#also assuming creators are evil for writing evil characters being evil like for fucks sake

[chillyneon]

Don't read the comments don't read the comments people are going to be wicked stupid when having bad takes on your favorite media don't read the comments on them you'll only get angrier DONT CLICK ON THE COMMENTS AND READ THEM

[apple-but-sour]

That repost reminded me of a take i am so dead fucking sick of seeing. “C!Dream doesn’t have a perspective because he’s the bad guy hurr durr” actually have you considered that given how majorly which perspective you watch changes how you interact with the story, (proven by the mere existence of everything that is apologist discourse), and how he’s barely even worse than other characters who get mountains of sympathy both narratively and by the fandom, that the message may be that the reason you perceive dream as a villain is not because he’s necessarily worse or “evil” but because you lack his perspective?? Like it would be such a shit message to go “look at all these complicated and morally grey people, and how a change in perspective can change a monster into a human and vice versa, except for this one guy who you’re not even given a chance with because man fuck that”

It directly ties into how c!dream intentionally misrepresents himself to his enemies or barely bothers defending himself in terms of intentions, how he tends to be dehumanized either by others or himself, even the mask thing (since it is canon) is symbolic in how it further dehumanizes dream, because the thing that would most clearly be an indicator of humanity, contact and expression is hidden away. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it’s just not something we have access to (obviously I doubt the mask thing would have any follow through in terms of symbolism, dream is never gonna change his skin, think of his brand).

In a way I can’t be that angry at people for having that take because it feels a lot like purposeful misdirection. It’s easy to write off dream, and empathizing with him takes leg work, as you’ve clearly demonstrated throughout your whole dreblr career, further encouraged by how he straight up lies about his motivations sometimes. Ideally it could build up to a “reveal” of sorts, that could recontextualize what kind of person c!dream is when/if cc!dream finally releases his lore video, though idk.

Is this intentional? Fuck if i know but it’s more credible than just assuming c!dream is a villain because it just goes against so much of what the dsmp is at this point.

This turned into a rant. Obviously cc!dream’s actual intentions for not streaming aren’t because of story impact or anything, but I do hope it’s something he’s realized so something cool could come of it.

Dude, anon you've put so much into words. With how cc!Dream himself pointed out how the lack of perspective makes his character a great villain that's harder to sympathize with, and how Season 3 seems to be building up to some kind of drastic change in how the narrative frames c!Dream, I do think all of this is intentional.

Just think about it, we've got this guy who's taken on an antagonistic role in Season 2, who did Exile, for Christ's sake, who was described as "reserved", out of all things, by the actor, who at the end of the season was revealed to be scheming basically a takeover of the whole server. I can see how people flatten him into a sort of villain stereotype from all that. And then we've got the Enderwalk Arc that to me seems to be heading in the direction of the Enderwalk's actions being given more context and c!Dream himself being recontextualized in the process. We also have the Prison Arc that's breaking c!Dream down to the point where some people can't help but sympathize with him. We have more and more characters questioning the previously established narrative around c!Dream.

And then to top it all off, as you've said, the creators make it a point to write all characters as morally grey, and it's strange for just the one guy to be the exception to the rule. And a part of me can't be too mad at people who bought into c!Dream's facade, same as I can't be too mad at people who believe c!Ranboo to be manipulated by c!Dream. Being fooled is what makes magic tricks fun, so a part of me is almost envious of the people who haven't clocked on yet because they get to be truly shocked by the eventual reveal.

Then again, we could always be wrong with our predictions of where the story is heading. Only time will tell who is right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[hellyeahheroes]

...So Cates, I have questions?

I am waiting until the event is finished to do a super post on Donny Cates Absolute Garbage. Until then, Cates continues to show that he cannot form sequence of events and just throws scenes in for no reason.

In AC #2 and MM: AC #1, we were left with Miles becoming a symbiote host. Cates doesn’t use his pieces well because for one Eddie and Mac were safely away from the Carnage horde at the end of both issues. As soon as this issue picks up, Miles transformation is complete and he is suddenly attacking Eddie and the Carnage Cult is surrounding both again.

This sounds like a nitpick but as I pointed out in that there is a right way to chart action scenes in comics and I refuse to lay the blame at Stegman because he is simply providing the art to Cates’ script. Also it continues to be a problem in the book and it involves a major scene.

Why couldn’t Venom just do this earlier? Why bother with the several page melodrama of Eddie angering over letting Miles down when it was his fault that he got captured in the first place since you want to demand Scorpion to man up for no reason? Why is the Symbiote getting bold and basically putting himself in danger to just kill Osborn or is it Cletus...who the fuck knows anymore.

So Venom takes Carnage back to the warehouse and to safety to find this.

Now Spider-Man explains to Eddie that the Avengers know that he is helping which is okay. But I have questions because it obvious why a certain character is there. If Ben Grimm is there, why not bring in Reed Richards instead of Bruce Banner? Yes, Banner is a genius too but Mr. Fantastic has familiarity with symbiotes and alien biology. Banner’s field has to do with Nuclear Physics, Physics, and energy transference. This is just the writer assuming all geniuses are the same in order to display a pivotal scene that is complete macho bait.

Oh hey, remember when I mentioned Cates lack of sequence of events?

...How did Carnage find their hideout? How did Carnage sneak into the hideout and become a copy of Eddie and how did no one think to realize why there are two Eddies in the same building?

That is the sequence of events, fam. There are no missing pages. Carnage just finds Eddie and Peter(Eddie casually dropping Peter’s name and alias to a serial killer god wannabe) and there is no explanation at all as to how 2 geniuses and Eddie got caught so fucking off guard by something so simple to realize. It makes people look stupid.

And the edgy ass dialogue? “I am sex and violence?” Cringe as fuck(I am aware he is quoting a book but whatever).

I am not a Venom fan. I was roped in this shit show because it involved Miles and Andi. So dealing with Cates, who is being hailed for his ‘writing’, is like one massive disappointment after another.

The issue is that he is desperately trying to exonerate Eddie while making the Symbiote look evil. The Symbiote is bringing the worst of Eddie and it’s never Eddie’s fault ever. Like you see the scene where the Symbiote is trying to relieve Peter of the responsibility of bringing Symbiotes on Earth(a retcon that Cates made btw) only for Eddie to make the same mistake and manipulate Peter’s guilt for his sake. But does the writing ever call Eddie out? No.

The Symbiote is the wild one for wanting to kill Carnage while Eddie wants to protect his own kin as if those two ideas are at odds. All of the sudden, Eddie values human life because he has a kid now? And it’s not even human. Null/Carnage is literally killing swathes of people and taking over people’s bodies while infecting them with a codex. At this point, Null is a parasitic disease.

But Eddie doesn’t trust the Symbiote and feels like it’s trying to control him and manipulate his life so he just does stupid things due to this creator forced drama. And it is creator forced because it was Cates that made the relationship between the two abusive when there was no such tension earlier. You erased the one sole motivator of Eddie, his sister, and claimed that she never existed. You made it seem like it was the Symbiote that was giving Eddie cancer intentionally so Eddie would always need it. You made the Symbiote use Eddie’s DNA and rape and force impregnate his ex-wife because women in this series are only good when they are sex slaves to an alien cult, raped to have children of dubious consent, and just a lie of a manipulation. Honestly, Cates’ Venom run should be held in the same regard as One More Day and I say this as an avid Spider-Man fan.

@ubernegro

[aglayalilich]

on some horror movies

a few months ago i got to see midsommar and though it didn’t quite do to me what hereditary did i thought it was a very compelling movie...shortly after, though, i was able to see the 2018 version of suspiria and wowwww did i feel some ways about that movie. i felt at the time that the two went very well together. so my friend invited me to see the director’s cut version of midsommar this weekend (still very interesting, though i felt the final cut was the right choice) and i decided i would also watch suspiria again and take notes on both. because i

wanted to articulate more why these movies work so well as a double feature for me, beyond ‘ah yeah there’s some girls dancing in it’ though certainly the role of dance and the climactic dance scenes are a part of it. there’s this structural similarity too in the final ritual acts. but like i was saying, it’s more than just a similar aesthetic. in fact the aesthetics are really in contrast, with suspiria’s bright red on desaturated colors versus midsommar’s blue and white on very lush, saturated backdrops. though they also do something similar with how color begins creeping into the character’s clothing in midsommar and of course many people have already talked about how the iconic red begins to creep into suspiria culminating at the end. really drastically different cinematography style also, midsommar is full of these long empty lingering shorts, all this wideness and slowness while suspiria is fast cuts, sudden zooms, races fromt he point of view of one character to the next. (sidenote: both have this GREAT visual language of mirrors, suspiria has the mirror room and dance studios and characters refracted a hundredfold, great for questions and multiplicity of identity. midsommar has a couple of really great scenes where one character is talking to another character but the second character is standing out of the shot and only visible in a mirror. ahhh so good. in general i wouldn’t say the effect of either movie is fear so much as disorientation--reflections, refractions, inversions. physical spaces impossible for the audience to navigate. images that the audience cannot arrange chronologically. i love it) anyway. this isn’t an essay so it is unstructured. i took about 10 pages of notes during my second viewing of midsommar and i can only understand about half of that because it was dark as fuck in the theater but i would like to at least ATTEMPT to give form to what i was feeling. comes down to 3 core similarities.

1. i read both of these movies as about abuse in communities that are supposed to be ‘safe.’ the community is a relief from trauma/abuse/horror of the outside world. there’s also a strong emphasis on the familial nature of this community. important to note that the community is genuine, it is not wholly a falsehood. it has a motivation beyond doing evil for evil’s sake, it may even believe the evil is necessary for the care of the community. this is a close and poignant topic for me, and i assume for other people as well, so it’s compelling to see it addressed in horror. it can be a great relief to see something as the subject of horror--that is an acknowledgement that it is horrific. a confirmation, an understanding, and sometimes through the resolution of the movie we can find stories that help us work through this.

2. both mostly focus on the horror of endurance rather than the horror of ending (death) which is a big thing for me in terms of my horror preferences. while i love some iconic monsters and killers ultimately the idea of ‘what if a fucked up thing killed you’ is just not actually that scary for me. what is scary for me is, yknow living in a state of unspeakable agony.

the olga scene in suspiria (you know the one) is a perfect example of this. every time you think that scene is about to be over it keeps going. and keeps going. the character is hurt but never killed, contorted impossibly, injured beyond the realm of what the human body should be able to endure but she is still alive. even when the scene finally comes to an end she is still alive! hard for me to articulate this scene if you haven’t seen it--i am very pleased and excitable about body horror and it was still rough for me purely because of how long it feels. in a sense this scene doesn’t even really end because much later during the climactic scene of the movie she is still fucking alive and has been in this state for the entire duration of the movie.

with midsommar it’s less of a body horror angle and more...dani living with all her pain and grief. but it’s done physically as well--being killed suddenly is not so horrible as being kept alive, the climactic horror is about a very prolonged, painful death. the dance scene doesn’t take it to suspiria levels but there is still a sense of the participants having no choice of when to stop, but simply must keep going in exhaustion until they cannot.

3. i really love how both of these films show pain (and other emotion) evoked through motions and breath. this one is harder to articulate. you know a lot of the time in a movie you will see an act of violence but it’s pretty...shallow, it’s just the image of violence, it has no weight to it. you don’t feel it. not so in these movies. it’s hard for me to articulate exactly how a piece of media goes about accomplishing this or not but often it makes the key distinction between things i think are just fine and things i really love.

these two have a really particular way of showing pain. in a very literal sense, there are incredible portrayals of bodies in physical pain. but there’s also dani’s raw screams of grief at the end of midsommar’s intro (and at other points throughout the film.) she is in too much pain to speak, all she can say is no, the leaked script describes it as ‘it’s so intense that it looks painful, dangerous even.’ on a slight digression i often feel  like i dont love ari aster the way a lot of people do but the thing i really truly do love and am awed by is the portrayal of this raw horrible grief pain in his films. it is so horrible it is very difficult for me to see and that is a little part of why i can never watch hereditary again. but anyway

sometimes pain robs us of thought and of language. (the movie knows this, the aforementioned prolonged painful death at the end of midsommar is one in which the character involved cannot move or speak). at a certain point it cannot be articulated through words. so these characters, the films themselves, articulate their pain (both physical and cosmic) through dreams, sighs, movement, screams.

sometimes pain seems too much for any one person to bear. this is when the movies come back around to the topic of community. both films emphasize the community as a body, made up of the individuals who serve as its cells or organs. when one part is hurt, the whole body feels the effects. more than that, the things too big for one human to possible feel are instead taken up by the community, felt by the larger body. volk is danced by one body, expressing the feeling not just of its creator but of the body. in midsommar we see the community take on in unison the feeling of one member, dancing or screaming as one (though i’ve seen different takes on whether this is to positive or negative result.) the body is formed and expresses itself through motion and breath, the dances, the sighs, the rhythmic exhalations which are all both precise and instinctive.

there is also something more i can’t say here about...not pain but the desire for someone to understand your pain, the desire for true connection.

i tried a few times to write about why this is a topic i fixate on but it didn’t feel right. to summarize ill just say that i struggle deeply with the ability to express pain.

now, on horror and the working-through of trauma...i said earlier that it is compelling to see these topics addressed in horror. horror is the main genre of any media that i enjoy and though i like other things, i don’t generally seek out anything that doesn’t have some inclination towards horror. this has always been the case but grew more true the more, uh, fucked up my life became, and i find it generally the best mechanism for thinking about (and not necessarily but sometimes coping with) grief and trauma and pain in all its forms. other people have written extensively about this, articulated it better than i could, there’s not really a need to get into it further than that.

but i’m thinking about one thing i’ve seen recently...(actually two things, firstly, some posts that seems to imply horror movies never tackled trauma before ari aster started directing which is just...quite a take, quite a take.) it was shots of ending scenes from a few horror movies, including hereditary and midsommar and also suspiria...i think the vvitch also and maybe also possession or something you know all the movies bitches with ptsd love (i’m bitches.) shots of the protagonist’s faces in the ending, a certain expression both rapturous and dissociated. there was something in the way i saw some people respond to this that made me think a lot...i think the idea that through great overwhelming trauma we can reach a point of ecstasy, or total transformation, is a very compelling story. it is something i have wished for often or even believed will happen--that there will be a certain point at which it really is too much and beyond that will be something different. some rapture that you will reach. not necessarily something positive but something that isn’t pain, that is beyond pain and horror. the idea of reaching divinity through great suffering is nothing new of course. but.

the true horror of endurance is that this is not going to happen. there is no point at which there will be absolution or ascension. the mirror does not shatter. it just keeps going. when you think this is the limit, it just keeps going.

the nice thing about movies is that they have a structure, and though they might leave you altered, they do end, the screen goes black. comfort of darkness, relief of endings. a sigh...

at least, that’s how i feel right now.