#The cia is so evil its comical

[tomialtooth]

Still working on that project Artichoke post. In the mean time, here's a list of drugs tested under MK-ULTRA and related projects. Some of these such as Cannabis and coffee are just funny, others like Heroin, Ergot and Scopolamine are more concerning. Any of these could have hypothetically been used on Bell.

[justvora]

MOON KNIGHT IS A HERO

HEROISM BEHIND A LEGACY OF VIOLENCE. A Moon Knight essay, pt1.

Origin.

Nothing pains me more than the segmented view of Moon Knight, which seems to be anchored to the stale perspective of the 2000s, an era that destroyed this character. It meant too much that stage, one where he hit rock bottom, where he was at the lowest point in his life. And those moments were intrinsic in him, they do not define him or determine his present, but they did mean a turning point to want to change, to want to be something else.

Marc Spector has always been a violent person, from his childhood (The Vengeance of Moon Knight, Shadowland: Moon Knight) where he exercised excessive violence against those who harassed his brother, to his adulthood, where he was a renowned underground boxer (Moon Knight Vol1: #37 ; Shadowland: Moon Knight), being this a stage where he felt rejected by the passivity of his own father, a rabbi. Marc never understood why he always kept his head down, why he was so extremely peaceful at levels that did him more harm than good. He was a rebel, a lost cause to his family, but someone who fought against anti-Semitic hate crimes no matter how alien he considered himself to this religion. After that, he ended up in the navy, from which he was expelled for disobedience, insubordination and assault on a superior, in addition for the strange behaviors that can be seen in the flashbacks that Khonshu distorted from his past, in Jeff Lemire's run (2016, Vol8: #12). After that he spent some time in the CIA which is extremely difficult to define given the ambiguity of his chronology. But it is clear that from that moment on he went off track to the point of ending up being something worse: an assassin, a mercenary.

In his mercenary days he did horrible things. He was never a good guy, death was nothing alien to him, so ending anyone's life was no problem… Until he met Marlene. He rebelled against Bushman and died, being left to his fate, crawling through the desert day and night until he ended up in front of a temple where, in the vicinity, Khonshu was. This was a new point, one which allows us to see different ramifications of the interpretation of both Moon Knight and the god who brought him back to life, Khonshu.

There are those who define him as an abusive god who took advantage of Spector's catatonic state to coerce him, leading him to make a deal whereby he became his vessel, leading him down a path of false heroism solely to quench the bloodlust of a god, an evil one, who recreates the idea of protecting people as an excuse to exercise violence.

On the other hand, there is the interpretation that I personally like the most. Redemption. Marc Spector went through a catharsis or metamorphosis that allowed him to change. He could not eradicate his bloodthirsty past, let alone clean it up, but at least he could give a new purpose to his person, and that would be to become a hero, one who would protect people.

“I became Moon Knight to end the darkness; and I never had to look beyond my heart”

He admitted, within his thoughts, in the trial that was made for his war crimes in bosqueverde, during the stage of the late 80s and early 90s where the infamous series of Marc Spector: Moon Knight is developed, one that has so many lights and shadows. I have to say that it is a good comic in its initial form, perhaps too corny and intense, throwing to “waste” certain ideas that had been established; but on the other hand the comic was fruit of its time and the bad writing of the 90s affected the rest of its issues from the middle, leading to the introduction of harmful ideas and concepts, but that hopefully remained in oblivion.

“Moon Knight is a critical pastiche of superheroes that somehow managed to exist in a Big 2 lineup. Marc Spector was not kind, or noble, or an upstanding citizen. He was a violent asshole who rejected God. Rejected his father. Killed people for money. Marc had pain in his heart and suppressed that pain with violence. He did not enter into a pact with some ambivalent greater power to protect humanity because it's the right thing to do. Marc was afraid of death, and contracted with an abusive, vindictive, petty God who cursed his own followers and declared the night time world his domain. A God who drove him to more violence not as an act of charity but of supernatural domination. Marc does not grow linearly as a superhero - his pact with Khonshu saves him from death and he begins to indulge his love of violence under the guise of heroism. In some ways these impulses grow worse - and ‘protecting the innocent’ turns into mutilating criminals and lashing out at the woman he loves. Marc does not narrowly survive danger. He dies. Again and again and again. Gruesomely, painfully, traumatically. He's crippled. He is not returned to service by an indomitable will or drive to do good, but a curse that will see him reduced to a mindless husk who only knows violence - something Marc has been training for his whole life. Marc does not wear the mask to hide his identity or protect his loved ones. He's a fractured, broken person who at this point in his story has accumulated a lifetime of failure and trauma, and constantly externalizes it, driving away the few people he loves. He wears the mask to run away from his past and play pretend that he's secretly a good man. Moon Knight should be in The Boys, or Invincible. His stories are critical of the violent, aggressively over-masculine anger that perpetuates in the medium. He's a critique of batman, daredevil, the punisher - any super hero who portrays themselves as some dark and tortured herald of justice. He is the result of some of the industry's best talents looking at the tropes of the genre and admitting ‘Anyone who acted like this in real life would be a friendless, unlovable asshole’ And he has an arc! He seeks to exist beyond the sins of his past! Marc desires to grow and abandon the violence he's cultivated within himself. To treat himself with kindness, to find forgiveness, and atone for the hurt he's caused.”

—explodyboompow, “What makes moon knight stand out from from other superheroes” : Reddit comment from that post (2023)

Marc Spector, as much as he is someone who dresses completely in white, is a gray person, someone who exists within the moral spectrum and is incapable of transcending it. He could be considered, during his darkest period, as the very opposite of copaganda (a term used to refer to police propaganda whereby comic book superheroes are blurred from their anti-police discourse to support strict measures within the law); he acted outside the law with sadism, punishing villains in horrible ways, even exercising excessive violence, although with the law of superhero registration and all the authoritarian control that was exercised he saw that he had to relax, at least to keep a low profile, because he did not want to finish tarnishing his image, being something that Black Spectre (Carson Knowles) took advantage of to dirty the way in which the knight himself was seen. Since he checked in, manipulating the man who interviewed him, coercing him and subjecting him to extortion that led to his suicide, he was considered a high danger even without his powers, mainly because of how dangerous he was as well as his own “mental instability”, so, as soon as the alarms went off, S.H.I.E.L.D went after him, and the competition was not far behind, Norman Osborn considered him a threat, so in the same way he sent the Thunderbolts to liquidate him.

That's why Moon Knight's story works. It speaks to society and the power that context has over society to torture people. Spector fell into the big pit, forgetting what he was, who he was, and the company he kept. He was selfish.

Part of the paradigm of his heroism is based on the fact that he kills. Evidently, he is not, as a person, the best human being you can find, that is something quite clear, but still… He does not seek to be a good person, but a specter of vengeance that takes the grief of others to avenge them for their pain. To a certain extent we could define Moon Knight as an opposite of Cassandra Cain: an antithesis to that way that the individual depersonalizes his human facet to serve justice and help others. Cassandra wanted to detach herself from what her father transformed her into: a killing machine. She believed that, if she was born that way, anyone else could change, as she was searching for so long for redemption that she forgot she was Cassandra to be Batgirl, because her world needed a heroine: And she became a martyr on a suicide mission, because if she died, she wanted to die a heroine. This is not so different from Moon Knight, although the roots of the paradigm are completely different.

The true meaning of Moon Knight in a past stage whose vestiges fall into a reformulated present that we can see, encapsulated, in Jason Aaron's recent writing in Spector's appearance during the last issues of Punisher, specifically, when the latter has been defeated and our hero comes to give him a brief speech, one by which he believes that he, despite everything, can change; but that unlike himself, he recognizes, inwardly, that he would not want to change, and that is where his perception of things lies: In believing that, if he after all has had more than one chance to prove to the world that he can be a better person, anyone else could do the same, and that is a thought that rests with Frank himself.

One thing that sets the current Moon Knight apart from any other character is that he recognizes the sin he lives with himself, but this doesn't mean he gives up striving to be better, quite the contrary, he always seeks to change himself to an era of light and hope. He wants to be a hero, a beacon of light for the people, and yet, he does not force himself to take on or absorb the cultural beliefs of what is right, he does not seek to cling to the idea of others, but to what he believes is right.

Moon Knight resignifies his will, his mission and the way he works. Crossing the line of life is something morally questionable, but he frivolizes it. He is not sadistic, he, contrary to popular belief, does not enjoy it. Contrary to the misbelief held about him, Spector is not looking for an excuse to exercise violence and let off steam, no. For him violence is just another tool, one he uses to attack evil, those who harm his travelers. It is the paradoxical irony of using more violence; he knows he will not be able to extinguish the flame of his past, and he believes that, much less, he can exempt himself from it; that is why his fight against evil is not as Marc Spector, but as Moon Knight: The system composed by his alters. All this does not take away that Moon Knight does not reach levels that are worrying, but what he does is to play with fear and the mistakes of his past, because in previous stages he fell so low that he began to act like a monster, destroying the criminals he faced in inhuman ways that could very well make him look worse than the Punisher. But it is just all those legends that he uses to evoke fear in criminals, something that is addressed in the recent volume of Vengeance of the Moon Knight where we are shown the paradigm difference between the new user of the lunar mantle and our hero under the words of Soldier, his loyal ally:

“Anyone can be a psycho. It’s easy. All you got to do is take a machete to a guy who rips off ATMs dressed up as pinocchio or whatever, and presto, you’re a grim avenger of the streets. But the Boss was better than that. Smarter. he kept them scared. He had his rep, from his bad old days, and he kept them in hand with that fear. He was their fixer, giving them their hit. But he was careful. Because fear’s like any other drug. If they get too much in their system, they get unpredictable. Get stupid, get sloppy, get out of hand. You want them too scared of you to act. Not so scared that they feel like they got to.”

Vengeance of Moon Knight Vol2, #3, 2024. Jed Mackay.

The paradigm here is in working correctly by playing on fear, following Batman's mechanics of instilling fear in people so that they don't want to act rather than so that they end up acting in an unpredictable way by having an overdose that makes them want to break through their own fear, though this is something I'd rather talk about later in more depth on 'Zodiac's theory and vision of the new Moon Knight'.

Re-reading his first comics I could not help but cry with joy when I read the incredible and beautiful writing of the character and the way they were able to define him better than ever, contradicting, ironically, the way in which in the future they will portray the character as an absolute savage, when he is nothing but the opposite of something like that. What's more, Moon Knight to some extent takes different ideas and concepts that have been developed with the Batman character but gives them a twist. For starters there is the cycle of violence with which he acts and which, to his surprise, does nothing more than fan a flame in a city that never sleeps or progresses, reaching a feedback whereby pouring violence against crime only fuels it more, making him see that people need more than revenge, finding, there, a mission greater than that of his god: Justice and, with it, hope. And, on the other hand, there is the issue of the use of the enemy's weapons: violence and fear. He takes everything, as well as 'murder', to frivolize it and change its dynamics, taking it to the paradox of intolerance: He will not tolerate that the rights and integrity of those he protects are violated, so those who cross the moral line must be punished… Although not all those who do evil are people with malice, but other people who, just because of the system, have been oppressed and pushed to the limit by their circumstances. There are those who have no choice -better- and can redeem themselves -Moon Knight believes in the redemption of others-.

“You know what’s out there. It’s a world in which the savages all too often rule our cities, our streets, our souls. The good citizens– the Grants, the Lockley’s– they fight that tyranny as best they can- They aren’t always enough. Moon Knight is more than a good man. He’s a force that transcends the brutality and the fear that are the savages’ main weapons– because he can use those weapons himself. He’s a savage on the side of the angels… A protector of innocents… A symbol of vengeance and hope. And, god willing… If he does his job well enough… he’ll be the last savage.”

Moon Knight Vol1, #35, 1980. Tony Isabella

“Those who forget their past are condemned to forget it”.

The mask not only serves to protect your identity, or to flee from your past, which also serves to become something else, something better. If yesterday's violence served to hurt, isn't it more poetic to use violence to protect? That is its mission. Not to harm, but to protect. He puts on the mask because no one else needs Marc Spector (MK Vol9 #4, 2021, Jed Mackay) and because he has caused enough damage, because people need the moon knight, and putting on that mantle serves to destroy himself, to punish himself and become a martyr. This is something we will also see in Doug Moench's stories where it is emphasized that Steven Grant came about as a way to leave Spector in the background. What Marc longs for most, after all - in his early 80s - is to die to escape hell, because he is someone weak, a man who has shielded all his horrors in a hard shell of toxic masculinity that has driven him to rot, desensitizing him when, inside, he is dying. But this hell is not, if not, a purgatory to exonerate himself from his sins (MK Vol1 #29, 1980, Doug Moench). And everything suddenly becomes, all of a sudden, a self-destructive missionary for what he hopes to be destroying himself and eliminating Spector.

To be continued...

[waroferas]

Cia HyWars is pure evil?

There is so much I could say about Cia . and i will ! you’re stuck with me now idiot !!!!! (speaking into an empty room)

i was going to skip this section bc if anybody reading this somehow didn’t know who Cia is then like . google is right there . but zeldadungeon actually has fuck all to say about cia’s backstory and i would never knowingly subject someone to the fandom wikis.

Cia was originally known as the Guardian of Time, a minor deity tasked with overlooking the checks and balances of the triforce across the past and future. She did this work alone, and her psyche was left vulnerable to a fragment of ganondorf’s soul. Her admiration and jealousy of the holder’s of the triforce was manipulated until she became physically fragmented, her “light half” being cast from her as she was fully corrupted.

That half goes on to become Lana, and what remains of Cia wants two things: Collect Link like barbie doll, and help Ganondorf restore his soul and gather the triforce so she can Collect Link like barbie doll. She’s the main antagonist of the game now.

why would she do this? is she stupid?

being lonely makes you crazy and i mean this very genuinely.

Hyrule Warriors is constantly hammering in that you need to rely on other people through gameplay And story beats. i would even say that friendship and teamwork is one of the strongest and most recognizable themes. In the very first stage there is an honestly comical back and forth that goes as follows: link runs in to fight volga. impa runs in to save link. link hops up last second and saves impa instead . and then they round out the stage with impa saving link and delivering the hero’s tunic to him. this has to be a joke? but it isn’t . they LOVE TEAMWORK !! not to mention the gameplay that forces you to run around and help your allies, or the massive story beat that revolves around Link running ahead to fight on his own, which i could dissect in its own post.

unrelated but related, in the first edition of this game Cia dies. she asks lana to make her pain make sense, reveals that she knew on some level she was doomed to fail, and admits that lana really is better than her. it’s a bitter ending with very little fanfare, as ganondorf swoops in quickly to kickstart the beginning of the end.

But in later versions, there’s additional content. Cia is found to be alive, struggling against Phantom Ganon’s forces with the last of her power. She becomes an ally and she gets to live at the end, finding a happy ending in resuming her duties now as one of two Guardians of Time with Lana.

Would it be such a stretch to assume that the root of her pain was her solitude? Her admiration of Link as the revered hero, her jealousy of Zelda as the damsel who is destined to always fight by his side, and her happy ending. she easily walks away from Link, Zelda, and the allure of the triforce because now she finally has company, and knows she is leaving them all as friends. Wouldn’t it make sense thematically that in the game about friendship, the main antagonist would be driven in part by a lack of it?

this doesn’t justify starting a war

yeag . the devs for the Dynasty Warriors hack and slash series should have made it Not a war (JOKE. PARODY. but see the first sentence or the previous section)

but what about the part where she is an irredeemable creep?

look me in the eyes . i cannot describe how much this train of thought kills me. i am trying not to point at anybody specific here but it actually scares me a little bit how common and Assumed To Be True this is considering the preexisting racism and misogyny surrounding Cia’s design and role within the game

Cia is creepy towards Link. it’s not normal to disregard a person’s autonomy because you want to “make him yours”, and it’s not normal to have just So Many pictures and statues of a guy. but i have to draw the line there because Genuinely that is where it ends.

Pet names? if you play her side campaign you find that she calls Literally everyone things like “lovelies” and “darling.” Her speech mannerisms are classically cartoonish villain and i am absolutely biased because i love this

Age difference? an important thing to note is that cia’s design is one of the things the most afflicted by the aforementioned racism and misogyny. considering she has no canonical age afaik it freaks me out that people treat her like a Textual Predator with the Everything in mind.

if she’s redeemable then they did a shit job at it.

no argument there . i think everyone forever should make something new up to make up for the fact that they did a Poor Redemption . at least have her say sorry or something idunno .

in my opinion they had a lot going on when cia joined the allies, so i like to imagine she ended up getting a proper redemption arc After phantom ganon is put to bed. it lives in my head and it’s just as convoluted and weird as the rest of the game 👍

Hyrule Warriors is just an extremely elaborate excuse to play dolls

and i LOVE my tuoys. come play with meeeee come have fun with me and ciaaaaaa

[valscodblog]

So-I s'pose ye'll be needin' this.

@thealtofvalleyxdoodles's sideblog <3

SHIT ABT ME! (Sorry for the horrible fake scottish accent. I am A Soap girlie thru and thru.)

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[brokehorrorfan]

4K UHD Review: The Guyver

Following in the wildly successful footsteps of Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Guyver takes a (relatively) grounded approach to its outlandish source material — in this case, a Japanese manga series — without divorcing itself from its comic book roots. Produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator, Society), the 1991 film is directed by special effects wizards Screaming Mad George (Society, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) and Steve Wang (Predator, The Monster Squad).

As the Star Wars-esque expository opening crawl explains, mankind was created by aliens as an organic weapon. The evil Chronos corporation is further developing a technology that allows humans to change into "super monster soldiers" known as Zoanoids for world domination. The only viable defense against them is The Unit, a piece of bio-booster alien armor that increases a human's natural powers a hundredfold, turning them into The Guyver.

Mark Hamill's top billing may lead you to believe that he's the titular hero, but he instead plays a supporting role as a CIA agent investigating Chronos. The real lead is Jack Armstrong (Student Bodies) as Sean Barker, an amateur martial artist who's the only person that can activate The Unit. When his girlfriend (Vivian Wu, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III) is endangered, Sean utilizes his newfound powers to take down Chronos and the Zoanoids.

Armstrong is a bland lead, but it's not entirely his fault. In addition to a mustachioed Hamill channeling Colombo, he has to compete with several scene-stealing character actors. Re-Animator's David Gale chews the scenery as the malevolent head of Chronos, briefly reuniting with Jeffrey Combs as the company's scientist, Dr. East (get it?). Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) plays Gale's right-hand Zoanoid with Jimmie Walker (Good Times) as his rapping goon. Linnea Quigley (The Return of the Living Dead) cameos as a scream queen.

But the real stars of the show are the creatures, the designs of which showcase boundless creativity. The Guyver looks like Ultraman by way of Clive Barker, and each Zoanoid adopts a different animal's traits. While a number of other artists were employed to pull off the myriad of monsters, George and Wang's fingerprints are all over the effects, imbuing the alien superhero movie with some disturbing body-horror.

Jon Purdy's script deviates significantly from source material not only in terms of story but also tone. While some of the manga's dark atmosphere and violence remain intact, it's undercut by goofy humor in an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic. Fans of Yoshiki Takaya's original creation were no doubt disappointed (Wang attempted a bit of a course correction with his 1994 sequel, Guyver: Dark Hero), but the tonal confusion is actually charming.

Originally cut down to a PG-13 rating in the US, The Guyver has been newly restored in 4K from the original, R-rated 35mm camera negative with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 options for Unearthed Films' 4K UHD + Blu-ray release. Far removed from the days of Jaws and Alien in which the monster was largely hidden in shadows, George and Wang put their creations on full display — and even with a crystal-clear restoration, the in-camera effects shine.

Two new audio commentaries are included. The first is a lively one with George and Wang, moderated by Budget Biomorphs: The Making of The Guyver Films author Dom O’Brien. It's not the most informative track — the filmmakers admit to not having seen the film in over two decades — but they're enjoying themselves so much that it hardly matters. The second commentary features creature crew members "Evil" Ted Smith and Wyatt Weed, who delve into the nitty-gritty of the effects.

Yuzna and George each sit down for thorough new interviews. Yuzna reveals that he's been approached about a remake, but the rights are complicated, while George's infectious energy lasts the entire 56 (!) minutes. Creature suit camera test footage is included with commentary options from George and Wang or Smith and Weed, while outtakes and a gag reel feature George and Wang commentary.

Other extras include: alternate title sequences in English, German and Spanish; English, German, Spanish, and French trailers (all carrying the alternate title Mutronics); and extensive promotional and production galleries. The collector's edition also comes with the soundtrack CD composed by Matthew Morse (Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker) and a booklet featuring liner notes by O’Brien and Morse.

The Guyver is available now on 4K UHD via Unearthed Films.

[indieyuugure]

I don’t know if you were already asked this somewhere, but will your Shredder have a real, sizable ambition, or will he just be focused on wiping out Splinter for the sake of his bruised ego?

I don’t mind how 2012!Shredder was made so complicated, and I guess it makes sense that he might not have to try world domination himself when’s already a successful crime lord, but I always enjoyed how 2003!Shredder made an evil laugh as he thought about achieving global, galactic, and then multiversal domination.

Secondly, does your Bishop secretly hate his own alien allies and plans to betray them, or is he like that Cemetery Wind guy from Transformers: Age of Extinction who hunts down Cybertronians of all kinds alongside an alien bounty hunter for sick kicks while intending to profit on Human-made Transformers?

I just don’t really know what motivates him at this time. 2003!Bishop at least had an understandable reason for discriminating non-Humans and in Fast Forward, actually turned his life around to make a better future. And the IDW Bishop is like that continuity’s answer to Hordy Jones from One Piece in my opinion, he hates non-Humans because he was raised up in that way of thinking, and by the time his own father realized that viewpoint was dangerous, it was too late for them both.

Lastly, this thought came to me from recently reading the 29th Mirage TMNT issue, but will the EPF oppose supernatural elements just as it does mutants and aliens? In a cosmic sort of way, that organization is like SHIELD and its numerous branches from Marvel comics, so I think there’s plenty of room to explore that.

It has not been asked, actually, you’re the first!

Hm, so my Shredder is motivated primarily by revenge, but he’s extremely power hungry and the prospect of more than just the criminal underworld wouldn’t be something he’d pass up. I think with his limited resources that was never a dream he could achieve, however with assistance from the Kraang, that would be a different story.

Bishop is a nerd with no morals or self restraint. He works with the Kraang because he is absolutely fascinated with non-human life forms, extraterrestrial technology and biology, and everything of the sort. He has a weird relationship with the Kraang because, while he’s paid to communicate with and investigate the Kraang with the intention to stop them, he wants to study them and often finds himself working for them instead of the EPF for bribes.

In my version of TMNT the EPF, “Earth Protection Force” has the soul job of investigating, studying and protecting the people of Earth from extraterrestrial threats. There is no magic at all in my version so the EPF only deals with aliens and mutants. The EPF works very similarly to the CIA but instead of spying on and investigating other countries, they study and investigate Aliens.

Good questions! :]

[tirsynni]

So for the longest time, I refused to think of the original Hyrule Warriors as canon. It was a fun little hack-and-slash side bit and I adore Link with his blue scarf, but I didn't actually add it to my mental timeline when it came to the LoZ games.

Then I made the mistake of thinking too much about the game and its implications on the overall timeline, especially the implications regarding the Spirit of the Hero. Stay with me on this. (Yes, it is once again time for me to put far too much thought into video games, because why not?)

Arguably, the Spirit of the Hero became entangled with everything due to Demise's Curse in Skyward Sword: "Those like you... Those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero... They are eternally bound to this curse. An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!" Thus the Cycle of Hatred is introduced.

In dissecting it a bit, it shows three permanent players: an incarnation of Demise's hatred, the Goddess's bloodline (note not Hylia herself, but her bloodline) and the spirit of the hero (note in contrast to the previous line, not the hero's bloodline, but the "spirit of the hero"). So we have an incarnation of a demon god's hate, a divine bloodline, and... some dude. Sorry, Link. You really got the short end of the stick here.

Obviously, he's not just "some dude," but he is a mortal tossed into an immortal war. Even as the Goddess's bloodline is mortal, they forever hold divinity within them, descended directly from divinity. Arguably, the Hero's Spirit holds some divinity itself through Hylia's blessing, arguably Farore's blessing, and playing emissary to multiple deities and powerful spirits through the games, but it relies on external sources instead of being inherent. The root of the Hero lies within the mortality of the Hero. That mortality probably provides a great deal of flexibility, as LoZ seems to follow along the popular concept that immortal beings are stuck to certain rules and mortals can go places and do things immortals can't. Biggest example is the Goddess Hylia needing a mortal Hero in the first place to fight Demise.

Okay, so where does Hyrule Warriors come into this? Because while the concept of the Spirit of the Hero comes up in multiple games, it's usually through inheritance, stepping into the role of the Hero, etc. When Cia comes into play, her target isn't the latest Hero: her target is the Spirit of the Hero itself. Not the concept. Not the implications of the role. The identity of the Spirit of the Hero. She didn't look at Link in HW and become obsessed with him: she became obsessed with him specifically because he possessed the Spirit of the Hero. It changes things a bit when looking at his character in the game.

First, there's the question of what awakens the Spirit of the Hero. In the other games, there's a great evil on the horizon -- the incarnation of Demise's hatred, which doesn't necessarily mean Demise or even Ganondorf but the awakening of an evil influenced somehow by Demise's hatred -- which leads to a Hero being born. Evil stirs, the Hero is born, Evil acts, the Hero awakens to their destiny. In the case of HW, though, the only reason Cia attacks that era is because there was a Hero present. So what sparked the birth of this Hero? If this Link wasn't born, then Cia would have targeted another Hero. Considering she was interested in the Spirit, not the person, I don't think age would have been a factor, so any of the other Heroes would be open targets. Cia didn't need to go after an awakened Hero, though. Instead, this specific Hero was born (looking remarkably like the Hero from the SS comic with his pretty scarf and such) and becomes Cia's target. So does more than the curse cause the birth of a Hero? If so, was this particular Link set up as a target? Or are the Heroes set up with specific destinies? Just Like OoT!Link is connected with Ganondorf and Majora, was this Link's soul somehow connected to Cia's? How does it work?

Which leads to the next issue: the challenges and pros inherent to mortality. In most cases, the Heroes have a choice in their destiny. Can they be pushed? Guilted? Strongly encouraged? Yes. However, in the games, one of the first things you do is choose to pick up the sword. You pick up the weapon. You start on your path. Link in almost every other scenario gets to go, "I want to save these people. I want to save the princess. I want to save Hyrule." In HW, while Link has the option to choose to fight or not, he would be targeted by Cia regardless because he was born with the Spirit of the Hero. He does choose to become a Knight and fight, though, which awakens the Triforce and puts him right in Cia's path. Pro to mortality: freedom of choice. HW-specific con: even with that freedom, being born with the Spirit put a bullseye on Link's back.

Another con of mortality, one presented in multiple games: the dangers of corruption. Link is a mortal, albeit a powerful mortal, who through his role as Hero regularly deals with divine objects. In most games, he deals with at least one piece of the Triforce and the Master Sword. The Triforce is not a symbol of good: it is a symbol of harmony: Power, Courage, and Wisdom in balance. If it had some sort of inherent morality, then someone like Demise reaching it wouldn't be such a big deal. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Link's Triforce is just insane power. Combine that with handling the powerhouse of the Master Sword, among all of the other things Link deals with, and you have a mortal who is dealing with one hell of a threat and burden. The Hero is repeatedly warned against falling to that darkness and has to fight against symbols of his darkness, ie, Dark or Shadow Link. This is a vulnerability most others won't have to deal with. He is a mortal struggling with the weight of immortal, powerful objects and needs to not lose himself to them.

Now combine that threat of corruption with the emphasis on the Spirit of the Hero which occurs in HW. With the other games, the threat is Link being corrupted. In HW, Cia's target is the Spirit of the Hero. Link's just the pretty package. If she succeeded, Link would be corrupted, but so would Cia's target: the Spirit of the Hero. There are a couple implications connected to that: what happens when you corrupt something as ancient and powerful as the Spirit of the Hero, something blessed by multiple spirits and deities and something literally older than Hyrule itself? Something which has the ability to turn the tide of battle against impossible odds? When no Hero arose once, the Goddesses responded by flooding the world. When Link slept(?) for a hundred years in BotW, no one, no matter their ability, was able to replace him. The Calamity remained unchallenged and untouched for that century, with even Zelda's powers limited to just holding the Calamity. That's a lot of power to corrupt... and that can also be one hell of a boon to Ganondorf. If not just Link but the Spirit was corrupted, how would that affect the Cycle of Hatred? Cia would have her obsession and the Spirit could not be incarnated into a new Hero to fight against Ganondorf. One hell of a win there... literally.

WW proved that if it came right down to it, a Hero could forcibly step up by fulfilling their own Hero's Journey. After all, even the initial Hero had to come from somewhere. But that would be an insane blow against Hyrule and the Royal Family. That would also be an insane amount of power available to Ganondorf. No opposition and all of the power inherent in a corrupted Spirit of the Hero. Oof.

If you view HW as canon with its focus on the Spirit of the Hero over the Hero himself, it does lead to some interesting questions regarding the role played by the Spirit, what happens if something happens to the Spirit, and the the lines between the Spirit and the Hero himself.

...hey, The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy book, why don't you focus on these questions instead of the stupid ones you went over? Bastards.

[woodaba]

We Wouldn't Have Alan Wake II Without Quantum Break

Remember Quantum Break? The first game announced for the Xbox One? The link between cult classic Alan Wake and surprising studio-saving hit Control? That prominently features Lance Reddick, the much-missed actor who was frequently one of the most electric screen presences of our time?

Don't worry, I barely do either, and I played the game yesterday.

So, a refresher. Quantum Break, announced in 2013 alongside the Xbox One and released three years later, is a third-person shooter starring Shawn Ashmore aka Iceman from the X-Men movies as Jack Joyce (and not Jake Joyce as I constantly remembered him as. In my defense, it's a better name, if only because then his superhero name could be Quantum Jake...), who, after being turned into A Remedy Entertainment Protagonist after a time-travel experiment gone wrong, battles against fellow Remedy Entertainment Protagonist Aidan Gillen aka Doctor Pavel I'm CIA as Paul Serene, over what to do about an imminent apocalypse after Time starts Breaking because of the aforementioned time-travel experiment.

As a rehabilitating former Doctor Who obsessive, I'm particularly open to this kind of time-travel nonsense, but Quantum Break is frustratingly unwilling to capitalize on its own premise. Interesting things happen, sure: people get stuck in causality loops, confront and become acausal time monsters, and live entire second lives in the past after time-traveling, but almost none of it occurs to Jack Joyce: he just spends his time just shooting guys in a series of warehouses and offices. Quantum Break is a potentially interesting story that we don't really get to see anything of, instead anything compelling in the narrative is relayed to us second-hand, by the myriad emails and documents scattered throughout the gunfights, or over the radio, and, of course, Remedy's now-signature multimedia ambitions.

In between acts of the video game Quantum Break, you'll be treated to episodes of the TV show Quantum Break, a live-action c-tier circa-2009 network TV production starring some of the big(ish) names that headline the game Quantum Break, but mostly follows a cast of extras who navigate around the events of the game while working for baddie Paul Serene's Evil Corporation, Monarch.

It's in the TV show that what Quantum Break actually is begins to take shape. Remedy, as a studio, has always been interested - and unusually adept at - pastiche, whether it's the noir comic stylings of their still-astonishing Max Payne duology or the rickety but deeply charming Stephen King love-in that is Alan Wake. And here, they do a genuinely stellar job at replicating the look, feel, and sensibilities of a 2008-2013 network TV Lost/Fringe rip-off that gets canceled after one season.

That may sound backhanded, but I assure you it isn't. I've long been a fan of Remedy, in spite of, or perhaps because I don't think they've made a truly great game since Max Payne 2. In a medium that often pillages relentlessly from Film and TV, Remedy set themselves apart from their competition with the depth of their understanding of the production of film, bringing into games a deftness of set construction and filmic pacing that blows their contemporaries out of the water. Even more-lauded names like Naughty Dog and Rockstar come up short against Alan Wake's hauntingly gorgeous misty woods, best illustrated with Rockstar's Max Payne 3, which matched Remedy's cinematographical flair in the cutscenes, but fell far short of their level design chops and breadth of influences.

Quantum Break is, in aesthetics and production, a genuinely extremely well-considered pastiche of this period of sci-fi television that is now comfortably in the rear-view mirror, the time since its release having given it a real nostalgic charm that would have been dulled at the time of release. It really reminded me of the years I spent watching shows like Heroes, or Flash/Forward, shows that may not have been very good, but are intoxicatingly emblematic of their time and place, hiding just beneath the floorboards of the shows that would actually get to be remembered.

It's a shame, then, that it just fails to really compel on any level beyond appreciation for the pastiche.

Much like the gameplay, the TV episodes of Quantum Break feel almost ancillary to another, better story that we never get to see. The stars of the game feel wasted here - particularly Lance Reddick, one of my favorite actors, who steals the show every time he appears, but is given vanishingly little to do in comparison with a group of wafer-thin characters that struggle to manifest a single dimension, with relational at best connection to the concerns of the narrative. It looks like a particularly budget-strapped episode of Warehouse 13, sure, but it doesn't really feel like one, as the episodes - until the last one, which is a noticeable improvement - are shockingly paceless and devoid of the arcs that would make a singular episode of television compelling. They are, ultimately, primarily dreary, overlong, and constantly highlighting the fact that they are largely interstitial filler.

It would be wrong to accuse Remedy of not having their heart in Quantum Break, as there is too much evident passion to discount, but I do feel like they struggle to find a core to this idea, something that they truly want to explore. Whether I'm playing the game or watching the show, QB leaves everything on the surface, with nothing to really find beneath the surface. It's notable that the game is absolutely filled with constant allusions to Alan Wake - including a full-blown trailer found on a TV moments after starting the game that bears startling resemblance to the eventual plot of this year's Alan Wake II - and that the game started life as a pitch to Microsoft for Alan Wake II: one suspects that they would much rather be making that game at this moment in time than Quantum Break, or that the game is a test-bed of ideas for the studio's future, the act of throwing a thousand darts at a quantum dartboard, and seeing which ones find their mark. It's just that for this effort, precious few of them do.

And yet, the surprise is that by the end, I truly felt like Remedy was genuinely onto something with the spirit of Quantum Break's ideas, if not the execution of them. The television show is the thing that makes Quantum Break live, that marks it out as something worth remembering in a sea of slick third-person shooters with cinematic ambitions. It is the icon of the foundational belief of the Xbox One, that the future of games lay in a synthesis with television, a dead-end future that had already worn out by the time the game was actually released. What remains is little more than a gimmick, sure, but it is one that, by the end, is oddly compelling, even if most of it is terrifically boring to actually experience.

There is a genuine thrill to seeing characters in both video game graphics and live-action forms, shifting between the two seamlessly thanks to some genuinely well-realized digitized actors that still look good today, a shift that blends well with the time-space bending of the plot. Do I care about Jack Joyce, as a person? Not even slightly. Did I still grin when I saw Actual Shawn Ashmore briefly appear in the TV episodes after controlling Virtual Shawn Ashmore? Absolutely. It's the same kind of shallow thrill you get from Cheers allumni showing up for a visit in Frasier, or when the Torchwood crew talk around the presence of Mr. Doctor Who, Esq, but as something that works with what the game is doing rather than distracting your attention elsewhere.

The gameplay portions represent time breaking down with (genuinely cool, if shallow) shards of space and glass and stuttering loops of physical time, but the collision of the Real and the Virtual feels so much more effective in communicating the idea of time and space shattering and colliding into one another. I just wish it played in this space more, focusing on Ashmore, Reddick, Monaghan, and Hope, rather than the cast of goons and extras who feel wholly separated from the game until the final mission.

I'd like to say that I'd love Remedy to take another crack at this idea, with the lessons they've learned from Control and Alan Wake II, but that already feels like a fool's hope. The ballooning costs of video game development make the idea of filming an entire TV mini-series alongside it feel laughable. Sure, Control's live-action segments were plentiful and superbly produced, but they were also far more restrained than Quantum Break, focusing on short segments with one non-big-name actor each in a couple of highly reusable sets. With both this and its open-world, side-questing structure with plenty of loot and upgrades to collect, Control is something largely in line with the realities and productions of modern game development

Quantum Break isn't rooted in reality for even a second. It's a time-locked instant, the most 2015 game ever made, which makes it all the better that it came out in 2016. There's no future in what Quantum Break envisions. It's a failed experiment, something to shrug at and move on. And yet, it compels me regardless, despite the fact that I don't really like it.

We need games like this, I feel. Historical curios like this show that the shifting landscape of the medium isn't a straight line, it splits off into splintered fraying timelines, some leading to nothing, but others spilling back in unexpected ways. After all, Courtney Hope, who played Beth Wilder here, returned for the starring role in Control, and that game feels so keenly like the product of lessons learned from QB, with everything from the live-action segments, the document-reading, and the combat feeling like a progression from Remedy's previous work. In particular, my complaints about QB's narrative taking place almost entirely off-screen evolves into a hugely compelling aspect of Control, with the genuine highlight of that game being reading the endless documents detailing the horrors and nightmares of America transcribed into corporate mundanity.

And while I've only played a taster of Alan Wake II, there's no doubt in my mind that that game, a bona-fide critical darling the likes of which Remedy hasn't had since Max Payne 2, owes a great debt to QB. Not least because its engine provides the framework for the game, but also because, well, it's been in there, this whole time.

Waiting for The Return.

[positivelybeastly]

Do you see x-force as a commentary on unchecked power?

"If I possessed truly unchecked power, you'd know."

So, it's meant to be. The ultimate intention of the series is meant to be a commentary/satire on the CIA and its various cruelties inflicted upon the world in the interests in national security. Beast has been forced into the role of Henry Kissinger, who, while never an actual Director of the CIA, certainly had his role to play in the history of the United States and its defence policies over the last 60 years.

"Kissinger is also associated with controversial U.S. policies, including its bombing of Cambodia, involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, support for Argentina's military junta in its Dirty War, support for Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh genocide.

He was accused of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued, his role in facilitating U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, and willful ignorance towards human rights abuses committed by the United States and its allies."

Taken from Kissinger's Wikipedia page.

(Apologies, by the way, that this particular answer will be text heavy, I refuse to cap X-Force because I just. Don't. Want. To read it again.)

The parallels are pretty obvious - Beast's genocide of Terra Verde, his space prison, his wilful manipulation of X-Force to satisfy what he viewed as the interests of Krakoan national security, to the point where he would weaponise Logan just as the Weapon X programme did . . . these are the comic book equivalents of the United States' various criminal acts against a wide variety of smaller, less powerful countries. They are brighter, louder, flashier, more outwardly grotesque, but they fulfil the exact same role.

Now, here's the problem.

And let's try and follow Ben Percy's narrative logic here, yeah?

Beast has always been evil. Beast himself, Logan, and Domino all express this exact sentiment. It was only when he possessed true carte blanche that he revealed this evil, because if he had done so beforehand, then he would have been cast out or killed by his fellow heroic X-Men. That's safe to say, right?

Now.

Hank has, in the past, been given cosmic power by the Black Mirror, and promptly used it to try and find out how to fix the damage that he had done to the space-time continuum by bringing the Original 5 X-Men to the present.

When he realised there was no easy way to fix it, not even with his cosmic power, he ran away SCREAMING that it was all his fault, and when we next see him, he is depressed, he is brought low, his fucking speech bubbles are tiny because he's so shaken and mortified by what he's done.

But let's ignore that. Because Ben Percy did.

When Beast makes his departure from X-Force, Sage takes over, and promises to run X-Force more efficiently, with more oversight, with more transparency. She promises to be what Beast wasn't.

So far, so good, right? That's a pretty clear narrative.

. . . Hey, uhhh, where was X-Force when the Hellfire Gala went down?

Oh, they weren't there?

The intelligence agency, the force designed to combat external threats and shut them down with extreme prejudice, just - straight up completely missed the biggest threat imaginable to their country, and they just. Fucked up, completely?

Hmmm.

They were infiltrated from within, by an observer sent by the Quiet Council, who was meant to provide oversight? An observer that Beast had previously identified as a threat, and didn't want anywhere near a position of power, albeit for xenophobic reasons?

An observer who, when they went into the far off future to navel gaze at Nimrod Beast's evil future, broke the control over him - and didn't tell anyone that he had been being controlled for the past, like, year? Who was acting strangely, and no-one followed up on it?

Hmmm.

Like, here's the thing - I don't think Ben Percy necessarily wants us to think that Beast was a better leader of X-Force than Sage. He's portrayed as a brow beating, emotionally abusive, manipulative, oily voiced, condescending asshole who keeps biting off more than he can chew . . . BUT.

It's only when he's gone that both Krakoa falls, and that X-Force is completely double fucked by a person who wouldn't be there if Beast was still there? Like . . . have I said anything incorrect here?

Ladies, gentlemen, individuals who fall outside or along the gender spectrum in various places . . . this is what's described as bad theming, and inadequate plotting.

By running these two plots in parallel, and having them happen like this, Ben Percy has accidentally implied that the corrupt, evil asshole leader of X-Force was the one actually keeping Krakoa safe, and the good, transparent leader of X-Force managed to fuck things up immediately.

That's not what the story wants you to think! It wants you to view Sage and co. as the heroes of the story, explicitly, they are the good guys. But. Through lack of care, and lack of thought, that's what's been accidentally implied.

Now, maybe that's just me being facetious, and you know what, it probably is. That's a minor quibble, you can't really blame Ben Percy for that, Gerry Duggan and the X-office say that the Hellfire Gala happens this way, and Ben Percy has to say, sure. It's unfortunate timing, but Sage did not cause the Hellfire Gala to happen, that's ridiculous.

However.

I have to remind you all, as I so often do, that the entirety of X-Force knew that Beast had killed Terra Verde, used the bodies of its ambassadors as puppets; had an evil space prison built using siphoned Krakoan funds; had attacked Piotr Rasputin's reputation, publicly humiliated him; they knew that he was not to be trusted, and they knew that he was a bad, bad, bad man.

Yeah? That's established?

. . . Why did they keep working for him?

Why was it that the buck apparently stopped at mind controlling Logan? THAT was the point where you draw the line, huh? The evil Mengele space prison, THAT YOU KNEW ABOUT, that you dragged Beast from in chains, warranted the fucking silent treatment, like you're a bunch of fucking children, but the instant something happens to Logan, suddenly he's got to go?

That's some real moral myopia you guys got going on, there!

That means you were all okay with everything he was doing before! You could have stopped working with X-Force, you could have just killed Beast, over and over and over, you could have protested to the Quiet Council, you could have done anything - but you just kept turning up to work! You kept doing the dirt!

Why?

. . . Oh, sorry, there's, uh, no real answer here. There are no character arcs for people in X-Force. It's just, Beast is evil, Logan is the grizzled hero, and everyone else is here, I guess.

Like, there's some real weak political commentary going on with Logan vs. the Quiet Council, where he's like, BLUUUUH KRAKOA'S A COUNTRY CLUB, BUUUUH I DON'T LIKE HOW YOU DO THINGS, but, like, it's just so without any kind of substance! It's acting like Wolverine wasn't ALSO fine with everything Beast was doing up until it affected him!

You can't have clear cut heroes and villains in a narrative like this. Everyone on X-Force, without exception, is a horrible person willing to do horrible things in the interests of national security, and they have been SHOWN to be FINE with whatever Beast wanted to do, but because they are NOT Beast, they're heroes.

This is what's known as the 'bad cop' narrative. One bad apple spoils the bunch, you know the saying - not all cops are bad, if you could just get rid of the bad ones, it'd be fine!

Except that it's not a case of good cops and bad cops, is it? It's a case of a cop culture that breeds corruptive power. It's a case of good cops being punished for calling out corruption, being put in mental institutions, left to die in combat situations. And it's the same with black ops teams. It's the same with intelligence agencies. There are no heroes on these teams, because it's not POSSIBLE to be a hero on these teams.

But Ben Percy seems to think that there can be. That X-Force would have been fine if Beast wasn't on the team from the start, that black ops teams full of murderers are completely fine so long as they're guided by the right person.

The instant he started prattling on about good and evil in this narrative, if it was ever meant to be a commentary on unchecked power, it lost all of its potency. Power and its relation to Beast becomes almost pointless if he's just evil - he just becomes a villain waiting for his chance, and it makes all the heroes look like morons for continuing to give him power and not take any of it away.

The only way this narrative works is if Beast was a good person to start with, and he had to start making moral compromises, he had to start cutting out his soul to save Krakoa, he had to - except, that's not how Ben Percy believes Beast is. He has told us so, repeatedly, both in and out of narrative.

What's the actual moral of the story in X-Force?

Is it that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, Beast was apparently always corrupt, and Sage apparently is a hero despite letting him do whatever the fuck he wanted, sooo. No?

Is it that intelligence agencies are intrinsically cruel and horrible apparatuses that allow states to harm innocents in the interests of national security? Well, this intelligence agency is full of heroes who pretty much never do anything morally bankrupt, who constantly push back against their evil overseer but don't really challenge him, so, I guess intelligence agencies are fine, actually, so long as the people are good.

Is it that nation building is a bloody process that requires moral sacrifice, and that everyone involved in the founding of a nation has some degree of blood on their hands? Maybe? Iunno.

How often do the Quiet Council actually appear in X-Force and Wolverine? Maybe two, three times? Are they to blame for what happens? I guess, since they give Beast carte blanche, but X-Force sure don't do a lot to push back against that, do they? For a character that allegedly is protecting Beast from these consequences, we never see Xavier interact with Beast, do we?

X-Force is a political commentary with messy, lazy politics, that believes that black ops teams are fine so long as the people running them are good people.

X-Force is a story of good and evil with very little actual moral nuance, and not much to actually, truly say about Krakoa, other than, it can be bad sometimes and Logan doesn't like it.

X-Force is an intelligence agency without any actual intelligence. Every character in it is unobservant, wilfully ignorant, lazy, short-sighted, easily manipulated despite being outwardly cynical, and have not once, in nearly 50 issues, executed a plan that I looked at and thought, you know what, I would never have thought of that, that was really smart.

X-Force is a group of morons who can't kill a fat blue man who bounces a lot, because he's just too smart and capable for them, even though he's also evil and arrogant and stupid and constantly overplays his hand.

X-Force is so stupid that they brought back a clone of their previous Director to fight the current version of him, left said clone in a room that he had the access codes to open with a guard that was talked to sleep with embarrassing ease, and then left their control centre unguarded, despite it having been broken into that very same day by this very same man, so that he could look through their files and leave.

X-Force is fucking dumb.

If it's a commentary on anything, it's that Ben Percy can't write smart narratives to save his goddamn fucking life.

He should stick to short Wolverine stories and body horror, because politics, spy thrillers, satisfying character narratives, theming?

These fucking escape him.

I have no professional respect for the man.

He's probably a nice enough guy if you talk to him in real life.

But, you wanna know a secret? I've never paid a penny for a single issue of X-Force, it's all pirated. All these caps I used? Pirate sources.

I'd walk up to his face and tell him so.

Because I find his work to be a complete waste of time, energy, good art, paper, downloaded megabits, and space. It's a complete wash.

Unless Hank gay kisses Wonder Man in the next two issues.

That'd make it worthwhile, I s'pose.

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

do sq or jimmy woo

ur literally my only true friend

favorite thing about them LOVE how hes like "im nothing like my evil immoral warlord dad and therefore i will consort with the westerners and become a CIA because they are against everything my fathers evil ancient chinese organization stand for, so SURELY that means they are morally perfect and SURELY that means im doing the right thing" like sure babe.. make more mistakes! 😍 comic shangchi is literally kungfu james bond with identity crisis. what better problematic rep than this!

least favorite thing about them now that marvel has given us their virgin mcu shangchi we'll probably never get the chad comic shangchi adapted properly and what a loss

favorite line nothing memorable! my boring king 😍

brOTP h him and lin lie <3 older bro little bro energy. also him and miss marvel... i like that hes the uncle mentor for atlas kids, he has such uncle vibe

OTP jimmy woo of course i know they have toxic weird but sexy repressed relationship

nOTP i dont want to say it

random headcanon watches sitcom with COMPLETELY straight face. he can act normal if he wants to but hes not. he has a very big coworker energy... as in hes reliable, but u cant really feel that close to him. the kind of pretentious bastard who reads sartre and camus and shit but he does it all so earnestly (while doing push ups or something like that). can be very dense at times. definitely a nerd but u cant make fun of him bc hes so serious while doing nerd shit he doesnt know that its even cringe. has an NFT pfp on twitter and instagram which is disgusting

unpopular opinion hes so unpopular that any opinion about him is unpopular.

song i associate with them his vibe is like, white room by cream

favorite picture of them hes so pretty here

[pinwheel-plant]

ok i need to expand on my conspiracy theory thing

for context, i researched how to make surprise villains on various - sources and just in general thought about it

-surprise villains have a fairly complex backstory and one that you can usually sympathise with to gain readers and characters trusts

-alexander is a morally ambigous character. while he has had a redemption arc, he still has problems with morality

-hes attractive which isnt a surprise considering how everyone in spy school is hot but! villains are (sadly) stereotypically ugly/have scars and stuff (glances at joshua) being hot throws u off their trail

-friendly, dumb and vapid. to throw u off his trail again

-hes very emotional, has physical fallibility and a history with relationships. stereotypical villains dont have those things. or pretend to

-gained the trust to not be a villain from everyone. even cyrus, the most untrusting dude out there is like "i trust alex 2 not be evil"

-he has motivation. emotional neglect and cyrus being a overall bad father are good reasons to be evil. ie revenge. (stares at the "idk seems like alex would kill cyrus if he could" scene

-being a hale. first of all, hes above suspicion. when ppl bring up that hes a hale so he cant be evil it cracks me up bc ur proving my point help!!! second a evil organization might be more interested in recruiting him bc he is a hale. id be nice to have a piece of that hale talent on our side right?

-while hes not a likeable character in the start, he grows to be a nice comic relief and pretty likeable to some people. hes very kind to others at first glance. but what if hes not hmm

-hes a actor. his 1st layer of acting is his suave personality. he fools prob the smartest character in the series for a while. and the entire CIA. this man isnt too shabby at this.

-its the perfect cover. "it takes a good double agent to act like a bad agent". erica herself said this. to people that it matters to, hes good or bad. to the hales + others (the best spies ever, ie the people who can catch him) hes dumb and not a threat. to everyone else, hes amazing and great and cant be a threat bc hes so cool (and the people he stole from, they think hes weak and cant be a threat to the CIA, even if they r mad at him.

-stealing from people means he can hurt the agency while boosting his creditability without doing anything

i have more so yeah

i may be reading into this too much

ur not reading into this too much im also insane /lh

i shall now take this and think about it for the whole day

[trainsinanime]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - Episode 3

Man, Wandavision was so much better.

The one person I follow on here who also watches this show posts a lot about the politics of the show and how questionable they are, and I think there are some valid points to be made. But I think that this makes it very easy to miss the important truth: The show is amazingly committed to not saying anything at all. It’s mind-boggling.

A key element of this is how little America, as a concept, seems to figure into this. The show is all about two Captain America sidekicks, about his shield, about who gets to be Captain America, about the legacy and about the treatment of African americans… but it goes out of its way to never be about America. The new bad Captain America seems to work for a Generic Recurring Council, and also the german police (and in fact in the opening jumps out of a van that literally has “GRC Polizei” on its side).

You could maybe argue that there is a default assumption of USA-ness here; people keep talking about “your/our guys/side”, and that side seems to include the CIA. But that’s as specific as it gets, and since the other side is explicitly the fantasy evil against everything Hydra, that’s not really saying much. The scene where they introduce the new Captain America and introduce him as an all-american Hero is arguably the closest thing they come to saying something, anything, about the US as such.

Now, MCU Cap has never really been about America much. The closest he came was in the first movie, but even there, he fought Hydra instead of actual Nazis. Aside: ”The First Avenger” is easily the most pro-German american WW2 movie ever. Anyway, even then, he was on the side of the good guys, who happened to be Americans, but he wasn’t explicitly about the US, and in the movies since, he didn’t much touch on the US either; it was always about SHIELD and HYDRATE and Bucky. But in this show this becomes even more egregious, because they keep touching on stuff, apparently on accident, and then don’t do anything with it.

Isaiah Bradley is a big deal, isn’t he? You’d think he’d be a key piece to the question “what does it mean to be a symbol for America, and what is good and bad about that”. But in this show, he doesn’t actually matter. They bring him up because they know he’s important, but they don’t seem to know why.

Who does the new Captain America work for? You’d think it would either be the US government, or explicitly not the US government, but in reality it appears to be the generic world council of badness. Speaking of, what does it mean that there is a generic world council? There is a group called flag smashers who are against borders - or against the generic world council hoarding medicine, or something? It’s all stuff that seems meaningful, and you can read meaning into it (which never works in the show’s favour), but nope, it doesn’t mean anything.

The show seems scared of being political, in this political spy thriller about the meaning of a US symbol, and just ends up dithering about. Of course it’s impossible to be completely apolitical, so the show settles for what it assumes are default political statements nobody can disagree with - which are apparently, in the minds of the show runners, „US interventionism is good“, „everybody loves the US“ and so on. That sure is a choice.

So when the show talks about Captain America being a symbol or an icon, what it seems to talk about mostly is Steve Rogers himself. But that’s boring, because he’s boring, and the show has nothing of value to say about him anyway. „Steve sure was a good guy“ is the one and only note it has, and it bends itself over backwards to say it. When was Bucky into the whole stars-and-stripes stuff? Why don’t any of them remember Steve personally? Do they have opinions about Steve going back in time to destroy the legacy of Marvel’s first good TV show „Agent Carter“? …have the TV show versions of Sam and Bucky ever met Steve? The thing is that they talk about Steve as a symbol, but never as a person. The show knows that the shield is a symbol, and the man wielding it as a symbol, but it doesn’t seem to stand for anything. The shield is a symbol for the man who is a symbol because he has the shield, or something.

Okay, with that out of the way, some more notes:

The banter between Sam and Bucky is fairly good. If they had a better writer, and more of it, then we could almost say that the show had a strong point there.

Breaking Zemo out of prison is a stupid plot point, but Zemo makes the banter better, so I’m not going to complain.

I like Sharon. The mean reason why would be because she doesn’t care about the plot either, which makes her relatable, but honestly, she’s just fun here.

I do recognise the term Madripoor from the comics but I don’t care. Between you and me, I’m not sure I like the concept of „like Singapore or Hong Kong but everybody is a criminal“, it feels a bit racist to me. Are there people who have investigated the concept of the port city that is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, so to speak?

Zemo is supposed to be imprisoned in Berlin, but the uniform he steals to sneak out has the coat of arms of Hamburg. That’s completely unacceptable.

[aion-rsa]

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: What the Post Credits Scenes Mean for the MCU’s Future

https://ift.tt/3jDyVCH

The following article contains spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

With Black Widow set largely in the past, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is technically the feature film kickoff to Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the exception of the end credits scenes, it’s the first Phase 4 feature set in the aftermath of the Thanos Snap or Blip, and it introduces a set of characters and a region of the MCU that we have not yet explored.

But like every Marvel movie, Shang-Chi also includes two scenes at the end — one in the middle of the credits, and one at the tail — and unusually, both offer important and possibly critical information for the future of the MCU. Often the very last scene tends to be a joke or a sight gag of some kind; that’s not the case this time.

While the last scene at the very end of the movie does hold some interesting implications of its own, it frankly doesn’t loom as large as the mid-credits sequence. We’ll get to that second one a little later. Right now, let’s examine the mid-credits sequence and what it could mean. And remember, we’re in spoiler territory from here on out!

Marvel Studios

The Mid-Credits Sequence

Halfway through the end credits of Shang-Chi, we fade into a room in what could be Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. Present in person are Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), his friend Katy (Awkwafina), and Wong (Benedict Wong). Present via holographic image are Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) — although notably, Banner appears in his original form and not as the Smart Hulk hybrid he became prior to Avengers: Endgame, although his arm is still in a sling after it was fried pretty much to a crisp when he activated the Infinity Gauntlet. What happened to Smart Hulk? Can Banner change back at will or did something happen?

In any case, all five are in a circle studying the Ten Rings, which are floating in the air between them. Although Shang-Chi remarks that his father has been using them for a thousand years, Bruce says that their power signature indicates that they could be much, much older. What’s even more interesting is that the same power signature generated by the Rings looks a lot like the multiverse — the same jagged, interweaving, branching labyrinth of ever-expanding and twisting lines that we last saw at the end of the Disney+ series Loki — as explained to Loki and Sylvie by He Who Remains in that show’s season finale.

But wait, there’s one final revelation: there’s a signal or beacon of some kind coming from within the Ten Rings themselves — a signal of unknown origin.

Captain Marvel has to excuse herself and leaves, saying that Bruce has her number if she’s needed (he doesn’t). The other four are about to leave as well — but then in what does amount to a classic MCU end credits joke, Shang-Chi and Katy manage to lure Wong out for a night of karaoke instead of standing around wondering what all this means.

They’ll leave that to us.

Marvel Studios

Who or what is sending that signal?

If the Ten Rings is connected to the multiverse, then the signal could be coming from any one of the many different universes we saw forming at the end of Loki. It could also be coming from the Quantum Realm, which is clearly part of our universe.

How the Quantum Realm connects to the rest of the multiverse is a question that’s yet to be answered. But since we also know that some variant of He Who Remains, possibly the version known as Kang the Conqueror, is slated to show up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there’s almost no doubt that the multiverse and the Quantum Realm are intertwined — does the Quantum Realm act almost as a secret subway between universes?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Is the beacon a greeting? A warning? A distress signal? Unknown. But there are possibilities of who or what could be sending it:

Kang/He Who Remains

While the version we met in Loki (played by Jonathan Majors) was a somewhat benign madman/dictator, intent on controlling the flow of events in our universe to prevent it from splintering into the multiverse, we know that there are other, more hostile variants out there, most notably Kang the Conqueror. 

And based on the ending of Loki, we know that there’s at least one universe in which Kang reigns supreme. Could Kang be sending out the signal as a way to lure others to his universe and entrap them? Or is a variant trying to warn others away from Kang’s dominion?

Read more

Movies

Who is Kang the Conqueror? Powers and Marvel Comics History Explained

By Jim Dandeneau

Movies

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Review

By Bernard Boo

The Beyonder

Many casual MCU fans may react to this with “Who?” But hear us out. The Beyonder was the antagonist behind the classic 1984 Marvel Comics arc known as Secret Wars, in which the character — an omnipotent entity that is actually the sentient remnants of an alternate dimension itself — creates a planet called Battleworld out of pieces of other worlds, kidnaps the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe and sets them on Battleworld to fight, so it can observe and learn about the ongoing conflict between good and evil (think the old Star Trek episode, “The Savage Curtain”).

The Beyonder’s creator and Secret Wars writer Jim Shooter recently hinted that he had been approached by a legal eagle from Disney to discuss the use of certain characters, leading Shooter to believe that a Secret Wars movie in the MCU was almost inevitable. And let’s face it, it’s too good a concept not to use — especially if you can cross over villains and heroes from different universes.

So the Beyonder may be sending out that signal as a lure or trap. But here’s another theory: Marvel Studios often takes liberties with characters from the comics, sometimes combining aspects of two or more into a version expressly designed for the big screen. If Kang is supposed to be the Big Bad of Phase 4 (and perhaps even some of Phase 5), it’s not unreasonable that Marvel might graft some of the Beyonder’s powers and motivations onto him.

The Fantastic Four

We know that a new movie starring Marvel’s First Family is finally coming, this time from Marvel Studios itself. And we know that Reed Richards can find a way to travel between universes as well as through time. Plus in the comics at least, Kang is possibly a distant descendant of Richards. Since the MCU until now has given no indication that the Fantastic Four exists, could that signal be coming from a version of the Four that does exist in a different universe?

It’s long been suspected among fans that the Quantum Realm (in which signs of civilization have been glimpsed) could play an important role in the introduction of the Fantastic Four into the MCU. But that signal, generated either by the Ten Rings or from somewhere in the multiverse, could also be coming from them.

The Celestials (from Eternals)

With the mid-credits sequence indicating that the Ten Rings are much older than first thought, is it possible that they are actually technology created by the Celestials?

The Celestials, of course, have been around almost as long as the universe/multiverse itself, and have seeded countless worlds in the cosmos with life. On Earth, they created “normal” humans, as well as the Eternals and the Deviants, and return periodically — we’re talking time on a cosmic scale here — to see how their experiments are going.

What if the use of the Ten Rings activates the beacon and sends a signal to the Celestials that it’s time to come look in on their little planet-sized lab? The Celestials operate on such a vast span of time that even Wenwu using the Rings for a millennium would seem like minutes to them. With the ongoing conflict between the Eternals and the Deviants seemingly coming to the fore in this November’s Eternals movie, it seems likely that a Celestial will show up to sort things out. That Celestial might also be very interested in finding out why the Ten Rings have been activated.

Marvel Studios

The Post-Credits Sequence

This one is a lot simpler to explain. Although Wenwu is dead by the end of Shang-Chi, and Shang-Chi himself is off hobnobbing with some of the Avengers, Wenwu’s daughter and Shang-Chi’s sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) is seen taking full control of the Ten Rings and planning to keep the organization running — although whether she plans to use it for good or perhaps some more nefarious purposes remains to be seen (she is, after all, still her father’s daughter).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

With a large number of now free agent Black Widows running around, and Sharon Carter/the Power Broker now operating her own agenda and unknown connections from within the CIA itself (at the end of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), there is plenty of geopolitical action for the Ten Rings organization to get involved with. Perhaps we’ll see more of their exploits in an upcoming TV series or Captain America 4 — or maybe Shang-Chi 2. But they aren’t going anywhere.

Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings is in theaters now.

The post Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: What the Post Credits Scenes Mean for the MCU’s Future appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3mVPdZV

[baeyungmin]

Falcon & Winter Soldier e3 Thoughts

- Sam & James more buddy roadtrip goof -1 oof god “hypothetical” please I’m- like i get it, TV show, plots gotta move faster but I dont feel the flagsmasher, stop the serum spread desperation, Sam’s right blew up UN, murdered TChaka, like what. no leads? seriously? not even the gov & CIA, FBI?

- Zemo prison break. It’s aight. still dont like his accent tho. i like the actor tho. a fellow ratman. 

- US Agent John Walker “do you know who I am?” B

- Baron butler sorry dude, i rlly couldn’t tell what you were saying, i like the evil rich guy trope tho

- Madripoor. Indonesian pirate sanctuary. *as an asian man, immediately expects southasian lookin ass ppl* enter looks like ex-pat bar. *no asian ppl* *sorely disappointed* also, black man jokes from Zemo, head writer Malcom Spellman a black man for context IM CALLING YOU OUT AGAIN DENIS, YOU GUYS WANNA USE NEO-ORIENTALISM YOU GOTTA BRING THEM ALIEN-LOOKING ASIAN PEOPLE GODDAMNIT FUCK

- Can’t suspend belief that ppl know a known international criminal been in jail for who knows how long and his disappeared assassin reappear in bar. -1

- chipper british bosslady exchanging serum info hmmm... it’s aight

- sam phone call. almost. same eh humor, but im enjoying this.

- phone txtmsg bounty Wick-style +1

- enter sharon. ex-gov operative abandoned offgrid after accomplice to superheroes? i dunno, you livin p large Sharon. jeez. an art seller and party hoster? jeez i dont know... -1

- party scene. tonal whiplash. where are the damn asian people. -1

- what the hell happened to the damn txtmsg bounty -1

- enter Dr. Nagel. evil gay trope. i mean cool for the nostalgia, sad its what you gotta use to ID the bad guy. sick Sharon fight scene tho, Borne-style, thanks Kari

- 20 vials. *begins death to shown calcs, eyeing the counter* why did Zemo shoot him tho. 

- firefight buddy roadtrip humor. geaugh. -1 bad. also, Bucky scene command really lacking here. 

- Zemo fightender. cool vision of comic book villain action. im doing my best to believe. 

- Karli friend death & bomber terrorism shoulda been weaved closer together imo. she seems nice, sells the robin hood, but feels out of character to actually justify with words firebombing. 

- US Agent/ Battlestar prison convo: I’m honestly really loving Wyatt Russell’s treatment, delivery, writing, direction. He backs arguments with sound reasons instead of quippy excuses. a man of thought and action. no humor. good, humor would have rubbed away at a mentionable character. government lackey, not quite reacting against Flag-Smashers, but a simple man on a mission. +1

- Wakandan +1

it’s an honest effort, but i have tonal whiplash and i am and you are allowed to feel sad abt so-so content. augh. 

[ty-talks-comics]

The Boys Season 1 Review and Comparison

This was so cathartic.

In an age where we’re inundated with superhero media on all fronts with their bright colors, cheery jokes and positive outlooks, it’s easy to slowly become sick of it, feel the “superhero fatigue” as it were. Where Marvel ruins some stories with far too many jokes (looking at you Thor: Ragnarok) and DC is far too dreary and serious for its own good with a lack of levity, where can one turn to for a GOOD happy medium?

Well, in comes Seth Rogan and Evan Gold, the brilliant minds behind the amazing adaptation of Preacher with yet another brutal and slightly more cynical series. The Boys absolutely stuns not only by being a genuinely compelling series, but also by being one of the few adaptations that improves on the original medium in a few aspects.

Story

The story centers around Hughie Campbell and the titular Boys as they work to expose the horrific deeds of The Seven, a collective of the world's greatest superheroes, and the company that sponsors them, Vought American.

In this world, superheroes are everywhere. They're on breakfast cereals, TV shows, movies, pretty much every piece of media and entertainment imaginable while also protecting America from crime. Sounds familiar, huh? The kicker here is that, much like every asshole celebrity that lets the fame and fortune go to their heads, these heroes are massive cunts. They take performance enhancing drugs, routinely cause accidents that hurt or kill people, sexually harass people left and right and just lie to their adoring public like they’re children.

Unlike the books, however, The Boys team isn’t the well oiled machine that’s been taking down and blackmailing superheroes for years and the first four episodes are spent introducing the different team members.This is likely due to wanting to give people time to care about them individually and the limited number of episodes in the season. This definitely works in also retooling the characters themselves for TV since they may not have seventy-two issues of character development ahead of them

For the most part, the show follows the initial story beats of the comics with a few select differences before splintering off in an entirely new direction. Hughie’s girlfriend still gets blown apart by A-Train, he denies Vought America’s hush money which draws the attention of Billy Butcher and Starlight joins the Seven after the “death” of the hero Lamplighter. 

This also means that there's less time to focus on smaller plotlines and teams that are referenced to in passing dialogue like the Teenage Kix, a pastiche on the Teen Titans, or Payback, the number two group of superheroes to The Seven. While seeing the team take these guys down on the small screen would have been fun, I like the idea of keeping the plot focused on just the core group of antagonists. This way, we don’t have to slog through three or four seasons of small fry and get the big bads in the last few.

After the first half, fans of the comic may start to feel a little bit of the familiar, but then things start to take a drastic turn when Billy's pride and the rest of the teams sloppiness gets them all burned and branded wanted criminals. This never happens in the books because The Boys are funded and protected by the CIA, but here they’re just another group of concerned citizens that are completely in over their heads, adding to the tension and keeping everyone guessing as to what will happen for the rest of the season and in Season 2.

Themes

The original series was written during the latter years of the Bush Administration. Tensions were high and America was still embroiled in the Iraq War. The president was a simpering fool and companies were fucking people over left and right in the name of patriotism. Reality TV and the awful personalities on our screens were on nearly every channel and all of this only fueled the anger that is Garth Ennis’ pen and Darick Robertson’s pencils. It was a product of its time and it was perfect.

We’re now in the Information Age where superheroes and social media are the only things that matter in everyone’s mind, where women’s empowerment is stronger than ever and our leaders speak bombastically with shit eating grins full of lies. Rogen and Goldberg have kept the series modern and take everything to task.

Media. Marvel and DC are everywhere nowadays with some indie companies managing to scrape up their own part of the pie. The Boys makes fun of the seemingly endless cycle of sequels and the goody-two-shoes images of America’s favorite heroes. Everything is carefully managed and curated by a media team, similar to how Disney micromanages even the smallest details of their properties to make everything so sickeningly squeaky clean. 

Not only do the heroes stop crime, but they star in their own movies about themselves as well, some have sponsorships for shoes and have to compete with each other for everything. Almost everything is done for the cameras, even intimate moments whenever Vought can find a way to make it work. The heroes are never too far from the spotlight even when they want to be and oftentimes their acts can go viral without them knowing.

Sexual Assault. In the comics, Starlight is sexually assaulted by Homelander, Black Noir and A-Train in a gross scene to establish that there’s nothing good in that world. It was good for its time in its own dark way, but today there are absolutely consequences to such things as there should have been back then. In the show, Starlight is assaulted by The Deep, her childhood crush, alone. 

It’s dark and makes use of the imbalance of power as The Deep threatens to have her kicked off of the team. Soon after, Starlight comes forward with what happens to her, not allowing herself to let what happened stand and unlike in the books, The Deep gets his comeuppance. Though this also unfortunately leading to him getting assaulted as well. It’s powerful and allows for Starlight to move what could have been an image of weakness, though Vought uses this to their advantage as well, painting her a feminist icon. Best for business right?

Politics. While not everything has to be an allegory for Trump, it’s hard to say that Homelander isn’t just that. He’s what the president thinks he is, a strong, blonde haired man that the entire country loves. Homelander has the people eating out of the palm of his hands and he’s only feeding them shit. He hates the common man and will just as easily let many die if it can somehow serve his interests. He’s not above a little sexual harassment himself and he is just an evil bastard.

There’s also a subplot of military application of superheroes that I feel mirrors the discussion on the use of drones in war. Drones are absolutely deadly and have caused the deaths of hundreds, even innocents when things have gone really wrong. Even President Obama was criticized for how reckless and dangerous their use could be. The world could only imagine the hell that would rain down if superheroes were allowed to duke it out over national security.

Characters

The Boys as a comic series was an unrepentantly cynical take on the superhero genre in an established universe of heroes. The creator, Garth Ennis, didn’t grow up with many superheroes and actually felt disrespected by a few of them, like Captain America. He brought on the amazing Darick Robertson and other artists to realize this horrid world of drugs, hardcore sex and brutal violence. Many of the stories are fun and hilarious, but with the unfortunate feeling of a lot of them feeling one note due to the one dimensional nature of a lot of the “heroes” and the ever escalating level of black humor to the point of being cartoonish.

Our main character cast is absolutely fantastic. Jack Quiad’s Hughie is much like his comic counterpart, aside from being like six feet tall and not Scottish. He’s surprisingly smart with a lot of awkwardness about him. He has a good heart and doesn’t see ALL superheroes as being evil, but does have a slight sense of justice that wants to see The Seven and Vought taken down. 

Karl Urban’s Butcher was the absolute perfect casting choice. He’s got that wry British wit, the fury to capture Butcher’s rage against supes and can play a manipulator like nobody's business. His character arc is one of the few regressions that I can actually appreciate for how it's done, especially as things become more fucked because of him and how he chooses to blame everyone else.

Everyone else is a slight bit of an improvement over the comics versions. The Frenchman, played by Tomer Capon, is similar to his comics counterpart, but we’re given reason to care about him and The Female. In the comics, Frenchie and the Female knew each other prior, but I don’t think it’s ever revealed how they met or became close. In the show Frenchie frees The Female, played by Karen Fukuhara, from thugs that had been keeping her prisoner and he slowly gains her trust over the course of the next few episodes after her introduction. We see their friendship grow, learn a little bit of her backstory and get a better understanding of what she wants versus just following Frenchie around and being terrifyingly adorable.

Annie January aka Starlight, played by Erin Moriarty, is probably the second best change in character in the series. She starts out as a bright eyed, bushy tailed hero looking to do good, but after being sexually assaulted on her first day in The Seven, decides that it will never happen again. In the comics, Annie stays around in The Seven and takes the abuse for a little while before speaking out and fighting back against the rest of them. What makes things even better, not only does she challenge her uber Christian beliefs during an event sponsored by Vought, but she does so while also getting Vought to force her abuser into giving a public apology at the mere thought of her causing their stock prices to crash.

Consequently, Mother’s Milk, portrayed by Laz Alonso, one of the most layered characters in the comics isn’t made better, but the more ridiculous aspects of is character have been toned down. We don’t hear of his disabled mother and his addiction to her breast milk that fuels his own superpowers, nor is his wife a crack addict that makes pornos with their daughter. He’s simply a reliable member of the team that loves his wife and will give Butcher the truth when he’s acting like an asshole.

The series actually brings a lot of grey to most of these characters. A-Train never once shows remorse for his actions in the books, but in the show he's painted as kind of sympathetic, while still being seen as a monster for what he does and the reasons behind them. The Deep could go either way after his actions with a redemption arc or a full turn to villain, but is shown to be knowingly aware of how little regard there is for him. He calls himself a "diversity hire" and acknowledges his own ineptitude, but he's still an absolutely terrible person.

Queen Maeve may be one of my favorite changes that manages to be even more sympathetic than her already pretty great comic counterpart. She, much like Starlight, did want to change the world, but she let the apathy and jaded nature of the job take her over. She's an alcoholic that sees a bit of herself in Starlight. The change comes in how she reacts to what I think might be Homelander's most heinous act in the show. She shows far more remorse and guilt over what happens than she does in the comic, showing us a side of her makes you want to root for her and to see her get better.

The best character… dear Lord, is Homelander, played by Anthony Starr. Homelander is a bastard. The worst thing imaginable because of his sheer strength and power. He’s a sociopath with all of the powers of Superman and none of the goodness. In the comics he’s simply just another asshole. 

He’s the most powerful of the Seven and absolutely revels in the hedonistic lifestyle that he’s accustomed to while also hating being under the rule of Vought. In the show, he’s shown as being supportive to Vought, especially it’s current Senior VP of Hero Management, Madelyn Stillwell. He has something of a mommy fetish as shown with his interactions with her and later in the series actually expresses emotions over learning of his own tragedies, but instead of trying to change for the better, he doubles down on his hatred and anger to become an even bigger monster than before. 

In the comic he just wants all of the superheroes to conquer the world, but here, he just wants to hurt everyone who hurts him. He plays games like a child, threatening and revealing secrets to toy with people before absolutely breaking them. He's horrible in a very personal way and his sneering smile only makes him so much more hateable. He knows there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop him and he revels in that fact, I love it.

Pacing and Direction

Coming in at an hour for each episode, the first two to three can feel a bit slow. Getting all of the story elements to sit just right can take time, especially as new things are introduced every few minutes. This slow burn approach easily helps to build the tension before things get really crazy by episode four. By that point, the story is unfolding at a perfect rhythm, the team is mostly together, they’ve made their plans of action and it’s all so smooth.

Thankfully each episode is directed by different people to avoid each feeling so similar. The common humor and tone is kept the same, but some episodes are very hopeful almost before being met with one that absolutely makes you hate certain characters and the actions that they take. In particular, the episode where Hughie and Butcher visit a group therapy session and Butcher flies off into a rage about the weakness of the attendees as they basically lick the balls of the heroes that have maimed them was amazing. The director pulls so much emotion out of that scene and continues on as the episode moves along in a far more dramatic fashion than some of the others.

Some others lean heavier on the debauchery such as the episode where Hughie and Butcher venture into a superhero sex club and watch as these guys do some pretty amazing feats with their abilities in some really gross ways. There’s a good balance of levity and drama that makes neither feel too overwhelming.

Overall

With a great cast, impeccable acting and an unpredictability that I actually enjoyed, The Boys absolutely blew me away. I was wholly prepared to rip it apart if I felt like it didn’t do the story justice, but Rogen and Goldberg are fans and knew what we all wanted. It’s unabashedly a comic book show, but still has enough to it that people who have never heard of the series will be floored by how much they can find to enjoy.

It’s for the nihilistic and jaded comic book fan. It’s for the casual watcher who’s gotten enough of Marvel’s colorful displays of happiness and it’s absolutely for the happy person who just wants to have some fun with what they watch. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this season of The Boys. So much so that I’m aching with anticipation to re-read the comic series in preparation for Season Two. It’s unlikely that it’ll follow the plot much, if at all after the ending, but with Stormfront (as a woman) being announced as the new Hero joining the Seven in the next season, I’m excited as to who else they might pull. This first season absolutely earns a high recommendation from me.

[yourkdramaanalyst]

MYSTIC POP-UP BAR REVIEW

• Introduction to the Drama

GIST:

Mystic Pop-Up Bar or 쌍갑포차 is about Weolju (played by Hwang Jung Eum), a spirit who is being punished by the heavens because of a mistake she made 500 years ago. To not end up in hell, she was offered to resolve the problems of 100,000 people and help them let go of their grudges. She opened up a cart bar where she hears the stories of her customers and help them out by visiting them in their dreams. Guibanjang or Manager Gwi (played by Choi Won Young) was sent to help her manage the cart bar. A month before Weolju's deadline, they met Kangbae (played by Yook Sung Jae), a customer service employer who can make people spill their problems and worries by being touched.

This drama is based on a popular web-comic Twin Tops Bar by Bae Hye-soo.

Hwang Jung Eum's last drama was in 2018 which made this drama her comeback. She is a Romantic-Comedy queen who is well known for her roles in She Was Pretty, Kill Me, Heal Me and Lucky Romance.

Yook Sung Jae is a member of the K-pop boy group Born to Beat or simply BtoB. He's famous for his roles in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God / Goblin and Who Are You: School 2015 (I still can't get over my second lead syndrome in this drama. I am Team Go Tae Kwang).

Choi Won Young was also in Kill Me, Heal Me with Hwang Jung Eum. He's been on many dramas like Hyena which was aired recently, Sky Castle and While You Were Sleeping. He also appeared a lot on the big screen.

• The Experience

When I watched the the trailer, it felt odd because it resembles Hotel Del Luna a lot. Even though, this kind of plot is already common among Korean series, the familiar setting, symbolism and elements are what made me think of Hotel Del Luna in particular. But no, Mystic Pop-Up Bar is not based on Hotel Del Luna at all because the web-comic was published in 2016, years ago before it aired on TV.

Here are some similarities and differences the two dramas have that I found:

1. Both the female leads are being punished for their sins and mistakes hundreds of years ago.

2. Both the female leads' goal is to help their customers resolve their problems. The difference is that Jang Man Wol focuses on the dead so they can ascend to heaven while Weolju helps both the living and the dead by entering their dreams.

3. Koo Chan Sung and Han Kang Bae. Both of these young and innocent men appeared to help resolve their cases.

4. The tree! The tree plays a vital role in both dramas.

5. The place of their business. Jang Man Wol has a fancy hotel that serves as a resting place for the dead while Weolju has a cart bar for people who have worries in life. 

These are just some of my observations. I'm not implying anything. Both dramas have their own uniqueness.

Going back to my experience, I can say it was pretty good. I was actually busy these days, even so, I was still able to binge-watch the drama. I thought I wouldn't be able to catch up but I ended up watching more episodes whenever I finish one. It was a pretty short one since it only has 12 episodes so it was fast to watch. I finished it in 4 days (I started watching 2 days before the release of 11th episode), which was understandable considering I am busy and also binge-watching other dramas.

• Points that I Liked About the Drama

1. It is easy to watch because it is light, quirky, and funny. Almost every episode is fun to watch but not to the point where you are gonna mistake the genre for comedy. It is not overdone. The scenes and their funny dialogues are what I enjoyed the most.

2. The flow of the story was just right for me. It's not exhausting to watch. Some dramas were hard to watch at a particular time. For instance, boring ones are hard to watch in the afternoon because it makes me sleepy so I prefer watching fast paced aka. exhausting ones in the afternoon. However, with Mystic Pop-Up Bar, I can watch it anytime of the day.

3. The characters are likable. I loved the trio. Even the supporting ones are warm and endearing. Sometimes I would even look for them in some episodes, specially Samsin, the conception dream provider and Kang Yeo Rin, Kang Bae's love interest.

4. Not emotionally draining. I had worries when I watched the first episode. "What if it becomes too emotional whenever they help someone?" Not really. I don't even remember crying. Dramas with plots like this, Hotel Del Luna for example, it drained me a lot that I ran out of tissues to wipe my tears. That's not a bad thing at all, it only means it has impact. It's just that with Mystic Pop-Up Bar, I watched it at a time when I am already physically drained. So far it was bearable. And it feels more fresh that way. (Sorry, I keep comparing the 2 dramas).

5. I like its uniqueness. They showed some afterlife scenarios that are really interesting. One example is the way they deliberate when a person dies, whether you'll get reincarnated or turned in an insect. Another is the afterlife Olympics. It's a really funny episode.

6. There is a theme for every episode/ every case. For instance, the food that they serve for the day has a connection to their client. One more example is when they had a Romeo and Juliet theme for a client who is a writer. They even paid attention to details like this which was fun and appreciative.

7. So Chan Whee's guest appearance! I literally jumped when she appeared out of nowhere.

• Points that I Didn't Like About the Drama

1. Predictable scenes. Not everything, though. Maybe just half of it. Especially the first few episodes when the story revolves mostly on the people who have issues that needed to be resolved. Mainly because, as I already mentioned, dramas like this are already common.

2. It got a little weird when it was almost ending. There are sudden appearances that didn't seem important at all. Their timing of appearance seems off as well.

3. The motive of Kim Won Hyung was not that convincing for me. He just annoyed me but I didn't see him as the main villain.

• The Ending

I did not have high expectations when I started to watch the drama. I told myself that I will not get disappointed if the ending feels rushed because that's usually the case with short dramas.

The ending was fine, though. There were unexpected turn of events which I found interesting and made me nod my head and say "Ohhhh, that's why!" Even though the conclusion was lacking a bit, I didn't regret watching it since I had a good time.

I didn't cry while watching the entire drama but started tearing a little the moment I realized it already ended. When Dive by Jung Jin Woo started playing along with some scenarios from different episodes, I felt a little sad. I will miss the characters for sure.

However, just like other dramas, I had a lot of issues with this drama, too. Don't worry, these "issues" are mostly just observations, uncertainties and questions I have because sometimes, I get out of focus and I get confused, too. I will mention them below on the issues section which you should skip if you want to avoid spoilers!

• Final Thoughts

Would I watch it again? No.

Would I recommend it? Yes. I would recommend Mystic Pop-Up Bar to those who like light and funny dramas. This is also a good drama for those who just casually watch dramas and those who are beginning to explore the K-Drama world.

I am giving Mystic Pop-Up Bar a 7/10.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Issues (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!)

1. The queen or the crown prince's mother's appearance and her remembering her past life is too sudden. It seems off and too convenient. She died fast, too. And her death was awful.

2. The group of evil thugs at the last episode. When did Kim Won Hyung gather all those spirits? That was so weird.

3. If Won Hyung could change his face as revealed in the last episode when he pretended to be Weolju, why did he bother possess his father in the previous episodes if he could just change into anyone he likes? So he could prevent his father and him meeting the same people at the same time?

4. For Weolju to not be sent to hell after knowing who Cinnabar is, Guibanjang made it so easy. Just a quick negotiations with Yeomradaewang and everything is smooth once again.

5. Did Yeorin figure out that they are not CIA agents after all? LOL. And where did she go after fighting the weird thugs during the last episode?

And that concludes my Mystic Pop-Up Bar review! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this. I hope my personal thoughts and insights were helpful at all.

To more K-Drama Reviews! Cheers!