#also in conclusion: let me write a goddamn script

[applestorms]

i was gonna write a more extensive post about this, but. fuck that i have too many points to write proper sentences rn, here's a bullet point list of my review of sonic 3. spoilers, obviously. tl;dr: i'm a hater

maria is fridged to hell and back, she is such a nothing character i have secondhand embarrassment for the writers every time she shows up. maria exists only to smile in flashbacks and lie in the flowers and go, "noooooooooooooooo, shadow :(( you can totally be whatever you want, dude," and then die on the floor. we don't even get to see her getting shot. fucking rip off.

to clarify-- maria absolutely does NOT have to be a fucking dead wife trope incarnate, imo. she can very easily be used that way, yes, but i think doing so also misses the core of her character and what she means for shadow. part of the appeal of the conversations that maria & shadow have on the arc in SA2 comes from the fact that they are characters coming from a very similar position, both being incredibly alienated from the rest of the world/humanity, daydreaming about it more than they are able to interact with it directly. like, come ON, they literally live on a fucking space station, the symbolism does not get that much more obvious?? it is the fact that maria CHOOSES to love humanity anyways, despite being unable to interact with it/live within it, that makes her words meaningful. jesus fucking christ.

anyways, speaking of. shadow has NO arc in this movie (literally and figuratively. did you seriously put the spaceship in Ohio) and it drives me up the wall. perhaps i'm just out of the loop on the Current Shit, but it feels like Nobody knows how to write that guy nowadays :((

not that i could fucking tell anyways in this particular movie from how little he shows up or SPEAKS. LET HIM SPEAAAAAK. i swear to GOD, he interacts w/ the main cast like three (3) fucking times in this entire movie and two of those interactions are fights. if you want those cute, quirky, somewhat cringe sonic/shadow interactions, you're better off watching the trailer plus whatever clips of the final fight inevitably end up on youtube, since that's basically their only real conversations in the entire movie.

the ending falls incredibly flat because of this. in the last movie, we at least had some decent character interactions between sonic & knux which made their fight and eventual team up at the end that much more satisfying. there was something to dig your teeth into, a back-and-forth that was entertaining (by sonic movie standards) but also established who they were, not only why they didn't like each other but how they could eventually bond. you had reason to care about knux, and reason to root for them to fight together!!

instead, here we got a whole lotta nothing. sonic and shadow fight, and it's cool, and it does all the Sick References and wowie yay clapping my hands live & learn blue/red lights cool. epic. yet i'm still left sitting here like WHO IS THIS BITCH??? WHO IS HE?????

fundamentally, the problem with this movie is that it Does Not Know what it's primary storyline is, or even who the main character is, and it falls flat on its fucking face because of it. there is no focus. sonic maybe barely kind of squeezes out an arc about teamwork and believing in your friends (a repetition of the last movie, i would argue, but whatever). eggman gets a much more hefty plotline about coming to terms with family, which i would be able to appreciate a whole lot more if it didn't feel like the only meaningful story arc in the entire fucking movie. robotnik bullshittery should be the B plot guys, come the fuck on. and shadow, of fucking course, gets NOTHING. he stands around looking grumpy and cool (and very cute, the animators did alright, i'll give them that), and emotes jack fucking shit. i know he's not a certified yapper like some people, but come the fuck on, he can still like. say words. right. RIGHT

is this review even comprehensible even more? i don't care, this is driving me insane. are you guys seeing this shit. are you.

this isn't even just me being a shipper and going wahh wahh no sonadow moments. you put those bitches on the poster why are they not talkinggg. even just an argument would be Great. it was like the one thing sonic prime figured out, why is it so empty here.

this also leads to the fundamental issue where i have NO fucking idea why either of them are so chill with each other by the ending. not only do i not know why shadow is so chill with sonic, considering he was just dead set on ending the fucking world to get revenge and one conversation is not enuf to convince me that he would get over it (even the lowkey suicidal tendencies fall somewhat flat for me since AGAIN. NOTHING), but i ALSO don't know why SONIC gives a shit about shadow!! or why he's so happy go lucky about all this!!! dawg he just killed the closest thing you have to a father. as much as i hate the humans in this series, even i have to sit for a minute and go uhh what? there is absolutely NOTHING to make their team up at the end of this emotionally meaningful other than the bland, surface level reaction of Yay Shadow And Sonic On Screen :) like the movie itself simply does not build up their rivalry in a meaningful enough way to make it feel worth it. one conversation can do a lot, but only if you have the build up to MAKE it mean a lot. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh

the ending being almost exactly the same as the beginning thus doesn't surprise me in the slightest cuz like. what else do you do. sonic Does Not have any reason to care about that bitch and neither does anyone else. his actual enemy eggman is presumably dead, so. who cares. a couple good fights then nice knowin' ya man o7 thanks for sacrificing yourself to save the world or whatever

the scene where shadow stalks the individual team members through the remains of their old military base/Ohio Arc stand in or whatever is cool, yes. one single hand clap for that. i like them making him ominous as fuck. but i just-- i need everybody to shut the fuck up for like two seconds so sonic and shadow can talk directly and have a proper fucking conversation before the literal end of the movie, like please just argue or SOMETHING. DO. SOMETHING. MEANING. LIKE A CHARACTER THING. WHO R U

also the eggman/stone shit drives me up the wall. another set of bitch ass writers too scared to make their characters canonically queer, so they bury their gays instead. idfc that they're inevitably going to revive him again, it's still stupid as shit. stone also does nothing in this movie so his internal "conflict" is dumb anyways aaaaskjdflksdjfl smacking my head on the keyboard

there comes a point in this movie where it really does feel like Everything is just about eggman and gerald. tails and knux stop being meaningful characters with personalities outside of quips by approximately the chao garden. sonic's weird human parents aren't even given a meaningful storyline outside of the one time that shadow punches him when they try to set up some miscommunication bullshit or whatever at the end. sonic and shadow fight but even that gets interrupted by... whatever the hell they were doing??? again, all of this would be way less aggravating if those scenes were able to fulfill their actual purpose: side bullshit funnie stuff to break up the serious scenes of the main plotline. unfortunately, this movie thinks a flashback to the traveling wilburys is sufficient to make its main character a complex, nuanced person. face in hands

seriously. why is that scene of eggman & gerald telling stone & shads to get back in the crab a microcosm of this entire film. orz

also also, before someone bitches at me for not paying close enough attention to [x] specific detail or whatever-- anything that you can easily miss on a first watch through should Not be integral to the plot of a movie. istg, i write scripts, i know how this shit works. if your audience can't figure out the emotional arc of a character after one watch, you have fundamentally failed your job as a writer. a flashback is not sufficient character writing, jfc.

and really, that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? the writing. it's always the Fucking writing with these movies. the animation here is, for the most part, fantastic, the voice acting is decent at worst, even the awkwardness of a half-human cast is somewhat smoothed over. yet the writing for these movies never fucking improves-- the jokes are still cringe at best, the references are blunt and unnatural, and the characters. have. no. arc.

perhaps it was somewhat inevitable that we end up at this point. this movie series has already been building up an entire universe of Other Bullshit, and it is here that we feel a lot of that crashing back down. the shelf could only stand up for so long.

i suppose in conclusion, my main takeaway from this movie is that it is an adaptation that fails. it does not understand who its characters are or what they want, it does not know why people connected to the characters it attempts to introduce on an emotional level, and it does not know how to make its own confusing lore work with all of the new details.

[fbfh]

nico di angelo relationship and intimacy headcanons

As with all steamy/nsfw works, the characters are aged up to 18+/college era

so

let’s get started ‘,:)

(1.1k words ooooh boy get ready)

Clingy cat boyf

If he’s dating you he already feels really close and comfortable around you

Do not be surprised if he gets really physically affectionate really fast

I’m talking jump your bones after a week of being official

Pun intended

He loves when you kiss his neck

Blushes so easily

Tends to mutter things in italian when he gets overwhelmed 

Which is often

but that doesn’t stop him

Believe me

Okay he’s an old fashioned fella

He still has a lot of internalized dating and courting etiquette rules from the 30’s 

and you’d think it makes him wanna take it slow

But nah son

During the 30’s no one had any goddamn time for taking it slow

Don’t worry about that 

It was also common for soldiers to get gifts like gum, candy, flowers, chocolate, and nylon stockings for girls they liked

Nico subconsciously falls back on this a lot

You end up with a small collection of fuzzy socks

You don’t automatically get the connection, but when you realize how important nylon stockings were in the 30’s because of the shortage, and that he was getting the present day equivalent of that for you

You appreciate your little collection of socks even more

All that being said we can come to two conclusions

His love language (amplified by the whole son of the God of wealth and death thing) is gifts, physical contact, and quality time

Especially with how much mortal danger he and the gang have been in the past few years, he does not want to waste any time, especially if he really likes you

Which he probably does 

Really really likes it when you take off his clothes 

Especially his shirt

That’s up there among his favorite parts

Absolutely an any time any place kinda guy 

Thinks of it exclusively as making love

Finds any new slang or euphemisms hilarious 

You call it banging once and he laughed for like 20 minutes

“So, are we banging or what?”

“Nico?”

“Nico why are you laughing?”

He has a lot of trauma obviously

His problems aren’t magically instantly fixed by you but he’s noticed how drastically your presence helps him feel better 

Can barely sleep if you’re not there

Like he has some of your cologne/perfume on him in case you get separated and can’t sleep next to him

If he does have nightmares 

Which thank gods are getting fewer and further between

A little light making out and netflix can usually solve the problem

Or like

Riding him

That usually works too

The faces he makes are,,,,,,

Very nice,,,,

he’s also very vocal

You one time deleted a happy birthday voice mail from a childhood friend to make room on your phone for an audio recording he sent you

And like be real

If your friend had heard it they would have deleted their message themselves

It takes him a while to get the hang of technology 

As soon as he does

He sends you a voice text

You’re like aww 

So you listen to it 

“Hello, cuore mio…”

Oh shit

Your face got very red

You were really lucky you were alone

Every time you see audio messages from him you know not to listen to them without headphones 

You also try not to listen to them until you’re on your way to somewhere you can be alone with him

There have been a lot of “meet me in the janitor’s closet” texts between the two of you

aLsO play with his hair

You did it once cause some hair fell in his face 

He moaned

“… will you do that again?”

The answer is yes

Yes you will

Write him love letters and his heart will explode

Everything from “thoughts of you get me through the day” to “truly astonished by how much I want you to rail me”

All are super effective 

He absolutely 100% has a locket with a picture of you

He just gazes at it sometimes when he needs a little extra hit of serotonin 

Okay okay we all know a certain Mr. Jackson who is king of surprising you in the shower

Nico is a close second

Honestly you and him probably break the intimacy ice first of any couples in the demisquad

Stamina for dayyyys

Never gets tired???????

Even you find yourself laughing “are you actually hard again?” Way more than you’d expect to

Also expect a lot of…. Private photos and Polaroids

You never would have expected to have a shoebox buried in your closet full of pictures and love letters that are very much not suited for general audiences

Much less three or four

K i n g  of quickies

“Any time, any place” -Nico Di Angelo probably

Likes buying you underwear and lingerie 

A whole lot

He’ll sometimes surprise you with a bunch of shopping bags 

You look through them equally excited every time

You do a little fashion show of all the stuff he got you

You usually don’t make it past three things before they’re on the floor

His kisses are so gentle and tender

They have all the soft fierce passion of Shakespeare plays and jazz vinyls

At one point pretty early on you started to feel bad that he was spending so much money on you 

“Don’t worry, vita Mia, it’s a non issue." 

After you’re done shopping he pulls out a black credit card with gold accents from a bank you don’t recognize

It says "bank of afthonos”, and in a fancy, minimalistic script below, “palladium select”

He sees you looking at the card and a smile plays at the corner of his lips

“Birthday gift from dad,” he answers without you having to ask

Ah

You can tell the cashier wants to roll her eyes, but he always makes a point to tip very generously

He hands her a few big bills and the irritation falls her face 

he holds you close as you leave the store, still a little surprised by everything that had happened in the past five minutes

“Anything else you want?”

You think back to when you two first got together

“I’ve had everything I want for a while now,” you tell him, giving his hand a squeeze

He smiles and presses a kiss to your cheek 

He pulls you into a small family bathroom and locks the door, pulling you close and kissing your neck

“I think we can be a little late to our lunch reservation…”

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 64: 13x07

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

November 23, 2021

13x07: War of the Worlds

Written by: Buckleming

Directed by: Richard Speight Jr.

Original air date: November 23, 2017

Plot Synopsis:

As Dean and Sam continue their search for Jack, they stumble across a familiar foe; Lucifer manages to escape Michael's grasp and finds an unlikely and mostly unwilling ally.

Features:

Cas’ solo meeting, witches are being killed, Alt!Kevin Tran, Alt!Michael takes Lucifer’s grace, Ketch’s “twin brother”, Asmodeus tracking Jack, Lucifer and Cas reluctant team up.

My Thoughts:

The whole episode I just had a running chant of “this is stupid this is stupid” running through my head. Why follow any of the myriad plotlines we’ve set up! Let's invent new bullshit to make the most convoluted possible storyline and force Laura specifically to watch an episode featuring two of her three least favourite characters of season 13! (It’s Ketch, Asmodeus, and Donatello, for anyone wondering).

The only two good things in this episode are that at least I got to see Cas and Kevin, but Buckleming did a bad job writing Alt!Kevin so I didn’t even really care about him.

I’m so mad about the Ketch plot because they’re taking away what was an extremely poignant moment in Mary and Dean’s relationship to each other when they killed Ketch by bringing him back. In the Secret Good Spn In My Mind, the British Men of Letters don’t exist and we can give the necessary plot points to Bela Talbot, returned as a demon trying to work her way up the food chain of Hell’s hierarchy.

Instead I get to watch yet another Buckleming torture porn scene and an aborted attempt at an evil twin brother plot. At the very least Dean doesn’t fall for it, but it’s embarrassing that Sam does. And then he escapes by goddamn smoke bomb.

Also Asmodeus locking Lucifer up is fucking stupid, what does he think is going to happen when his literal god’s grace regenerates. It’s like they’re trying to woobify Lucifer but they haven’t made him likeable enough for it to take.

The actors and Speight as director do their best with a bad script. Richard Speight Jr. has a good sense of cinematography.

Notable Lines:

“Where I come from, God is a paradox. He's everywhere, in your mind. In reality, he's nowhere.”

“So you're seriously gonna sit there with a straight face and tell us that you have an evil twin?”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 2.0

IMdB Rating: 8.4

In Conclusion: Before watching Supernatural I rarely bothered learning the names of TV writers, now I have a mental conspiracy board surrounding Buckleming, Robert Singer, and Mark Pellegrino that makes me froth with rage when I think about it too hard.

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[smokeybrandreviews]

Tomorrow Should Have Died

So i was planning on reviewing The Tomorrow War because it’s a new film and i like new films i can watch without having to brave the plague. I saw a preview for this thing a while back and had real low expectations for it, figured it’d be dumb fun like Independence Day. Imagine my abject horror when it turned out to be so much worse. Okay, first things first, the good stuff. Chris Pratt is good and so is J.K. Simmons. Betty Gilpin and Yvonne Strahovski work miracles with what little they have. The sound design is exceptional, probably the best thing about this sh*t flick, and the actual effects are on point. The problem with the movie is the script. It’s f*cking terrible. Oh my god, so much dumb! Here’s a list of sh*t that made me irrationally angry, in order of plot progression.

Eleven minutes in and i hate it. How are you losing a war to anything if you have mastered the ability to traverse space-time? How the f*ck is your technology so advanced, that you have found a way to exceed the light speed limit and literally break physics, but lose to a bunch of rabid, interstellar, komodo dragons? This is the dumbest f*cking contradiction I have seen all year and i am offended that whoever decided to make this film, is asking this of their audience. Sh*t is patently absurd. These f*cking things don't even have written language, man, and you really expect me to believe they have pushed a human race that has harnessed the power of time, to the brink of extinction?

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

Seriously, you can create a time machine, you should conceivably have the ability to harness gravity or one of the other fundamental interactions. Why the f*ck haven't you designed a miniaturized rail gun that uses modern tech or materials to build? You have worked out the science in the future, go back to the past and build miniature or handheld doomsday devices for use in the field. Why isn’t everyone running around with f*cking Megatron fusion cannons on their arms? Why the f*ck am i fighting aliens with ARs and Glocks?? The fact that there is an active time machine built from tech on hand from thirty years into the future, means cats could have spent their time building actual weapons to kill these f*cking things instead of betting the literal human race on a time displaced draft. This movie is dumb as rocks.

The way they describe how their time travel works is dumb. I mean, it isn’t, but i can guarantee this sh*t is going to be a problem later. I can feel it in my bones. They are definitely going to contradict this sh*t because multiverse theory is the only way to make movie time travel work and they are trying their damnedest to not do that.

This f*cking thing is over two hours long and the first drags. I hate when cats attempt to develop characters and they just fail at it. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I should care about any of these people and i still don't have an answer after half the goddamn movie is over. Like, why should i care about Chris Pratt? He’s the main character and the writing has done nothing to endear him to the audience in a whole ass hour.

Also, the reason he’s so mad at his dad is stupid. Dude did right by his kid by bailing because he would have been a terrible father. Pratt’s character would have known that as a father himself. He didn’t have to like it and, of course there’s animosity there, but you’re an adult. Your dad knew he was lousy. He did you a favor by walking out. It wasn’t like he didn’t help support you or make sure you went without. As far as i can tell, dude was there in every way by physically. Because he couldn’t. Because he was f*cking shell-shocked from fighting in Vietnam. Where they raped innocent women and set babies on fire. Holy sh*t, this cat is an unlikable protagonist after this one scene. Which brings me to my next thing...

Pratt f*cking abandons his family?? Word? After that entire scene with his dad and the very obvious trauma he has suffered, he turns around and abandons his own kid because he lost his job?? Word? Like, for real? You expect me to believe that the Chris Pratt who cussed out his pops, was willing to go on the run from his future conscription, abandoned his own family because he lost a teaching job?? What the f*ck, movie? Do you want me to like this asshole or not? More than that, how the f*ck you mess up your character so bad in what i imagine is just five pages of actual script? Nothing we know about this character would ever even hint at him doing this to his family, to his daughter, so why the f*ck would he? Why the f*ck would you, as a write, believe we, as the audience, would just accept that sh*t as a forgone conclusion?

You got ropes on a Queen and you don't kill it? How the f*ck you make it that deep into the hive to even do-si-do the b*tch to the surface? We just watched these things tear through Miami to the point that they needed a whole ass bombardment just to survive and you not only go into their hive, their home, with no heavy ammo, but you somehow lasso a queen and drag her to the surface. Alive. If you can do all of that why not just drop a nuke down there and blow them the f*ck up? Why do you need a live Queen for your science? Shoot the b*tch, take the juice of her corpse, and end this sh*t! Why is all of this stupid recklessness necessary??

Okay. Okay... F*ck everything i just said, right? Why the f*k did you bring this Queen b*tch back to your base? You don’t have a different offsite lab to do this sh*t? You gotta bring her to your stronghold? Isn’t this a military operation? Why aren't their security protocols and sh*t in place to stop this stupidity? You don’t bring the enemy home. You take them to black sites for sh*t like this, not to the goddamn Pentagon!

All of a sudden, the aliens understand science? We spent this entire movie establishing that they are mindless beasts with teeth, eating the human race into extinction but now, because the plot demands it, the Queen one understands what the people are doing? That the green sh*t they made is plague that can murder them all? How the f*ck she even know what science is? They don’t even have language, dude! How the hell she know they made a death plague for her people?! F*ck it, whatever, bro. Next you're going to tell me she let them capture her just to get inside the lab or some sh*t because these rabid f*cking animals, who have demonstrated no military command abilities or even the barest of higher cognitive functions, are tactical geniuses.

Okay, so the Queen b*tch is a tactical genius. So, in the initial future drop, the team was murdered by a bunch of these things because they were sent to a lab where they were trying to make the death plague. Now, hat i am about to say is all assumption on my part because none of this, and i men NONE of it, is ever confirmed by the movie. So, they get to the lab and everyone is dead but the green per-plague is still there. That mean they had a Queen there. It’s established after this that Queens can call for backup and the Males will lemming their way to her. I deduce that’s how this lab got overrun; Queen got loose, called for her boys, and they ate everyone. That happened. That was the first thing we see in the future. This b*tch does the same f*cking thing on the home base lab so now the males are overrunning The Pentagon. You motherf*ckers knew this was a thing because it literally already happens. Why the f*ck would you do it again? AND it gets worse... Home base, The Pentagon, is the f*cking rig where they house the goddamn time machine! You brought a hostile enemy leader, still alive and coherent, to the heart of your resistance operation, to the core of your time travel operation, knowing that at any time this b*tch can scream and have your whole ass base overrun with teeth and poison darts? Look, if the future is this stupid, they deserve to die, okay?

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

Okay. Okay... So they create this toxin to kill all the monster things and send it back in time to be mass produced  Put that sh*t in bullets and send it back to the future or whatever. But, because of the aforementioned stupid, that plan is bunk. Time machine go kablooey. And now we are at the "all is lost" moment at the end of the second act." Solution to the problem in hand, no way to save the future because the only way back to the future was a casualty of idiocy. Right. So... just wait. F*cking just wait. You know when these assholes show up, you know how to kill them all, you even have a plague ready to be mass produced right now. You have thirty f*cking years to refine that formula, to make it cheaper to mass produced and develop variants just in case immunities start to crop up or something. There are people from the future, stuck in the past, because of the egregious future error. They have all of that intel and they are just alive. The second this dude got back to the past with that antidote, the future was saved. The war is over. Like, even if you don’t know where the ship is, you have a sure thing that will murder these white f*cks and three decades to produce, weaponize, and store that sh*t. The war is won. The Prime timeline is absolutely safe at this point. Because that's how time travel works. You have the nuclear option, right now, to averting the end of the human race, ready to be mass produced. Yo have the knowledge from the future on where these things will first appear. You still have all the future tech brought over from the beta timeline ripe for reverse engineering in order to improve the weapons of the present. There is no scenarios where we lose this war, the second Chris Pratt plops back into the present with that plague. None.

Why is everyone so dejected?? Why are there f*cking riots all over the world?? None of this makes sense. How can you assume the world ends and the war is lost just because the communication with that version of the past is cut? Wouldn’t you expect that sh*t? You just altered the entire timeline by sending Pratt back with the antidote. That future is effectively gone. How can you communicate with a place in space-time that doesn’t exist anymore? Hell, even if it’s because the time machine broke and everyone over there is dead, you have the f*cking antidote now! Multiverse theory, bud. The fact that those time displaced assholes didn’t disappear, means multiverse theory is real and you have the opportunity to Future Trunks this sh*t so why panic? Why are there no leaders n television assuring their people that this is a thing? Why are there no scientists publishing papers about how sh*t is going to be fine? Bro, I'm just so tired...

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

So you find this ship and you don’t tell anyone where it is? You decide to just kill them all yourself? Motherf*cker, what happens if you die? Did you back up the enzyme formula somewhere or did you bring all of it with you on this stupid f*cking mission? Did you leave notes or even text your location to anyone in authority, just in case haphazard attempt goes sideways so someone else can make a more organized attempt? Or just drop a nuke on the site from orbit? If one asshole denied you funding for your mission, why didn’t you ask someone else? Why didn’t you ask f*cking Putin? Because governments are bloated down with bureaucracy? My dude, people from the future came back and interrupted the world cup to tell you that aliens are going to exterminate the human race in three decades. If you tell anyone in a position of power that you know where these little sh*ts are, they’re going to listen. Especially since everyone decided to riot because the future changed/we lost the time war/ the timeline imploded.

Why would a terrestrial saw work on an intergalactic star ship? That doesn't make any sense. This f*cking thing survived a crash landing into earth intact and a goddamn circular saw cuts it open? Fine, whatever. On to the next stupid thing.

Bro. Bro, they just blow the f*cking thing up. Motherf*cker spent the entire movie, time jumping form the past to to the future and back to the past, just to get this plague to kill them all, and a bunch of C4 just blows them all up while they sleep. Why the f*ck was everything even f*cking necessary? At this point, when the dude comes back with that claw the first time, the future is saved. Analysis on that one claw gave up the location of the hidden spaceship where these things had been in stasis for millennia. Which was blown up with C4. No plague needed. No goddamn time draft needed. No casualties needed after that first wave. The second that dude brought back that claw, it should have been  under a forensic microscope so actual f*cking scientists could figure out what a high school kid id in a matter of minutes. I hate this movie so goddamn much.

I hated this goddamn movie so much. It’s f*cking boring and the dumbest thing I've seen all year and i watched Army of the Dead. It’s pretty and the performances are decent, but there is absolutely no substance to any of this sh*t. It wants to be Independence Day and Edge of Tomorrow and The Great Wall. all in one, while infusing time travel family drama but it’s so f*cking confused trying to juggle all of that, it drops the ball on the most important part; The script. This thing must read like a fever dream induced by peyote because, in execution, it’s a wet fart. This f*cking thing is all over the place with no regard for any insular universe logic. It contradicts itself from one scene to the next and it’s goddamn offensive. I’m sure there is someone saying that i am overthinking this sh*t and that it’s just supposed to be dumb popcorn fun. I get that. However, i can’t just turn my f*cking brain off and mindlessly drool over sh*t that insults my intelligence the way this movie does. It’s dumb as f*cking rocks, man, and i want those two hours of my life back!

[msindrad]

If you like the series just ignore me (or don’t and learn something about some freaking great movies that are subsumed under the title the Dollars trilogy)

Anyway, as I’m in a bad shape today, I’ve decided to watch that Mandalorian thing that has been bombarding me with its ads on all my devices for ages now. I wanted to do it just because somebody here on Tumblr had brought up how many parallels – that’s a very nice way of talking about this kind of atrocious thoughtless plagiarism, btw – there are between the Dollars trilogy and the series in question. So, I had seen a lot of similar screenshots before I sat myself down to watch the thing, but, girl, I was not prepared to see this product.

That’s a pure experiment setting, mind you. I have exactly zero concrete knowledge about the SW movieverse, so, I’m pure tabula rasa in that sense. Never seen Firefly or the like, too. All I see is the story in front of me – the directing, the script, the performances etc. And it’s bad.

We have a literal ‘guy walks into a bar’ situation. Except there is no real anecdote/punchline after that set-up, it doesn’t pay off, okay. A couple of aliens/weird but still humanoid creatures threaten/torture somebody in that bar in plain sight. Because they’re bad, you know. And they threaten this other alien by telling them that they’ll be eaten alive and stuff. Because they’re bad, just in case you didn’t get it. Offensively bad, have no doubts about it, otherwise the subsequent brawl will be kinda less impactful, right? Right, yeah… Then, the protagonist enters this fine establishment and his entrance causes the drink of one of the torturers to spill. For this reason, the torturers approach him, momentarily forgetting about their victim and clearly looking for a fight, but “Mando” remains silent, the bartender tries to interfere and deescalate the situation when the aliens crowd Mando. Then, one of them scratches his armor, and only then he brutally fights back, using a mug that he’s given by the bartender to make the first hit.

Now, why is this a sub-optimal introduction to a character, imo, boring and blunt? It’s a terribly missed opportunity in characterization. Why not asses a situation verbally? Make a comment about these a-holes? Make a joke? Instead, he’s just being _mysterious_ samurai type until it’s stupid to let himself be insulted any further by these aliens.

Also, you can argue that the protagonist here just isn’t the type to mix up into random fights that aren’t in any way relevant for him personally or won’t get him paid (he’s an assassin or the like, right?). So, then, he is the type who doesn’t care whether somebody will be tortured in his vicinity? Are we supposed to be rooting for him? (And, yeah, I know what the deal with this tortured guy was, but it doesn’t make the scene anymore interesting, damn it!).

Remember Joe in AFOD? He also seemed to be keeping his head low after he witnessed the conflict between the Rojos’ people and Marisol and her family. But the key word here is “seemed.” He wasn’t okay with the situation at all, he was calculating his chances, and towards the end of the film he did free Marisol and her family just because it was the right thing to do (and he later suffered some brutal punishment for the goodness of his heart) and because he had seen such situations before and couldn’t let the familiar scenario happen on his watch again. That’s a smart, brave, compassionate, and humane hero. He is also humane because he has learned from his experiences. He saw it happen before, maybe he actively disregarded a similar situation back then and regretted it a lot. Maybe somebody with whom he sympathized suffered, and it’s the reason why he is empathizing with this family of strangers and risks his life for them. Either way, he _is_ fighting the injustice, and he’s doing it as a good tactician.

(Note: I don’t have to explain any of these to my Jusitfied people because the show is a fantastic example of how to do even the shortest scenes funny and/or meaningful. Remember the disabled hacker’s escape from Raylan? That time when Raylan got his ass kicked by two random drunks in a bar for trying to defend the honor of an unknown woman? The introduction of Bo? The introduction of Loretta? Of Carol? How in a brief exchange we learned everything we needed to know about the dynamics between Helen and Raylan? HOW JUST ONE SINGLE LINE from Arlo told us everything about their relationship with Raylan during their first encounter after decades of not having sent one kind thought to each other? I mean, common!!! All you got to do is to think when writing a scene to make it interesting and to know what your characters are (and to have found something interesting about them in your head in the first place).)

On the other hand, let’s take Manco and Mortimer. They also get into conflicts and irritate people in the bars they enter in FAFDM, right? But they do it actively, as any protagonist/deuteragonist with personality should. And so, they do it by being two bad-ass professionals and also two little shits.

Manco? Walks into a bar, casually figures out that the sheriff of this town is bought, provokes a fight, interrupts a card game and makes a bet with the wanted criminal, wins that game, beats the shit out of the guy, kills his henchmen. A quiet type, barely says three phrases during the scene. Also, a few minutes later, he disgraces the bought sheriff by stating his disdain and demonstratively throwing away his star.

Mortimer? Lights a match off the hump of an unhinged criminal to look at his reaction and assess how serious the game of the gang is this time, uses his cigarette to light up his pipe when the hunchback blows the first match out, actively causes the whole gang to leave, reaches several conclusions during a very short interaction, comments on how somebody with a gun wouldn’t allow themselves to be insulted like that in front of everybody. And when Wild approaches Mortimer after recognizing him as the smoker who humiliated him before in another scene Mortimer at first pretends that it didn’t happen and they’re complete strangers. Then, when it doesn’t work, he implicitly admits having humiliated him before and laughs at him. And then, when Wild provokes him Mortimer savagely humiliates him AGAIN.

Now, that’s writing, that’s characterization with unique colorful personal responses. And it’s entertaining, ingenuous, and suspenseful. In one word: creative.

Also, lol, 

I guess, you dropped your Josie Wales, Disney. Shame on you. 

And I have nothing against homages or citations, re-inventions, etc. Everybody quotes everybody (e.g. AFOD is inspired by Yojimbo, but those are two completely different movies for different audiences!). But if reiteration is mindless and doesn’t re-invent a single thing, then it’s just stealing and disgustingly pretending like you have the mental capacity to understand what you’ve stolen.

ALSO ALSO this series managed to incorporate in the final product three things that I hate the most in film/on TV: 1) stupid plagiarism 2) RUSHED WESTERN YOU IDIOTS YOU DON’T RUSH A WESTERN UNLESS IT’S A COMEDY AND EVEN THEN YOU THINK HARD BEFORE DOING IT 3) no goddamn light on my screent!! you think if I can’t see your idiotic story I won’t judge it, that’s the plan?!

Ridiculous.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

TFW when you try to do Anastasia but you also suck at your job: A Master Class by The Rise of Skywalker

Okay. So, I promised you guys a TROS review, and it’s coming, I promise… except I’ll be making two “spin-off posts” about specific issues just in order to clear up some stuff, mainly because in my mind, those issues are important.

First post is going to be, of course, about Rey’s parentage.

So. After TFA, it would have been possible for Rey to have been the kid of “someone”. However, TLJ made it impossible to do so, unless you’d have some serious, bullshit retconning going on – which is exactly what happened.

I know this is a VERY controversial thing to say at this point, but post-TFA, Rey Palpatine “could” have been possible. Okay, maybe not have her be Palpatine’s granddaughter, but more of a descendant of his.

This said, I “tried” making an origin story for Rey Palpatine that “works” for the purposes of this meta, on a hypothetical basis, while making it consistent with canon (something JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio clearly couldn’t be bothered to do, LMAO). I had plotholes no matter what. I do think I could have eventually found something with a little bit of brainstorming, but truth is, IT’S HARD, and a lot of exposition would have been for novels/comics only.

From a thematic perspective, though? It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. For this to work, though, you would have needed to go on full-blown Romeo and Juliet mode with sprinkles of Anastasia, though. I mean, The Lion King 2 did something similar, so why the fuck not. Because, yeah, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the last prince of Alderaan, who falls in love with the last Imperial princess Rey Palpatine while they’re on opposite sides of the war but not the ones you’d think of is the stuff of fairy tales and star-crossed romances, except this one would have a happy ending and brought peace to the galaxy.

Truth be told, I still really enjoy fanfics who go for that story and find a way to make it work in canonverse or in AUs – because it’s genuinely fun. But in canon itself, as I point out earlier… it’s not easy.

So, we have Rian Johnson who said he made a list of potential origins for Rey while he was working on TLJ’s script. You bet Rey Palpatine was on that list. However, he came to the conclusion that Rey Nobody was the best way to go, and whatdyaknow, he made the right call.

Why? Rey Nobody requires minimal exposition. Storytelling-wise, you don’t have a lot of brainstorming to do, and it’s easy to have Ben revealing it, and easy to present it as a repressed memory of Rey’s. On a thematic level, that puts Rey on the same level as Jane Eyre or the main character from Rebecca: she’s a nobody from nowhere who is thrown into a family drama, and since she’s the glitch in the matrix, she must stop the story from becoming a tragedy.

See? Simple. You got your easy exposition, you got your thematic coherence, and you got the literary call-backs.

So, JJ and Terrio decided to retcon this shit because, as they said, they thought it was boring. I think Colin Trevorrow probably thought it was boring too, because I have my reasons to think a lot of TROS is from him (but more on that in my main review). But thing is, it’s not it’s “boring”, it’s literally that they didn’t know what the fuck to do with Rey. No, more than that, they don’t understand her, and frankly, they can’t be bothered to do so. She’s an empty vessel they can toy with at their ease, and in the process, turn her in a Mary-Sue. Because yes, TROS!Rey was a Mary-Sue, whereas TFA/TLJ!Rey was not. So, what I say above regarding Rey might be a bomb for some, considering how people are (understandably) defensive when it comes to that statement. I promise I will elaborate more about it in the main review, once again.

So, with the lineage aspect addressed, it’s time to talk about Rey’s parents themselves.

It’s hilarious how HARD JJ and Terrio tried to make Kylo’s explanation work – because as much as they butchered the shit out of him, they said: “Well he’s a bad liar, right? Gotta keep that in mind.”

Although, I don’t think it was a case of them being concerned with Kylo’s characterization – they’re not that graceful. They had to figure out QUICK why the hell Kylo wouldn’t have known Rey was a Palpatine from the get-go, because the Force is a great DNA test and shit, and I guess that’s how Palps located Ben’s Mighty Skywalker Blood™. Except that still doesn’t work because Palps couldn’t even locate his own goddamn granddaughter, but I digress.

Seriously, why would Kylo lie to Rey about her being a nobody instead of her being a Palpatine? It makes no sense, because if you’re going to roll with the theory Kylo just wants UNLIMITED POWAH, the Palpatine princess is not only a great asset (since marrying her legitimizes your claim to the throne in the eyes of the Imperial Remnants, I mean, that’s literally why Henry VII married Elizabeth of York), it’s also the one argument she needs to hear in order to sway her to your side. So I guess JJ and Terrio’s one shared brain cell kinda flicked a bit at that moment.

This said, getting the Palpatine princess on his side is clearly Kylo’s intention in TROS (which, again, makes no sense with what was set up in TLJ but that’s something I’m keeping for another post), except they trip all over themselves by having Kylo say he didn’t lie to Rey in TLJ. Except…

So, what Ben said in TLJ was the following:

Her parents sold her for drinking money.

They’re dead and buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere on Jakku.

Rey is related to no one.

Here’s what Ben reveals to Rey in TROS:

Her parents sold her for her protection.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle (nah, for real: the actress who plays Rey’s mom is Jodie Comer).

So, um, yeah, it’s the EXACT opposite of what Ben said in TLJ. Just say Palps was fucking with Ben’s mind-reading or Rey’s memories instead, JJ. Not that “Oh Ben was telling the truth, but he didn’t have the whole story”, because that’s not it.

For the latter, once again, it would have been feasible: the one thing, for me, that was possible to be added was that Rey had killed her parents accidentally, by having their ship to leave Jakku crash down with the Force: that’s what made her Force powers go dormant for all those years and provoked her trauma. It would also make sense that Ben would willfully not bring that back to her memories, because she’d understandably not be able to cope with the truth, which is often what happens to a lot of trauma victims. THAT was the theory I had pre-TROS, because that’s the only answer I could come up with when it came to JJ saying that there was more to Rey’s past. I guess I expected JJ to be, like, actually able to write, lmao.

I even wonder if that was actually in the cards, considering we see Rey in TROS bringing down a transport that supposedly has Chewie in it… but I guess they deemed that to be “too dark” for their heroine. Except the bullshit that comes instead is actually… much worse.

To make things simple, I’ll just take the above points and develop them.

Rey’s parents sold her for her protection.

Okay, so, Rey’s parents need to hide her to make sure Palps doesn’t get his hands on her. Fair enough. This said, why did it have to be Jakku and not, like, ANYWHERE ELSE? Especially that Palpatine had interest in Jakku at some point and that maybe having Rey anywhere close to that place would not be a good idea?

But let’s play the game and say that Jakku is the only place they can hide her because… I don’t know, it’s hard to find someone there with the Force. Whatever. Even then, why the fuck would they think Unkar Plutt is a proper guardian for a tiny little girl? You know they could have walked a few miles more and found a nice old man who likes the Light Side of the Force and the Jedi and all that shit called Lor San Tekka? Hey, why not even try to find a guy like Luke Skywalker who’s like, a Jedi and shit, and have him take care of their little girl and protect her? 

Even then, why the hell doesn’t Rey’s mom stay with her daughter? Her husband is the Palpatine, not her. All Rey’s mom has to do is find a nicer hiding place for her and Rey somewhere on Jakku, like, not Niima Outpost (again, Tuanul is just a few miles away), and just let Dad hide somewhere else. He’s a grownass man, he can take care of himself and he just has to hide on Nar Shaadaa or some shit. Fuck, why don’t all three of them hide on Nar Shaadaa? Or in the Coruscant undercity? ANYWHERE ELSE?

Also, wouldn’t Plutt clearly see two desperate parents as a business opportunity? Like, if you want to do a Les Misérables comparison here, he wouldn’t “buy” Rey from them, he’d try to get money for them à la Thénardier with Fantine. Except Rey’s parents make Fantine look like frigging Einstein because at least she had the excuse of thinking Madame Thénardier would take good care of Cosette since Éponine and Azelma seemed well-cared for.  

Again, a creepy-looking alien who exploits the outpost’s inhabitants for portions in exchange for junk, who asks you to pay him to take care of your kid should be a big fucking red flag – unless you want to involve blackmail, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, why the hell would Rey’s parents even ACCEPT money that comes from selling their own child? Were they really that desperate? Fuck, even if I had no other way of getting off Jakku, I wouldn’t even THINK of using money that comes from selling my own child. Any parent who’d even CONSIDER doing that is automatically a godawful parent in my book. Shame on you. And shame on JJ for trying to make me buy them as saints, because THEY’RE NOT, JUST BY THAT SINGLE ACTION.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

I didn’t notice it until Jenny Nicholson pointed it out in her TROS review, because it SOMEHOW completely escaped my notice, but… Rey’s mom saying Rey is DEFINITELY NOT on Jakku is like the worst fucking lie I’ve ever seen in a film because it’s so hilariously bad. Congratulations, Space Villanelle, may you be forever remembered for this line.

Also, it’s stupid af that Oshi (that’s his name, right? Can’t be bothered to Google it, might just call him Barney the Bounty Hunter from now on) just kills Rey’s parents, because HE’S EVUL MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA, because he literally creates a dead end for himself. He still has no fucking clue where Rey is, and he just killed off his only leads. CONGRATULATIONS BARNEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER, YOU SUCK AT YOUR JOB.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle.

So, Rey’s dad looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, right? Maybe a little younger than Luke and Leia, then. So, unless he got frozen in carbonite at some point, that means Palpatine fucked at some point while looking like this:

Anyway, I sure hope Sly Moore was Grandma Palpatine because she’s pretty much the only person who’d be game to smash raisin ass. Which leaves me with extremely disturbing pictures of Palps and Sly having sex, so I’ll spare you the more graphic details of my twisted mind that’s screaming for an end to this misery. 

I sure hope having Rey’s mom as Jodie Comer isn’t a clue that we’ll get spin-offs with those two (GOD PLEASE NO), but while I crack jokes about how Rey’s mom is Villanelle and Palpadad kinda looks like Ramsay Bolton… I find it fucking hilarious they dressed Rey’s mom in BLUE. LIKE, SEE? SEE? SHE’S IN BLUE, LIKE THE VIRGIN MARY, BECAUSE REY IS SPACE JESUS!!!! GET IT??? GETIT???? PLEASE TELL ME YA GET IT, OKAY???? *gross sobbing* I knew we should have had Rey born in a manger, that would have made the artistic intentions clear *wipes tear*

All right. There’s a lot more that could be said about Rey’s lineage, but I’m keeping that for my main review because what’s left to say ties up to the bigger picture. What I tried to point out with this preliminary post is that while Rey Palpatine *could* have worked, in different circumstances, it couldn’t have had post-TLJ… and we’re left to see a mutilated horse who was dead on arrival. And that’s tragic.

[365days365movies]

January 6: Last Action Hero (Epilogue)

First thing first, I do indeed like this movie. It’s got a cult following, and if you look it up on Tumblr, you can see that this cult following is present on this very site! So, if you’re in that cult following, well...

I’ve got good news and bad news, to quote the Dean. Yes, I’ve been rewatching Community, what of it? Anyway, I do like this movie...and it’s an absolute mess that makes no sense when you really think about it.

Rather than go into my feelings on it now, I’ll just put up the review, OK? Let’s go. And get ready for a lot of words. I know, atypical of me.

Review

Cast and Acting

I appreciate that Arnold was, essentially, making fun of himself throughout this movie. And in the end, he almost injected some character depth into Jack Slater. Almost. THe movie itself didn’t really let him, but I’ll get into that in the next section. Austin O’Brien does fine with Danny, but he doesn’t save from getting juuuuuust a little annoying there around the middle. Again, there’s obviously something deeper to the character, but the movie didn’t let O’Brien explore any of that depth. But then again, he’s also far too emotionless in the movie, considering the events that happen within it. Unfortunately, that’s common for ‘90s movie kid protagonists, and it’s very jarring in this example. On the flip side, Charles Dance is fantastic. Seriously. I love him. Dance actually appears to be taking this role seriously throughout most of the film. Toward the end, he starts to get a little hammy during that ending villain speech (a speech literally about film villains), but he’s a great casting choice, and a great actor. But then, it’s Charles Dance. Who’s surprised by that? 

Prosky’s Nick is extremely endearing. Despite his lack of screen time, he quickly became one of my favorite characters in the film as well, placing second above Slater but below Benedict. Prosky also doesn’t get a lot of time to inject much character into Nick, but we still get a sense of who this man is. Everybody else is fine; they play the characters that they’re supposed to play, no complaints there. In fact, any complaints belong in the next section. A couple of standouts amongst this supporting cast includes Tom Noonan’s Ripper (terrifying, and played very well), Bridgette Wilson’s Whitney/Meredith Caprice (the first film role gimmick to her character makes me smile), and Art Carney in his last film role. 

Cast and Acting: 6/10

Plot and Writing

THERE IS WAY TOO MUCH IN THIS GODDAMN MOVIE. OK, let me explain. Zak Penn and Adam Leff wrote a story for the movie, parodying ‘80s action films like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. This was Penn’s first movie, and he’d go on to some success including writing the story for The Avengers with Joss Whedon, alongside a few great movies, and many...not great ones. Anyway, they sold the story, and the screenplay duties were handed to Shane Black, the writer for, uh...Lethal Weapon. OK. Black, in case you didn’t know, tends to inject his screenplays with irreverence and meta humor. Check out his earlier movie The Monster Squad (I love that goddamn movie), and his later movies Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (on the list) and Iron Man 3 (form your own conclusions from that). That screenplay is VERY different from the original, and only kept a few elements. And a bunch of script doctors and edits later, and you have...a mess.

THIS MOVIE IS A MESS. IT IS ALL OVER THE PLACE. There are SO many potentials for character development and plot points that are unexplored, while the number of meta jokes and commentary and film references are SO FREQUENT that they end up breaking the entire concept of the movie. Here’s an example of what I mean: WHERE IN THE SHIT IS THE MOVIE UNIVERSE SET? Weird question, but think about this. In Slater’s world, there’s a widely accepted cartoon cat cop voiced by Danny DeVito. And, just...how? How does that work? If Danny gets zapped into the movie, that means that all of the stuff, ALL of the stuff that we see in the movie is in Slater’s universe. And that makes...no sense. Unless the film franchise is just that batshit crazy, which I doubt. This movie is absolutely crazy, and it ends up breaking itself with plot holes. There are a lot more, but this section is already long, and I’m about to add a paragraph.

See, new paragraph. Why? Well, I should say this: a lot of the commentary about the film industry and action films of the day actually do work really well. The movie-in-a-movie universe does have some great references and jokes, and that stuff actually salvages the film somewhat for me. Man, I love some of that stuff...but there’s also so much of it, that it becomes draining. Plus, the balance between the movie world and the real one is heavily skewed towards the former, not giving us enough time in the real world, and missing the opportunity to have Arnold fight Jason or Freddy Kreuger. I mean...come on. Of all the missed opportunities in the world...that’s the biggest one I’ve ever heard. Whoof.

Plot and Writing: 4/10

Direction and Action

John McTiernan, the director of Die Hard, apparently didn’t have a hell of a lot of time to make this movie, and the production of this film is legendarily a mess. That said...direction was fine. I think McTiernan did OK, and he wasn’t the biggest issue with this movie. The action, on the other hand, is the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever seen...and I love it. A LOT. It’s constantly over-the-top, and I’m goddamn HERE for it, as I said before. If there’s anything else to talk about with this movie, it���s the goddamn action. Hell yeah.

Direction and Action: 7/10

Production Design

Costume and set design for this movie was sometimes pretty suthentic, similar to that of The Running Man. And sometimes, also like The Running Man, IT IS GODDAMN INSANE. The weird-ass creative choices in this movie boggle the mind. I didn’t even MENTION the dominatrix cop you see when Slater’s fired. Yeah, look it up. This movie makes no sense 50% of the time, from a viaul standpoint. And yet, sometimes, it’s just straight-up good looking, especially when you get to the real world. Look, if there’s anything I can see, its that this movie’s production design is extremely memorable. And for that...yeah, it weirdly deserves some credit. Might’ve melted by brain, but, hey, I ain’t gonna forget it!

Production Design: 8/10

Music and Editing

AC/DC, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains, Megadeth, Def Leppard, Cypress Hill. Do, uh...do I need to say anything else here? That lineup is insane, and it works pretty well! Stands out more than The Running Man did last week, and definitely brings you into the universe of the movies. Where The Running Man’s soundtrack was distilled ‘80s, this one is pure ‘90s. This one I would download on iTunes. However, it’s still not extremely memorable outside of the film, unfortunately. Better than The Running Man’s, though, I can say that.

Also, you wanna see something? Check this out.

Here’s the deal, as I see it. This movie is a complete mess. And, yeah, I gave it a 64%, which is higher than most critics would give it. But one, I’m not a critic; this is a fun hobby for me. And two...sue me. I had a good time with this movie! I laughed quite a bit throughout it, so the jokes really did work for me. Got a little annoying after a bit, but I still liked it. Would I watch this movie again? Absolutely...but probably with friends. This is definitely another good party movie. But then, it’s Arnold? Are you really surprised?

This movie, amongst EVERYTHING ELSE, sets itself up as a buddy cop movie. That’s actually a pretty common action-comedy formula, right? But I’ve seen most of the old classic buddy cop movies...so how about a new one?

January 7, 2021: The Nice Guys

[demigodsanswer]

Me: Huh, some people seem to want RR to write the script for the TV. Or, they are at least hoping for a perfect, word-for-word adaption. I think either of those options would cause some problems. Let me write a short post explaining why I think that, if those wishes were fulfilled, we would not have the best adaptation possible. 

All of you: I am going to jump to conclusions. 

If one more person condescends to me on my post about not wanting Rick to write the adaptation script, I’m going to lose my goddamn mind. 

I know he’s not writing it. The post was partially a response to seeing people express a desire for it. The post was also about how we should and need to expect changes to the source material when the medium changes. There is no perfect 1-1 adaptation, because the medium is changing. 

I know what an outline is. I know he’s not writing the show. I’m not an idiot. 

[eisforeidolon]

Episode: Atomic Monsters

I watched this at least a week ago, but just didn't get around to rewriting my notes into a post 'til now.  I did actually find this the best episode so far, but lets be real, that's such a low bar to clear at this point it says basically nothing.

The opening sequence is really fun!  I found the whole thing genuinely enjoyable, both the action itself and that it included exactly the kind of return cameo I can actually get behind.  No retcons or resurrections that make death somehow even cheaper or ruin the original finish to the character's story!  Not even to mention that, instead of existing just for the sheer fanservice of it?  A sequence like this is actively improved by giving us a familiar face we have investment in to keep it from being all just random unfamiliar cannon fodder getting offed.

Unfortunately, this isn't the rousing endorsement it could be when we know that both expanding to a big action sequence and bringing Benny back for it were actually Jensen's ideas.  Not even to mention that the thing which really works best in the episode?  It's the dream sequence that's not actually connected to anything else and doesn't have to worry about continuity to work. This is my surprised face.

I enjoyed the exchange between Sam and Dean in the kitchen.  The meat man conversation over the bacon was rather silly, but in a fun way. I've seen some people reading things into it (it's insulting Dean doesn't know the slang, Sam is randomly vegetarian now) that I didn't really see there.  I did appreciate how Sam was weirdly jumpy and had trouble meeting Dean's eyes after the creepy alternate world dream.  I thought it worked really well for both slice-of-life and Sam’s reaction.

In terms of the Winchester's case, well, for the most part it could have been worse.  I don't honestly believe even if I hadn't been spoiled that I wouldn't have immediately suspected the parents from their introductory exchange about how Billy playing in the big game was more important than a cheerleader's death.  I think it was supposed to be a retroactive subtle clue, but it was more of a clue-by-four.  So the “mystery” of tracking down the monster was pretty lost on me.  I did like that the one girl having braces was a clue!  But I also thought the scene with her rehearsing her speech on a live mic in an empty auditorium was weird and contrived.  I straight out cannot forgive that a girl was literally abducted from the school campus and NOBODY checked the security footage near her car fucking IMMEDIATELY well before Sam & Dean.  C'mon.  Then, of course, a couple random middle-aged suburbanite humans get the drop on Sam and Dean, because Dabbernatural really just loves to make them incompetent so plots happen.

Then the big reveal and blah blah blah, kid accidentally ate his girlfriend.  WHAT WERE WE SUPPOSED TO DO???  Um, maybe try not being scumbags?  Idiotic scumbags at that, abducting a second girl from their son's own school instead of somebody that wouldn't be missed or even, hey, maybe encouraging him to try harder not to eat people.  Don't try to sell me on this pseudo hallmark 'but they just love him so much' bullshit.  At least the kid has more self-awareness and conscience than his fuckwad parents.  

Then we get to the infuriating character assassination part of the programme.  Having Sam and Dean say that they'd do the same thing as the dad for Jack their “son”?  Fuck you very much, show.  I could maybe, maybe, see Sam or Dean kidnapping and draining the life out of an innocent to save the other at their most desperate worst.  Though I think the only time they even really get close to that kind of an actively, knowingly evil choice is with Doc Benton.  Not only do I not buy for a second that they would do that for the totally-really-their-actual-child-for-reasons albatross Dabbernatural has shoehorned into their lives?  Struggling to do the right thing even when it hurts used to actually mean something – it was always a very important qualifier that while Sam or Dean might make that choice, the other would not let them.  So having them both agree this kind of straight up villainy would be a-okay for oh-so-totally-loveable-no-really-woobie-blob Jack ...

Like carelessly assassinating every human in the BMoL headquarters, it fundamentally fails to understand what it is that keeps Sam and Dean from being the monsters.  Hint: it's not just that the show centers around them.  “We do the ugly thing so that people can live happy” - these moronic hacks seem to be actually trying to parallel Sam and Dean saving innocent victims and the world to human monsters that were going to selfishly help their son eat his way through the entire goddamn cheerleading squad.  Am I getting this wrong somehow?  Is there some other, less appalling, reading here that I'm missing? This whole scene honestly made me nauseous.

They talkity-talk on for a while longer, but it's really not much better.  Sam declaring that God was totally done with them was the writers putting those words in his mouth based on nothing.  At it’s very best, it was Sam’s bad habit of convincing himself conclusions he’s come to are true because he wants them to be.  So them both just deciding to believe it's true after Chuck has admitted to orchestrating their entire lives … I'm not sure if we should conclude the Winchesters have brain damage or if that's just the writers.  Especially when the underlying reason for it is nothing more compelling than , “Watch the Winchesters see-saw on the angst fulcrum completely at random!  Yay!”  If this was actually well written, there would be some precipitating reason for Sam to suddenly be the one being all fatalistic while Dean is accepting.  Instead, the writers  just slap some coin-flipped angst angst angst on the page and meander on in a supposedly forward direction.

So then there's the other half of the episode, the Becky storyline. Am I the only one a little disturbed that Becky's first reaction to seeing Chuck was to look scared and try to run away?  Like, they're exes and all, sure, but she doesn't know any of the god stuff yet – I think the only thing she even says about their breakup is that Chuck dumped her.  Is that reaction supposed to be yet another bit of “new canon” showing how Chuck was just that terrible all along? But then she does let him in, so maybe we're just supposed to take it as Becky still having a tendency towards dramatics?  I honestly don't know, but it was weird to me.  

I do genuinely love that they had Becky go to therapy and realize just how absolutely fucked up what she'd done was and ultimately sort herself out to become someone who seems to be a well-balanced adult. A well balanced adult that didn't have to give up being a fan for that!  Seriously, kudos to the writers for this, because 7.08 is such a loathsome episode that otherwise ruins Becky as a character.   Though I do have to nitpick a bit – while I get that they wanted to put SPN merch in Becky's home as a callout to her still being a superfan?   In the show's universe, Chuck's books were never that popular, so I'm having some suspension of disbelief issues that there would be Funkos for them.  We could pretend they were customs, but she's got at least one Impala, so even that doesn't quite work.  I'm not entirely sure who “people only want them sitting around doing laundry anyway” is a dig at, but I'm giving it the side eye.  

I also am not entirely sure what to make of Chuck's whole no one needs me I kinda hate me I'm all lost and don't know what to doooooo shtick.  Is this a game he's playing?  Is he really that wishy-washy? Did some of Dabb's sad internal monologue as showrunner somehow end up in a script by accident?  

He goes on like that and laments he's lost the Winchester's trust and had words with them or whatever, and then he zaps Becky and her family away at the end.  Like, if he cared enough about Becky to care about her opinion, why does he turn on her, too, just like that?  I guess we're supposed to see it as him having found his mojo in her space and vanishing her because taking over her space that's working for him currently is his latest whim.  I suppose they're intending to show Chuck as just being that capricious and flighty, but I don't know that it works for me.  The way they've been writing him he's acting so randomly and impulsively that it's kind of unbelievable he can even sit still at a keyboard long enough to write another Sam and Dean installment.  Again, I definitely find it unbelievable that the Chuck they're giving us now would be capable of playing the long game that he would have had to for him to be actively behind everything.  Until he suddenly got impatient and lazy and popped up in the cemetery at the end of the last finale ... for reasons … and is now just … like that … because.

Not to mention that his powers are, big shock, just as arbitrary as everyone else's in the current show.  He can't actually see what is happening to Sam and Dean because of the bullet sapping his power or whatever, but we're supposed to be worried about the ominous ending he's writing for them because … he's got those god powers to make it happen, I guess?  Uh...

I will grant that the ominous bobbing of Sam and Dean Funkos' heads to Chuck's furious typing was a wonderfully foreboding shot to end on.  

[ialreadyreadthatfanfic]

So I saw the new Star Wars movie

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT PEOPLE

First off: I went to a marathon of the whole sequel trilogy with my friends, and I’m glad that I did, because I forgot A LOT.

Mostly how many good memes there were born out of those films.

The Force Awakens evoked pretty much the same feeling it did during the first watching: it’s a good, enjoyable beginning, with a lot of hooks, not a lot of risks, a bit too much resemblance to the original trilogy, but on the whole a promising start.

The Last Jedi, on the other hand. I forgot how effectively this movie killed my interest in Star Wars for a long, long while. The plot is a mess. Most of the characters are unlikeable, because the idiot balls they’re holding are too big to get past them. Main offenders are: Poe, Hondo, Finn and Rose. The unfortunate Casino subplot, which is tiring. The fact that whoever wrote Rose’s character arc (or rather didn’t bother to write it) did the actress massive disservice, because the way Rose “saves” Finn at the last minute is, frankly, rage inducing and makes her character devoid of any shred of consistency. I have a lot of other complaints about this movie, but the storylines not making sense are a common theme, so let’s not rehash the familiar arguments.

Now, onto the main event.

The Rise of the Skywalker was… mostly okay.

For me personally, it would be hard to match the disappointment of TLJ, so this worked to lift the sequel ROTS up. I went in pretty much unspoiled, actually! I heard the “oh they plan to bring Palpatine back” thing back when the first teaser/trailer was released. But after that nothing more.

Number one: Leia.

It’s such a shame that Carrie Fisher didn’t get to act in this movie. There are several scenes with Leia mentoring Rey, but it is obvious the filmmakers went as far as they could with the footage they had available, but could go no further. Some scenes with Luke and Han (Han especially) are obviously done with Mark and Harrison standing in for Carrie.

Number two: Palpatine and the theme of Rey’s legacy.

This is where the lack of overall plan for the sequel trilogy, and subsequent lack of proper foreshadowing in TFA and TLJ hurts the most, probably. So Rey is revealed to be Palpatine’s granddaughter. Her parents chose to abandon her for her own safety and were killed when they refused to give up her location. Okay, that’s interesting backstory. Sadly, after the WHO ARE REY PARENTS… PERHAPS SOMEONE WE KNOW and the OMG PLOT TWIST SHE’S NO ONE AND HE PARENTS DIDN’T CARE FOR HER AT ALL, the third plot twist gets me merely to roll my eyes and sigh heavily. I wish dearly there was more time to develop this storyline. It’s wasn’t ENTIRELY bad, but the whole thing has this feel of “uhhh people were really pissed off after the last one… what can we do to fix it?? Oh shit we kinda killed Snoke too and there is Big Bad Villain missing bc we want to redeem Kylo… you know what?? Palpatine was the big bad in prequels AND in the original… let’s have a dramatic reveal how it was him all along. It will nicely bring the story back full circle, you know” and so they did just that.

Nr two subsection A: the whole Sith legacy/Final Order thing was interesting, but again: too little time to develop it. It should have been tied into First Order and Snoke in previous movies… and the less said about Deus Ex Machina Sith Fleet in which every ship has a planet-killing weapon on board the better. Just don’t thing about it too much PLEASE.

Conclusion: Snoke was Palpatine’s test tube baby experiment? That actually explains a lot…

Number three: redemption of Ben Solo.

Honestly, this one? Is actually a net positive for me! I had so little patience for Kylo Ren as a villain that redemption storyline actually made me like Ben Solo in the last part of the movie (AT LAST). And while two first movies had me uninterested in Reylo to the point of irritation at its prevalence, the last movie actually made me ship it a little! Maybe I’m a sucker for redemption. Maybe I don’t have patience for characters who themselves have no idea why are they doing what are they doing and they kinda maybe might not want to do it but continue to do it because it’s easier than giving it up aaand you get the picture how I saw Kylo Ren. And how glad I’m that Ben Solo at the end got to move past this stage of his character.

Also, the Reylo Force Skype was strong in this one. And how!

Number four: Finn and the Stormtroopers deserters.

Again, this should have been in TLJ. They should have taken this whole storyline about Finn meeting other deserters from First Order out of sequel ROTS and replaced the goddamn casino thing with it in TLJ. Sadly, they only thought of putting it in the script once the fanbase got pissed off about lack of Finn’s character development/his BACKWARDS character development in TLJ.

Consequently, Rose was sidelined. On one hand, it’s a shame. On the other, I’m a bit relieved; after the mess they made of her arc in TLJ, there was no salvaging it. It’s better to let the actress have a few scenes to note that she didn’t just disappear from the plot, but don’t try to aggressively resurrect her plot and make an even bigger mess.

The unintentionally hilarious thing about this point: Finn suddenly comes across as such Casanova. Here’s Rose! Here’s Stormtrooper deserter lady! (sorry, I forgot her name). Here’s a sly hint that he might have feelings for Rey!! Pick a girl, for god’s sake!!!

Nr four subsection A: Poe also got an old flame lady Who Happens To Help Our Heroes. Just so you know that he’s definitely into ladies, you know, just a heterosexual dude… The relationship in the movie is handled actually pretty well – they’re old flames and while Poe wants to rekindle the relationship, the lady is ultimately like “nope” and the Poe does “aw” face and moves on, so pretty classy overall. Just in the context of Finnpoe and great chemistry they had in the first movie? This is such a shame.

Number five: Poe in charge and the Resistance thing.

Poe’s storyline in The Last Jedi totally ruined this for me, sorry. I couldn’t even get all that invested.

Also, it feels at times like the movie wants to have Poe taking up Leia’s legacy, Rey taking up Leia’s legacy, Ben taking up his mother’s legacy and you know what? Leia’s legacy is big. There’s definitely enough to go around! TOO BAD THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME IN THE MOVIE TO SHOW ALL THIS PROPERLY YOU KNOW GOD I WISH THERE WAS MORE ABOUT LEIA’S JEDI TRAINING

Number six: the ending.

Rey and Ben fighting together – I was actually finally sold on Reylo at this point. Their fight together in TLJ against Snoke’s guards was pretty cool (one of few good things in THAT movie), and here their shared fight against Palpatine/Knights of Ren (?) was also great.

Palpatine shooting the force lighting into the sky to disable the whole Rebel fleet and friends apparently got someone in the cinema to go “seriously?!” out loud, as my friends report. Enough said.

Rey dying and Ben trying to bring her back to life: this part actually got me really excited. For a moment there I thought that Ben would fail, and the force ghost Anakin would show up to Deliver Some Hard Earned Wisdom About Bringing People Back To Life And How You Can’t Do It and this would be a very satisfying ending to the whole “Ben/Kylo tries to be Just Like Grandpa Vader” storyline. Well, that didn’t happen.

The fact that Ben brough Rey back, then kissed her passionately, and then IMMEDIATELY KEELED OVER DEAD got the whole theatre laughing (me included). Again, enough said.

The “Galaxy Shows Up To Help Out BC The Resistance Asked Twice And They Felt Bad After Ignoring The First Call”: I got it. You want your feel good moment here. Look how happy ending is when the people of galaxy unite together, aww. Sadly, when you think about it for a two seconds more, this is such a bullshit and disservice to Leia, because the implication is that they didn’t pick up when LEIA was calling, but decided to help after all when LANDO asked… What??? Go fuck yourselves.

The ending-ending was ok. Rey, Finn and Poe hugged (aww!). Two ladies kissing in that 0.5 sec long shot are all Disney needs to show how open-minded they are*. That one kiss with Ben was apparently enough to marry Rey into the family, she’s a Skywalker now. Leia and Luke look approvingly on as they force ghost along, that’s nice.

At least people who wanted Rey to have a double blade got what they wanted in the end.

 *So it’s actually genuinely good that scenes like these ARE put into cashcow franchises like Star Wars, but I’m hesitant to give Disney too much credit. Knowing them, they’ll just shove one blink-and-miss-it scene in all their movie and claim that’s comprehensive proof of their supportive approach to alternate lifestyles.

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x14 “Ouroboros”

conclusion: yes, apparently feet can look gay, and Dean and Cas are both queer by proxy

04:35pm

me: still v magnesium deficient, sick, dizzy

LET’S WATCH A THING AND THINK ABOUT IT WITH MY PUDDING BRAIN

any thoughts stated here are run through a pudding filter so please do not be alarmed if they are incoherent or a weird colour

okay it’s a Steve Yockey episode so i guess he’s gonna give us a great character and then kill them before the title card

-

04:41

hang on i need to eat and i can’t eat and think at the same time so i’mma go watch an episode of shaun the sheep brb

-

04:46

okay well i watched half an episode and ate half my food so,... yay

LET’S WATCH THIS OTHER THING THEN

-

04:48

sam’s “i believe in us” *PUNCH* still makes me laugh

-

04:49

the body on the AAAAAAAAAAAAA I’

M SCREAMING NOPE NOPE NOPE

-

can i just watch this whole thing with my hand over the screen

because that is what i’ doing rn

oh god i hate this

-

actually you know what

i just skipped to the title card

cause fuck that haahahhaah nope

-

oh lord it didn’t skip to team free will

how much of this do i have to take

-

oh okay tfw are here already

WELL GREAT NOW I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHERE TO SKIP BACK TO

ASJFSDFHSFHSJ

-

04:54

i fuckin love rowena and how much they ask for her help even though they’re “enemies” except they’re clearly lowkey Fond of each other

also i like how this ep started in the middle of the case

-

04:56

rowena: “hello castiel” ;) ;) ;)

okay well

this pleases me

because i know the only way this ends is that cas is not interested and that’s the Point

because he <3s dean

but also why the hell is rowena into cas....... surely she knows he loves dean. unless she’s just into starting shit, i wouldn’t be surprised

-

04:58

the way jack says “i’m not dying”

10/10

-

04:59

cas: “he’s now claimed the lives of six people in northern new mexico”

why does he say “people” like that

-

05:01

dean’s throwing a looooot of salt at rowna. maybe because she keeps flirting with cas

-

“everything means something”

YEAH EXACTLY

DEAN’S SALTY BECAUSE ROWENA’S FLIRTING WITH CAS I’VE DECIDED

-

05:03

sam says dean can keep michael locked in his head “because he’s dean and dean is dean”

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah okay

expert closet curator, you mean

-

05:05

dean has a good feeling about bringing rowena in on this one??????????????? after all the snark????????????

cas: “they do have many books”

me: *squINTS REALLY HARD* i feel like they’re implying something else and neither of them are talking about the same thing. did dean set sam up on a date with rowena????????????

also?

DEAN AND CAS ARE ON A DATE. DEAN AND CAS ARE ON A DINNER DATE IN A DINER. ALERT ALERT ALERT

paralleling rowena and sam perhaps

-

05:08

concerned head tilt

oh god their love and mutual understanding and trust in each other is killing me with its softness

i’m so so so glad we get to see them in some downtime at fucking last

-

05:10

oh no jack’s coughing again

why can’t he have nice things

-

05:10

dean: “that’s what i’m supposed to say, right? i’m fine? keep on moving?”

cas: “no, dean”

the fact dean lets his guard down only with cas in private ;~;

-

sidenote, this episode is giving me my bloody valentine meets hunteri heroici vibes, which is nice because they’re two of my all-time fave episodes

but god i wish it would go easy on the cannibalism

-

05:14

dean: “i’m barely even sleeping” :D

THAT PAINED GRIN OH GOD

but also

i’m so emotional because he told anyone at all, but especially that of all people he told cas

of course he told cas, cas is his emotional sounding board

if this were a fanfic cas would offer to share the bed with dean and help him sleep

....but i mean, who knows, maybe dean was secretly hoping for that anyway

-

05:19

that’s the face of “dean doesn’t know what liturgical means”

-

05:22

jack: “what’s an av club?”

cas: “it’s a special club for people who do not play sports”

dean: *points at cas* “him. he’s av club”

mmmmmmmm yup

autistic nerd

dean’s baseball and track team, cas is av club and student tutoring

but also if dean ever got cas onto the baseball field cas would hit every ball first time

and dean would be swooning

BUT ALSO DEAN WOULD FUCKING LOVE AV CLUB ARE YOU KIDDING ME

he’d be in there with charlie every fuckin day and leaning seductively on furniture while cas does his nerd thing, until the point where something properly capures dean’s interest and then HE WANTS A GO and bats away everyone else’s hands and hogs the contraption for 3 hours. also he’d fix things when they break

DEAN TONE DOWN THE PROJECTION A NOTCH WOULD YA

JEEZ

look i’m just gonna count dean calling cas “av club” as flirting, because hello yes there is no way dean doesn’t find that interesting

-

05:30

i fucking knew it

the moment this episode opened and i saw the guy’s bare feet in the kitchen somehow i knew he was queer ??????????

like

i can’t explain it

but the fact there was a shot of his feet and his feet looked gay i can’t even

anyway this probably doesn’t even count as legit queer rep given he’s seducing guys and killing them so

stupid gay feet

sidenote: did ANYONE else get queer vibes from that opening scene? CAN PEOPLE’S FEET LOOK GAY OR IS THAT JUST ME

maybe it’s like... the sensuality of bare feet + cooking, breaking pointless gender roles n stuff, my brain has been coded by society’s bullshit to perceive sensual men as non-heterosexual

idk

but also. the foot-upward view of a new character... male gaze, right? and seeing the male gaze on a male character makes it queer

goddamn

it’s a thing

it’s a thing and the directing got the point across and it took me until now to work it out

GAY FEET

-

also

now i’m going back to cas’ line “six people”

my initial understanding of that line was that they weren’t all men

but the thing was the people didn’t need to be said that way if it was just men and women

my immediate instinct said the victims were non-binary, but i didn’t type it because i had no reason yet to believe that might be true and it seemed unnecessary to say it

but at this point, as the baddie hits on a guy at a truck stop in exchange for a ride, they’re clearly potentially queer victims

so

yeah that explains the inflection

-

05:41

on the one hand, i’m seeing a connection to that time dean was seduced by a siren

but see my problem with this is that the guy’s either gonna end up dead or saved and i don’t know which yet

i just want happy queer stories

so i’m pretty divided about this

but on the other hand, please, god, let this gorgon guy “sense things” about dean

ALSO WAIT

IS THIS THE FIRST GAY KISS ON THIS SHOW?????????? 90% SURE THIS THE FIRST GAY KISS. there might have been a background one once

PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE

EVEN IF IT’S EVIL AND TWISTED AND MAKES ME FEEL WEIRD

-

05:44

i feel like there should’ve been an optic nerve attached to that eyeball.. and a lot of gross stuff

but also thank goodness there wasn’t

ohdfjfdg i really hate this

but also i’m smiling?

-

05:46

cas: “is this amusing to you?”

the guy called him sir!!! eeheheh

-

05:47

cas: “you’re not standing alone, why doesn’t he mention me?”

dean: “maybe you’re not his type”

i mean. guess he can’t see angels. BUT ALSO

CAN WE UNPACK HOW UTTERLY QUEER EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS

WE NOW UNDERSTAND THAT NOAH’S TYPE IS QUEER GUYS

AND DEAN KNOWS THIS

SO BY SAYING CAS ISN’T NOAH’S TYPE THAT MEANS HE’S IMPLYING THAT HE HIMSELF IS

BECAUSE HE’S QUEER AF

steve yockey, this is the episode i was waiting to see from you

team free will working a case together, dean and cas on a date talking about their feelings, on a case about queer stuff

hell fucking yes

-

05:52

rowena: “need anti-venom in case one of you boys gets sloppy”

wouldn’t that mean noah kisses either cas or jack

god i’m so glad rowena’s there too

this episode is great sdgsfkg

-

05:53

ROWENA AND SAM FAKING A RELATIONSHIP + A DOG OH MRJGJD IFUCKING LOVE THIS

WHERE DID THEY GET THE DOG

WHERE’S THE BIT LATER WHERE DEAN AND CAS ~FAKE~ A RELATIONSHIP PLEASE

-

05:55

OH MY GOD THE VET STUCK A THERMOMETER IN JACK’S ASS

OH MY GOFH D:

-

06:00

noah: “then he doesn’t have to die like all the other men”

hmmmmmmm

okay so all the victims were men

which makes me even more curious about why cas used that inflection on “people”

cas also looked like of amused? definitely a misha expression rather than a cas expression, the little lilt of a smile on his lips like the way he says any word starting with “h”

maybe some of them were transgender men and cas didn’t know them before they died so could only guess as to their gender? maybe some of the bodies they found were not gender-conforming

it also kiiiiind of sounded like misha changing the script after a discussion on set about it

but if that were true then that means someone on set doesn’t believe gay or queer men are men? maybe? maybe i’m reaching there

but i’m genuinely caught up on that inflection and the use of that word, it really stood out to me

and it stands out especially, now, because like i said, we know the victims were men, we know team free will found them all, and we know they were queer.

but also it’s not dean saying it, it’s cas

and i can’t imagine any scenario where cas would have trouble with non-binary pronouns

if anyone has further thoughts on this, please direct me towards them

-

06:23

my browser broke?? and i lost a chunk of this post, but i had the above stuff backed up in email

i'mma go back a bit and try and remember what i typed

-

idk i think it was just about the fact noah confirmed all his victims were men which further confused me

and then said he also eats ladies

and then said some feminist stuff which made me sad that it came from the bad guy

but also that i could imagine cas saying something similar, deadpan, and then reaching for dean’s burger

-

* schmooch *

whEN DOES DEAN GET TO DO THAT

-

06:28

okay YES

I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO SAY

NOAH SAYS HELLO TO DEAN

WHY JUST DEAN

WHY IS HE FIXATED ON DEAN WHEN THERE’S 3 OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM? and why only write the letter to dean?

I’LL TELL YOU WHY

BECAUSE DEAN’S BISEXUAL AF

AND YES HE IS HIS TYPE

REPRESSED “STRAIGHT” MEN WHO SECRETLY LIKE GUYS

CAN THAT BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS?? I THINK NOT

i love how this episode refers back to some of the older episodes, in the best possible way

conclusion: dean is bi

-

06:32

noah took the bag with the snek inside but i guess the snek esckep

-

06:34

maybe true love’s kiss will wake dean up

CAS QUICK

MIGHT AS WELL TRY RIGHT

-

06:40

hurts my heart how cas has apparently made peace with the fact he’ll outlive dean and sam

i guess it’s good but

can’t help but believe deep down he would rather die than live without them

-

and now i’m crying because cas says the point is that you got to know them at all

suddenly catharsis for future pain

-

06:47

oh NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MAGGIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

D:

THIS IS THE WORST

-

06:47

rowena as michael??? okay, that i can get behind

ooh

BUT ALSO

OH NO

-

06:49

michael (about dean): “it didn’t work out. it was him. not me.”

flip of a classic dating line, making this QUEER AGAIN

-

06:55

JACK THE LIL HERO

WHAT DID YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

//waits for the silence to be over

-

06:56

oh boy

-

06:57

OKAY WOW

WHAT AN EPISODE

i was really hoping it would turn into a plotty one, the way changing channels does at the end

this was really well done and i enjoyed it a lot!!!!!!!!! i mean, besides the squicks, and the fact the queer rep and feminist lines came from a bad guy

dean was 100% noah’s type

jack is the bestest baby bean

i feel so bad about the thermometer thing..... like, i’m not sure if it was meant to come across as funny? but there was no indication it should be... which is good i guess? but also i feel secondhand violated

DEAN AND CAS’ DATE AND TALKING ABOUT FEELINGS WHEEE

i like that this episode actually came full circle on that “dean vs michael” point, rather than having it be a one-off conversation and things aren’t resolved until a later episode

i think i’m gonna enjoy rowena as michael. and i like that she said yes because she does care about team free will

sad about maggie :c

but also all those other extra hunters were changed out pretty much episode so there was no real way to know who they were. they seemed pretty diverse though, across various episodes

i liked the asian lady vet!!!! she was fun. and i’m glad the asian gay guy didn’t die... where did he even disappear to though? who knows

overall 10/10? it had all the good shit i like so. yep.

I WANT MORE EPISODE LIKE THIS. QUEER CHARACTERS (PREFERABLY NOT EVIL), MORE ASIAN CHARACTERS, MORE TEAM FREE WILL ON HUNTS, MORE LADIES GETTING COOL ROLES AS PART OF THE TEAM AND/OR AS AN FRENEMY, MORE JACK SAVING THE DAY

MORE ROWENA IN PANTS

yeah

but more of all

MORE GAY KISSES FOR DEAN AND CAS

i love that the fact noah was fixated on dean put him in the “noah’s type = queer” category, and when noah kissed cas it did the same thing

so really, by evil proxy, noah made a point of showing us who’s queer

i mean we already knew

but HE SHOWED US

yee

-

no conclusion on why cas said p e o p l e though

[ansu-gurleht]

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? THATS WHERE SEASON 1 ENDS?????

talk about a fucking cliffhanger god dammit

anyways i quite like the umbrella academy. no idea how it compares to the comics since i never read  them. the acting is......hit or miss. even from ellen page, but it might be due to the script and the uh.....kinda weird forced romance they push on her. david castañeda as diego is probably the best out of all of them.

i will say though.....a lot of the plot elements in this story follow a trend of the past 10-20 years or so in writing, where a lot of the plot is moved forward via arbitrary contrivances that result almost exclusively from people just......not talking to each other. like yeah, i get it, people don’t always get along, people keep secrets from each other, etc. but this is ridiculous.

like if for every scene in this where somebody overheard/saw somebody doing something, or every time somebody said “wait, i can explain,” like....if they actually just let them explain, or just.....did anything but jumping to the most plot-convenient stupid conclusion, this whole story would make a lot more sense. (it would also probably be at least half as long.)

i just feel like....yes, there should be obstacles for your characters. there should be disagreements between them. that’s conflict, baby. but those obstacles and conflicts should derive from the characters and the world naturally. not just arbitrary disagreements that could be talked through in under an hour if you just....bothered to try. 

idk. is that kind of thing realistic, actually? do people really get in stupid arguments like that? im not the best with people, but i feel like that’s not true. if characters actually tried to talk through things and understand each other, things would be better, and also give me less second-hand embarrassment and frustration.

and also, are people really stupid enough, especially like, theoretically-superpowered people, to be presented with the possibility of saving the world, and instead deciding to just fucking argue with each other for no goddamn reason??????? i feel like, idk, saving the world might take precedence. 

i wont give any spoilers, but vanya’s arc especially relies on this sort of “let me misinterpret something you said in the way that validates my struggle best and makes everyone else look like an asshole.” so does luther’s, except in his case he’s more the source of the stupid things said/done that make him look bad. (it’s really easy to hate luther, tbh. idk if i do, per se, but god if he isn’t an asshole like 70% of the time.)

(note: i am not a professional writer or academic or critic or whatever. i’ve just read and seen a lot of stories in my life, and a lot of them have this stupid arbitrariness to the conflict.)

[tumblunni]

Okay I know that kingdom hearts has a bad reputation for sticking crucial plot information on obscure spinoff games but HOLY SHIT I just finally watched a lets play of the fuckin digimon tcg game and found out it ACTUALLY HAS A GODDAMN CONCLUSION TO ANALOGMAN FROM DIGIMON WORLD 1

like 90% of the damn game has no plot whatsoever let alone indicating its a digimon world sequel! and then suddenly in the last battle without being foreshadowed whatsoever analogman returns and gets possibly the best boss battle ever IN A GODDAMN TCG GAME

holy shit his whole fight is framed as ‘this is literally the same guy from digimon world 1, hacking another game’, the interface wigs out and a bunch of fake command windows pop up with rapidly scrolling code of the game supposedly falling apart. And then his boss battle flips the entire gameplay system on its head by giving him fourth wall breaking special moves that pull overpowered effects by “hacking the engine”, with cool animations to fit. Fuckin badasssss!!

and it also fuckin FINALLY EXPLAINS THE DAMN PLOT LIKE GEEZ

digimon world’s conclusion was so rushed, you never even meet the villain until the final battle and it ends all weird with just “something” going wrong that causes him to get sucked into a portal or something while screaming dramatically in weirdly high resolution terror faces??? the tcg game confirms that this was him attempting to flee back to the human world after you defeated him, but one of the stray attacks from the battle damaged his machine and it caused him to essentially commit accidental suicide when he turned it on.

and HOLY SHIT MY FUCKIN OBSCURE HEADCANON IS TRUE????

the game had some sequel bait hints that maybe analogman is somehow still around and that the portal explosion just turned him into “corrupted data” so he can never return to the human world. and i always thought it would be super ironic if he actually got turned into a digimon aka the thing he hates more than anything

WELL OKAY I GUESS CRITICAL LORE IN A TCG GAME IS OKAY WHEN ITS A BIG YES BUNNI U THEORY BE CORRECT

he appears in this game as a malomyotismon who does a damn good vexen face during the fight, lol. And he’s all “gahh that stupid kid ruined my plans but this accursed body at least improved my hacking abilities!” Tho its implied that his corrupted state is more like a bodyless cloud of data that can possess/copy different digimon, which would be REALLY FUCKIN CRITICAL to explaining the goddamn plot of Digimon World Next Order!

Seriously wtf is up with this series? Digimon World 2 is not the sequel to Digimon World 1, all the numbered games are entirely separate individual stories with wildly different genres from pet sim to roguelike strategy. The real sequel is fucking DIGIMON THE CARD GAME THE GAME and then Digimon World Next Order a bazillion years later for the ps4. In which i am STILL REALLY SALTY that they have a FUCKIN RAD remix of analogman’s boss theme yet he doesn’t appear in the game. The added context of this damn tcg game confirms once and for all that the Ambiguous As Fuck Ending actually WAS him appearing in the game, this unexplained “oh wait the villain was good all along and he was just possessed by an evil virus” was supposed to be corrupted-digi-analogman and seriously WHY DONT THEY JUST FUCKIN EXPLAIN IT!!! this tcg game wasnt even released in europe!! and even american fans probably had no clue it was linked to this entirely separate subseries! You have to friggin piece it together with context clues like the battle music and the fact analogman’s signature mon was machinedramon. I mean vjesus christ Next Order is a litera; sequel with the grown up version of Digimon World’s protagonist as a badass home ec teacher who still defends the digital world in his free time yet you couldnt spare ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE mentioning the name of the villain?? and summarizing the fuckin tcg game everyone missed??? AND CONFIRMING THAT THE VILLAIN IS INDEED MAKING A REAPPEARANCE POSSESSING THIS GUY??? oh god everything makes SENSE, thank you terrible card game adaptation. ehh but i do still love Next Order for making Hiro/Mameo’s canon partner Mamemon, he’s even more badass as this big tough bishie version of himself with a tiny adorable pal that can shoot rocket fists through space and time. (its funny tho cos the DW1 intro movie showed metalmamemon and metalgreymon and the american boxart flipped a coin and decided metalgreymon must have been the one the protagonist was using in that scene. Whoops!)

anyway even with the added context that IT WAS INDEED GODDAMN ANALOGMAN, the final boss fight in Next Order was as terrible as the rest of the plot. So I’m glad trash gramps got a suitably badass boss fight after all, even if it was a CARD GAME VERSION! lets all celebrate the awesomeness of this obscure fuckin spinoff game’s obscure fuckin intercontinuity cameo with the boss fight music that other game wasted

seriously fuckin hell the biggest challenge in that final boss was that i was so distracted by SHEER OFFENDEDNESS at the cool music not matching it that it was hard to keep focused

its not just a great boss theme for a terrible boss, its a really fuckin EMOTIONAL song for anyone whose childhood was fuckin defined by the first game!!!

and look you had a PERFECT FUCKIN EXCUSE for a REALLY GOOD boss battle against MY MAN GRUMPY GRANDPA OF THE COOL DAMN NAME. Seriously guys analogman was THE FIRST digimon villain! digimon world came out before the anime, digimon world was the BETA FOR THE ANIME! this was the first place they had the ideas for file island, so much of the areas in the game are awkwardly mistranslated versions of stuff that would later appear in the anime in a different form. before this digimon had never been anything more than a fuckin 2-bit graphics tamagotchi and this was (after the manga) only the second goddamn time these monsters had an actual full colour character design! all of those charmingly janky 90s gross out show styled tcg illustrations? that was concept art that this game was working from! fuckin hell this game thought up the idea for metalgreymon’s changed design that ended up becoming the iconic partner of tai in the anime. (you can also see beta tai in the manga with a beta veemon as a partner instead! o_O)

SO LIKE...

JUST....

I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT ANALOGMAN OKAY!!! he’s a badly written guy with only like five sentences across all the videogames but fuckin hell he was such an Iconique part of the development of this series that they named him fucking ANALOGMAN

like dude you could have SO EASILY made me scream at my tv in a more positive way by bringing him out as the surprise villain and showing us wtf his deisgn is even supposed to look like cos god all we have is a blurry faceless early ps1 model buried under the glow filters of Mt Infinity’s funky background effects.

AND FUCKING

IF IT IS CANON

THAT MY FUCKIN

STUPID THEORY

IS CANON

slap a fuckin O on this man and LITERALLY LET ME BEAT HIM UP

like dont even give him a team or anything, just let me fight THE MAN HIMSELF

you canonically fuckin said he’s a digital ghost now and basically the same as a digimon

let me beat the shit out of a regular businessman in a suit and tie while he pulls his badass ‘i’m hacking the game i’m in’ bullshit from the GODDAMN TCG GAME THAT WAS MORE CLIMACTIC THAN YOUR SHITTY CASH GRAB FAKE SEQUEL

man god i didnt expect a fuckin TCG GAME to revive my righteous fury from back when i first played that piece of shit. i hate it cos Next order is so pretty and its gameplay is so good and i really loved my twin digis but there were SO MANY bugs and cut corners and missing content and really bad writing and GOD it made me so sad that the dub team really really tried, they tried so hard that they got fuckin renamon’s original voice actress back even though the renamon in this game has nothing to do with the anime one. THE DUB WAS REALLY GOOD BUT IT COULDNT SALVAGE THAT SCRIPT!! THE MUSIC WAS REALLY GOOD AND THE ART WAS REALLY GOOD AND THE DIGIMON THEMSELVES WERE MY BEST DAMN FRIENDS FOR THAT MONTH OF MY LIFE BUT THE GODDAMN FUCKIN SCRIPT!!! the postgame was MORE FUN because FINALLY everything opened up like the sandbox of the first game and you could just fuckin hug u digis without being distracted by constant cutscenes butchering your childhood nostalgia

man i wanted to write a fic/draw a comic about my headcanons on how to fix it but i never managed to do it cos holy shit it was basically “throw everything out and make a different game geez” I COULD RAMBLE FOR HOURS ABOUT THE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SEQUEL THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN!! and a fuckin!! tcg game!! was closer to that sequel!!!

and fuckin MY THEORY WAS RIGHT AND MY BETTER GAME IDEA ACTUALLY WOULD WORK IN CANON

fuck it im gonna do draw myself decking business gramps in the face

oh! and the female protagonist design! thats another rare good part of that thing! i loved the pixellization effect on her ponytal, way better than the male equivelant having a very ordinary costume design just with a pixel corner taken out of his jacket. also why did the plot never actually make a thing out of that? like you’d think that ‘unlike every other digimon tamer i’ve got this scar of my digitization’ would be a plot point. like they didnt give everyone else a cool pixel squares mark! they could have at least used it as an excuse why the protagonist is the Only Chosen One who can do all this plot shit. or if it was me i would have made it early foreshadowing for the Return Of Business Gramps, like you were partially infected by the Oooo Mysterious Unexplained Digi Virus (seriously why did they not just have ONE SENTENCE explaining its the fuckin original villain returning????) during the prologue and i dunno somehow that gives you powers to break analogman’s control on the digimon he possesses. or maybe the pixel thing is like a tracking device he put on you? or just give that cool design trait to the protagonist of digimon cyber sleuth instead, whose entire plot is that theyre a digimon human hybrid with literaly the power to pixellize themself into computers.

ALSO!!! actually do something!!! with mameo!!!

they really fuckin hyped up in all the prelease materials that the digimon world 1 protagonist was gonna be in this game and he’s all grown up now. and then he does NOTHING in the plot except babble exposition and stand around your home base. and has one line about how he’s a badass teacher now and his partner is mamemon but hey we made a bullshit excuse for why his digimon is sealed away and he never gets to fight :<

give me an actual cool teamup of new protag girl and her cool teacher dude beating the shit out of business trash with their bare fists and also their digimon’s bare fists while THE BEST DAMN MUSIC GOES UNWASTED

...fuck i sure do Feel Intensely about nostalgic games lol. i wonder if i’ll be so rambley when i play kh3? maybe itd be a really shitty lp, aaagh...

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen (Properly) Rambles About RWBY

Okay, so the original RWBY Rambling I did was... lacking, to put it nicely. Quite a bit, at least compared to the Puyo Puyo one. I forgot a lot of things that are usually staples of my Ramblings, explaining about the goddamn synopsis of all things being one of them, and I just flat out didn’t go too in depth with my opinion on the series. I’ll be honest, I was in a rush to finish that Rambling since I wanted to try and finish it in under 2 hours, as most of my Ramblings usually take 5-8 hours to write.

Yeah, I’m never going to try that stunt again. 

So, if you guys don’t mind, let me just... start over from the beginning and pretend that last Rambling didn’t exist. Well, I deleted it, so it really doesn’t, but that aside...

Hello RWBY fandom, or FNDM as you like to be called. I am Allen X, I write fanfics, occasionally work on fan lyrics for video game BGMs, draw ocs, and do opinion pieces like this one every so often when the mood hits me.

As I’m sure you all know, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle is less than two months away. I don’t know about you guys, but I am pumped for it. I recently checked out some of Yang’s gameplay for it, and it looks fantasy. She hits hard and fast like in the show, a lot of her moveset is based off the Yellow Trailer, her Super Saiyan fire powers are an actual mechanic, and I’m going to main the hell out of her and Blake once I get this game in my grubby little hands. If you aren’t a fighting game fan and are only getting into BBTAG just to play as Team RWBY you are in for a treat. Arc System Works are masters of creating 2D fighting games, and I hope this game gets you all into fighting games more as not just a genre, but as a form as expression as Blazblue has done for me. A crossover fighting game like this was something that we fighting game fans have only dreamed about. To see it coming together is just... majesty. The moment those special edition pre-orders come in I’m getting one. I need that art book.

But my fanaticism aside, all the hype around this game has gotten me to look over these franchises again. Going back to play a bit of Blazblue was fun, Persona 4 Ultimax is surprisingly still solid after all this time, and Under Night In-Birth, while it’s probably my least favorite to play, still grips me on its aesthetics. I even went back to watch some of the old RWBY trailers and checked out some of season 1 again, and... well... doing all that kind of made me want to talk about these series again, just get my opinion of them out there and talk about how I feel on each series. Originally, I was going to talk about Blazblue first, but... I have a near ten-year history with Blazblue and to talk about that first would just eat up my month. 

No, I’ll have to break that discussion up into at least three Ramblings.

So for the sake of my sanity I’ll talk about all the other series and franchises that Blazblue Cross Tag Battle is using first. And I think it’s only fair to start out with the newest franchise to the fighting game genre first, RWBY. 

But first, that synopsis, as I forgot to add that last time. 

RWBY, pronounced as “Ruby”, is about the world of Remnant, a type of urban-fantasy world infested by bestial creatures drawn to negative emotions known as “Grimm”. To fend off these creatures of Grimm, humans learned to harvest a material called Dust and utilize the abilities of Aura and Semblance to defend themselves, later forming fighters called Huntsmen to fend off the Grimm. The story of RWBY specifically focuses on a girl called Ruby Rose and her adventures, trials, and successes as a budding Huntsman living in this world of Remnant. She forms a team under her, team RWBY, they go to an academy for Huntsmen, and the story takes off from there. 

To me, the plot is more a way to get invested into the world more than the characters going by the premise, but a lot of the characters are likable.

So with the plot out of the way, I can now properly go onto...

My History

You know... this might be the first in a long while where fandom discourse isn’t the main cause that got me into a series. That’s a big shock to me now that I’m writing this, as I got into Fire Emblem, Fate, Dangan Ronpa, Tokyo Ghoul, and handful of other media by how much the fanbase was screeching about something. This... probably says more about me than the media or fanbase, but moving on. 

I got into RWBY because I knew the animator that made Dead Fantasy, Monty Oum, was heading this project. That’s... really it. I honestly only knew Monty Oum as “that guy that did Dead Fantasy”. I was amazed at all the dynamic action that series had back when it was first coming out, and was constantly on the edge of my seat when a new part for it came out. When I learned that guy was heading this RWBY thing I just had to see what he was planning, and after watching the Red Trailer I was pleased, but... ultimately decided to take a step back and just keep it in the back of my mind. I had some other things going on at the time and other fanbases I was in. That, I and wasn’t too keen following something that was a work-in-progress, or at least not being vocal about my following of it. Though, once the White Trailer came out  I was all in after at. I skipped the Black and Yellow Trailers until about a week until the first episode came out since I wanted to be able to just binge as much RWBY as I could before the big premiere. And boy, while I winced a little at the voice acting I ultimately decided to check it out weekly once the episodes started coming out on Crunchyroll. From there I was hooked. 

I’ll admit that the first volume was shaky. A lot of the animations looked cheap if it wasn’t an action sequence, the voice acting wasn’t bad, but it was definitely not great, and a lot of the script and dialogue felt... juvenile, to put it nicely, though I’ll talk about the specifics later on in the Rambling.

So with my history out of the way, I’ll talk about...

The Appeal

RWBY’s appeal, at least what I find appealing about it, is pretty simple. It’s got cute girls, and it’s got action. 

...

...

...

Nope, that’s really it folks. I’m a simple guy to please. As I’ve said before on my blog:

“...[I]f there’s anything I love more than watching shows about cute anime girls, it’s that I love watching shows about cute anime girls BEATING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE IN ONE-ON-ONE HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.” 

Needless to say Yang is one of my favorites in the show, but moving on. If you’ve been following me for awhile now you’ll know that if its got action and cute girls in it I’ll at least give it a shot, and RWBY was definitely worth sticking with. I mean... just look at this trailer. 

If this trailer doesn’t get you hyped up to watch this series just a little, then I don’t know what to tell you, friend... I really don’t know.

But it’s more than just the action that I like in RWBY it’s also the character designs and some of the smaller things.

Take Ruby’s current design for example. While I’m a personal fan fighting game designs, there’s a lot I like about Ruby’s outfit here. How the black dress helps highlight her cape and hood, the red highlights in her hair, the overall gothic and adventurous tones. I just the love the how Ruby looks in terms of design an- 

... 

...

... 

I’m... going to ignore the boob window before I start ranting and raving about that concept like I did in one of my RP Ramblings, but I’ll just say that most of her design is fantastic in my opinion, to the point where I think Ruby has my favorite visual designs out of all the main cast, with Blake being a close second. Though if we’re talking about side characters? Oh Lord, where do I begin? I think I’ll just give you a handful of screenshots from the wiki of my favorite designs.

And these are just the cute girls...

Though... with all that said, there’s a reason I give these two points as the main selling point of RWBY...

The Writing

Like I said, the action is what I think the show’s main draw is, and that’s because the writing... well, it’s not bad, but it’s obviously not the main draw nor focus of the series. From what I understand this series started as a passion project that just happened to be marketable after a few volumes. I think that should be obvious from the trailers, as the first two were glorified action sequences, and the last two only had faintest hints of a story or plot. Credit to the Black and Yellow trailers for giving more context to the action, but the series overall doesn’t really hold up as solidly in the writing department.

But I’m starting sound vague now, so let me give some example I’ll try to be light on the spoilers for some of my followers that might be interested in the story.

I think the clearest sign of less-than-stellar writing in RWBY is Volume 4. In that Volume, Team RWBY had split up due events that had happened in Volume 3 and were countries apart as a result. So, too keep each main girl in the spotlight the show had to cover what each girl was doing while separated, and the volume felt really disjointed as a result of constantly switching perspectives. 

The main focus of the volume overall was, obviously, Ruby and her journeying through the country of Mistral. Again, being light on spoilers, but Ruby’s journey involved her heading to the Huntsmen academy of Mistral along with her non-RWBY friends. During this journey Ruby meets up her uncle who... basically gives a bunch of exposition around episode 8. Now, before episode 8 Ruby and her friend were attack by a henchman of the Big Bad of the series, a person that we knew little about and still know little about in terms of their goals. Ideally, this exposition explain what exactly the overall plot of this series was and why the Big Bad needed to be stopped. However... we didn’t get that, what we got was an explanation for the creatures of Grimm and... that was really it in terms of what was relevant. And since the exposition didn’t tell us anything that we, or at least I, really cared to know at that moment, it just... killed the pacing of Ruby’s current adventure for the sake of world-building that was only arguably relevant to Ruby’s current situation, with the world-building itself being about as vague as the previous paragraph I gave about the writing.

Okay... I reread that paragraph, and it was still pretty vague.

Alright, here’s a better example. Ruby has silver eyes, a rare trait not only biologically, but also seems to give her an enhanced ability to fight the Grimm to some supernatural level that isn’t related or on the scale of Dust, Aura, or Semblances. This was noted in episode one of Volume 1 and the main reason Ruby was allowed to attend Beacon Academy two years early, along with her skill with her scythe. This point doesn’t become important again until the end of Volume 3 where... spoiler events happen and Ruby is able to save the day... well, to a point anyway. However, after that scene in Volume 3 Ruby’s silver eyes and how they specifically work are still a mystery. We don’t know exactly how they help in combating Grimm, or how she can activate, and Ruby herself seems to have no interest in learning how to use her eyes to her advantage either, which is very aggravating as a viewer. And I’ll admit I find the silver eyes as a concept unpleasant, mostly due to my annoyance of main characters having vague uber-special powers in shounen manga and anime, but I find Ruby’s a little more aggravating for the previously mentioned reasons. As of Volume 5, we still don’t know what those silver eyes specifically do. Ruby has never questioned her ability or tested what it can do, nor does she seem interested in training with that power. Now in Ruby’s defense she’s likely being stubborn and would rather win her fights with her own skills rather than some special power, but the fact that she herself hasn’t said this combined with the fact that we don’t know the specifics of her powers just means she can become a Deus Ex Machina at any moment... and I really don’t like the idea of her having an anti-Grimm screen nuke in a series that’s main appeal is the action. 

Though for all my complaints, I do think there is some good writing here, namely with the characters and their development. One of the side character, Jaune Arc, probably has the best arcs and character development in the series, going from an incompetent coward to competent leader and tactician. The character development Weiss has made during the series has been great to watch, seeing a haughty and arrogant heiress slowly turn into a nicer person that cares about her friends. The tender moments between Blake and her family in Volume 4 and 5 were honestly heartwarming. All of these things are great points in the writing to me. I think the character writing is solid, it’s just the overall plot that’s a bit of a mess. And honestly, for all the flack the World of Remnant series gets, on its own it’s pretty interesting world-building with good presentation. I wish it was more of a post-series thing, something uploaded weekly before or after an actual volume ended to keep us invest in... well, the world of Remnant, but as pure supplementary material, it’s good.

I could go on with nitpicks and critiques, but you guys get the point. 

But... I think I’d be a fool to not mention...

The Elephant in the Room

Okay... so... while it’s no secret in the RWBY community, I think it’s worth saying for my followers that don’t know, the original creator and lead animator of RWBY, Monty Oum, passed away in 2015, leaving RWBY in the hands its staff and writers. Now I’m not going to start spreading drama about that point, but I do think its worth noting that Volume 3 and onward does feel like it’s missing a certain touch to it, especially in its action scenes. 

People more educated in terms of animation have explained why, but when people like me can sense something is missing... it says something. That being said I think things have gotten better overtime, but... it’s a slow improvement, and there still feels like someone on staff is just... missing.

Also, you might have noticed that I barely critiqued or harped on Volume 1-3. There’s a reason for that. Like I said, this was a passion project at first, and despite the flaws of Volumes 1-3, as just a personal project that happened to garner a fanbase, I’d feel a little too mean to nitpick those Volumes. However, once the show continued into Volume 4, past the point of the creator’s death, this went from being a passion project to a franchise, and I will judge as such starting from there. Volumes 1-3 are far from perfect and are just as, if not more, flawed as the recent Volumes, but... again, I don’t feel like harping on what was an expression of love from a creator that has now passed away, that’s a little too cruel. My only real issues of the first 3 Volumes worth saying being that some scenes followed the rule of cool a little too much and nearly breaking my immersion for the sake of spectacle, along with some more... juvenile moments in the writing, but that’s really it.

Now originally this is where I gave my conclusion in the last Rambling, but I completely forgot to mention one key appeal of RWBY as a whole, something that I honestly think got better as the series continued past Volume 3...

The Music

I’m surprised I wasn’t called out for not mentioning the godly OST that is the RWBY soundtrack. Red Like Rose, I Burn, Caffeine, Neon, these vocal tracks are just the hypest thing, I listen to these tune when I do my laps so often I’m surprised I didn’t mention this soundtrack. I can’t wait to hear the Rooster Teeth’s rendition of BBCTB’s opening theme, Crossing Fate. If there is anything of RWBY I can recommend to even someone not interested in watching the series, it’s to at least buy the soundtracks, as this is just good music in general.

Alright... I think that’s everything, and everything done properly. So without further ado...

Conclusion

With all I’ve said, I hope that anyone with even a slight interest in RWBY, even if it’s just for Cross Tag Battle to check out the first 3 Volumes. They have their flaws, but if you can get past that first volume then you’re in for the a treat for the next two volumes after. As far as Volume 4 onward... I’d honestly say to wait until Volume 6 is at least being simulcasted. Like I said, this series became an official franchise once Volume 4 came out, and I honestly can’t say if its worth your time or money after that happened, at least not outside the soundtracks. Things are getting better though, the writing is slowly improving, the plot is getting more interesting, the characters are still developing and developing well. It’s a slow process, but it’s happening. I said in one of my Anime Update that I think Volume 5 fixes and cleans up a lot issues in Volume 4, but not everything. I’d honestly wait and binge Volumes 4-6 when 6 comes out if you’re on the fence after Volume 3.

Overall, I’m glad to be a fan of RWBY, even if I’m a more casual fan of it. This series has it’s problems, but it honestly has less issues than some of the other series I like. God knows I’ll be making a damn thesis on my issues with Blazblue next month.

...

...

...

God, I’m gonna’ hate next month...

[smokeybrand]

Tomorrow Should Have Died

So i was planning on reviewing The Tomorrow War because it’s a new film and i like new films i can watch without having to brave the plague. I saw a preview for this thing a while back and had real low expectations for it, figured it’d be dumb fun like Independence Day. Imagine my abject horror when it turned out to be so much worse. Okay, first things first, the good stuff. Chris Pratt is good and so is J.K. Simmons. Betty Gilpin and Yvonne Strahovski work miracles with what little they have. The sound design is exceptional, probably the best thing about this sh*t flick, and the actual effects are on point. The problem with the movie is the script. It’s f*cking terrible. Oh my god, so much dumb! Here’s a list of sh*t that made me irrationally angry, in order of plot progression.

Eleven minutes in and i hate it. How are you losing a war to anything if you have mastered the ability to traverse space-time? How the f*ck is your technology so advanced, that you have found a way to exceed the light speed limit and literally break physics, but lose to a bunch of rabid, interstellar, komodo dragons? This is the dumbest f*cking contradiction I have seen all year and i am offended that whoever decided to make this film, is asking this of their audience. Sh*t is patently absurd. These f*cking things don't even have written language, man, and you really expect me to believe they have pushed a human race that has harnessed the power of time, to the brink of extinction?

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

Seriously, you can create a time machine, you should conceivably have the ability to harness gravity or one of the other fundamental interactions. Why the f*ck haven't you designed a miniaturized rail gun that uses modern tech or materials to build? You have worked out the science in the future, go back to the past and build miniature or handheld doomsday devices for use in the field. Why isn’t everyone running around with f*cking Megatron fusion cannons on their arms? Why the f*ck am i fighting aliens with ARs and Glocks?? The fact that there is an active time machine built from tech on hand from thirty years into the future, means cats could have spent their time building actual weapons to kill these f*cking things instead of betting the literal human race on a time displaced draft. This movie is dumb as rocks.

The way they describe how their time travel works is dumb. I mean, it isn’t, but i can guarantee this sh*t is going to be a problem later. I can feel it in my bones. They are definitely going to contradict this sh*t because multiverse theory is the only way to make movie time travel work and they are trying their damnedest to not do that.

This f*cking thing is over two hours long and the first drags. I hate when cats attempt to develop characters and they just fail at it. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I should care about any of these people and i still don't have an answer after half the goddamn movie is over. Like, why should i care about Chris Pratt? He’s the main character and the writing has done nothing to endear him to the audience in a whole ass hour.

Also, the reason he’s so mad at his dad is stupid. Dude did right by his kid by bailing because he would have been a terrible father. Pratt’s character would have known that as a father himself. He didn’t have to like it and, of course there’s animosity there, but you’re an adult. Your dad knew he was lousy. He did you a favor by walking out. It wasn’t like he didn’t help support you or make sure you went without. As far as i can tell, dude was there in every way by physically. Because he couldn’t. Because he was f*cking shell-shocked from fighting in Vietnam. Where they raped innocent women and set babies on fire. Holy sh*t, this cat is an unlikable protagonist after this one scene. Which brings me to my next thing...

Pratt f*cking abandons his family?? Word? After that entire scene with his dad and the very obvious trauma he has suffered, he turns around and abandons his own kid because he lost his job?? Word? Like, for real? You expect me to believe that the Chris Pratt who cussed out his pops, was willing to go on the run from his future conscription, abandoned his own family because he lost a teaching job?? What the f*ck, movie? Do you want me to like this asshole or not? More than that, how the f*ck you mess up your character so bad in what i imagine is just five pages of actual script? Nothing we know about this character would ever even hint at him doing this to his family, to his daughter, so why the f*ck would he? Why the f*ck would you, as a write, believe we, as the audience, would just accept that sh*t as a forgone conclusion?

You got ropes on a Queen and you don't kill it? How the f*ck you make it that deep into the hive to even do-si-do the b*tch to the surface? We just watched these things tear through Miami to the point that they needed a whole ass bombardment just to survive and you not only go into their hive, their home, with no heavy ammo, but you somehow lasso a queen and drag her to the surface. Alive. If you can do all of that why not just drop a nuke down there and blow them the f*ck up? Why do you need a live Queen for your science? Shoot the b*tch, take the juice of her corpse, and end this sh*t! Why is all of this stupid recklessness necessary??

Okay. Okay... F*ck everything i just said, right? Why the f*k did you bring this Queen b*tch back to your base? You don’t have a different offsite lab to do this sh*t? You gotta bring her to your stronghold? Isn’t this a military operation? Why aren't their security protocols and sh*t in place to stop this stupidity? You don’t bring the enemy home. You take them to black sites for sh*t like this, not to the goddamn Pentagon!

All of a sudden, the aliens understand science? We spent this entire movie establishing that they are mindless beasts with teeth, eating the human race into extinction but now, because the plot demands it, the Queen one understands what the people are doing? That the green sh*t they made is plague that can murder them all? How the f*ck she even know what science is? They don’t even have language, dude! How the hell she know they made a death plague for her people?! F*ck it, whatever, bro. Next you're going to tell me she let them capture her just to get inside the lab or some sh*t because these rabid f*cking animals, who have demonstrated no military command abilities or even the barest of higher cognitive functions, are tactical geniuses.

Okay, so the Queen b*tch is a tactical genius. So, in the initial future drop, the team was murdered by a bunch of these things because they were sent to a lab where they were trying to make the death plague. Now, hat i am about to say is all assumption on my part because none of this, and i men NONE of it, is ever confirmed by the movie. So, they get to the lab and everyone is dead but the green per-plague is still there. That mean they had a Queen there. It’s established after this that Queens can call for backup and the Males will lemming their way to her. I deduce that’s how this lab got overrun; Queen got loose, called for her boys, and they ate everyone. That happened. That was the first thing we see in the future. This b*tch does the same f*cking thing on the home base lab so now the males are overrunning The Pentagon. You motherf*ckers knew this was a thing because it literally already happens. Why the f*ck would you do it again? AND it gets worse... Home base, The Pentagon, is the f*cking rig where they house the goddamn time machine! You brought a hostile enemy leader, still alive and coherent, to the heart of your resistance operation, to the core of your time travel operation, knowing that at any time this b*tch can scream and have your whole ass base overrun with teeth and poison darts? Look, if the future is this stupid, they deserve to die, okay?

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

Okay. Okay... So they create this toxin to kill all the monster things and send it back in time to be mass produced  Put that sh*t in bullets and send it back to the future or whatever. But, because of the aforementioned stupid, that plan is bunk. Time machine go kablooey. And now we are at the "all is lost" moment at the end of the second act." Solution to the problem in hand, no way to save the future because the only way back to the future was a casualty of idiocy. Right. So... just wait. F*cking just wait. You know when these assholes show up, you know how to kill them all, you even have a plague ready to be mass produced right now. You have thirty f*cking years to refine that formula, to make it cheaper to mass produced and develop variants just in case immunities start to crop up or something. There are people from the future, stuck in the past, because of the egregious future error. They have all of that intel and they are just alive. The second this dude got back to the past with that antidote, the future was saved. The war is over. Like, even if you don’t know where the ship is, you have a sure thing that will murder these white f*cks and three decades to produce, weaponize, and store that sh*t. The war is won. The Prime timeline is absolutely safe at this point. Because that's how time travel works. You have the nuclear option, right now, to averting the end of the human race, ready to be mass produced. Yo have the knowledge from the future on where these things will first appear. You still have all the future tech brought over from the beta timeline ripe for reverse engineering in order to improve the weapons of the present. There is no scenarios where we lose this war, the second Chris Pratt plops back into the present with that plague. None.

Why is everyone so dejected?? Why are there f*cking riots all over the world?? None of this makes sense. How can you assume the world ends and the war is lost just because the communication with that version of the past is cut? Wouldn’t you expect that sh*t? You just altered the entire timeline by sending Pratt back with the antidote. That future is effectively gone. How can you communicate with a place in space-time that doesn’t exist anymore? Hell, even if it’s because the time machine broke and everyone over there is dead, you have the f*cking antidote now! Multiverse theory, bud. The fact that those time displaced assholes didn’t disappear, means multiverse theory is real and you have the opportunity to Future Trunks this sh*t so why panic? Why are there no leaders n television assuring their people that this is a thing? Why are there no scientists publishing papers about how sh*t is going to be fine? Bro, I'm just so tired...

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

So you find this ship and you don’t tell anyone where it is? You decide to just kill them all yourself? Motherf*cker, what happens if you die? Did you back up the enzyme formula somewhere or did you bring all of it with you on this stupid f*cking mission? Did you leave notes or even text your location to anyone in authority, just in case haphazard attempt goes sideways so someone else can make a more organized attempt? Or just drop a nuke on the site from orbit? If one asshole denied you funding for your mission, why didn’t you ask someone else? Why didn’t you ask f*cking Putin? Because governments are bloated down with bureaucracy? My dude, people from the future came back and interrupted the world cup to tell you that aliens are going to exterminate the human race in three decades. If you tell anyone in a position of power that you know where these little sh*ts are, they’re going to listen. Especially since everyone decided to riot because the future changed/we lost the time war/ the timeline imploded.

Why would a terrestrial saw work on an intergalactic star ship? That doesn't make any sense. This f*cking thing survived a crash landing into earth intact and a goddamn circular saw cuts it open? Fine, whatever. On to the next stupid thing.

Bro. Bro, they just blow the f*cking thing up. Motherf*cker spent the entire movie, time jumping form the past to to the future and back to the past, just to get this plague to kill them all, and a bunch of C4 just blows them all up while they sleep. Why the f*ck was everything even f*cking necessary? At this point, when the dude comes back with that claw the first time, the future is saved. Analysis on that one claw gave up the location of the hidden spaceship where these things had been in stasis for millennia. Which was blown up with C4. No plague needed. No goddamn time draft needed. No casualties needed after that first wave. The second that dude brought back that claw, it should have been  under a forensic microscope so actual f*cking scientists could figure out what a high school kid id in a matter of minutes. I hate this movie so goddamn much.

I hated this goddamn movie so much. It’s f*cking boring and the dumbest thing I've seen all year and i watched Army of the Dead. It’s pretty and the performances are decent, but there is absolutely no substance to any of this sh*t. It wants to be Independence Day and Edge of Tomorrow and The Great Wall. all in one, while infusing time travel family drama but it’s so f*cking confused trying to juggle all of that, it drops the ball on the most important part; The script. This thing must read like a fever dream induced by peyote because, in execution, it’s a wet fart. This f*cking thing is all over the place with no regard for any insular universe logic. It contradicts itself from one scene to the next and it’s goddamn offensive. I’m sure there is someone saying that i am overthinking this sh*t and that it’s just supposed to be dumb popcorn fun. I get that. However, i can’t just turn my f*cking brain off and mindlessly drool over sh*t that insults my intelligence the way this movie does. It’s dumb as f*cking rocks, man, and i want those two hours of my life back!

[junkobears]

Here Lies Dreaded V3 Discourse

So I have seemed to cause a huge kerfuffle in the hardcore Ouma conspiracy theorists standom, and a banal (if condescending, but seeing the response to it honestly justifies it more than anything now. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it”, you better believe I can take it and will now PROPERLY dish it out right back at you) comment about one of Tsumugi’s anime references has led to someone launching a hilariously personal attack at me for Daring To Disagree With A Theory That Was Posted On A Public Website. Someone who I wasn’t even initially responding too, at that. And has now blocked me before even allowing me to respond and clarify my original comments. Don’t want to deal with the consequences of being a repugnant, rude person I guess? Shock and surprise for Tumblr.

The link to the post is here, but I’ve taken the liberty to screenshot it just in case it gets deleted later, in hope that maybe there’ll be some reflection on this person’s part that this really is not an acceptable way to respond to people who have a dissenting opinion? Anyways, I will be responding to the personal attack post and that will be the last time I interact with this group, because clearly it’s not worth it to actually have a discussion about our respective ending theories. I ain’t got time beyond this for tedious insecure fucks these days.

Anyways, my response is under the cut to save my poor followers’ dashes. Sorry to drag drama onto my blog but I can’t really let this slide. I’m also tagging @jacks-plays-drv3 just because I assume the twin comes with the other with these two, and I want my response to have been seen.

Screenshot In This Link - This post is long enough without the image taking up more space, haha.

Let’s start with this mess, shall we? And I will go into painstaking detail.

Paragraph 1: So this already starts off with a whole lot of needless aggression and projection. So I’m not even going to attempt to be nice back. But: maybe I haven’t proven anything because I literally had not typed up a response to clarify my original comments @ Jacks yet before the rabid attack dog was unleashed? Like, there was literally no attempt from you to have a discussion that was a genuine offer from me, I was not out to get you actually. I also honestly just laughed at being called shallow, JUST LIKE THAT HORRIBLE CHARACTER TSUMUGI SHIROGANE right off the bat as well. That’s a compliment really, honey. Weirdly I don’t share the same opinions as you do. Tsumugi is my fave and unlike you I actually think about and HAVE analyzed/discussed her character in detail previously, which I would’ve been happy to share had you not immediately went into Blind Raging Idiot Mode. Guess we can’t have it all, huh?

As for needing proof that she makes the Flashback Lights... nevermind the CG that literally shows her making them during Chapter 6, but do you have proof that Monokuma is the person who makes the Lights instead of just placing them for the students? I doubt it, somehow. Cuz a lot of your theories don’t actually have any concrete proof. Quelle surprise. Probably why anyone not immediately on board with your headcanon gets you so goddamn angry, huh? Cuz it’s completely baseless and you know it at heart.

As for the Ouma comments, actually I have read the assorted creator comments regarding his character even if you like to believe I’m a slobbering moron who turned my brain off as soon as I finished V3, so yes I already know that his name was chosen to sound mastermind-like. Maybe this was to emphasize and make his fake mastermind reveal appear more legit on first read? JUST A THOUGHT, SWEETIE. You know the entire fucking point of Chapter 5? You’re so slavishly devoted to your theory that you actually are incapable of reading the basic fucking text from the actual game, but again. Not a surprise. Considering what I’ve read from your blog (really, who are you again? I only knew Jacks’ blog from before all this, so you taking such a personal offense at my comments is honestly hilarious but baffling at the same time. It ain’t all about you, babe.)

As for the lab door, here’s an simpler explanation (Occam’s Razor, look it up): The star sign constellation pattern was there as a hint for the player to connect Ouma’s messages from his dorm room to the vault in Amami’s lab once its opened and you can see the star signs in there. Or perhaps it was designed like that by TDR to make the students make that connection as well in the original script and think that Ouma was the mastermind cuz of the connection to Amami’s lab? Literally, there are a lot of possibilities, cuz it’s a NOTHING DETAIL THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER IN THE BIG PICTURE. Considering Kodaka’s track record with writing these games I don’t actually believe it’s anything major, personally. He doesn’t really strike me as the type to hide this completely separate story underneath the actual story we got, and with such vague nothing “”””””””””””clues””””””””””””. You and Jacks do yourselves (well you already do cuz you love to jack yourselves off with how CLEVER AND BETTER you are than the rest of us plebs), sure, in believing otherwise (You have way too much faith in him as a writer. Or you’re desperately trying to pretend V3 wasn’t poorly written cuz you don’t like the Ch. 6 twist) but also realize that its nothing more than extrapolation on your part that it actually means anything beyond the.... SHALLOW (horror scream) connection given in-game.

And really, who the fuck cares if it doesn’t match the title of ‘Supreme Leader’? It’s already a ridiculous talent as it stands already. The entire point of his character is that everything about him, his motives and his talent is contradictory and weird. That’s why I like him, actually. He isn’t an abused martyr who never lies like you goons believe and he also isn’t the evil monstrous chessmaster some of the fandom thinks. It’s Complex Motives™ .

Anyways moving on. Pointing out an anime reference =/= DISREGARDING PEOPLE’S ANALYSIS. Pointing out that most of the plot leads up to and supports the fiction twist =/= uncritically agreeing with everything Tsumugi says. Actually, after examining the game’s story for myself I came to the conclusion that all the clues in it really only support her version of the story, really. There are a few things I think she lied about, but it is not CONCLUSIVELY proven she lied in my opinion and so I don’t really give a fucking toss until new canon comes out and reveals more of the V3 story. Oumatwin don’t real, gurl. If there was actually anything in-game beyond one obvious joke line in the NON-CANON!!!!!!! bonus mode supporting that he existed, maybe I’d respect your theory more. Even though you don’t deserve respect after your little tantrum. 

Paragraph 2: Jesus I already am investing way too much time into this response at people who don’t actually deserve it, oh well. But laughing hard at the attempt to try and act as if you weren’t being a snobby asshole with your comments. Again, HUGE AMOUNTS OF PROJECTION at me about things I literally have never done and said. I have never interacted with you or Jacks prior to my initial comment. No fucking clue why you brought up the SaiOuma shit, cuz I don’t even LIKE Saihara as a character and don’t like that fujobait ship in the slightest? But I guess it’s easier to assume that all your critics are the exact same fucking person with the same opinions, so you can feel more persecuted, huh? You literally did not even wait for me to respond or check my blog that would’ve easily disproven these dumb-as-fuck assumptions. And get off the fucking high horse (pun completely intended), you lot are not the only people in this fandom who are capable of critical thought. How completely self-obsessed can you be? 

For someone who claims to have a lot of critical thinking skills compared to this nasty fandom, you really are terrible at parsing other people’s words. You fucking know when I said “group of anime fans” that I was referring to Team Danganronpa, the organization literally mentioned in game as running the game. The group Tsumugi is part of. She literally has a company badge FFS. THEY ARE ANIME FANS. THEY ALL STARTED KILLING GAMES CUZ THEY ALL LOVE THIS SHITTY SERIES. I can’t believe this had to be explained. And the rest of this paragraph word salad is the most pedantic argument. It’s really not hard to believe an organization in this series would have access to all this tech. And yes, it’s a popular TV show in-universe, of course it’ll have funding. And the whole damn point of the ending is that the V3 world is consuming fiction the wrong way by having real-life killing games, missing the entire point of the DR series and fiction in general? What’s your actual point?

Paragraph 3: Again more assumptions, I wasn’t ‘crying’ about being called gullible. I was just pointing it out as part of your extremely unnecessary smug dismissal of my post. That you really haven’t disproved at all, btw. Honestly the childish response you both had to me just makes me laugh out of pity more than anything. And if I was really upset I wouldn’t have offered to have a discussion with you or even continued to reply after Jacks initial (vague) post about what I said. So don’t put words in my mouth. And yes my analysis was not completed in my initial comments. It’s Tumblr fucking replies, I can’t fit the entire fucking dissertation of Tsumugi opinions in there for you to jeer at in there. Again, I offered to share my opinions and got this as a response, so lol. You are your own worst enemy when it comes to trying to get people to take you and your theories seriously. 

Paragraph 4: Especially since you immediately jump to PULLING THINGS OUT OF YOUR ASS (seriously, fucking snorted at this part. I want this whole diatribe on my fucking gravestone. It’s by far the most hilariously petty thing ever said about me on this site.) instead of letting me explain my position. If you just want to be in the creepy cult Oumatwin echo chamber you should’ve just said and blocked me ASAP instead of word salading vague bullshit justifications for why actually people who disagree with you are just stupid crybabies who can never hope to understand your genius. Again, my initial comments didn’t whine about not being taken seriously at all, I was pointing out the hypocrisy/rudeness is all. And again, get off the high horse about critical thinking. I have thought about Tsumugi’s character and how she relates to the over-arching plot and how truthful it is, and the overall ‘mystery’ of V3 (spoiler: there is none. it was all solved by chapter 6). I have thought about this game. In fact I dedicate too much time to critical analysis of this series that doesn’t actually deserve it cuz lately I find Kodaka to be a hack writer. Your assumptions are flat-out wrong, dear. And AGAIN. I WOULD’VE. SHARED AND DISCUSSED IN MORE DETAIL HAD I BEEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY. But rude fucks gonna vomit shit out of their mouth cuz they have literally no self-control and have meltdowns at the slightest difference of opinion, I guess. 

Your extreme hatred for Tsumugi as a character truly shines through. Clearly no thought has been put into her from your end, even though you and Jacks rage about people not taking Ouma seriously as a character. Double standards as always with fujos. Nothing I’m not used too, she is incredibly unpopular in this fandom. And everyone is entitled to their own opinions. So I’m not even mad at that. I have never said otherwise. Even you and Jacks are valid in having your own theories and thoughts. The ending of V3 is designed entirely so everyone can analyze the game for themselves and draw their own conclusions about the story and themes. That’s the whole point. Even though I personally dislike that as a writing decision on Kodaka’s part because I would prefer the story to be conclusively ended and the epilogue is a giant turd that misses the entire point of Chapter 6 and enables shit (anal pun intended, dumbass) like this to start spreading as “Analysis”. But hey, to each their own.

However I will not be interacting with either of you again after this post though, even though I was willing to discuss beforehand, because you both have shown yourselves to be incredibly vile with the way you approach other people in this fandom, and especially those who don’t share your conspiracy theory. Despite the absolutely ironic comments I’ve seen from Oumanous in their later, also terrible posts about how you need to understand your opponent before engaging, which they literally failed entirely to do before engaging the firing squad at me and other commentators who responded. So much for the sanctity of discussion, huh? Enjoy your circlejerk. Everyone else who follows me in this fandom though? Please consider blocking these two if you are also a sane human being who is capable of polite discussion/disagreements. They are not worth your time otherwise. They were really not worth my time writing this post, but I felt I had to say something.

In conclusion: Out with the both of you.