cindy (Sadie Sink and Emily Rudd respectively), Alice (Ryan Simpkins) and Tommy (McCabe Syle) When an axe-wielding murderer starts butchering the camp residents, Cindy and Alice, while trying to escape, stumble into the cave system that runs under the camp and discover Sarah’s hand and that the only way to break the curse is to reunite the hand with her body. However, they are unable to break the curse when they realise that the body is not buried where they thought it would be. Alice, Cindy and Ziggy are killed by the cursed murderers with only Ziggy being revived thus being labeled the lone survivor. In the present day, Deena and Josh dig out the hand from where Ziggy and Cindy left it, when Deena reunites the hand with the body, she sees visions of Sarah Fiers, leading us into the third and final film.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666

1666, the year it all started. We see the events play out leading up to the hanging. Deena is inside Sarah’s body, seeing and experiencing her life as if it were own. We learn that it was never Sarah’s curse, but in fact it was the Goodes who had made a deal with the devil, securing power for themselves (their descendants are the mayor and sheriff in 1994) Sarah Fiers was just the scapegoat. Every time someone saw a vision of Sarah, she was trying to show them the truth and un-dead killers hunted them to keep them from exposing it.

The films work individually but their impact really hits home once you’ve watched all 3. Leigh Janiak crafts such an intricate story and links 3 time periods, weaving them through each other seamlessly. With 3 films, she also has the time to invest in these different time periods and the characters that inhabit them.

The story, both in terms of individual films as well as the trilogy as a whole, is engaging and engrossing. It keeps the audience on their toes and the edge of their seats, waiting and dreading as the bodies pile up. Janiak also grounds the story so that it feels real even as the characters are fighting off un-dead killers, adding to the nail-biting tension.

There’s plenty to admire for a horror film buff, from the Scream reference in 1994, to Friday the 13th in 1978 and The Witch (or VVitch) in 1666. There’s also a good amount of gore to be found along with some really inventive ways of killing, who knew bread cutters/slicers could be so menacing.

There’s so much attention to detail in terms of costume and production design that you really feel like you’re in 1994, 1978 or even 1666. All of these work to draw you in as the viewer, adding to the authenticity on screen. The clothes and places feel lived-in. The song choices are amazing with popular hits from 1994 and 1978, the soundtrack definitely elevates the visuals. The original score in 1666 was absolutely gorgeous, especially Deena and Sam’s theme.

The sequence of the films with 1994 being the first, followed by 1978 and finally 1666 was a great choice with each film revealing a little more of the puzzle till all the pieces are revealed in 1666. It keeps the tension alive and keeps the characters and the audience constantly guessing. It also allows Janiak to sprinkle just enough subtle clues that become apparent when rewatching the films.

The characters are one of the best things in the trilogy, they are so well written, and I mean that for almost all of the main cast which is rare. One of the best things that Janiak does is repeat actors, especially the principle cast. For instance, a lot of actors we see in 1994 and 1978 appear in 1666 playing different roles but with a similar dynamic. It helps tell the story without worrying about too many new faces and worrying about whether or not the audience will be able to keep track of them. The return of old faces also ensures that the audience is already a little invested in them and their well-being.

Small side-note: I really appreciated that there was no sexual violence. It always worries me when I start a horror show/film and it was such a relief that they did not go that route. There is a lot of violence and a lot of people and kids die but it’s always just slightly campy enough that keeps it from being genuinely disturbing.

One of the things that always irk me with slasher films (especially the old ones) are how white they were, no characters of colour and if there were any, they always died. There were also no queer characters. Fear Street undoes that beautifully, all of our main characters are outsiders, they are people of colour, they are queer. In another film, they would have been nameless characters, among the first to die. Here they are the heroes. I loved all of them and I hated that Alice, Kate and Simon died, to be honest, I expected the core group to survive, Kate especially.

Fear Street is also unapologetically feminist and Janiak does this without it being too obvious. The central conflicts in the story are between women (sister/ friends/ ex-girlfriends) but they also band together and fight for each other. It’s worth noting that most of the core relationships are between women (Deena-Sam, Ziggy-Cindy-Alice, Sarah-Hannah) and those are not coincidences.

I loved how gay this trilogy was, Deena and Sam’s love for each other was the driving force and was at the heart of the story. Even in 1666, Sarah’s crime was not so much witchcraft as it was daring to love someone you’re not supposed to and fighting back against the proprietary nature of the men who sought to control them. Sarah and Hannah loved each other fiercely and we see that same love reflected hundreds of years later in Deena and Sam who fight for each other relentlessly. I also appreciated that Deena and Sam were exes instead of a new relationship. It meant that they already had history, they shared a familiarity and comfort with each other that a new relationship would have had to build onscreen.

The Fear Street Trilogy is one of the best horror trilogies I’ve seen in a while, each film is consistently great and delivers gore and violence coupled with immense heart. It has one of the best queer relationships I’ve seen on screen and spoiler alert, they get a happy ending. I’m sick and tired of lesbian women dying or separating because of realism. Damn realism, give me happy women loving women and who live through their traumatic ordeal. Watch Fear Street for them if for nothing else. Now excuse me as I prepare to rewatch the trilogy.

[kitkatzzcore]

I’ve given it some thought and finally decided to voice my opinions about Infinity Train not getting renewed

This is going to give context about everything in order from the cancellation rumors from February up to the release of book 4 and the Reddit AMA that was done the same day. This will include my experiences and the feelings I have had about everything that I’ve seen, and why I have been upset for months at this point. This contains some spoilers for book 4 and mentions the synopsis for book 5.

(This is extremely long and I apologize for that, I just believe that it’s important for me to express how I have been feeling for months and I want people to understand how I feel. I will be putting a TL;DR at the end since this is super long and I know not everyone has the time to read.)

I have been upset about all of this since the cancellation rumors that were started on Twitter in February and have been feeling mixed emotions since. I have been a fan of this show ever since book 1 aired on Cartoon Network and have been in love with it since. The day rumors came out about Infinity Train being cancelled had made me upset for days as this has been probably the best cartoon I’ve watched in years.

In mid-February, posts were flying around about Infinity Train being cancelled. Funny enough, I was watching the show and decided to go on Twitter the day it all happened. I see that Infinity Train was trending and thought that many of the fans were doing the usual, trying to get the show renewed by promoting it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After two minutes of scrolling through twitter, I could feel tears streaming down my face as I read through the shock and sadness from other fans. After 30 minutes of trying to figure out what was actually going on, the heartache I was feeling was starting to turn into anger. My only thought at this point was why? Why would HBO Max cancel one of their best shows? Why won’t Cartoon Network or HBO Max officially say anything about any of this? After days of seeing people argue whether or not these rumors were true, I was sick of it all, and decided to just rewatch the show as much as I could to cope with the storm I had witnessed.

A week after these rumors, HBO Max announced book 4. I was in tears because of how relieved I was after hearing nothing from Cartoon Network or HBO Max the week before. Everyone was excited at this point, the fanbase here on tumblr was more awake than ever as we all reblogged the announcement and posted about our excitement.

A few weeks after the announcement, we get the official trailer for book 4. I had just woken up and decided to open Twitter that day. The first tweet I saw was from an article talking about the trailer that Owen had retweeted. I was so happy to see what this season was about, until I read the full tweet and saw that this was going to be the last season. Like the extremely emotional person I am, I shed a few tears reading that, many of you probably did too. A few hours later that day, Owen put out a thread about this season, saying that it was very different from past seasons and that this wasn’t meant to be the last season. Reading those words about how this wasn’t meant to be the last season left a sour taste in my mouth, especially after the rumors from before, but I decided to stay positive and not let my emotions take over my feelings about book 4.

April 15th was the release of book 4, and of course I watched it the second it was released. This season was much more lighthearted than previous seasons, and could even be seen as more of a comedic season than others. (Owen has also mentioned that this season was supposed be been seen more as a comedy on the Reddit AMA!) While many people had mixed feelings about this season, I absolutely adored it and thought it was wonderful. However, I did cry after watching it because I knew this was the last season and it broke my heart.

I’ve watched book 4 about three times now and can understand why people are having mixed feeling about it. This was not meant to be the last season. This season was created with the mindset of having future seasons. There were many things in this season that left everyone with hundreds of questions, and after looking through the Reddit AMA Owen did a few days ago, these questions that we all have were supposed to be answered in future books.

Now I want to talk about the Reddit AMA and some of the things Owen said. As I mentioned before, many people had lots of questions after book 4 and thought to ask about them in the AMA. Owen responded to these questions saying that the answers were supposed to be in book 5, and does not want to end up giving away these answers in hopes of getting the show renewed in the future (which I am also very hopeful for knowing how wonderful the fans are and the amount of support this show gets). One person asked why the show did not get renewed, and the answer made me absolutely furious.

According to Owen, Cartoon Network didn’t renew the show for a 5th season because of what was going to be in it. The 5th season was going to be a movie rather than the usual ten episodes. This film was going be be focused around Amelia and take place around the same time as book 4. It was supposed to show how she ended up taking control of the train. There were even storyboards and an entire script already made for it. For many, if not all Infinity Train fans, this was something that we would have loved to see, especially after seeing her appearance in book 4. Cartoon Network, however, decided against this since it did not get past the ‘child entry point’ that they apparently have.

You may be in the same boat as me and ask yourself ‘what in the actual hell does that mean?’ and I wish I could give you an honest answer, but I don’t work for Cartoon Network and I don’t understand how their system works. I have read multiple thoughts about what this could mean. One example being that the protagonist of book 5 was going to be an adult woman and kids would not be able to enjoy it as much. Book 4 had two protagonists that were in their twenties and book 3 also had two protagonists that were older teenagers/young adults, so how is that any different than what book 5 would be? There are also plenty of shows on Cartoon Network that don’t have child protagonists such as Regular Show, Total Drama Island, and plenty of their older shows, so this idea makes me question if this was their actual reasoning. Another example was that children wouldn’t enjoy watching a movie like this because it would be too dark. This show has talked about many serious and darker topics that I have never seen any other show mention while making a younger audience be able to understand these topics. This was a show made for all ages, not only kids, not only adults, everyone can watch this show and enjoy it. Also, I don’t know about you, but I guarantee that there’s a young audience that absolutely loves this show. I don’t want to get into anymore about this ‘child entry point,’ but if anyone would like to inform me more about this system, please do so. I want to understand more about it than struggle to try and understand it myself.

At this point, I am beyond livid seeing that this show did not get the recognition it deserves by higher-ups in the animation industry. My anger from the rumors has grown much more after understanding why this show did not get renewed. As I said in the beginning, I have watched this show since book 1 was released, and have never had a better experience with a show. I’ve been in many fanbases throughout my time using tumblr from middle school all the way up to now as a college student, and I have never seen fans like the ones for Infinity Train. You guys are the reason this show exists and has gotten to the point it’s at now. You are the ones possible for giving this show a platform. Thank you for giving this show the recognition it deserves. Thank you to Owen Dennis and the entire Infinity Train crew for creating probably the best show in western animation. Never did I think I would watch a show that was able to make me laugh hysterically while sobbing at the same time. I am thankful that I got to understand what was so special about this show and get an experience that I never thought would have happened.

I would love to hear your experience with this show, whether you were there since the release of the pilot, or if you’re new to the fanbase. I know I’m not the only one broken-hearted by the future of Infinity Train, but I am not giving up hope, yet. As I said, the fans are the reason the show got to where it is now. Nothing is stopping us from letting this show go, and I know someday we will get these future seasons.

(TL;DR: After experiencing the cancellation rumors and everything else that has happened recently, I am absolutely furious that this show is ending and why it didn’t get renewed. However, I’m not getting my hopes up yet, the fans are the reason we got 4 seasons, they’re going to be the reason we get 4 more seasons, even if it takes years.)

[jcmorrigan]

What movie or tv show scared you the most?

OH HEEHEEHEEEEEE MY TIME HAS COME

I think this was probably the sign I was meant to be a horror fan, because I'm gonna talk about two movies here and neither one is a standard horror film. Now, I avoided horror films like the plague, but I now realize that's because of my aversion to jumpscares and gore, which have very little to do with actual scary stuff. I feared actual horror imagery as a small child, but basically once I read Coraline it all just turned around because that book gave me nightmares but I actually WANTED those nightmares and kept going back to the book. So what are the movies I just COULD NOT contend with?

First up, I have found that a lot of people have said this one, but really and truly, fuck Chicken Run.

I was...maybe ten when I watched it. Signed up for a goofy claymation adventure. What did I get? First of all, a whole lot of bleak color palette that warned me that this was not going to be a happy story. We are then shown the stakes right away: our entire main cast lives in a dystopian prison and if they do not find a way to escape, they will die. One DOES die. This is where a lot of people say they noped out right away, but actually, the execution of the dinner chicken in the first scene was tame for me compared to what would come next.

The pie machine. It's assembled, it's talked about, and eventually our two leads fall into it in a way that is designed to be fatal. Look, there are a ton of horror tropes in this scene alone. I haven't seen it SINCE THE ONE AIRING and I can still vividly tell you a lot of this. And if I walked into a horror film and asked for this, I'd come out super satisfied, but I was not expecting horror from this. First of all, I remember vividly the shot where you're looking from Ginger's POV falling down the shaft and the divider comes up to shunt her into the "meat" line. It's incredibly claustrophobic and you just get this almost jumpscare reminder that the character through whose eyes you see is regarded as nothing more than meat to be consumed. There is then an array of blades designed for close calls, and dough that essentially glues the lead characters down to a conveyor belt so they have to helplessly watch the death machines that are coming. Sticky stuff that roots you to one spot; that's another thing that just REALLY unnerves me and I love it if I'm reading CreepyPasta but I was not reading CreepyPasta; I was watching a children's film. The leads escape certain death by jamming the gravy system, causing the machine to overload on pressure, and here I feel like I should've been relieved that they escaped but instead I was the most unsettled of all when the pressure meter started climbing. I don't know if this film *gave* me a phobia of industrial accidents or if it just awakened what was already in my OCD little brain, but suffice to say that after this movie, I was hyper-aware of my own fear of things like hissing steam, rising pressure meters, and being in a room where large metal things were clanking. (I'm since over it; I've been exposed to it in enough things.)

Now, I was no quitter. I should have just noped out. But I didn't. I continued to traumatize myself. The next part of the film until the climax I don't remember so well - it wasn't as traumatizing - EXCEPT for the part where Ginger finds and rebuilds Rocky's circus poster. And now, as an adult, I can see how that was kinda supposed to be funny, like, "The goddamn chicken padded his résumé and the way they found this out was a circus poster." But little me was invested in these chickens, I wanted them to be happy, and what I saw was basically their death notice being signed with that scrap of paper with a cannon on it. I FELT that in my bones.

STILL NOT HAVING THE GOOD SENSE TO JUST EJECT THE TAPE ALREADY, I proceeded to the climax, in which what happens to Tweedy might be one of the most fucking awful things I've seen ever? Pinned upside-down in a superheated, confined space with rising liquid from below as the pressure meter starts climbing again. And her husband arrives just in time to see her like this but not in time to actually stop the explosion. Thank God it didn't actually kill her because even though I was already traumatized, that would've absolutely made it worse.

Thing is, ever since this movie scared the absolute shit out of me - and was probably the cause of the weird stomachaches I had for A WEEK after - I've kinda had this thing about reclaiming the scary parts and stomping on them while laughing maniacally. I feel like every time I've done a crossover project, there's been a temptation to write in an arc where the mains go up against THE PIE MACHINE and fucking win. And also there's whump with tons of comfort in my version to mitigate it all. I haven't done any such thing for TBTC...YET. But I know what I must do. I know who must destroy the machine and the Tweedys along with it. Buckle your seatbelts.

My final word before I move on is that as I ascend into adulthood, I think that for the most part, a rewatch of this film wouldn't traumatize me so badly. It'd still be gross and creepy in a way I think shouldn't be sent to children without warning, but I could deal with the imagery, maybe enjoy using it as whump fuel even more, maybe my horror side would really get into the peril this time. But the one thing I've realized is that this premise is fucked EVEN MORE if you're a grown-up, because as a child, you're sympathizing with the chickens. You want them to get free of this death camp environment. But as an adult, you start to realize that all Tweedy wanted to do was be a chicken farmer who sold pie, and her supposedly nonsentient animals ganged up on her in a display of unheard-of intellect among farm stock. This would then lead to her undergoing at least one near-death fate. Think about being a farmer in our world and the animals you keep GANG UP ON YOU LIKE PEOPLE because you're killing them for food. No thank you, no THANK you.

But surely this was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. Surely, after this...after so many other people agreed with me; "Fuck Chicken Run"...no animation studio would ever pull shit like this again.

I had hoped that was the case until Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

This is one I don't actually see lambasted as often. Maybe because the Chicken Run trauma crew grew thicker skins before this movie. I only sort of did. Maybe because no one ever actually invested in this film, having already predicted how much it would be garbage from the dumb humor in the trailers. Oh, but not me. I was a fool. Also my family picked it for a movie night so my fate was sealed anyway.

The original book is actually pretty frightening on its own. Food falls from the sky in such great numbers that it starts to destroy the world. Okay, that's terrifying. But kind of in the alluring way. I would keep coming back to the one page about the giant pancake on the school because the way it was drawn unsettled me so, with something huge and immovable blocking off the way to a building that usually has hundreds of innocent children inside. The film built on this and made it a thousand times worse.

Let's start with the goddamn Spray-On Shoe. Our main character is a mad scientist (but the good kind, apparently) whose list of bumbling failed experiments dates back to when he was a child and invented a spray you could put on your feet to coat them in shoes. He then gets laughed at because he didn't engineer a way to get the shoes off, and runs home in humiliation. Guys, the teasing/bullying factor is...not the most worrying thing about this story. There's a throwaway line about how Flint wears THE SAME SHOES into adulthood because to that day they simply cannot be removed. This seems like an incredibly urgent medical problem? Having your feet encased in the same rubber for years? The same rubber as when you're a kid? I just found myself thinking "What if my shoes never came off one day" and that terrifies me, okay? It's stupid and it's silly and it scares me. Even more than that, though, is the canonization of a polymer in this universe that can be sprayed on sticky and will literally never break no matter what you do to it, because that goes back to the pie machine dough principle. Being glued to a surface permanently is inherently terrifying and we'll go over this later because this is not the last fuckin time the glue shoes get brought up.

Flint invents a food-spewing machine. It ends up in the sky. He rides his popularity as it rains larger and larger food down upon the town and also the world. Most of this film up until the climax is unsettling but not AWFUL. Where it starts to go to shit is when Flint realizes his machine is too dangerous and shuts it off, only for the town's local greedy politician to switch it back on into an apocalyptic mode. So can we start with "Local town finds out its elected official is willing to sabotage their well-being in order to capitalize on the fame of a disaster-causing object?". Like, the whole film would've been solved so much sooner if there hadn't been a saboteur in the works - not a fun campy villain, mind you, but a saboteur who exists to drive the plot to the scary place. But I guess we need that narrative tension to justify having a film in the first place, so fine, I'll ride it out.

The main crew saddles up to fly out to the machine, which is now encased in a FLESH LABYRINTH of food, and...I'm just gonna rapid-fire the shit that happens at this part:

-The food turns sentient in order to defend itself. The cute animal sidekick brutally dismembers an army of gummy bears that is fully sentient and rips them apart to devour them.

-We enter the flesh labyrinth and it's exactly as much a horror RPG setting as you think it is.

-Now sentient cooked chickens besiege the party. The comic relief character is consumed by one, only to kill it from the inside and decide to WEAR ITS SKIN in what is seen as his defining character arc's conclusion. Wearing the skin of a dead monster allows him to forge his new identity.

-One of our party has to go back because of a tight passage lined with her deadly allergen, causing her to undergo anaphylaxis after an accidental mild nick. In the flesh labyrinth.

-The entire horrific journey is instantly INVALIDATED when it turns out that instead of the kill code for the machine, all Flint has is a file of a cat video. Which he finds out as the town is about to be obliterated off the face of the earth.

-So he solves it by jamming the works with the spray-on shoe and DID I NOT JUST GO OVER HOW HORRIFIC INDUSTRIAL EXPLOSIONS ARE IN KIDS' MOVIES? DID I NOT? ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS AGAIN? Anyway it's canonical proof that NOTHING can break the shoe glue and I should be happy for the town and happy that there's no more flesh labyrinth of living meat but instead I'm just terrified because of the door we have opened. We have imparted the existence of an indestructible sticky polymer upon the world.

-It's later seen used in a credits sequence to repair damaged houses. Which, first of all, given its flexible nature, is fuckin stupid. It won't serve as an actual wall. Second, that got me thinking about construction accidents involving the fuckin shoe glue. If that stuff gets dripped on a person's face -

-So then cue me sitting awake in bed later thinking wide-eyed about Cloudy with a Chance of Fucking Meatballs and realizing that this compound that is essentially a chemical weapon in the making is now in the hands of the mayor who deliberately caused an apocalyptic event over the town because he wanted the food rain. And THAT'S not going to lead to pretty circumstances.

I think you'll see that a lot of my fears with these two movies is "THINK OF THE IMPLICATIONS!" and I think that just shows how my mind works and why I'm drawn to fanfic so much. I'm all about diving into a universe, exploring its corners, analyzing it to death.

And with the industrial horror stuff, I kinda wanna bring it around to two other films that actually really subverted my expectations and made it fun. 102 Dalmatians was a fave of mine through middle school, but I remember when the climax took us to a big ol' factory and I got plumb nervous. After the usual blades and ovens of horror, the fact that it concludes with Cruella basically wearing a cake and a lengthy montage of the dogs kicking toppings onto her is just one of the most wholesome imageries. She survived the thing and now you get to watch her be decorated Lisa Frank style by her victims who are more interested in humiliation than murder, and I love that.

But maybe more prevalent is that I'm well aware that if certain filmography or plot points had been handled in different ways, The Boxtrolls might've actually frightened the ever-loving fuck out of me what with all the industrial stuff and medical horror, but I just...felt like that film was holding my hand the whole way through going "It's okay." The industrial stuff was framed in a way that was just campy enough and yet also taken seriously. Putting a really charismatic villain - ACTUAL VILLAIN, NOT CHICKEN FARMER OR CORRUPT POLITICIAN SABOTEUR - at the wheel was just such a mitigating factor that it gelled the whole thing together and I ended up LOVING what was done with giant machines and garbage crushers and explosions. And as for the medical body horror, I really appreciate how it was so baked in that Snatcher did that to himself - that everyone, EVERYONE warned him "Do not do this, you will probably die, I'm serious, bad fucking idea" up to the point of Eggs trying to plead him during an anaphylaxis attack, one last time, DO NOT continue down this path, we can find a way to heal you psychologically and get you some self-fulfillment. And Snatcher fully chooses hubris over the many, many opportunities offered him to be able to step down onto a safer path and that removes the fear and pulls it more into a tragedy for the villain. Not at all the same thing as "Sam the reporter is trying to save the world and doing her best until a fixture of the landscape accidentally sends her into anaphylaxis."

(Oh, and by the way, can I just - when I do see CWACOM brought up these days, it's always in the context of "This is the one movie where the guy tells the girl it's okay to look nerdy!". Well, no, not the way I remember it. The way I remember it, Sam basically tells Flint "I used to have really tacky style but have since changed it up of my own volition" and Flint is just like "NOOOOO YOU NEED TO WEAR GLASSES AND A SCRUNCHIE. I WANT A HOT NERD GIRL." This could've been pulled off right with some more introspection into female beauty standards, even in a tongue-in-cheek way, but right now it really looks like Sam just wanted to make herself more glam for a new image and Flint bullied her into regressing her style. Which I've also realized meant he bullied her into dressing more like she did as a teenager and normally I think that kind of shit is just "You're overthinking it" but since it's CWACOM and I spelled it out on paper like that, I'm just now realizing how that can be seen as pretty...icky.)

The one saving grace of CWACOM is that I was older by that time, and so it didn't affect me as hard as Chicken Run. But I still hold it dearly to my heart as one of the MOST DISTURBING movies I know, and by "dearly" I mean "fuck this movie, really and truly." I want to extend my thanks to 102D and Boxtrolls for giving me industrial-horror-based climaxes that were actually really comfortable, and again, probably what drove both of these was the fact that we had a campy diva villain in the lead for the potential scary stuff to surround and radiate off. Not a fuckin...ordinary chicken farmer who is just trying to make bank but is somehow passed as a Nazi allegory for trying to live her life as a farmer? I dunno, maybe if I rewatched that film I'd see she has a thirst for human blood too, and if I could fix fic Chicken Run my first order of business would be to give her a thirst for human blood instead of/in addition to chickens.

Anyway. Fuck both these films, EXCEPT for the fact that traumatizing scenarios can always be recast as whump material, and the next time I wanna do some crossover aftercare from a physically and psychologically damaging mission, I have a pie machine and a flesh labyrinth to exploit. REALLY HEAVY ON THAT AFTERCARE COMFORT THOUGH!

[ironstrange-is-the-endgame]

Okay, so this might just be my sleep deprived brain talking but. I rewatched endgame. And like Natasha calling the Avengers a family makes no sense??? Nat. I love you. But y'all were work friends at best. Like Natty, did we watch the same movies? You know the ones where y'all blame one person for everything, where y'all hide the truth bout they're parents death and then just leave em there or the fact that y'all only come to that person when y'all need something?

Sorry, I saw this before and didn’t actually have the time also we don’t speak about Endgame in this house.

When it comes to that sentence, though, I would have agreed with you if it was everyone else, but Nat has never taken parts since the relationship between the Avengers started to crumble and always did what she thought it was best for the team. Like, even at the end of CW, she could have run with Steve and Bucky but she doesn’t and I think that Tony being in BW will explain more. Like we know she didn’t even go with the Rogues because she is in Russia at least for a while between CW and IW.

And then we also have to consider where she comes from. I doubt they’ll ever show us the entire storyline with Recluse, but basically in the Red Room she’s been manipulated into believing that they did all the things they did to her to protect her and the other girls, so it’s a huge change to get to live with SHIELD first and the Avengers later.

I’ve written hundreds of words about what I think Nat actually knows of the entire mission report: 16th December 1992 but that mostly headcanon from my part, so yeah, I guess that the avengers are what she believes a family should be (the only other example she has are the Bartons and with Clint working for Shield I doubt the situation is anywhere better) and that’s why she says that. “The Avengers weren’t my first family,” is what she says in her own movie trailer which, once again, I think we should see before speculate about, but I guess it’s not like family of the year. Nat’s around 33/32 in that movie - according to her birthday in TWS- and Yelena is even younger and it’s implied that they’ve finished the Red Room training around the age of 12/14 at best - first period - this means that they had time to fight side by side with Alexei and I don’t remember her name, Malina I think, before Nat started working for KGB. They could have been a family for what 3/4 years?! Like, she has no idea of what a family really is and how the Avengers accepted her with her past and trusted her, well it’s certainly something.

How other people treated Tony, well... we know that like 90% of this comes from someone entering a certain helicarrier with a clear idea about Tony Stark and not being able to slow down a bit and realizing who the man really is.

[letterboxd]

The Package.

As the bonkers genre thrill-ride Shadow in the Cloud blasts into the new year, writer and director Roseanne Liang unpacks her love of Terminator 2, watching Chloë Grace Moretz’s face for hours, and the life lesson she learned from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Cheng Pei-Pei.

Roseanne Liang’s TIFF Midnight Madness winner Shadow in the Cloud landed with a blast of fresh genre energy on VOD platforms on New Year’s Day. It’s A-class action in a B-grade body, cramming plenty into its taut 83 minutes, including: a top-secret package, a freakish gremlin, a hostile bunch of Air Force dudes, outrageous stunts, dogfights and a fake wartime PSA that feels remarkably real.

Throughout, the camera is focused mostly on one face—Chloë Grace Moretz’s, playing British flight officer Maude Garrett—as she tackles all of the above from a claustrophobic ball turret hanging under a B-17 Flying Fortress, on a classified mission over the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

While the film’s tonal swings are confusing to some, schlock enthusiasts and genre lovers on Letterboxd have embraced the film’s intentionally outlandish sensibility, which “makes excellent use of its genre mash to create an unpredictable, guilty pleasure,” says Mirza. Fajar writes that “it felt like the people involved in this project knew how ridiculous it is and gave a hundred and ten percent to make it work. Someday, it will become a cult classic.” Mawbey agrees: “It really goes off the rails in all the best ways during the final third, and the last couple of shots are just perfect.”

Chloë Grace Moretz and her top-secret package in ‘Shadow in the Cloud’.

To most of the world, Liang is a so-called “emerging” director, when in fact, the mother-of-two, born in New Zealand to Chinese parents, has been at this game for the past two decades. She has helmed a documentary and a romantic drama, both based on her own marriage; a 2008 short called Take 3, which preceded Hollywood’s current conversation about representation and harassment; and Do No Harm, the splatter-tastic 2017 short in which her technical chops and fluid feel for action were on full display, and, as recorded in multiple Letterboxd reviews, established her as one to watch.

Do No Harm scored Liang valuable Hollywood representation, whereupon producer Brian Kavanaugh-Jones brought Shadow in the Cloud to her, thinking she might connect with the material. “It did connect with me on a level that is very personal,” Liang tells me. “As a woman of color, as a mother who juggles a lot.” She says Kavanaugh-Jones then went through the process of removing original writer Max Landis from the project. “He felt that Max was not a good fit for this project, or for how we like to run things. We like to be respectful and courteous and kind to each other…”

In several interviews, Liang has said she’s comfortable with film lovers choosing not to watch Shadow in the Cloud based on Landis’s early involvement. What she’s not comfortable with is her own contribution—and that of her cast and crew—being erased. While WGA rules have his name attached firmly to the project, the credit belies the reality: his thin script, reportedly stretched out to 70 pages by using a larger-than-usual font, was expanded and deepened by Liang and her collaborators.

Writer-director Roseanne Liang. / Photo by Dean O’Gorman

That team includes editor Tom Eagles, Oscar nominated for Jojo Rabbit, actor Nick Robinson (the titular Simon in Love, Simon) and Beulah Koale, a star of the Hawaii Five-Oh series. The opening newsreel was created by award-winning New Zealand animation studio Mukpuddy, after a small test audience got weirded out by the sight of a gremlin in a war film, despite well-documented WWI and WWII gremlin mythology. It’s an unnecessary but happy addition. The cartoon style was inspired by Private Snafu, a series of WWII educational cartoons scripted by none other than Dr. Seuss and directed by Looney Tunes legend Chuck Jones.

But the film ultimately hangs on Chloë Grace Moretz, who overcame cabin fever to drive home an adrenaline rush of screen craft, in which the very limits of what’s humanly possible in mid-air are tested (in ways, it must be said, that wouldn’t be questioned if it were Tom Cruise in the role). Liang would often send directions to Moretz’s ball turret via text, while her cast members delivered live dialogue from an off-set shipping container rigged with microphones. “I just never got sick of Chloë’s face and I’ve watched her hundreds, if not thousands of times. You feel her, you are her, she just engages you in a way that a huge fighting scene might not, if it’s not designed well. Giant empty spectacle is less interesting than one person in one spot, sometimes.”

Ambitious and nerdy about film in equal measure, it’s clear there’s much more to come from Liang, and I’m interested in what her most valuable lesson has been so far. Turns out, it’s a great story involving Chinese veteran Cheng Pei-Pei (Come Drink With Me’s Golden Swallow, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Jade Fox), whose film training includes a tradition of remaining on set throughout filming.

Roseanne Liang on the set of ‘Shadow in the Cloud’.

That meant that, during filming of Liang’s My Wedding and Other Secrets, Cheng would stay on set when she wasn’t required. “In New Zealand, trailers are a luxury,” Liang explains. “I said ‘Don’t you want to go to the trailer that we arranged for you?’ ‘No, I just want to sit and watch.’ ‘Why do you want to watch it, you’ve seen it hundreds of times!’ And she said ‘I learn something new every time’. To Pei-Pei, the secret of life is constant education and curiosity and learning. Movies are her work and her craft and her life, and she never gets bored. If I can be like her, that’s the life, right?”

Speaking of which, it’s time we put Liang through our Life in Film interrogation.

What’s the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the movie that is at the top of the mountain that I’m climbing. To me it’s the perfect blend of spectacle, action design, smarts and heart. It poses the theory that if a robot can learn the value of humanity then maybe there’s hope for the ships that are us. That’s perennial, and possibly even more pertinent today. It holds a very special place in my heart, along with Aliens, Mad Max: Fury Road, Die Hard, La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional.

What’s your earliest memory of watching a film? I have a cassette tape that my dad made for my grandma in 1981 (he’d send tapes back to his mother in Hong Kong). I was three years old and he had just taken us to see The Empire Strikes Back in the cinema. And he can’t talk to my grandma because I’m just going on and on about R2-D2. I will not shut up about R2-D2 and he’s like, “Yes, yes I’m trying to talk to your grandmother,” and I’m like, “But Dad! Dad! R2-D2!” So it’s actually an archive, but it’s become my memory.

What’s the most romantic film you’ve ever seen? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s not the sexiest, but it’s the most romantic. That last scene, those last words where she goes “But you’re gonna be like this forever and I’m gonna be like this forever…” and he just goes “okay”. That to me is one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen. It is a perfect movie.

And the scariest? If it’s a horror movie, the most scared I’ve been is The Ring. I was watching it on a VHS and I was lying on a beanbag on the floor and I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t move, because I felt that if I moved she’d see me! Also, American Psycho just came to me this year. I caught the twentieth anniversary of that movie, which is a terrifying film, and again, possibly more relevant now than when it was made. The scariest film that’s not a horror is Joker. It scared me how much I liked it. When I came out of the movie, I was like, “I’m scared because I kind of love it, but it’s horrible. It’s so irresponsible. I don’t wanna like this movie but goddamn, I feel it.” Like, I wanted to go on the streets and rage. In a way we’re all the Joker, we’re all the Batman. That duality, that yin and yang, is inside everyone of us. It’s universal.

What is the film that slays you every time, leaving you in a heap of tears? This is a classic one, the opening sequence of Up. The first ten minutes of Up just destroy me every time. I also saw Soul a couple of days ago and I was with the whole family and I, just, if I wasn’t with the whole family I would have been ugly-sobbing. I had a real ache in my throat after the movie because I was trying to stop [myself] from sobbing.

Tell me your favorite coming-of-age film, the film that first gave you ‘teenage feelings’? Pump Up the Volume. Christian Slater! Off the back of Pump Up the Volume, I fancied myself as a prophet and wrote a theater piece called Lemmings. Obviously the main character was a person who could see through the façade, and everyone else was following norms. “No one understands me, I’m a prophet!” So clearly I have this shitty, Joker-style megalomaniac inside of me. It was the worst play, and I don’t know why my teachers agreed for us to do a staging of it!

Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis in ‘Pump Up the Volume’ (1990).

Is there a film that you and your family love to rewatch? We’ve tried to impose our taste on our children, but they’re too young. We showed them The Princess Bride—they didn’t get it. We literally showed our babies Star Wars in their cribs. That’s how obsessive Star Wars fans we were.

Name a director and/or writer that you deeply admire for their use of the artform. I have a slightly weird answer for this. Can I just give love to Every Frame a Painting by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos? They are my film school. I was thinking of my love of Edgar Wright, but then I thought of their video essay on Edgar Wright and how to film comedy, and his essay on Jackie Chan and the rhythm of action and then their essay on the Coen Brothers and Shot Reverse Shot. I must have watched that 30 times ahead of the TV show that I’m making now. I started out in editorial and Tony Zhou is an editor and he talks about when to make the cut: it’s an instinct, it’s a feeling, it’s a rhythm. I realized the one thing in common that I could mention about all the films I’ve loved is Every Frame a Painting. It’s their love of movies that comes bubbling out of every single essay that they made that I just wanna shout out at this part of my career.

Were there any crucial films that you turned to in your development for Shadow in the Cloud? Indiana Jones was something that Chloë brought up—she likes the spiffiness and the humor of Indiana Jones. Sarah Connor was our touchstone for the female character. For one-person-in-one-space type stories, I watched Locke quite a lot, to figure out how they shaped tension and story and [kept] us on the edge of our seats when it’s only one person in one space. In terms of superheroes, I came back to Aliens. Not Alien. Aliens. You know, there are two types of people in this world—people who prefer Alien over Aliens, and people who prefer Aliens over Alien. But actually I think I vacillate for different reasons.

Can there be a third type of person, who thinks they’re both great, but Alien³, just, no? Maybe that’s the best group to be in. We don’t need to fight about this, we can love both of them! I was having an argument with James Wan’s company about this, because there’s a rift inside the company of people who prefer Alien over Aliens.

Okay, program a triple feature with your film as one of the three. I don’t know. Ask Ant Timpson!

I’ll ask Ant Timpson. [We did, and he replied: “Well, one has to be the Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. And then either Life (2017) or Altitude (2010).”]

Thank you Ant! I used to go to his all-nighters as a university student. He is the king of programming things.

Jake Gyllenhaal in ‘Life’ (2017).

It’s strange that we never met at one of his events! Ant would make me dress up in strange outfits and do weird skits between films. (For those who don’t know, Timpson ran the Incredibly Strange Film Festival for many years—now part of the New Zealand International Film Festival—and still runs an annual 24-Hour Movie Marathon.) So what’s a film from those events that sticks in your head as the perfect genre experience with a crowd? It was a movie about a man protecting a woman who was the girlfriend of a mafia boss: A Bittersweet Life. Not only does it have one of the sexiest Korean actors, sorry, not to objectify, but also I actually screenshot a lot of that film for pitch documents. And, do you remember a crazy Japanese movie where someone’s sitting on the floor with a clear umbrella and a woman is lactating milk? Visitor Q by Takashi Miike. I remember just how fucking crazy that was.

Finally, what was the best film you saw in 2020? I haven’t seen Nomadland yet, so keep in mind that I haven’t seen all the films this year. I have three: The Invisible Man, which I thought was just amazing. I thought [writer-director] Leigh Whannell did such a great job. The Half of It by Alice Wu, a quiet movie that I simply just adored. And then the last movie I saw at the cinema was Promising Young Woman. The hype is real.

Related content

Kairit’s list of “She Did THAT!!!” films

Beyond Badass: Female Action Heroes

Up in the Air: The Letterboxd Showdown of Best Airplanes in film

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

‘Shadow in the Cloud’ is available in select theaters and on video on demand now.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

YouTube video views

I've been thinking about my YouTube videos. I actually have two YouTube channels which I've been keeping very separate. One of them is for videos about books and writing, which includes serious writing advice, interviews with other authors, and things like that. I've only had this channel for about a year and it’s still small, with only a handful of videos and subscribers. The other is a channel I've had for years where I post fan videos of stuff. I used to post loads more videos but my creations have become a lot more sporadic over recent years because Real Life.

On that fan video channel, I've been trying to work out a pattern for the videos that do best, because the videos with the most views are not my best videos. So here is me taking a critical look at my videos to try and get to the bottom of why some YouTube videos are more successful than others.

1st Place: Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger, 378,002

The video that has the most views at 378,002 last time I checked is a Power Rangers video called Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger. The song is When Your A Jet from the musical West Side Story, which is a little... odd as a choice. As videos go, it's okay. The video clips fit the lyrics and there are no obvious slip ups like stray frames being left in. There's a slightly clunky bit of dialogue in the middle that doesn't transition well to the rest of the video and the title at the end is a touch crude, but I can look back at this and smile instead of cringe. It doesn't do anything particularly clever but it's fine. I made it in 2007 so it's had 13 years to gain viewers, which would make sense, and at the time I posted it I was very active on a Power Rangers forum so I probably posted links on there and got some viewers that way.

I think the main reason this video has done so well though is because a Power Rangers anniversary episode came out later with the same name, so I suspect a lot of the views are people who were looking for that episode and clicked my silly, little video instead. I expect the 23 dislikes were a result of this. The average view time according to the analytics is 35 seconds, which combined with the general lack of interaction suggests that people click on it, realise it isn't what they want, and click away.

2nd Place: Trailer: Am I Perfect Yet? 211,239

My next highest view count video is Trailer: Am I Perfect Yet? This is a trailer I made for an original story I was working on. I took clips from a bunch of different films and TV shows and stuck them together in a way that formed a trailer for my own story. In terms of quality, the biggest thing I notice rewatching it is that it jumps between different aspect ratios. Some of the film clips are generally in widescreen, but the made from TV films and TV show clips aren't, so it jumps constantly between them. There are also cuts between scenes from different things that are supposed to be in the same place, but the lighting is so clearly different. But on the other hand, it does what I intended it to do. It gets across the points for the story the way a trailer should. Looking at this, it makes me want to dig out the half-written first draft of the novel and see if it's worth continuing to write the thing.

In terms of why this video has so many views, I think it's because this was the pinned video on my channel for a long time. I pinned it while I was actively working on the story and then I just didn't change it for ages, probably years. So anyone going to my channel would have seen this video first.

3rd Place: Trailer: The Forgotten Power, 165,144

The next videos are a bit more of a mystery. Coming in third is a trailer for a Power Rangers fanfic I wrote. The fanfic is probably still up on fanfiction.net if anyone cares enough to hunt for it and I did include links to the trailer videos when I posted the fic, so I guess that would have brought people to it.

As far as videos go, it's not good. Some of the clips are badly cut out so there's a random frame from another scene that sneaks in. I put audio clips over video clips in a way that's really obvious and bad. The audio is jumpy.

I'm ashamed that this is my third most viewed video because it is definitely not a great example of my video editing skill. I know that it's over 13 years old, so I should cut myself some slack, but if someone sorts my videos by views to look for the best ones they'll find this instead of any of the much, much better ones I made later.

4th Place: Blood on my Hands - Jayden/Deker 150,740

Another Power Rangers video, this one a little bit more recent. This one I published in June 2011. My skills obviously came a long way in those 4 years. It's just a lot less clunky. The clips flow together a bit more smoothly. I have included some dialogue but these sections are during instrumental-only parts of the song and I've layered the audio a lot better than in the previous video. It gets a little bit repetitive because there were only a limited amount of scenes with these two characters together but I don't think I reused any exact shots.

Overall, it's a decent little video but I'm not sure why it's so high on the list. I don't have any explanation for why this one has done so much better than other videos I've made.

5th Place: Teaser Trailer: The Deal, 115,548

This was another fanfic trailer but for a fanfic I never actually posted anywhere. It's a short video, only a minute and a half long, teasing a story I never got far enough into to start putting online. I posted this video near the end of 2011 and like the one above, the years between it and some of the earlier ones of this list were clearly filled with a lot of improvement, but the success of this little video is baffling to me. It's fine as a piece of video editing but it's not great as a trailer because it doesn't give much of an indication about the fic. It's clearly meant to tease people and get them excited about the story I was working on... and never did anything with.

But why does this one have more than a hundred thousand views? It's not that it was linked to a fic because the fic was never posted anywhere to link back to it. I do not understand why this video has done so much better than others.

Videos 6 - 10

That was the last video with more than a hundred thousand views. The next view range between 60k and 90k. Two more general Power Rangers videos, one more Power Rangers fanfic trailer, A Perfect Body fan video, and a Firefly/Serenity fan video. The most recent of these was the Firefly video posted in 2009.

Is there a pattern?

It's obvious that most of my highest viewed videos are older ones. I can only assume that this is because the older videos have had more time to build up views. If I look for videos I've posted in the last five years, the first one I find is I Choose You a Class fanvid featuring the Charlie and Matteusz ship published in 2017. This has a respectable 39k views putting it in 17th place on my list but it's surrounded in the list by videos posted between 2007 and 2011.

The next one published in the last 5 years is a Teen Wolf video Heroes published in May 2015, with 19k views, in 25th place.

If I sort by date, most of the videos at the top of the list have a few hundred views, but there's an interesting pattern here. Videos for White Collar, Class, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency do better than my Marvel videos. A lot better. Is it to do with the size of the fandom? There are loads of people making videos for Marvel movies so my poor Stucky video is down at 157 views unable to get noticed while not many people are making Dirk Gently videos so my Panto/Silas one has 3055.

But that can't be the only thing. I published a bunch of Voltron videos within a few weeks of each other in October 2016. The Shiro video I Will Remain has 847 views while Make a Man Out of You has 17k, and the Pidge video Robbed of Her Innocence that I was really proud of only has 953 views. So published time and fandom can't be the answers to the mystery because these are all the same fandom published within weeks of each other.

Conclusion

I have no friggin' clue why some of my videos do so much better than others. This makes no sense whatsoever. I give up. I'm just going to post whatever random stuff I come up with and some will magically do better than others with no pattern or logic.

And if you’re going to look at my fan videos, don’t sort by views because the most viewed videos are far from my best work.

[starwarshyperdrive]

I’m concerned about the Star Wars canon

I’ve always been a huge Star Wars fan but didn't follow the old EU (extended universe) because it was too convoluted and well.. a bunch of gobbledygook (granted there were some good bits in it, who doesn’t love the Thrawn trilogy even though he is pretty much a different character now), so I actually welcomed the new canon. Start over with a clean slate and make sure everything is connected, makes sense and feels Star Warsy. So far the story group has done a decent job, even though there were some questionable bits and pieces. As hardcore Star Wars fan and apologist I can force myself to get behind a lot of things and I was cool with the Bendu somehow, but the Clone Wars Mortis arc, as well as space whales and the world between worlds really rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of people are celebrating Dave Filoni as savior of the true Star Wars spirit and he is certainly an inspired artist and nice guy but I once again have to wonder whether or not some of the comic bookish stuff REALLY fits the Star Wars universe. Yeah I know ‘it’s a huge universe bla bla’ but do we really have to accept everything?

Someone recently described hardcore fans (such as myself) as a ‘cult’ and Star Wars Celebration to a religious ceremony and if I’m being honest and self-reflective I can’t really argue against it, but that’s also why you always need to check yourself and not just ‘swallow’ everything without questioning it. Keep a critical eye. Things like time travel and other super hero stuff ( I haven’t seen any of the recent Marvel or DC movies) have no place in Star Wars. Of course Star Wars is for everyone, but does that then also mean we need a Star Wars romcom, a Star Wars coming of age movie ..or ..?  I don’t know..porn? Leave that to fan fiction. 

Star Wars was always more about mythology, some sort of buddhist Excalibur and I am seriously concerned that at some point the ‘people in charge’ will forget that and it will become a shallow bubble gum entertainment focus on ‘what is selling at the moment’. A good example are - again - all the super hero movies picking up on trends. I don’t want a Thor Ragnarok Star Wars movie with a Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. Don’t make everything the same. Keep Star Wars unique. Keep ‘that Star Wars tone’.

‘XY doesn’t UNDERSTAND Star Wars’ is an overused and abused phrase and in so many ways pointless as there are many facets to Star Wars especially now that we have generations of fans who grew up with the prequels, the Clone Wars, Rebels or even Resistance - I should point out that I actually liked Resistance because it’s not tempering with the mythology - but the lore has been laid out in the original trilogy and everything needs to acknowledge that. We cannot have some Terminator-franchise kind of disaster a la ‘Ezra traveled back in time and actually was there with Yoda on Dagobah’ or what not. 

By now it’s common knowledge that - despite what they say - there has been no overall plan for the sequel trilogy, which is quite concerning and feeding into my concerns that it’s all downhill from here (after The Rise of Skywalker and the Mandalorian or course). I know a lot of people who vehemently defended The Last Jedi when it came out, mostly as a reaction to all the stupid hate it got for the wrong reasons and I am one of them myself, but most of them are admitting now that there is something off about the movie. It is written into a corner and not picking up on the clues given in The Force Awakens. It has some amazing scenes and I will keep defending it, but there are some scenes that just don’t feel right and leave a bad aftertaste. I frequently rewatch all the movies and besides Attack of the Clones it’s the only one where I think ‘Now I have to endure THAT bit again’. I go to a lot of Q&A and it’s interesting to see how people who have worked on the movie feel the same. Even if you 100% loved it and it’s your favorite movie ever, let’s be honest - the humor is completely out of place. Fart jokes in The Phantom Menace > Your Mom jokes. And it’s just too long. Of course we all want MORE Star Wars, but where does it end. Would you go and see a 6h movie? If you are a good filmmaker you should be able to say what you want to say in the same about of time as the other movies. But that’s just my personal 2 cents. It just felt like someone who was hellbent on doing his own thing for the sake of doing his own thing and not for the sake of the story. Don’t get me wrong. It was a great idea to (spoiler alert) kill off Snoke that casually, so the movie has redeeming qualities that save it for me. Then again, as a Star Wars fan I WANT to like it. I still watched it 13 times or so. I was in the room for the trailer reveal at SWCO. I want to take ownership and be part of the hardcore fan community, but they shouldn't bank too much on it. I still want a good movie. I’m not gonna be meek and mild about something contradicting the core mythology. Ryan Johnson is allegedly still doing his trilogy and then there is the Benioff and Weiss trilogy. They didn’t exactly do a great job wrapping up Game of Thrones and left fans in awe about how the show ended and have not really proven that they can handle a franchise well either. Will all off them have free rein and just go to town on a Star Wars story as they please? Am I the only one who finds this a bit odd?!

I trust JJ Abrams to do the right thing and I hope my trust is not misplaced. I think the allegations of The Force Awakens being a A New Hope reboot are misplaced as there are also a lot of similarities to The Phantom Menace, so.. if you’re a fan you know what comes next.. ‘it rhymes, it’s like poetry’. So it makes sense. So I think ‘he gets it’..

My main concern in the new canon overall. I made an effort to get all the publications of the new canon, but the books and comics already started to get weird again. Star Wars always had a slight alien but yet familiar vibe and some stories feature people smoking cigars, drinking coffee in the morning and doing other stuff never depicted in Star Wars before. How long until someone gets a Star Wars burger at Star Wars McDonalds or orders Star Wars pizza while watching Star Wars HoloNetflix. I’m sorry. That’s ridiculous. It’s not automatically Star Wars just because you use Star Wars terminology like death sticks or Nerf steaks. Watch the movies and make an effort.

 And now the novelizations of the movies are apparently not considered ‘hard canon’ anymore because the authors didn’t know the direction the next movies are going, so the clues and hints may be completely useless. So why do I force myself through some really not very good books then (others are great, no generalization here)? That’s quite alarming. Wasn’t the entire reason they got a story group to avoid that? What’s with all the loose ends?  That's also why I think they will shy away from using canon characters in the movies (for the most part). Its easier to have a self contained canon universe where you can introduce Purge Troopers in a comic and then have them in a video game. I once read an interview with one of the Star Wars authors who invented a character and then got told ‘give him that name / make him this person’ instead of having this particular character in mind from the start. This is how you lose consistency. I’m well aware that over hundreds and thousands of years that’s EXACTLY how ancient history was written, which is why there are flood legends all over the world and why Jesus and Mithras are pretty much the same person, but they DID NOT HAVE A STORY GROUP and ancient mythology hasn’t been written over a course of a few years.

At the same time it’s interesting how there seem to be purists who are very determined to bring that original Star Wars vibe back. Like Jon Favreau with The Mandalorian. And like I said earlier about Resistance. Its so much easier to do that if you stay away from the mythology. It’s really tricky and so much could go wrong. The stuff introduced in Rogue One like Guardians of the Whills and the temple of Kyber is a perfect example how it’s done. Some of the stuff in the Clone Wars and Rebels is the complete opposite, so I’m really curious to see how Dave Filonis involvement in The Mandalorian pans out. He is really great with stuff like Mandalorians, Clones and I even came to accept Ashoka after reading the book and seeing her all grown up as Fulcrum, but I’m very skeptical when it comes to his ‘mystical side of the force’ interpretations.

In conclusion I know that I sound like a preacher and George Lucas repeatedly stated it’s ‘just for 10 year old kids’ but tell that to all the dead Bothans.

Please just don’t ruin Star Wars.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

“The Lion King” (2019) - Thoughts/Review

So my sister, Ciara, and I went and saw the remake of The Lion King at the cinema where I work since I get free tickets and I didn’t really want to have to pay £20 just to watch a film I could easily watch at home. To add, my sister has been super sick recently and I felt it might be nice to treat her - even though she has been saying for weeks “they’ve ruined it, I can tell”. The original Lion King is Ciara’s favourite movie and we actually rewatched the original on Friday because it’s one we both love.  Ciara and I went in with absolutely zero expectations, thinking “it’ll be absolutely shit” based on what we’ve seen trailer/advert/clip wise.

I’m going to put my thoughts/feelings under a “read more”, just to be safe. Also, reminder that it’s just my opinion and that I can’t tell other people how to feel about the film.

So...it wasn’t as terrible as we expected it to be but it wasn’t a masterpiece like the original either.

They could have just reused the original “Circle of Life” as it was, really, but whatever.

Having said that, they could have frankly just lifted the entire audio of the animated film and animated the film to it instead of bringing in other cast members.

One of the first things my sister said was “where the fuck is Rafiki’s staff?”, and she kept saying it throughout the film, like it REALLY annoyed her that he didn’t have his stick with him the entire time.

Ciara said that the opening was the best part for her personally, I don’t know if that’s because nostalgia or because there was no talking, but that’s her thought on it.

BABY SIMBA IS SO SWEET OH MY GOODNESS

I love James Earl Jones but for some reason he just sounded...rather unbothered here. Like he was bored. Maybe it’s because hes old(er) now and he just doesn’t have the energy for it, maybe I was comparing his vocal performance here too much to his original one in 1994, but for some reason he just didn’t sound at all bothered or like the wise powerful King you can respect and fear.

I didn’t hate Scar’s new voice but I did feel like Jeremy Irons’ performance had more character to it, more sass/sarcasm. Here he just seemed a little..I don’t know. It was a little less sassy, if that makes sense.

It honest to God does feel like watching a nature documentary, like I was half expecting fucking David Attenborough to suddenly start talking over it to be honest. 

Baby Simba reminded me of our cat, Dave, and he was admittedly very cute. I also really loved the things that the lions did that reflected actual cat behaviour, like pouncing and stuff like that. 

Is it just me or did the filmmakers have the same issue as the original did in that they couldn’t decide what colour Nala’s eyes were? Like at one point I was like “oh, they’re actually green, cool”, but then in the next scene I was like “they’re brown?!” etc. 

I liked the hyenas in this, I like that they were allowed to make actual hyena cackles because real hyena cackles are creepy as fuck. I also really loved Shenzi, even if I do wish they’d brought Whoopi Goldberg back.

During “I just can’t wait to be King”, I couldn’t help but feel like it paled in comparison to the original. I know I’m talking about the original a lot, but that’s the issue with these remakes - they will always be compared to their original films. In the original, the cubs were jumping on top of animals, making big gestures, the colours were bright etc. Here it was just two cubs running around a watering hole, the colours just...normal. Muted even. The vocals were fine, but compared to the original it just wasn’t the same. 

My sister wanted to know why they didn’t bring back Rowan Atkinson as Zazu and I kind of have to agree. I found his woodpecker joke funny though.

I stand by what I said about Simba and Nala as cubs looking too similar. In the wild, yeah, that might be the case but this is a movie - the audience should be able to tell who is who. Eventually I think I understood which cub was which but that was only because they were talking and Simba is nearly-always in front. 

Nala’s “Simba, do you speak bird” had my sister giggling though, so there’s that.

There were moments where I could see the animals expressing some emotion but for the most part it was very uncanny. It was like those voices shouldn’t have been coming out of lions - which is kind of the point. That’s why the Lion King on screen works better as an animation instead of realistic CGI.

I’m assuming that they changed Ed a bit to be more politically correct since in the original he was a bit...not quite there. 

Unless they were talking, I could not tell which hyena was supposed to be which. The original three hyenas had very clear differences in their designs, whereas here they all look the same.

I did like the “Kings of the Past” scene under the stars - I think my sister and I both agree that it was very sweet.

Having said that, it went from broad daylight to dark as night in about two seconds and I can’t stand it because it should have been FAR more gradual.

Let’s have a moment of silence for “Be Prepared”. Somehow the best song from the original is the worst one in the remake because they cut 90% of it and turned it into a weird chant. It just makes it even more glaringly obvious that Jeremy Irons was a better Scar, to be honest. The beat is good but goddamit, the song deserved better.

I know Disney changed it because the original “Be Prepared” had sort of Nazi undertones but like...isn’t that the point? Scar is an evil dictator, it’s not like he’s a good guy. It’s like changing Chicken Run so that the farm isn’t operated like a concentration camp - it ruins the whole point.

I could be wrong but did they not use the “Mufasa has something he didn’t have before...a weakness” line? Because that was the line I heard in the adverts and thought was a good addition. 

THE GORGE SCENE JFC

Not gonna lie, I kinda miss Scar knocking Zazu out - though I suppose it makes sense for Zazu to get the lionesses (and where the frick were they then?!)

I audibly gasped when Mufasa was knocked over trying to help Simba off the tree branch like I KNEW what was coming but it genuinely still gets to me.

Mufasa REALLY had to jump carefully down the gorge, huh

Mufasa’s death gave me mixed feelings to be honest; the delivery of “Long Live the King” was disappointing. Like in the original it’s slowly said, so evil it gives you chills, whereas here it’s so...meh. And I had to try not to laugh still because I turned to my sister and just said, “...Did Scar just bitch-slap Mufasa off a cliff?!”

Okay, Simba in the gorge and finding his dad’s body, him calling for help... god fucking damn it. My sister was openly crying and saying “for fuck sake, I’ve seen the original a hundred times and it still gets to me!”. I was crying too...it’s just something about that baby lion calling for help as his dad lies dead on the floor...shit, it gets to you.

It also helps that Hans Zimmer composed the soundtrack again - it’s beautiful, but I think that because we’ve heard it before and associate it with the original, it adds to the feelings. Like I hear the “Stampede” soundtrack and immediately I think of Simba crying for help. 

I wish they had showed more fear on Simba’s face when Scar told him to run away - in the original, his ears are down, his eyes are wide, his posture/stance is clearly showing he’s terrified. Here he just looks a little...surprised.

OKAY BUT HOW DID SIMBA END UP ON THE LOWER PART OF THE CLIFF?! I DON’T...HOW?!

The imagery of Scar walking onto the ledge of Pride Rock as the hyenas surround the other lions is still super powerful, to be honest.

I wish Zazu had been trapped like in the original, like that was comedy gold and they missed it.

Disney really couldn’t have brought back Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella huh -_-

Look, I’m not a huge fan of Seth Rogen anyway - Sausage Party HAUNTS me to this day - but usually in voice over I find him more bearable. Not that I hate him that much but still... I would have felt ten times more generous about his Pumbaa voiceover if he hadn’t done his laugh. We ALL know the Seth Rogen laugh.

I still liked the dynamic between Timon and Pumbaa, even if my sister felt it wasn’t the same. 

Some absolutely GOLDEN lines were cut, and it should be a crime:  “he looks blue” “I’d say goldish-brown”.

THANK GOD they kept in “what’s a-motto with you?” though

“I got downhearted every time that I...farted, are you gonna stop me?!” “NO I AM NOT, YOU DISGUST ME” - wHAT. I mean...what?!

I’m glad there were a few other animals living in the jungle other than Timon and Pumbaa, like it makes more sense that there’s others living there. Having said that, I also liked the idea of them having this utopia to themselves in the original so...yeah.

My sister pointed out that the Timon-Pumbaa-Simba relationship was severely lacking in this film. In the original, you could tell that Timon and Pumbaa loved Simba dearly and that he was seen as a total equal. Here they seemed so much stand-offish even after living with him for so long.

“Yeah, you’ve grown 400 pounds since we started” - LMFAO THIS WAS A GOOD LINE OKAY

“Oh now he’s riffing” - honestly same, was it necessary XD

Ciara felt that the added scene showing Nala/the lionesses in the Pridelands/Nala leaving was unnecessary. In the original, you feel the shock with Simba when he returns because it’s the first time you see what a wasteland it has become. Here you don’t have that. It was clearly just to fill some extra time and get their money’s worth out of Beyonce, milking it for all they have.

The tension in that scene was nice though, and I sort of liked how a) Sarabi rejected Scar and b) how this was then a catalyst for Scar saying “the hyenas eat before the lions...but they don’t leave much behind”. Good addition that was.

Was the additional exposition showing a tuft of Simba’s mane journeying really necessary? Like we didn’t need to see a giraffe fucking eat it or a dung beetle rolling a ball of shit with the mane inside of it. Like come on, Disney, really? They clearly just wanted to show off that they could pull it off.

What’s that quote Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park (I think?)? “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should”. THE SAME GOES FOR THE PEOPLE AT DISNEY, JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN, DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD

How did Rafiki see a random tuft of hair and immediately go “FUCK YEAH IT’S SIMBA HE’S ALIVE”, like he didn’t smell it (it would have smelt of shit though) or anything, he just looked at it and was like “SIMBA IS ALIVE”. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THAT.

“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was a fucking delight, and my sister and I both sung/danced along to it, no regrets.

I jumped so hard when Nala just came out of nowhere and interrupted the song to be honest

The close-ups of Timon’s face in this film are hilarious to be honest - creepy but hilarious.

HOW DID NALA REALIZE IT WAS SIMBA RIGHT AWAY?! In the original she was like “who are you?” but now she just knew?! SHE THOUGHT SIMBA WAS DEAD BUT SHE SEES A RANDOM MALE LION AND IMMEDIATELY KNOWS THAT’S HER OLD BEST FRIEND WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD?! FUCK OFF

“Can You Feel the Love Tonight”...hmmm. Sorry, I gotta have a whole separate section for this.

Firstly...TONIGHT. CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT, DISNEY. IT’S AT NIGHT TIME. IN THE EVENING. AT LEAST PUT A FUCKING SUNSET OR SOMETHING TO SHOW IT’S EVENING.

Don’t get me wrong, the animation was beautiful, but jesus christ, it’s set at NIGHT TIME. How do you fuck that up?! It’s literally IN the damn song.

My sister and I are really not Beyonce fans, I’m sorry. Ciara literally leaned over and whispered “I’m going to sing the song myself to block out Beyonce”, that’s how much she despised it.

Look, Beyonce is a singer and yeah, she’s a strong singer. No one is disputing that. Do I think she’s overrated? Absolutely, but I can admit she can sing. She is NOT a voice actress and she should NOT be voicing a character like Nala. Every time she spoke, I just missed Moira Kelly’s performance from the original even more.

Beyonce’s voice just doesn’t fit the song. She was overpowering Donald Glover far too much - it was like he was a backup singer in a song meant to be a duet. A duet is supposed to have the two voices melding together and harmonizing to create a beautiful sound - not one person taking over and making it all about them

Okay but why the fuck does Seth Rogen sound like Kermit right at the end of the song? 

Anyway, moving on back to the rest of the film:

Another moment of my sister saying “BUT WHERE IS HIS STICK, HE HAS TO WACK PEOPLE WITH IT”

Disney really cut out the stick metaphor where Rafiki hits Simba and says “it hurts, yes, but it’s in the past”. Like COME ON DISNEY. That’s one of the key moments for god’s sake!

So they could animate Simba’s mane-hair being rolled along the ground in giraffe shit but NOT Mufasa in the clouds? LMFAO OKAY WHATEVER

Jesus Christ Disney, did you HAVE to put that “Spirit” song over Simba going back to the Pridelands?! It just a) doesn’t fit the scene and b) comes out of nowhere. Like nowhere else in the film is there a moment like that, so why now? 

Unpopular Opinion: “Spirit” is a bad song and my sister agrees. Everyone’s kissing Beyonce’s ass about it but me, my mum and my sister have all on separate occasions heard it and said “wow that’s fucking shit”. 

I miss the slo-mo of Simba running through the desert more than ever. Couldn’t we have just had a recreation of that scene with the same music and NOT Beyonce’s random song ruining it?

I had a feeling they would cut out the Hula dance thing but it still annoys me because that is ICONIC

My sister and I were both far too happy when Rafiki took his stick out of the tree, like we were like “FINALLY”

Instead Timon and Pumbaa start singing “Be Our Guest” and like...Why?! Is this a joke just for Disney fans? BATB and TLK aren’t even set in the same continent, for a start, let alone being a part of the same story, so how the hell does Timon know it? I mean, it’s hilarious if you’re a Disney fan but just...why? It makes absolutely zero sense. 

Sarabi still manages to be a badass Queen and I love it

The vocals during the big reveal scene really weren’t anywhere NEAR the standard of the original, especially on Scar’s part. It just felt so weak compared to Matthew Broderick and Jeremy Irons, to be honest.

Why...Why does Nala suddenly have beef with Shenzi? Just...yeah, Shenzi and like 50 other hyenas tried to eat Nala (and Simba) as a cub but like...why does Nala suddenly have personal beef with her based on that one interaction? They don’t even LOOK at each other again until this moment in the film.

The battle was cool, I guess, but maybe I’m just super blood-thirsty and gory so...who knows. The Simba/Scar fight was especially good.

I wish Rafiki using his stick was more karate/martial arts like the original, here it’s just like he’s flailing it about randomly

I did like that they reused the part where Scar basically flings smoldering soot/ash/rock into Simba’s face. Like that’s the kinda dirty tactic I live for.

“You were right about one thing, Scar...a hyena’s belly is never full” - OH SHIT, MY WIG WAS SNATCHED OH MY LORD WHAT A LINE

The hyenas eating Scar is so dark in the original and it’s even darker here because it looks so real, like I genuinely felt horrified watching it even though you don’t see anything.

Towards the end when Simba nuzzled two of the lionesses, I couldn’t tell which one was supposed to be Sarabi and which was supposed to be Nala.

THAT MUSIC AS SIMBA BECOMES KING, THANK YOU HANS ZIMMER FOR NOT LETTING US DOWN 

Okay but I genuinely want to know if the baby cub at the end is Kopa, Kiara or Kion. Disney can’t seem to make up their minds about Simba and Nala’s cub so...yeah. It could literally be any of them at this rate.

I had no idea that the first credits song was Elton John, and I miss his renditions of Circle of Life/Can You Feel the Love Tonight even more, like those are arguably two of the best Elton John songs.

THEY USED “He Lives in You” AS AN END CREDIT SONG AND I WANT TO WATCH THE LION KING 2 AGAIN

So here’s the thing...it wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be, and Ciara agrees. Ciara is arguably the one to ask about Lion King matters since it’s literally her favourite film (having said that, for the longest time I thought her favourite was Tangled so...). It was nowhere near the standard of the original, and you could definitely just stay at home and watch the original and get more out of it then paying £30 at the cinema (far more if you’re a family). Some of the jokes fell sort of flat, some of them worked, it was a bit of a mix. 

For the most part, the new voices weren’t too bad but none of them were better than the original voice actors. I honestly don’t understand why they didn’t bring back Matthew Broderick, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Jeremy Irons, Rowan Atkinson, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg etc. Obviously I know at least two of the original voice actors died (the ones for Sarabi and Rafiki) but why replace the ones who are still alive? I just...I don’t understand to be honest. Having more members of the original cast would have definitely triggered nostalgia for the adults watching the trailer/adverts and made them want to watch it more. 

I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to. I don’t think I would want to pay to see it again (so if I do end up seeing it again, it’ll probably be at my place and for free) but it was cute and I can understand why parents would want to bring their kids to watch it. I did feel super nostalgic but afterwards, I kind of just wanted to go home and watch the original again. And I literally rewatched it three days ago. 

It’s definitely not a masterpiece like the original was - none of the remakes are up to the standard of their original movies, but The Lion King is definitely nearer the bottom of my list in terms of how good a movie it is. Like I said, it wasn’t anywhere near as terrible as I thought it would end up being - I fully expected to want to leave halfway through and to have a raging headache, but that was not the case. It was a fine way to pass the afternoon, no doubt, and I think I ate too much food whilst I was there, but other than that...yeah, you get the idea.

If nothing else, it has adorable lion cubs in it so that’s a big plus I guess.

[millennialdemon]

Summer 2019 First Impressions, Round 2!

Premieres the past few days have mercifully been better -- but that’s not saying much considering how awful the earlier releases were...

-- Dr. STONE

To be honest, I had already developed a bad taste in my mouth for this just based on the trailers I had watched weeks before the premiere. I thought the protagonist was wildly unappealing and unrelatable, not just because the art/design style is not my favourite, but because of his personality... I was crossing my fingers he wouldn’t be as insufferable as he was in the trailer clips, but alas...

The “novelty” of a shounen where “Science Trumps Magic And Fantasy!” is completely lost on me, because the first episode honestly didn’t feature much science, at least not in a meaningful or interesting way? Sure, the protagonist rattles off some chemistry terms and has fucking E=MC2 on his shirt collar in the post apocalypse (I wish I was kidding...), but him having survival skills enough to build a primitive hut isn’t a display of Genius Intellect, and even at the end when he finally “figures out” how to crack open the shell of stone covering the birds he collected, we didn’t really see him... figure it out. He just did the same thing a bunch of times over a long span of time. Because science is doing the same thing over and over again until it works and not experimenting...?

I assume though that that will be explained in episode 2. I assume. I hope. Or maybe I could rewatch it and see if I missed some pivotal detail of genius realization, but I’d probably still be distracted by Taiju yelling constantly and Senkuu looking at the camera and smirking about #Logic. And some story things that seem glaringly wrong to me even with the hyped up shounen tone, like teenage boys being trapped in stone with their minds aware of it for thousands of years and still having the same personalities as they did before when they finally escape it... 

...I guess what I’m saying here is that the comedy/adventure mashup tone is not terribly appealing to me, and that I think it comes off as a bit pretentious when it tries to lay off the Shounen Shenanigans. The characters range from nothing to sneeze at to actively irritating, and for a story trying to make a statement within a genre, it felt super run of the mill. But I will stick around and see how it goes, I suppose... 

Tepid 5/10. 

-- Fire Force

Probably the best premiere so far, but it still didn’t blow me away, and had quite a few problems just in episode 1... fanservice is the number one turn off of course (and on this note, not just the exploitative visuals of it, but also how it changes the perception of the characters reacting to it... protag boy was alright in my books until the script begged him to look at a co-workers chest, sigh), but I also found the writing very clunky, which is a shame because if it took its foot off the gas re: Flashbacks And Repeated Declarations Of Intent, it could have been more compelling than not at all. You almost had me, protagonist boy, but alas... Anime Bullshit Got In The Way, As It Tends To...

The animation was beautiful (the fire animation! Wow! Cool "firefighting” scenes too) and I actually ended up really warming up to the character designs and weird firefighter-but-a-bit-fantasy aesthetic. I tend to like the shape of over-sized clothing and the modifications to some of the fire fighting uniforms were charming (even though they were pretty silly and unnecessary) like the mage’s witch hat and the nun’s outfit. Other than the outfits, I thought the actual character designs were pretty good too. (Shout out to the protagonist’s mother, who looks like a completely generic, normal anime mom, but she just has pointy teeth! Obsessed with that for some reason)

That’s pretty much all I have to say about it so far. It has potential, I think, but it could easily be squandered with perverse slap stick at the wrong defining moment. 

... Like most anime...

7/10 for now. 

-- GRANBELM

Hmm... I’m not sure what to say about this one. It actually wasn’t as bad as I was expecting based on the super moe art. But it was certainly messy and wore its inspirations on its sleeve with a bit too much pride...

Let me put it this way: Have you ever wanted to watch a slightly dark and serious magical girl anime, except they also have mechas, and once a month they all fight each other in epic mecha battles on an alternate plane of existence for some reason, while wearing frilly dresses or absurdly ugly bikini/frog hoodie combos, because they are mages who can access magic that was sealed away by seven legendary sages hundreds of years ago because humanity was using magic for evil?

I hope the answer is “No, that sounds ridiculous.” Because it was. 

But beyond a few very questionable magical girl outfits, there actually wasn’t any pantyshots or leering cameras, and this is the first show this season to feature an all girl cast that wasn’t completely reprehensible and severely misogynistic.

And I think that counts for something. So 5/10 for being bizarre and average but not making me gag. Yet.

-- Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Season 2

Alright, I know the “premiere” that dropped a few days ago wasn’t actually episode 1 of the new season, it was a recap episode for the previous season (it has been a few years, I suppose, but I’ve never seen an anime hype itself up so much by releasing a recap before a season premiere)... but I’m glad I watched it anyway. So that I could remember all of the memories of terrible ecchi I repressed when I was 19 (SERIOUSLY forgot about Lili and Hermes existing!!! I wish I could forget again!!!), and could better brace myself for another Godforsaken season. I already watched one season for Bete Loga, I can do it again...

Preemptive, like, I don’t know, 3/10? for being inherently bad, but nevertheless being something I am going to watch and complain about and wish was better the entire time.

and! Thankfully my beloved partner warned me about If It’s For My Daughter I Would Even Defeat a Demon Lord -- which I might have checked out because of positive reviews -- because they had heard that the manga apparently has an Usagi Drop trajectory which is tragic and vile. So anyone sighing in relief and happily reviewing that it’s Unexpectedly Not Horrible!, I recommend holding your breath...

It’s literally the worst, to see an anime about a little girl being adopted, or just existing in general (Dragon Maid...) and having to think “Oh no, this is going to be horrid”, and then being relieved that it isn’t p*dophilia. Only to find out: Actually, it might be! 

The bar is under the ground. It’s in hell. 

See y'all in a few days with the next batch of probably not great anime premieres, maybe!

[total-drama-takes-takes-2]

tta finale (alt)

“Last time, on Total Takes Action: our final three competed in an all-out, extra dramatic laser tag challenge with a few… twists. Alliances were formed, friendships were broken, and it was Peter who took the fall to give Scruffy a chance at the finale. With just one exciting challenge left, I’m sure you’re all wondering who will win- and there’s only one way to find out: right here, right now, on Total! Takes! Action!”

The sky is clear and blue, the pigeons are cooing, and the smell of breakfast sausage is filling the air as Scruffy and O wait in a very short line for their complementary “final two breakfast” in the craft services tent. 

Chef heaps a few sausages, eggs, and waffles on each plate and shoos the players off, both of which immediately gravitate towards the opposite ends of the picnic table and eat in silence. Scruffy paces around their end of the table, swiping forks, knives, and spoons, just in case. O draws a little smiley face on his plate with syrup. 

---

O: “Well… this is it,”

---

SCRUFFY: “Today’s the big day,”

---

O: “I can’t believe how far I made it,”

---

SCRUFFY: “I can’t believe how far O made it,”

---

O: “I’m not exactly winning material… but then again, neither is Scruffy,”

---

SCRUFFY: “He’s a big softie. Not nearly as well-trained, unless you count psychology- but then again, I’m an expert at that, too. He’s just gone to- ugh- “therapy”. Who has therapy helped?”

---

O: “I’m thinking that once I get back, winnings or not, I might cancel my sessions with Dr. Anderson. I feel like… I don’t know. Pathologizing my problems has made them worse, somehow. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The… Scruffy approach, I guess,”

---

SCRUFFY: “Still, I can’t help but wonder if all of this dedication- all the hours I’ve spent rewatching the original show, all my community college classes, all my reading and training- has really helped me get here. I’ve been missing an obvious pattern. If only I could figure out what that is…”

---

 O looks up from his syrup smile and waves at Scruffy. “Hey, bro. Good luck today,”

Scruffy blinks. “Um… okay,”

“Attention, campers! Your final challenge starts in five minutes out by the trailers. Time to bring your A-Game!”

---

Scruffy and O stand an arm’s length apart as Chris paces between them, humming to himself. “You’ve lived. You’ve loved. You’ve laughed. And most importantly, you’ve lost. Today is the final test of strength, wits, smarts and endurance- both of you will enter, but only one will emerge a hero. And with a big fat check,” Chris chuckles. 

“Today’s final challenge is a multi-part rendezvous across the set. You will start here and make your way through the city,” 

Scruffy immediately jumps into a running stance, ready to take off. 

Chris grins. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The first leg of your race to the finish line was inspired by your very first challenge here- the birdocalypse. Thousands of territorial birds are having their afternoon nap on the city set. Wake them up, and you might have a problem,” he goes on. “After that, you’ll make your way through a ghost-filled maze, inspired by the video game and period flick challenges. Once you’re out, you’ll run the final stretch to Lot B- a functional studio next door. The first to arrive wins the prize. Ready?”

Scruffy and O exchange nervous glances. 

“Go!”

The two don't run, but awkwardly walk off in the same direction, as if taking a pleasant afternoon stroll. 

O’s eyes drift over to Scruffy and he winces. 

---

O: “Is it weird to ask them for advice? I feel like it’s weird, but…”

---

“Hey, dude,” O says, looking over. “I know we’re competing and all, but-”

“Shh!” Scruffy interrupts him, holding a finger to their lips. They point ahead, where a black mass is covering the city set- it’s almost like an oil spill, but instead of the viscous glimmering liquid, it’s hundreds of sleeping crows. 

Scruffy goes first while O hangs back, looking ahead nervously. The former moves through the set, stepping over birds on the road and ducking under birds on the street signs and lamps. They delicately step, roll, and skip through the set with expert agility while O watches on. 

---

SCRUFFY: “This isn't so hard! Just a little yoga moves and some spatial awareness. Maybe I haven’t lost my zing after all!”

---

Scruffy reaches the other side and turns to wave at O- in a clearly taunting way. O crosses his arms and glares. 

---

O: “Yeah- no chance of friends there,”

---

Scruffy reaches the mouth of the maze and chuckles. “Easy. Is this all you got, Chris?”

Chris rolls his eyes and pulls out a large remote. His thumb hovers over the big red button on the surface for a few moments, taunting Scruffy, before he slams it and the maze lifts off the ground and begins rotating on a large metal plate. 

Scruffy watches the ground disappear beneath them and sighs. 

---

SCRUFFY: “WHY would I say that? That’s the easiest mistake to avoid on this show!”

---

Back on the city set, O tip-toes over the birds, nearly stumbling over each one. He’s breathing heavily, and almost falls over at least ten times. 

But, he reaches the end and sighs before jogging off. O reaches the entrance of the rotating maze and gawks at it. 

“Yeahhhh,” Chris grins. “Don’t worry, though, we’re prepared for this.”

Chef wheels out a canon. 

---

Scruffy wanders through the maze, dizzy and unbalanced as it spins around itself. They’re about as green as their hair, but still pressing on nonetheless. 

---

SCRUFFY: “I’ve been trying to improve my gag reflex since island. I’m usually pretty good, but I have… a thing about other people getting sick in front of me. As long as that doesn’t happen, I’m set,”

---

O’s screams echo, growing closer and closer before he slams into the concrete of the maze behind Scruffy, leaving a hole in the ceiling. He coughs. 

“Don’t throw up!” Scruffy shouts. 

O stands, rubbing his head. “Wasn’t gonna. Don’t worry, man, I’ll leave you be,”

Scruffy nods and the two run in opposite directions. 

---

O: “I get it! Scruffy has nothing to get from me, so why would I bother them?”

---

Scruffy steps through the maze, scratching their head as it spins. “This isn’t good. I’m all turned around,”

Chris’ voice blares over the intercom: “That’s the point, Total Drama Genius!”

They sigh and hold onto the wall while stumbling along. The maze suddenly lurches and begins turning in the opposite direction, sending Scruffy tumbling to the ground. They groan and sit up against the wall. “It’s hopeless. I keep lying to myself and telling myself I can do this, but I can’t! I don’t know what I’m doing,” they turn to the camera. “I’m sorry, Jules.”

---

O walks along, faring much better than Scruffy. A light breeze tussles his hair and he turns to where it’s coming from- and just around that corner, a beam of sunlight filters through. He grins and jogs forward. 

As he rounds the corner and sees the exit, though, he hears a loud cry. The sound of Scruffy’s wailing carries through the maze, and it stops O in his tracks. 

He hesitates. 

---

O: “I know I shouldn’t go back. I mean, what if it’s a trap? What if Scruffy is just trying to get my help and then dump me after? But…” he sighs. “I’m not like them. I’m a nice person, and there’s nothing weak about that.”

---

O turns and jogs off into the dark. 

---

Scruffy, curled into a ball on the floor, cries in anguish. 

“Hey? Dude?” 

They whimper loudly. O sits down next to them and sighs. 

“Listen, I’m not gonna try to fix your problems, ‘cause I know that’s not what you like,” O says. “But you should know that… well, you don’t have to win this. You’re not a weak person for not being mean and conniving like the people who get far on this show…”

“But I want to be!” they whimper, eyes full of tears. “I want to be Heather!”

“But you’re not… Heather,” O looks around awkwardly. “You shouldn’t want to be, either?”

“I’ve been studying this show since primary, I’ve taken all the classes, done all the research, trained to perfection- why am I so bad at this?”

O pats Scruffy’s shoulder. “You’re not. You’re good.”

“But not like you. You didn’t even try and you made it to the same exact spot I got to! I don’t get it. Were you a pawn? A twist villain I didn’t see coming?” Scruffy rocks back and forth. 

O raises an eyebrow. “Um… no… I don’t know, man, I’m just nice,”

“You can’t win just by being nice, I mean, that’s… that’s improbable! The nicest contestants always get got!” Scruffy says. “I’m nice! I’m not mean!”

“Yeah, man, but you’re kinda… uh, you know… you’re not the easiest to be around,”

Scruffy’s eyes water again. “Wh-what do you mean?”

O sucks in his breath through his teeth. “You’re… kind of intense, dude. All you talk about is the show, and, I mean… you’ve got some serious walls up, man,”

“I-I do not! Ask Jules, she’ll tell you! Julia knows!”

“Saying that one of the meanest contestants on the show knows you more than anyone is… not great, Scruffy. Haven’t you made any other friends?”

“Haven’t you?”

O frowns. “I guess not. But… I mean… I dunno,”

“When you say you’re nice, all I hear is that you’re a pushover. You let people use you!” Scruffy says, crossing their arms. “I’m not like that! I don’t like being pushed around!”

“Says the guy who went nuts cause they thought a girl would like them more if they won some dumb game show,”

“Says the guy who hasn’t had a single steady friendship since the show started!”

“Says the guy who needs to impress everyone with how great they are!”

“Says the guy who does the same thing, Dr. O!”

Both huff and turn away from each other. The intercom crackles to life and Chris’ voice sounds slightly peeved. “Hey, guys, this heart-to-heart has been great, but you are IN A CHALLENGE! Now get to it!”

The maze suddenly starts spinning faster, throwing Scruffy and O to opposite sides of the hall they were seated in. Each grab on to a corner of the black walling and hold on for dear life as they’re thrown around like they’re getting flushed down a toilet. 

“I- can’t- hold- on!” O shouts. 

“Take my hand!” Scruffy throws out an arm as O flies off the wall, catching him just in the nick of time. “Maybe I can be… nice after all!”

O smiles gratefully and nods. “Let’s get out of here!”

The two fashion makeshift ice picks out of the forks Scruffy had swiped from the craft services tent and rake their way up the wall as the maze spins even faster. 

“This way!” O instructs, retracing his earlier steps to the exit of the maze. The two reach the door and look to the ground below, where only a tiny kiddie pool was left to break their fall. 

“Ready?” O shouts. 

Scruffy nods. “On the count of three!”

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

The two hold hands as they jump, both screaming and flailing their free arms until they land in the shallow pool below. 

“We… we made it!” Scruffy shouts with glee as O coughs up a mouthful of water behind them. “We did it together!”

O stands. “We did, didn’t we? Together,” O puts an arm over Scruffy’s shoulder. “No strings attached.”

“No expectations,”

“No value!”

Scruffy nods. “Let’s wing this,”

The two start off on the final track, throwing the doors of a large set building open and running through it, approaching a final set of double doors. 

“Hey,” Scruffy jogs up to O. “May the best man win, right?”

O salutes them. “May the best man win!”

---

“And that’s the story of how I lost my first tooth,” Staci says. “And no one ever found the hammer.”

Caesar massages his temples. “Another fascinating story from Staci. Anyone else have something to add?”

Luckily, before someone else can add on, Bonnie runs on stage. Caesar sighs with relief. “Bonnie, here to save the day again! What’s the news?”

“They’re coming!”

Caesar squeals, and the peanut gallery turns to the double doors backstage in anticipation. “Can we get a countdown?”

“Five!” Ass and Courtney both lean forward, then notice each other and glare. 

“Four!” Sha-Mod and McLovin are busy giving each other crudely drawn stick ‘n poke tattoos of each other’s faces. 

“Three!” Julia shoves Patrick out of her face when he gets to close. 

“Two!” Mal blows a gum bubble and texts something on her phone. 

“One!” Bonnie takes a seat and Caesar puts a hand on their shoulder. 

The doors burst open, and Scruffy runs in. 

“The winner of Total Takes Action, everyone!” Caesar shouts. “Scruffy!”

A shower of confetti and balloons fall from the ceiling and the crowd cheers. Julia stands and runs to the doors, hugging Scruffy. “I missed you!”

O jogs in behind them, breathing heavily. He notices Scruffy and Julia and gives the former a thumbs up. The peanut gallery continues whooping and cheering as Patrick storms over and pull the two apart. 

“What a season, what a cast!” Caesar says. “And here’s our runner up, O!”

O waves as the crowd cheers for him, then collapses. A select group from the peanut gallery- Michela, Peter, Kelly, and Al- run to help him off the floor and into the stands.

"You did well," Michela says.

Peter grins. "You did awesome!"

"Even though I didn't win?"

"Hey, man, you have integrity. That's what counts," Michela continues. "Dinner tonight, on us?"

O smiles. "Deal,"

Caesar turns to Bonnie. “Thoughts, feelings?”

“Not many. I’m a little hungry,”

“Oh, God, me too. Those finger sandwiches are three parts air, I swear,” Caesar says. 

“Uh, hello? SCRUFFY WON!” Julia shouts. 

“Oh, right,” Caesar says. “Scruffy, do you want a sandwich?”

He grins as Julia huffs. 

“Well, this has been Total Takes Action- The Aftermath. We’ll see you all soon for- what’s this?” Caesar presses an earpiece, and then bursts out laughing. “Oh, my God- no- really, you’re joking? You’re not?” he turns to the audience. “Chris McLean has been arrested and is currently in custody for illicit activities!”

The crowd cheers even louder, the big screen rolls down and displays a live newscast. Chris is being led from the Action set in handcuffs, Chef and the interns watching from behind a police barricade.

"You CANNOT do this to me! Do you know who I am?!" Chris shouts. "Chef- call my lawyer- call the producers- call my mom!"

"You should've remembered our anniversary,"

"CHEF!"

The police drag Chris into the back of their squad car while he screams. The wind picks up and his hair detaches itself, flying away in the breeze.

"MY TOUPEE!"

Chef rolls his eyes. A white van pulls up just as the cops slam the door of their cruiser on Chris, and a team of hazmat-suited scientists hop out of the back. The broadcast ends and turns back to the studio, where a blonde woman with a tight face reads off the happenings to new viewers. The monitor turns off.

Scruffy raises an eyebrow. “What happened?”

“No official reasons yet,” Caesar says. “In due time, I suppose. In the meantime, we’ll-”

An intern runs over to the host and hands him a letter. He huffs and opens it. “It’s from Scary. It just says “told you so”,”

Bonnie rolls their eyes. 

“Well… all I have to say is that if this was the last time we got to be together, I’m glad we met,” Scruffy says. “I love you guys.”

The former contestants turn to each other with warm smiles. 

“And yet… this can’t be the end,” Scruffy says. “We haven’t had a musical season yet!”

“Woah, woah, let’s save that for the Gemmy’s,” Caesar chuckles. “We’re about out of air time, but… I want to say that it’s been a hell of a season, everyone! See you all soon!”

[fortunatelylori]

Why the Jon/Daenerys romance doesn’t work (Part 1)

Are D&D really idiots?

Disclaimer: So ... my experience with Tumblr is veeeery limited ... as in this is my first post on here so if I fail to link things properly, give credit for gifs, caps or other people’s creations in an appropriate manner, I apologize in advance. Please let me know if you notice something like that and I will change things accordingly.

I have been scrolling around the site for about a week now, after having revisited season 7 of GOT. I will freely admit in advance that I ship Jonsa. However, for what it’s worth, when season 7 first came out, I was more than ready to abandon my Jonsa dreams and get on board with the Jonerys love fest, since everyone around me assured me that it was the end all be all of romance. After seeing the episodes for the first time, I was completely underwhelmed but I ignored my gut feelings because well ... everyone assured me that Jon and Dany were oh, so meant to be. Who am I to fight fate, I thought?!? So I just shrugged and moved on with my life.

However, part of the problem with this ship is that the more time passes, the more people like me, who actually enjoy watching and rewatching the same thing over and over again, start to see the cracks in it. I don’t mean to offend anyone that ships Jonerys, even though I probably will or anyone who likes Dany. Personally, I’ve had a whole host of problems with her character but I will refrain from commenting on my issues with her in this series and just give an opinion on why this story has the deepest scent of red herring since the invention of red herrings.

Before I get into it, I will keep these metas mainly focused on the story from a scriptwriting POV, since that was my job for a time. This series will be less focused on visual cues, camera angles and such. People with far more patience and experience have already done this so I will focus my observations around my area of expertise, such as it is.

In this first part I will try to dispel a few notions about  David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and their writing crew.

One of the common defenses for Jonerys, is that the creators of GOT are simply not every good at their job. They are unable to craft a decent love story for these two characters.

So the guys who created the most popular TV show on Earth, a show that HBO has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into, are hacks. Ok … 

Why do people believe that? Well, for a number of reasons:

1)      The show does not have the thematic scope and wealth of characters that GRRM included in his series

This is true. From the direwolves, to the missing characters, to entire plot threads, prophecies and themes upon themes, D&D have significantly simplified GRRM’s work.

But I would argue this is not because they don’t know how to do their jobs, but rather because they do know how to do it.

GRRM’s himself has said that he started writing ASOIAF out of sheer frustration with being a scriptwriter. Writing a book IS an extremely liberating experience after writing scripts. Why? Because words on a page cost nothing, aside from time and creativity. The sky is the limit.

The sky is absolutely not the limit when you’re a scriptwriter. You are constrained by all sorts of things like: money, sets, weather, daylight vs. night time, actors ‘availability etc. You’re always looking at what you can condense, tighten up. You’re always cutting words out of lines to make them sharper, regrouping scenes so you can maximize your locations, cut out all the fat so you can get an episode that is the required length.

And then there’s the all important element: the audience. People have different reactions to reading something vs. watching something. You read to get lost in a world, the journey is the main entertainment. In contrast, you come back week after week to watch a TV show to see what your favorite characters are getting up to.

Considering all of this, is it really surprising that they would cut out things like the young Griff or fArya from the show? Does anyone believe that the general audience out there cares about them? No. They want to see Jon, Arya, Tyrion, Dany … And they also want to see progression. A season of Tyrion on a boat thinking about stuff is not an option.

Also, GOT has quite a reputation for having a hellava lot of characters. Just watch the honest trailer that Screen Junkies have done:

At around the 3:20 mark they point out all the characters whose names you remember and all those you don’t. And it’s hilarious. Why? Because it’s true.

By season 3, people were still struggling to remember Littlefinger’s actual name. How do you think they’d fair with all the Greyjoys that pop up in the books like mushrooms after the rain?

So yes, D&D and their team cut out themes, characters and storylines for the sake of brevity. That’s what scriptwriters have to do, as sad as it may sound. That’s not to say they do everything right but by and large they’ve done a decent enough job for me not to assume they can’t write a proper love story for 2 characters that they’ve been working with for 6 seasons.

2)      Emilia and Kit have chemistry in real life so if that didn’t translate on screen, it’s because the scriptwriters were doing a terrible job at tapping into it

See, I would almost buy into that if it wasn’t for the fact that their scenes aren’t poorly conceived but rather are actively undermining the budding romance. You never get a sense of completion, of certainty from any of them. I will go through every scene in my next post, but for now, I’d just like to draw your attention to this moment:

(source: @dreamofspring )

We’ll leave aside character motivations on this for now, but if the script writers put that line in there to further advance the Jonerys romance, then they shouldn’t be in charge of writing commercials, let alone multimillion productions.

Are we to assume they simply forgot the other two instances where this line was used?

They revisited the Tower of Joy this season but apparently no alarm bells went off in the writer’s room at this:

(source:  @dreamofspring​)

They paralleled Jon’s arc this season to Mance Rayder’s but nope, simply forgot about this:

This script went through a dozen rewrites and probably 100 hands by the time it made it to the screen and yet at no point did anyone think: “Hey guys maybe we shouldn’t have Jon say good bye to his lady love by quoting Mance right before he was burned alive.” Those silly, silly writers.

3)      The show has taken a dive quality wise since they can’t follow GRRM’s source material any longer

There is some validity to this, I will admit. This season we’ve seen the likes of Tyrion, Varys and Littlefinger lose some of their vital energy and characteristics that have made them such interesting, fun characters to watch.

The Littlefinger plot, in particular, was poorly executed. In their desire to leave us in the dark about what was happening in order to have what amounted to a cheap twist at the end, we were given a convoluted, clunky mystery plot where everyone was playing everyone else but not really. While I’m glad, on principal, that the show established the Stark sisters coming together as a unit against a common foe, giving Littlefinger such a stupid ending left a bitter taste in my mouth. Not a worthy completion to the arc of one of the best players of the Game of Thrones at all. So yes, they dropped the ball on that one.

Tyrion and Varys are a different matter. The main reason why they’re rather ineffective and sidelined is because they probably shouldn’t be there in the first place. That’s because their entire vision on life, justice and good kingship comes directly at odds with Dany’s “Fire and blood” policy. They are just now starting to worry about this predicament but they’re both far too smart not to have noticed until now. The woman brought 3 dragons and a Dothraki horde into Westeros. What did they think she was going to do with them? Play boggle?!?

If I try really hard, I can find an explanation for Tyrion. I think, probably, he’s still reeling for the trial and murdering dad so he’s not in the best state of mind.

Varys however? He definitely shouldn’t be there. He should be with young Griff which makes much more sense since it’s very likely there is a deep, personal connection there that would make the usually cynical and skeptical Varys trust that the person he is actively supporting is actually best for the realm. But alas, young Griff doesn’t exist so he’s stuck with Dany, until he finally turncoats and gets burned alive. So brevity is at fault here.

All that being said, I think it’s unfair to assert that the show runners have dropped the ball. That’s because the more I think about it, the more season 7 looks like a part of a whole, instead of an arc on its own. There are too many open ended questions, too many character choices that don’t make sense (particularly Jon who is, by far, the central character this season) for it to feel complete.

Season 7 is like the Infinity War part 1 of Game of Thrones. You can analyze it on its own but you can’t really determine its true quality or meaning until you see Part 2.

I know this got very long so thank you to everyone that had the patience to read until the end. J

[stormxpadme]

Look, last time this happened I left tumblr because I couldn’t deal with the fallout, but this time? Seriously, everyone who didn’t delude themselves knew this was coming ever since 2014. And I’ve always been someone who rather had a realistic outlook because I hate to be disappointed, it really triggers me. So I had five years to prepare for this, and I never got my hopes up even once, not at the arrow necklace that wasn’t even important in the fucking movie now (and yeah we’ve had that kind of fucking with us before too, nothing new to see here), not at the sweet moments in the trailer, never. I just knew this was happening. Full stop.

So I guess I’m kinda numb to it now? I rewatched all MCU movies over Easter and found exactly what I already felt like in the last years. Starting with Age of Ultron the quality of MCU movies has decreased heavily, except for parts, bits and even movies (GOTG2 comes to mind) that were still really done well. But the spirit of Phase 1 and 2 was lost in AOU for me and never came back. So the thing is... I couldn’t be hurt by this movie anymore because I long said good-bye to my fierce 2008-2014 love for this fandom. And I got other fandoms and friends here on tumblr now whom I won’t leave, just because MCU let me down once more.

Also, aside from this shit we all knew was coming, Endgame is a really fucking good movie.

So what I’m saying is, if you need someone to rant over this shit with (or to talk about the good things in the movie), I’m here. These days I actually got the strength to.

Other than that? Let’s go back to our alternate universe and fanfic-heaven where Whedon never destroyed anything so bad that not even the Russos could fix it. It’s a nice world we have there. Fixing everything canon fucks up like fanfiction has done it for hundreds of years. I like living in that world. So much better than getting depressed over a stupid movie, really.

[wonderland-inferno]

who wants to hear stories of my older brother being an idiot???

you know what? i’ve decided that you do no matter what!!!

-one time, our mom wanted him for some reason or other and thus he got up and started to run. his desk is in the corner of the basement. right next to a pole. he ran straight into the fucking pole. our dad thought he knocked himself out for about thirty seconds. he was fine.

-knocked his toe on something and rolled around on the floor for thirty seconds crying insesintly. does this when he looks at lights too. why?? it’s a mystery

-ok so background on this: we’re both on a robotics team where we compete for fun and whatnot. anyway so he was safety captain for our pit this year and in charge of all the safety. he was such a good safety captain, that when one of the mentors cut his finger and asked for a bandaid, he pointed in the direction of the first aid kit and started laughing at the face of the mentor after

-once started arguing with that same mentor after attempting to grab an ice cream from the garbage. he argued that it was still edible because it was ontop of the garbage and not actually touching it. he still left with three ice creams because he is the human embodiment of a garbage can who takes all the leftovers

-when he started working, broke one of the rules in the employe handbook and realized that no one else noticed as it had remained the same for a while. you cannot read the handbook without a third party browser. you cannot download a third party program without a full security sweep and asking the it department first.

-legit ate like five things of mcdonalds/wendys fries in like two hours. he’ll eat virtually everything. it’s scary

-had two roles in our high schools rendition of twelfth night. got to yell “antonio! i arrest thee” and then stood around for the rest of the play

-opted out of ap us history because he is a very committed robotics guy

-half life two takes about ten hours to complete on the first try. he has about one hundred sixty in that particular game

-cried about five times and kept rewatching the star wars the clone wars return trailer

-has an entire fucking collection of star wars books. tried to take one of my bookshelves for them. i charged him rent. he didn’t take it

if i think of any more, i’ll add them... just wanted to talk for once instead of doing nothing.