#also people can ship what they want regardless but it's still infuriating that people act like ace people can't or don't have sex

[keekeenuggets]

People act like shipping Alastor with anyone is a crime when like. There are literally aroace people who date/have relationships/have sex/etc. It may not be the majority, but there's nothing wrong with it. So like, people can ship what they want, just chill lmfao

[dlartistanon]

I wanted to ask because I find you have really good takes on arknights ships most of the time so I’m genuinely curious what the deal with PlatiNearl is. I don’t remember them interacting much in the Kazimierz events and I assume the ship is popular because they were some of the only kazimierz operators from when Arknights started. You don’t have answer if you don’t want to of course, but I want to know what it is about the ship that you like if you wouldn’t mind explaining

Huh. I don't believe I've talked about ships that much, but I was originally baited by the Near Light 3D PV. They played up a sort of rivalry or climactic showdown between Ideal Knight and Knight-Assassin... only for them to never exchange a single word in any event. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Though it wouldn't be the first time. Also NLPT isn't really popular at all, at least in EN.

Regardless, it did get me thinking about the potential. Even if they don't say anything to each other directly, Platinum does have a voice line about Nearl, and her operator record has Nearl show up in her dream. Also Plat's whole deal is that she's assigned by the Armorless Union to keep an eye on Nearl.

On the surface it's knight and knight-killer, positions that are fundamentally opposed and can never truly meet on the horizon as the KGCC has a hold on both. One is stuck in darkness, the other in light. Nearl (at first) wears mostly black, Platinum is all white. Nearl is pretty old-fashioned, Plat is a bit of a fashionable girl. Nearl is serious and disciplined, Plat is casual and wants to coast by on life. Nearl has a hidden dorky side to her personality while Plat, despite her lackadaisical nature, enjoys simple frivolous pleasures. They're pretty clear opposites.

It's no secret that Platinum hates knights. According to her, they’re either muscle-headed jocks or self-obsessed assholes (and she knows what she’s talking about; she was one of them) What pisses Plat off the most about Nearl is that Nearl is neither. Nearl is what a knight SHOULD be and Platinum is just astounded that after all these years, after all this time, she’s acting like being a knight actually means something. It pisses her off so much because why? To run the risk of being left behind by stubbornly clinging to what some might call outdated ideals... deep down, I think she can’t help but admire Nearl too. There's something admirable about believing in the romanticism of true knights in a world so determined to quash you under its boots. For all she knows, the world has moved on from knights, but Nearl disagrees. There's value in keeping the ideal alive in a world that seemingly dismissed it but is also in desparate need of it. Nearl is not the artificial lights of Kazimierz that Plat is used to, but actual light.

I also want to say that Plat resents Nearl because Nearl had the chance to escape Kazimierz, but came back instead. Plat wants nothing more than to be free from her current life. So to see Nearl willingly return to the place that made her life hell? It’s infuriating. How can she think this rotten country can be fixed, when Platinum herself can't see any light at the end of the tunnel? They're both victims, but how is it that their outlooks are so different?

Pictured: Juxtaposing the symbolism of Nearl standing alone but bathed in light, who's still adored by many, while Platinum stands in shadow, surrounded by others but in reality she has no one and has to fend for herself in a cutthroat organization she hates. Their respective loneliness and isolation...

The events reveal that Platinum is quite compassionate. She didn't become an assassin to kill people; rather, she was coerced into it by someone taking advantage of her emotions. Yes, her job is to monitor Nearl, but she doesn't want to hurt her. She sees that Nearl has been away from her family and just wants her to be with them, likely projecting her own feelings of being estranged from her own parents.

This is more going into extrapolation of their characters and circumstances, but yes, Platinum kidnapped and threatened Maria to use as leverage but I have to wonder if Nearl would actually hold that against her should she learn about Plat having been manipulated into a job she desperately wants to leave. Also I think just based on Nearl’s voice lines about not pursuing enemies and giving them another chance to change their life trajectory, she’d feel sympathetic for Plat’s situation if she ever learned that she was tricked into it and couldn’t easily leave.

I just really like the idea of a slow-burn where Nearl herself is actually against Plat at first because of said kidnapping but eventually learns about her situation and how Plat is trapped and miserable. Her distrust and wariness turns to pity and then gradually concern. Nearl’s strong desire to help people compels her to try and find a way if she can help the girl she has mixed feelings about. In Plat's op rec, Nearl's appearance implies that both of them can never truly escape the shadow of the KGCC. If they come calling, Plat will eventually have to answer. Nearl still has to watch her words and actions now that she's back in Kazimierz, otherwise her friends get targeted.

Compare and contrast Nearl the ideal knight who stuck by her morals versus Platinum who just did what she was told under threat of retribution and how they both ended up getting screwed over by the system anyway, the unwinnable Kazimierz competition scene. Alternately, an assassin falling for their mark? That's the stuff of novels. Something that actually happened to Platinum's predecessor, and for her to follow in his footsteps?

NLPT slow-burn because both of them aren’t sure how to feel about the other. Plat avoiding her, it’d be so easy to blame all her problems on Nearl; if she didn’t exist, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. and Nearl always second-guessing Plat’s intentions... I have a scene in my head that’s basically like: too much of their dynamic is rooted in the place that changed their lives for the worse. But at Rhodes Island, they are not assassin nor knight, but comrades. And as her comrade, Nearl will die for Platinum, if need be. She was willing to die for Firewatch too, despite Firewatch also claiming to despise knights.

[highfaelucien]

I completely agree with how you feel towards azriel. Thinking about azriel’s character now vs how I used to view him during acomaf times is just... sad and so so so much more complex. Part of me still wants to love him for the character that was presented to us in acomaf and other small good moments, like his friendship with nesta. And then the other part of me is disgusted, disappointed, and honestly kind of terrified of who he may become if sjm allows him to continue acting predatorily/toxic. The whole mor/az situation really fucked me up. As someone who is also a lesbian and an abuse survivor, it broke my heart to watch the situation unfold in acowar. It still hurts seeing many readers (and sometimes even sjm) take az’s side and paint mor as some sort of liar/two faced character that is playing everyone. I kept thinking that things would be fixed in future books, but instead az has grown worse and mor was, once again, sidelined and written out as a character. And honestly... as much as I love the idea of gwyn x azriel ... I think his books would need a lot more focus on his own recovery/growth and not center on a romantic relationship. If anything, I hope it’s written as friends to lovers so az has a better way of interacting and forming relationships with women. Because right now... well, that shit is borderline predatory and isn’t coming across well. And I really really do not want that for him. Basically, azriel deserves a better arc than what has been written for him. I miss him :( he used to be a character that made me feel safe and now :/ idk anymore

I'm going to quote parts of this/chop it up and reply to them a chunk at a time. because there's a lot going on here and I want to try and reply to as much as I can because I resonate with.....all of it. Please forgive me for the length of this.

I completely agree with how you feel towards azriel. Thinking about azriel’s character now vs how I used to view him during acomaf times is just... sad and so so so much more complex.

He feels like a different character? There was always an anger simmering under the calm surface, we knew that. But it was an anger born of love, deep down, and the desire to protect his family, and his court, at the expense of himself. Az was always the first to volunteer himself for dangerous missions, to spare the others.

Now that anger is directed at his family, and at the world, for not giving him what he feels he 'deserves'. That has NEVER been Azriel. Azriel's deepest issues and insecurities have always stemmed from the feeling of being unworthy, and undeserving of anything.

She's just made him into......Every other dude in this series tbh. Snarling, and possessive, and wanting to fuck anything in a skirt that moves.

Azriel was actually somewhat of an original, complex character initially. It's unusual that we see trauma affect men in the way it did Az. Usually it makes them angry, and vengeful, and eager to prove they are the alpha etc. Seeing them withdraw, and think less of themselves/that they're unworthy is something not explored often enough. But bye bye nuance hello #Drama.

Part of me still wants to love him for the character that was presented to us in acomaf and other small good moments, like his friendship with nesta.

I feel this. I found a lot of comfort in Az's character. Particularly the way he reacted with Mor. I was a big fan of their relationship, and I wrote a few 'missing scenes' style fics in the gap between ACOMAF and ACOWAR. One of them was where Az went to her when she had pushed everyone else away, including Cassian, and comforted and calmed her.

I hate that Maas took that away from Mor. I hate that Az no longer does that for her. I hate that Az was the one to betray her along with Rhys and bring her abuser into her safe space behind her back. I hate that he is no longer a symbol of calm, stable, dependable comfort and support for Mor, but is instead a threat. I HATE it.

Every now and then Az has lovely, gentle moments - his friendship with Nesta is a good example, and something I hoped we'd see. But also quieter times with Rhys, and their similarities being explored. And I adored the flying lessons with Feyre in ACOWAR, and the training he did with Cassian and the others in ACOFS.

But then she goes and twists him and does something else that just makes me want to fucking scream. Like the High Lord scene where he 'frightened' Mor. And his entire POV chapter which is frankly fucking gross.

And then the other part of me is disgusted, disappointed, and honestly kind of terrified of who he may become if sjm allows him to continue acting predatorily/toxic.

I agree.

I don't know how she can write a series that explores the effects of emotional abuse so well with Feyre and Tamlin...And then write what she did with Az?

The possession to a traumatised, still impressionable and desperate young woman, who likely finds the same comfort and safety in him that Mor did. Before that got shot to fucking pieces.

He sounds like a whiny toddler 'Cassian has a mate, and Rhys has a mate, where is mine!?!?!?!?' I DESERVE Elain, because I'm your brother and you guys have her sisters and what the FUCK. Who let that shit get published holy mother of god.

It's just...It's so unhealthy? Like, not even talking ship wars here (which I'm aware are rampant, and which I'm trying my best to stay away from). But that just.

How can that ever be a healthy foundation for a relationship? A man who thinks that he deserves, not only to be in a relationship with her, but to be bonded to her. Not because of HER, not because of who she is, or how she makes him feel. No. Purely because her sisters are mated to his brothers?

The whole thing made me feel so uncomfortable. It's predatory and toxic, just as you said. It's not right, it's not fair. Forget alliances and Lucien, even if none of that was a factor, that sort of thinking is still not right. And it's completely unfair to Elain.

But it also just. It didn't read like Azriel. The first part, where he struggles to sleep, and pushes himself until he passes out, and the insight that his shadows are basically hovering beside him screaming SELF CARE YOU DUMB BITCH at all times was very pleasing.

And the part where he goes to Clotho and leaves an anonymous gift for Gwyn. No fanfair. No audience. No pressure on either of them to react/perform. That felt like Az, too.

But everything in the middle. Everything with Elain, was just...Gross and out of character. And this is not because I dislike E/riel as a ship. I could get on board with it, tbh, if it wasn't written the way it was.

But it's not about ships, for me. It's just. Everything felt out of character. The predatory way he was with her. The fact he lies awake and gets himself off to fantasies of her. How apparently quickly he was aroused by putting a necklace on her. Idk, maybe it's my ace ignorance, but that doesn't sound normal/healthy to me.

Nor does him having to leave a room because he can scent her mating bond with Lucien. Or not being able to control himself to sit and eat dinner with her?

This is the same dude who has, apparently, been in love with Mor for 500 solid years, and who never did a damned thing about it. Who always kept himself in check. Even while she's had other lovers. But he can't control himself through one dinner with Elain?

It just. It doesn't feel like him. It feels like...Honestly not even Cassian. It feels like Tamlin on horny, predatory steroids. And that's not something I ever wanted to see from Azriel's POVs.

She could have explored a darker side to him without making it sexual? And misogynistic. And having him treating Elain as little more than a fucking object that he feels entitled to because 'everyone else got one, where's mine?'. What the FUCK???

The more I write it the more angry I get.

Because SJM has consistently put Az in the position of saving women when they were in danger? He was the one who found Mor near death at Autumn. He was the one who rescued Gwyn from her attackers during the war. He was the one to retrieve Elain when she was taken.

She always puts him in this position and, for better or worse, presents him as a safety figure for these women. The first person who they saw come for them, and fight for them, and protect them.

And on the inside she makes him this vile, predatory monster who just thinks constantly about fucking them? Who isn't actually safe at all?? It's sad. And it's infuriating. Because this isn't about ships anymore. This is about female survivors who have an apparent safe person who's presented as almost as dangerous as the people who attacked them in the first place. And that makes me feel so sick and sad that we've gotten here.

It still hurts seeing many readers (and sometimes even sjm) take az’s side and paint mor as some sort of liar/two faced character that is playing everyone. I kept thinking that things would be fixed in future books, but instead az has grown worse and mor was, once again, sidelined and written out as a character.

This is yet another vile thing SJM has done to queer readers with this whole fiasco. Because it puts me in a position where I want to call out her shitty writing, and what she's done to Mor - sidelining her as soon as she became queer. Undermining her power and her strength. Undermining her role as the survivor to look up to. Saying her power is truth but then making her seem like a liar. Which is all shitty, shitty, shitting writing.

But I'm also a queer person. And I will always always ALWAYS want to defend a queer person's right to remain closeted. Regardless of their reasons for doing so. But in this case it's a concern for their safety/a fear of how those around them will react. And I will NEVER condemn that. I will never say Az is suffering more than Mor for her being closeted. I will never call Mor a liar/a manipulator/two-faced when all she's doing is trying to survive.

I WILL condemn SJM for making this a scenario. For putting homophobia in her world purely to cause pain for queer characters, and drama for her straight ones. And for sidelining Mor as soon as she can't write graphic scenes with her fucking men because now she's a lesbian so we best get her off the page so the guys can get their cocks out some more.

And honestly... as much as I love the idea of gwyn x azriel ... I think his books would need a lot more focus on his own recovery/growth and not center on a romantic relationship. If anything, I hope it’s written as friends to lovers so az has a better way of interacting and forming relationships with women. Because right now... well, that shit is borderline predatory and isn’t coming across well. And I really really do not want that for him.

This is going to sound sarcastic but I actually mean it fully and completely genuinely: 95% of the drama inducing problems in this series could be fixed with some fucking therapy.

But I agree with you. I think it's high time Azriel worked on his own issues. Even if they've apparently made a complete 180 from what they were in ACOMAF.

I...Like the concept of Gwyn/Azriel, but I'm not sold on the ship. Not with the way Maas has been writing Azriel lately. That kind of man shouldn't be with any woman right now. But especially not a rape survivor who sees him as one of the first men she's been able to trust in a long time.

Basically, azriel deserves a better arc than what has been written for him. I miss him :( he used to be a character that made me feel safe and now :/ idk anymore

"he used to be a character that made me feel safe" - This shit hit me like a tonne of bricks because this is EXACTLY how I feel about Az, too. You just managed to say it in a few words instead of 12 pages of rambling, like I do.

And I think this was intention. Azriel was presented as a very dependable character. He rescued Mor, and was respectful enough to keep his distance, despite his feelings, for 500 fucking years. Because he didn't think she was ready/interested.

He had a very calm, and calming air about him. Always in control of himself. Without the expected bursts of aggression and temper we'd seen from...Every other male character in this series. He was stable, and solid, and that was comforting. An anchor. And someone who would quietly, and without fuss, seek out Mor/others when they needed someone to talk to or comfort him.

That was a very soothing, reassuring presence in the book, I felt. And now she's made him seem...volatile, and unstable. With this dangerous anger that he can't control, that he uses not to protect, but to intimidate, and to fuel his entitlement and desires.

it's just sad. It's sad that she's taken this away from Mor, but also from other survivors who found comfort and safety in Az. Because I'm sure we weren't alone in that regard.

I miss him. And I mourn the character he was, and feel anger for the character he should have been. but instead he's become yet another possessive, entitled, snarling cardboard cutout dude like...everyone else.

And I ache for the Az/Mor dynamic that we had in ACOMAF. Even without it becoming romantic, there was no reason for that to be destroyed/ruined.

She could have written it that Az is the only one who knows about her sexuality, and that he pretends he's still in love with her as a shield/buffer, so no one looks too closely/to protect her and make her feel comfortable.

Instead she turned it into a soap opera style drama. And wrote it almost as though her sexuality was her cheating on him? Denying him what he deserved. And now she's just...just pussyfooting around it. And apparently he's just. Just moved on. Without them having any kind of conversation or closure at all. He just wanks off to the thought of Elain instead of Mor, now, problem solved /s

I miss what they were. I miss what he was to Mor. I miss when she had that support system, and that safety net. I miss when he protected her. And looked out for her. And understood her in a way that no one else, not even Rhys, did.

Mor deserved that. Azriel deserved that. WE deserved that. And she nuked it for some fucking twisted drama that punishes a lesbian because a man is thirsting after her. it's a fucking disgrace. I'm so fucking done with SJM, y'all. So fucking done.

[gaybarbiegirl]

Your top 5 least favourite shops from violetta and Soy Luna (preferably 5 from each) and why

Uuuu okay!

Violetta:

5 - Violetta/Clemont and Leon/Gery

I'm grouping these two together because I dislike them for the same reason, and that is that these ships were totally based on lies and spite. Clemont and Gery just wanted to separate León and Violetta for their own benefit, without really caring about how this would affect them, and that's something I can't get behind.

4 - Broduey/Cami

I just hate relationships that are pretty much defined by jealousy and fighting. Like, it's not that a relationship can't have its issues, but when it has nothing but issues, it gets tiring. It's not cute, it's not funny, you guys should just break up.

3 - Felipe/Naty or Ludmila

Felipe was a slimeball, and the way he treated Ludmila (and also Naty to a lesser extent) was gross. And the fact that he got away with it all is really frustrating. Like, he'd go around purposefully putting Ludmila and Naty in very unconfortable situations that they didn't wanna be in, but then afterwards he'd act all nice, so everyone (except for Ludmila) assumed that he either wasn't doing anything wrong, or, if he was, it wasn't on purpose. Disgusting, stay away from both of them, they deserve better.

2 - Tomás/Anyone

Tomás/Violetta? Terrible, he was whiny, pushy, insensitive, and treated her very badly. Tomás/Ludmila? Awful, he was clearly just using her to get back at Violetta for not dating him. Tomás/Fran? Trash, he spent the whole season treating her weirdly because of her crush on him, only to turn to her once he ran out of options and had no one else he could use to spite Violetta. I honestly think Tomás needs to step away from the dating world for a good couple of years until he learns how to handle it maturely.

1 - German/Angie

There's so much wrong with this relationship I don't even know where to begin. The two of them are in laws, they have a huge age gap (I think, time is very flimsy on this show), and German was Angie's boss for a good chunk of the series. Also, German took Violetta away from Angie right after her sister died, giving her even more grief to deal with. He lied to her multiple times and hurt her so badly she moved to a different country just to stay away from him. And he strung her along for three whole seasons even though he was always in a relationship, essentially toying with her feelings. The fact that they ended up together after all of this still baffles me. Terrible, worst ship in this show by far.

Soy Luna:

5 - Ana/Gary

This is one of these ships that are as bad in concept as they are in execution. Like, I don't know who thought that getting Nina's mom and Gary Lopez together was an idea that made sense, but I wonder to this day how comes nobody shut them down. And the relationship itself was trash, which is unsurprising given the type of person Gary is. But hey, at least they didn't end up together, and now Ana is free to go back to her wife, Mora, and live with her in Paris.

4 - Sharon/Rey

No ❤

3 - Nina/Eric

I honestly think creating this ship (and Eric's whole character) was one of the worst writing decisions in the show. Gastina was a really good ship, and they had a very sweet and healthy relationship, really one of the best relationship examples in the show. Also, this was a ship with two whole seasons of history and emotional investment from the audience. Throwing this all away for pretty much nothing was such a bad decision, especially when it would have been so easy to make the long distance thing work out, even with limited appearances from Gastón.

And as for Nina and Eric, their relationship itself isn't the worst I've ever seen, but it's nothing compared to what Nina and Gastón had. No wonder there's pretty much a consensus in the fandom that Nina and Gastón get back together after the end of the show.

2 - Simón/Daniela

I don't think I have to explain too much when it comes to this one. Daniela was a horribly manipulative person, who tried to sabotage Simón's career and separate him from the people who made him happy so he'd only have her to rely on. It was awful. I feel like the words emotional abuse, manipulation, and gaslighting are often misused on the internet, especially when talking about shipping, but that's honestly what this relationship comes down to. Just terrible, I'm so glad this only lasted a few episodes.

1 - Benicio/Ámbar

Surprising no one, Benicio/Ámbar gets the first place. This ship is so awful it's even a bit hard to talk about. First of all, we have the constant harassment that took place before they were dating, with unwanted advances/physical contact, plus Benicio purposefully putting Ámbar in very unconfortable situations. Then we have the issue of Benicio essentially forcing Ámbar into a relationship by wearing her down with said constant harassment, and also ignoring her when she said she didn't wanna be his girlfriend and deciding they were dating regardless. And that's not even mentioning the array of issues that happened before and during their relationship, like the extreme possessiveness, Benicio treating Ámbar like property, Benicio's total disregard for boundaries, etc. Oh, and there's also the grossly manipulative stuff that Benicio said to Ámbar while they were dating to prevent her from breaking up with him (one example that comes to mind is him telling her that no matter how much she tries to change, she'll always be a bad person inside, so she should just stay with him instead of going after Simón), and the fact that he put her through even more harassment after she broke up with him, including threats and actual assault. It was all terrible and honestly difficult to watch at points, and all I can say is I'm so glad this whole ordeal is over.

Aaaand I'm done. This got a little heavy towards the end, but still, thank you so much for the ask! It was a lot of fun (if a bit infuriating) to think about all of these. Thanks again!

[insertdeeplyrics]

On the ending of Supernatural

Hi, I’ve never actually posted anything on Tumblr of my own creation (I mostly reblog stuff), but I’ve just seen the ending of Supernatural, and given that this is where I’ve been fed my SPN content, it felt right to share my thoughts here. I’m sure nobody is going to read this, but whatever, I just need to get this out of my chest. Sorry in advance if this is too long, but I have to type this out if I want to move on.

I still need to take some time to process everything that’s happened, because it is a lot. I did have my hopes up for the finale, thinking that Cas would at least show up, but like many of the fans, I was let down.

So I guess that would be the first issue I had with the episode. Regardless of what Dean felt towards Cas, if he reciprocated his feelings or not (which he totally did, I mean, we have all been watching the same show for 12 fucking years, and if you don’t believe me, there are plenty of metas that would support this statement), he still is his best friend and it doesn’t sit right with me the fact that he doesn’t even try to find a way to rescue Cas from the Empty. And okay, maybe he didn’t, make Cas got resurrected by Jack, then why the hell wasn’t he on the final episode? He was a pivotal character for the series, I mean, the proof is in the ratings: Season 7, when he was killed off to apparently never return, the ratings were at their lowest. The show may have started as just Dean and Sam, but over the years it became much bigger than them, and it is so disappointing that the show runners failed to acknowledge it. But I’ll get back to this point later.

Okay, I need to talk about Dean’s death, the only part of the episode that made me cry, because my poor baby had to suffer so much! Like, when he started saying that Sam never put up with John’s crap (which reinforces my headcanon that John was abusive towards the boys) and how much he admired him for it, my heart just shattered. I just love Dean Winchester so freaking much, and they did him so dirty... Don’t get me wrong, Jensen and Jared’s acting was 10/10, like, I thought I had a grip of myself and then Sam started crying and tears came back to my eyes. Nonetheless, I felt that the scene was so freaking long! I mean, Dean was dying, and he had time to make a 10 minutes-long speech! C’mon! Also, I get that Sam and Dean’s relationship is quite deep and strong and whatever, but I felt a bit unconformable watching it: it didn’t feel like a brotherly goodbye, more like a lover’s one. They were too touchy and intimate, and, overall, their relationship from this point on was coded as a romantic one, in my opinion. And Chuck, did I hate it! I have an older brother and I know what it is like to be close to your sibling and to love him more than anything else in the world, but the way they portrayed their relationship on this last episode felt incest-y, which makes me believe that this scene was originally written with another character in mind (cough CAS cough) or the writers don’t know the difference between romantic and brotherly love. To finish off, the way they killed off Dean??? I mean, I did expect Dean to die, but this was such a horrible and ridiculous way to go... I would have accepted it if he died actually fighting, but impaled??? After all he’s been through, after fighting so many demons, angels and deities, that’s how he dies??? That just felt cheap and rushed. Dean did not deserve that ending and I refuse to accept it. In fact, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of this whole fucking mess of an episode. Also, I just can’t believe that no one showed up to Dean’s funeral. I just can’t. I get that maybe it was difficult to bring in a lot of actors due to the pandemic, but they could have added them on post-production...

Next, we have Sam’s ending. He quits hunting and finally obtains his white-picket fence life. I did like the fact that he honored all of his friends and family that he lost along the way, especially Dean. Like, yes, if my brother died, I would like to keep a token (don’t know if that’s the actual word for it, my first language is not English), to have something with me that reminded me of him and to have him with me wherever I go. And I did like that he named his son Dean, in honor of his brother. However, we don’t know how he met his wife, we don’t even know who she is. They set up Sameileen for what?? Like, Sam and Eileen deserved better, tbh. And, again, even with Covid restrictions they could have done something to signal that Sam got married to Eileen, you don’t need the actor there. In fact, we never actually found out what happened to her, and just like I can’t believe that Dean didn’t even try to save Cas from the Empty, I can’t believe that Sam didn’t reach out to Eileen. Furthermore, the montage with his son felt cheap and a way to try to appeal to the audience’s emotions... (Btw, as a side note, the grey wig and the glasses, my god, they did Jared dirty 😂😂). But it wasn’t doing it for me, I didn’t care much for the kid, and while I do believe that was always going to be Sam’s ending, I didn’t like how it was executed.

And the worst part of it all: that suuuuuper long scene with Dean driving in Heaven, waiting for Sam. They could have used that time to show something more meaningful, even to develop a bit more Sam’s new life, how he adjusted to domesticity and fatherhood and all that crap. Or, I don’t know, A TEAM FREE WILL 2.0 REUNION??? And I guess this is my biggest issue with the whole episode. I get it, Sam and Dean are the central characters, the ones that started it all, but family don’t end with blood, and they were not the only ones who deserved a goodbye. They had formed so many bonds and friendships over the years, and to not have them address them on the final episode just feels infuriating. Especially Cas. His arc was not finished, he deserved to be on the finale. We never got Dean’s reaction to his confession, we don’t know how he felt about him, nor did Cas get to say goodbye to any other character. How did he get out of the Empty? What is he doing now? Is he still an angel? Also, he gave his life to save Dean, only for Dean to be killed not long after. My headcanon that is helping me cope with Dean’s death is thinking that he was so quick to accept his death because he was hoping to reunite in Heaven with Castiel. A girl can dream, ok??? But also, what about Jack? He is the new God, but I highly doubt it that he won’t drop by the Bunker from time to time, after all, Sam and Dean (AND CAS, ESPECIALLY CAS) raised him. And Charlie? Did she get back with Stevie? Did she and the boys go for drinks from time to time? And Jody? Donna? Claire? Sorry to be so repetitive, but I just can’t understand why the writers thought that these characters weren’t important enough to deserve a spot on the finale, and not just an off-hand mention (and not even all of them got that). Of course, the brothers are the main characters and their goodbye must be the longest and the most emotional of them all, but like I said before, the show stopped being just about the Winchesters on season 3, when Bobby was first introduced, maybe even 4, with Cas.

Overall, the finale left a lot of questions unanswered, most of them regarding secondary characters (but not less important for that!), completely destroyed Sam and Dean’s character development (Dean never got to be free, like he had been fighting for all season, probably all his life; Sam’s development is non-existing, as he ended up as he would’ve if he never had gotten on that hunting trip with Dean 15 years ago), and completely disregarded all the themes they had been setting up this season, probably on previous ones as well. It is sad knowing that the writers, either don’t know the show good enough to give it a proper goodbye, or they just didn’t care to do so. I don’t know who’s to blame here (definitely not the actors, though, probably someone higher up the chain), but I just know that I am so fucking disappointed. I expected more from the last episode of a 15-season TV show, one that has been part of my life for 7 years. I guess, that despite all of it, I can’t hate Supernatural. Maybe I was not a hardcore fan like some people on this site, but I did care for the characters and what happened to them. This is the show that introduced me to the world of shipping (Destiel will always hold a special place in my heart, it doesn’t matter how badly their relationship was treated, as well as the characters) and I got to discover one of my favorite characters, Dean Winchester. He is just such so complex, one that I relate to on so many levels, and his relationship with Cas has been the source of many short stories that I’ve never posted anywhere, but that have made me take up writing again. That’s the reason why I love the show so much, it has helped me tap into my creativeness and go back to writing, a passion of mine that I seem to have forgotten over the years. Anyways, maybe one day I’ll publish some of those stories, and maybe even write my own fix-it fanfic, but right now, I can’t deal with anything that has to do with the show, I am too hurt. Maybe once the five stages of grief are over, I might give it a try and read all of the amazing codas and fanfics that I’m sure will be posted here or on AO3. But for now, Supernatural is dead and gone, and I don’t want to talk nor think about it anymore. I’m done wasting my time here, because I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing this past 7 years after watching this crap of a finale.

To finish this long rant off, I just want to say thank you to some meta-writers, the true heroes of the fandom. Thanks to them, I carried on watching the show, because they made me have hope that things will get better. They are the ones that have made this experience worth something, and even though I’ve never spoken to any of them, I see you and I love you. Thanks for everything ❤. 

@tinkdw @charlie-minion @dotthings @heliodean @verobatto-angelxhunter @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover

[sonicringnoise]

Have a Jak 3 rant

Okay, I need to talk about Jak 3 and just...how absolutely janky the plot is. 

This rant is extremely long, so I put it under the cut.

First of all, I just want to point out, I love this game. I love it so much, and it’s my favorite out of the trilogy. But it just...it could have been so much better, guh.

And I know that development of this game was rushed (hell, it only came out a year after Jak 2), but I’m still going to rant about it!

It starts out just fine, with the Wasteland and Spargus and the arena, but it gets so weird as it goes on. Just...really disjointed.

We never really find out why Jak keeps going after eco crystals. Seriously, he gets a dark eco crystal from the Dark Maker at the beginning of the game, a light eco crystal from Seem, and just...starts collecting them, for some reason? Like, was he going to make a necklace? Start a rock collection? It’s never explained.

But whatever, it turns out those are needed later in the game to save the world. Fine.

After some Spargus-y missions, we then go...to the Monk Temple. You know, the temple. That’s never been mentioned before, and we didn’t even know existed, but we just went up there to explore and stuff and...

Like, how hard would it have been to have a line where Seem says, “We monks live far to the north, in a temple in the mountains.”

Then we’d at least have a reason to go there. But no, instead we just show up there and start poking around. 

This is one of my biggest issues with the game. In Jak 2, there are cutscenes that set up these missions, or even communications in gameplay that tell us where to go. In Jak 3, there’s just...a lot of that missing.

But, fine. Whatever, Jak has, like, ESPN or something.

At the volcano, Jak gets a dark power of invisibility, I guess. But only when he touches certain statues, and it’s only ever really used to get past a few traps and then never again.

Oddly enough, this was something that...made sense? I mean, invisibility is actually a power that dark eco has. Remember in Jak 2, there were metal heads who could turn invisible. 

But it’s never used! And that complaint holds true for almost every power Jak gets. You basically use the powers when a prompt comes on screen to get through a one-time obstacle, and then never again. 

Then we find out Veger is talking to the monks, but no one ever really expands on why? Or how? Like, for a city hidden in the Wasteland and forgotten, a lot of fucking people know it exists! 

Speaking of which...

We meet Ashelin in the desert and she begs us to come back to Haven City. Jak asks her how she knows Damas and she answers, “It doesn’t matter now.”

Excuse me??

It totally does matter! If Ashelin knows Damas, it begs the question: does she know that Jak is his son? Does she know the Kid is his son? Does she even know about the Kid? 

I mean, Ashelin would almost have to know that Jak is Damas’ son: during this scene, she gives him his seal back and says, “Don’t you remember who you are?”

Whatever. Add that to the list of things that are never mentioned again.

Jak says he’s not coming back to the city, because he’s an angry teenager and he likes hanging around with his Sand Dad. 

This is immediately followed by Jak returning to Haven City.

We head to the Monk Temple, again for no reason. This time, we open up some doors and Pecker leads us back to the city. 

There is no explanation as to why Jak has a change of heart. I actually think that the scene where Damas and Jak had a heart-to-heart and he mentions his lost son should be here: it leads perfectly into Jak deciding that the Greater Good is more important than his feelings.

Instead, we get nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just Jak heading back to Haven City because it’s The Thing To Do.

We reach Haven City after a boss battle and meet with Samos and Keira. Samos sucks, but that’s in character. Keira has no lines in this scene, and only makes goofy faces. Seriously, look: 

That’s it, that’s the character. 

Like, what’s happening in this scene? What’s going on with you, Keira? Are you okay? Are you making bedroom eyes at Jak? Are you confused? Did you smoke some of your father’s funny herbs again?

(Again, I know Keira’s role got cut down a lot because they changed voice actors, but it’s...so...jarring for a normally prominent character to suddenly get shoved into the background.)

We do some missions for Torn and eventually find out that Erol is the bad guy. Never explained how Erol survived slamming his Zoomer into dark eco and exploding in front of a huge crowd, but at this point, it’s whatever. 

We continue on our journey: Tess is a furry, Samos is useless, Torn is...Torn. 

We get a scene with Sig where Jak and Daxter ask him about Damas and his job as a spy and all that stuff. Fine, well and good, except the following exchange happens:

Jak: You’re playing with people’s lives!

Sig: Why not? They played with mine.

I’m sorry??

There’s a story there, and I’d like to know! What the hell happened to Sig? Why is nothing ever explained??!!

We get some Dadmas feelings, then we head over to have a chat with Kleiver. And this happens:

Jak: Kleiver, I need to find some very special Precursor artifacts, but I’m running out of time.

...Are you?? Has that been established?

So, in one of the previous missions, Samos mentions over the communicator (during gameplay, not in a cutscene) that to activate some ruins in Haven Forest, you’ll need some artifacts. But all he says is this:

Samos: Mar wrote that there was some ancient ruins to the west that were activated by five special artifacts and revealed wondrous truths. I'll see what I can find out.

That’s it! There’s never a cutscene where Samos says you need to find the Holo Cube, the Quantum Reflector, the Beam Generator, the Prism, and...by the way, there is no 5th artifact. Samos, you’re full of shit.

(Unless the Eco Sphere you get from Seem towards the end counts, but it’s very unclear.)

And, by the way, I had to Google those artifact names. The artifacts are never actually named until you acquired them in-game. Jak just finds random artifacts and is like, “Welp, this’ll do it! How convenient!”

Sigh.

Once we get all these artifacts no one told us about, we’re told to go take a cab down to the center of the earth. We don’t do that, and instead blow some shit up to visit our friends in person again. 

(Quarantine mood, really.)

And, again, I can’t get over how much of a non-character Keira is. Seriously, she just stands there and claps like a 3-year-old.

And we also come to my own personal pet peeve: the scene where Ashelin strips Veger of his title.

I can’t with this shit.

The biggest issue I have with this game, from a story standpoint, is how quickly the inciting incident is resolved. Like, Jak being banished is the whole reason we have a Jak 3. The city turned against him; his anti-hero choices in Jak 2 led to him being blamed for the war in Jak 3. It made sense.

But Ashelin decides, 75% through the game, to just be like, “Naw, Veger, fuck you. Get out of my face, buh bye.”

It just pisses me off, because if Ashelin had that power, why didn’t she use it before Jak was banished??

And why is Jak okay with this? Why is Moody McAngerface not even a little annoyed that she didn’t care enough to do this when he was dying of heatstroke in the desert?

Uuuuuuggggghhhhh guys I don’t understand.

So we see Vin again, blow some more stuff up, fight Erol, and get some tentacle wings. Seem acts all nice to us and gives us a present we didn’t know we needed. More Dadmas ensues, we see the Dark Maker ship for some reason, blow even more stuff up.

Finally, it’s time to head to the catacombs. We get into some trouble with Dark Makers (even though there’s only, like, three of them), and Damas busts through the goddamn wall in a car.

No idea how he got here, considering the Wasteland appears to be an island, but whatever, it’s a badass scene.

Then, because Jak can’t have anything nice, they get hit and crash the car all over Damas’ legs.

Seriously, dude, I get that you might be dying from blood loss, but why are you coughing, your lungs are fine.

So Damas dies, Jak is his long-lost son, it’s very sad, and Veger you piece of shit.

I will forever be salty that Veger, who was an overall excellent villain, was sidelined for Erol of all people. Admittedly, Jak 2 did the same thing with Praxis, but Kor was a much better Big Bad than Erol.

Regardless, we then get the Worst Plot Twist Ever, when we find out the Precursors are ottsels.

k.

Moving on from that tragedy, we then get to fight Erol. The fight sucks, it’s boring and I hate driving the stupid Wasteland buggies.

And then the end comes, and my blood pressure skyrockets. Somewhere, my PCP senses a disturbance.

The Precursors being ottsels is stupid, but Jak telling them to call him “Mar” is even stupider. First of all, Jak does not seem like the kind of person to get sentimental over his birth name. It’s weird, and I don’t like it.

Second of all, the ottsel leader calls him Mar once, directly after that. And then never again. 

Seriously, 90 seconds after Jak says he wants to be known as Mar, this happens:

I’m sorry, what’s that?

Why would you add that line in about Jak wanting to be called by his birth name, and then ignore it a minute and half later??!!

It just infuriates me. There’s a lot of stuff in Jak 3 that does this: it’s touched on once, then it’s gone forever.

And let’s talk about Daxter’s wish. I actually find this particular decision - where Daxter chooses to wish for pants instead of being human again - totally believable. 

Despite how much Daxter is regarded as the comic relief idiot of the duo, he’s actually shown to be pretty sharp. He’s definitely observant. And at this point, remember that he’s already seen the Precursors at work: he saw them turn Veger into an ottsel.

So Daxter probably realized that these guys were on some monkey paw, be-careful-what-you-wish-for bullshit and decided to wish for the most innocuous thing he could. Who knows what would happen if he actually asked to become human again? Might come out lookin’ like Samos.

And he’s right, by the way! Look at what those assholes did to my baby Tess. They could’ve just got her a size 6 pair of Levi’s and been like, “Here, boom, pants.” 

But nooo, they turned her into an ottsel, too, because why not why the fuck not nothing matters ahhhhHHHHHHHHH

...

...

Anyway, like I said, Jak 3 is my favorite in the series. It had such potential. It’s like a puzzle that’s missing pieces. I like it more for what it could have been, rather than the absolute mess it actually is.

[batfam-adventures]

(Commentary and thoughts on the problem with certain anti tags and frankly anti tags in general, be warned)

I'm going to be honest, there is nothing that infuriates me more than those who attack a ship, or a character as abusive for the reason of banter, poor writing verging on character assassination or astonishing reasons as one character being created to be a beard for the other.

To give an example, the TimSteph ship has attracted a lot of hate recently because apparently one of the two is abusive towards the other (mostly Steph).

Now, I'm not against preferring another ship to that one, such as StephCass or TimKon, or feeling that Steph has basically had a lot of her agency taken away recently, reducing her to just Tim's girlfriend and that causing people to distance themselves from the relationship, those are all fair enough reasons to not really like the ship. Even feeling like there is no chemistry is a reason, that I disagree with, but can respect.

What I can't respect are some of the reasons given for hating the ship.

To give an example, one tumblr outright stated that part of the reason (though not all of it) they hated Steph was because she was created by a homophobe (Chuck Dixon who IS conservative at the very least) to serve as beard for Tim.

Ignoring for a second that Tim is explicity sexually attracted to women (though considering the run that made that clearest was FabNic's version of Red Robin, I can understand not knowing about it), Steph was originally created to be a one-off character, it was fan popularity that caused her to return AND become a love interest for Tim. Even ignoring that, Tim was dating another girl named Arriana, which didn't work out for various reasons, the least of which was his constant absences to perform his duties as Robin.

Speaking of FabNic, it was his run as writer for Robin that is most often brought up when giving reasons to hate Steph and call her abusive. A run that was basically a rush job, when Dixon left DC again for unrelated reasons, where FabNic proceeded to write Steph hire Scarab of all people to fight Tim non-lethally after promising Batman to make him better. I'm going to be honest, I hated the idea of this to begin with, but someone pointed out how stupidly out of character Steph hiring Scarab was given that A) she would definitely not have the contacts to pull it off, and B) Scarab was the entire reason Steph got fired as Robin, resulting in a lot of trauma for her and I have to agree.

Combined with Steph being portrayed as unusually incompetent and her motivations being glossed over and it really reads like either A) FabNic had a vendetta against her character, meaning her character was hurt again almost immediately after being finally getting a break and having her incredibly spiteful death retconned or B) he was in such a rush due to being brought in to write the final arc of Robin in a hurry when Dixon left, that he didn't think his ideas through, and just wanted to get rid of Tim's supporting cast quickly and finish things up for the next writer to have a clean slate, causing him to write that mess of an arc.

To anyone unfamiliar with FabNic's work, the exact same thing happened in Red Robin when the Nu52 was about to happen, so he ended up butchering an entire arc he had planned, Tim's character suffering from an abrupt shift in coldness again when he was getting better and left the series on a frankly unsatisfying cliffhanger. So, I can completely see that as being what happened.

Now as for those who say that Steph's banter with Tim is cruel and abusive. This is something he canonically said very shortly before their relationship started.

So Tim definitely gave as good as he got.

Though this is nothing to what he once said to his first girlfriend, Arianna.

Not that I believe for a second Tim is actually sexist, but his banter can be unusually and unintentionally aggressive at times.

Now I'm not going to say a word about most of Yost's Red Robin run, but what helps is that Tim is not being portrayed as being in the right with many of his actions and gets called out as such, plus he was written pretty clearly to be in a mentally bad place.

Otherwise I and probably a lot of Tim's fans, hate the Batman jr. Character arc every writer (but Dixon ironically) seemed to have fixated on him having, making him become positively humourless for quite a while (especially in Teen Titans, but to be honest there are many fans of the YJ team who hated that run.) Which basically started with Steph and his dad's deaths by the way.

I'm not going to deny Tim and Steph had their fair share of drama before War Games, most notably the power imbalance caused by Tim knowing Steph's name, but being unable (yes, unable) to give her his. Tim had a reason for not telling Steph, Bruce making him promise not to, and he kept that promise even with the YJ team, and even made it clear that Steph couldn't know if they entered a relationship. That's all fair enough, even if Tim had a nasty habit of reminding Steph he knew her name while they were out in the open, putting her identity at risk and knew she hated it.

The stalking was caused when Tim implied he personally knew a girl they rescued, causing Steph to realise just how unbalanced their relationship was, since Tim could be cheating on her without her knowing due to the double life (and had in fact done so to his previous girlfriend Arianna, with Steph).

Which lets be honest, is also completely understandable as their relationship couldn't work long-term without it being equal knowledgewise.

Think about it, you're in a relationship with someone who refuses to tell you his real name, you may be able to recognise him without his mask on, but have no idea he goes to the same school as you since he makes sure to avoid you while simultaneously keeping an eye on you.

Tim himself realised this, since when Batman leaked his secret without his permission, he eventually made it clear he didn't blame Steph and that he should have been open with her when it began to trouble her.

As for Steph coming on to him when he had a girlfriend and wasn't interested, well this is what caused her to crush on him...

He had just been traumatised by being trapped underground with Cluemaster (brrr.) So kissing her in relief when he had a girlfriend was understandable, but it's also understandable that Steph thought he was interested in her especially since he never mentioned a girlfriend.

Amd Tim clearly cared for her in some way regardless judging from this page when Steph was kidnapped a few issues later.

As for Steph only being in love with Robin... the problem is that Steph made it clear once that she didn't care if Tim quit and she'd love him all the same.

So, no, I don't think Tim and Steph was an abusive ship, it might not be your cup of tea, but it's certainly not abusive, especially when written by a writer who isn't being rushed or got a lot on his plate.

As a side-note, it's worth noting that due to how the Tumblr Search Engine works, people not looking for Anti Tags, and instead quite the opposite, still end up finding them on occassion, so yes, they have a right to be annoyed and complain in private conversations.

I'm sorry if this devolved into a rant, but many anti threads have a nasty habit of focusing only on the bad, even when that bad isn't consistent characterisation. Whether we like the Character or not, we need to remember that having so many writers means that the Character will be screwed up occasionally. How many times has Batman learn not to be a jerk only to return to be a jerk almost immediately? How many times has Green Arrow gotten his act together only for another writer to have him return to cheating on Black Canary again?

We have to concede that any character can be screwed up by the wrong writer and we shouldn't hold that against them, especially when the stuff we don't like doesn't consistently happen.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Stop, It's Already Dead

I’ve been trying to watch Army of the Dead since it came out but every time i start, i end of bailing on it because it’s trash. Yeah, that’s it. This movie is trash. You can literally stop reading this review right now because that’s the verdict. Army of the Dead is shallow, inconsequential, zombie murder porn wit that trademark Zack Snyder, edgelord, spice. It’s f*cking ridiculous and i hated every minute of it. That’s it. That’s the review. Don’t watch this rancid spooge. Now, if you want to know why i hated it so much, read on. But it really is one of the worst things i have seen all year.

The Adequate

Dave Batista works magic with the material on hand. Zack Snyder isn’t know for having emotional bite or a realistic edge to any of the characters in his films but Batista was able to hone in on something and does a decent job of letting me tolerate this clusterf*ck. His Scott Ward is easily the best thing about this flick.

The carnage displayed while the opening credits rolled was almost as dope as Zombieland and i appreciated that. Literally the only time during the film where i didn’t feel like someone was standing on my sack and twisting.

Also, Hiroyuki Sanada is in this. I don’t know the name of his character and i don’t care i just genuinely enjoy Sanada’s work. He is an excellent actor and, similarly to Ken Watanabe, makes everything he’s in better, regardless of his role’s size or relevance.

The integration of Tig Notaro was kind of seamless. That sh*t was surprising because every one of her scenes was added in post. She had no interaction with any of the cast, not even in pick-ups. That’s just her, in front of a green screen, talking to herself. Of course, there are scenes where that is very apparent but the fact she was even able to replaces an entire actor wrapped month beforehand, is kind of a miracle and testament to the absurd technical skill Snyder wields as movie maker.

The Horrid

Zack Snyder. Literally everything i am about to unload, is Zack Snyder’s fault. This “film” is pure Zack Snyder. More so than the Snyder cut of Justice League. More so than BvS. Even more than f*cking Sucker Punch. Netflix gave this man a bunch of money and told he to go “create” and, to his credit, Snyder did just that. Unfortunately, he created hot dumpster water topped with soggy diarrhea.

Seriously, everything i have a problem with, has Zack Snyder’s name on it. He was the director, the writer, the screenplay writer, AND the f*cking cinematographer. What the f*ck, dude? Like, you want to be an auteur director, fine. Be good at it. Be good at movies if you’re trying to wear all of those hats. Zack, as a filmmaker, is bad at ALL of them. At best, he’s pedestrian, so doing all of that, just infuses abject mediocrity throughout this movie and it shows.

I’ve seen a lot of cats haring of Snyder’s depth of field choices but I'll take it one step further; What the f*ck was up with the shot composition as a whole, in this film? It was bad! All of it was so bad! There was no substance, no dynamism in the camerawork or the way the shots were set up. I’m not going to sit here and say it was just a bunch of static work, like how someone would film a play for theatrical exhibition, but it wasn’t that much better. I was watching this sh*t and thought to myself, “Hamilton had better camera work than this. F*ck.”

The whole ass plot is paper thing. I’m watching these first few minutes and it’s readily apparent that the guv’ment knows zombies be doing a zombie and Vegas is lost. Why the f*ck didn’t they nuke that motherf*cker off the face of the earth. Straight up Raccoon City that b*tch. There is nothing, no plot contrivance or mental gymnastics that could make believe that Las Vegas wouldn’t have been scrubbed off the map, within a week of this outbreak. Not after seeing actual paratroopers floating in to their deaths and straight up napalm strikes on the Strip. Why did anyone think building a fence out of shipping containers was a good long term option for containment! And that’s literally just in the opening credits! It gets worse as the flick progresses, man! The actual plot is trash!

Now, the actual premise? Interesting. It could have been interesting. But then Zack Snyder snyder’ed it up with the f*cking execution. Look, in order to write a great zombie flick, you need a strong human element. That’s where the audience is going to focus. They’re going to try and find the humanity in a sea of despair. Every great Zombie flick has a laughably strong lead and fantastic supporting characters you come to care about, usually withing the first act. 28 Days later is a fantastic example of how to execute your Zombie disaster apocalypse. You do not give a sh*t about any of the characters in Army. Snyder tries with Batista, thus the father-daughter relationship, but that cliche sh*t was cookie cutter from a whole different movie, which I'm going to get into next...

Army of the Dead is Aliens. It’s just a popularization of Aliens. It’s the same f*cking movie, but worse. There are shot-for-shot recreations in this movie, with just enough changed so Snyder won’t get sued. Just, off the top of my head, the ending. It’s exactly the same as f*cking Aliens! Literally the same goddamn ending! Heroes survive a gauntlet of monsters, rush to the top of or roof. Pilot of escape flying contraption kissing. Hero curses pilot of said whirly dervish. Queen Alien or Zombie King shows up. Pilot returns at the last minute to save survivors. Same. F*cking. Scene. And that’s just one. There are SO many in this thing you’d think Snyder watched Aliens everyday on set and just stole sh*t from that flick to add to his. It’s real bad. Real f*cking bad, man. which exasperates my next point...

This movie is f*cking boring. i was bored. If you’re stealing the entirety of Aliens, how do you f*ck that it up so bad? The same movie, which thrilled and entertained me thirty years ago, sh*t the bed so hard, today, and i don’t know how that happened. It’s infuriating when i think about it for too long. Speaking of long...

Why the f*ck is this anal prolapse, two and half hours long?? Why did you need this much movie to tell so little story? Seriously, how the f*ck is there this much run time yet, no actual f*cking characters outside of whatever the f*ck Batista was able to save with his sheer screen presence? How do you have all of this time and still not craft a character in which to invest?? In a f*cking Zombie movie?!

Also, he hired a rapist.

The Verdict

This movie sucks. For all of the reasons outlined above. I told you that in the beginning. You didn’t have to rad this far. You knew i hated this movie within the first sentence. This sh*t was a waste of my life. Batista is good in it and that sh* Snyder did with Tig was pretty cool, but everything else is bad. All of it. None of this movie is good. It was boring. It wasn’t entertaining. There are no characters. The plot is dumb. The execution is worse. The run time is absurd. Did i mention how bored i was? Army of the Dead is garbage. This is a bad movie. This is what you get when you just let Zack Snyder do whatever the f*ck he wants with no limits or boundaries. Snyder is bad at movies and he keeps proving it. I have no idea why people keep giving this obvious fraud work.

[atelier-dayz]

⭐star⭐

Beginning of chapter 4 :)

The sandstorm has passed when Jango wakes from his nap. He figures it’s a good time as any to do another patrol around their area, not to mention to stretch his legs. After refilling his water flask, he exits the ship, discovering the ramp has already been lowered.

He soon finds out why when he spots Kenobi in the shadow cast by the ship, seated cross-legged with the hood of his robe pulled up to hide his face from the glare of the sun. He supposes Kenobi is meditating, but he has to squash the instinctual unease he feels at the sight. There is no wind, and yet the edges of Kenobi’s robe and sleeves waft softly as if there is. Swirls of sand in distinct tendrils surround him, orbiting lazily. It’s strange, yet beautiful, yet terrifying. It’s such a casual display of a power Jango will never understand, it makes his gut want to squirm.

One of my favorite scenes that I’ve written!! I also want to draw this. Or someone to do it for me LOL I talked about this in an old ask so won’t ramble on here. <3 

Jango turns from the sight, takes a deep breath in and out, and puts it out of his mind. He sets off to begin his patrol. 

The landscape has changed, the sandstorm depositing new dunes where there had been none and flattening out other areas. There is, however, still no signs of life, just endless expanses of sand. Mos Espa remains barely visible in the distance, unchanged. He wonders about Jinn's progress on getting their parts.

He returns to the ship to see Kenobi has emerged from meditation. He has remained seated, but has his hands buried in the sand on either side of him, a bemused quirk to his lips.

“What is it?” Jango asks.

Kenobi blinks and looks up at him, shaking his hands free of sand.

“This planet has an...interesting Force presence. Old and...almost feral, I suppose.”

There’s no way Tatooine doesn’t have a unique Force presence. The planet where Anakin, The Force Baby, was born. The planet where Obi-wan chose to live for all those years. The planet where Luke grew up. Also I love the desert, and have a healthy respect for the...power it holds. ~u~

“...right.” Jango has nothing to say to that. 

Kenobi gives him a wry smile before getting to his feet. 

“Nothing alarming, just interesting,” he says. He brushes off the sand he’s collected on his leggings. “I am a little worried though that we’ve disillusioned Padmé, and by extension the Queen, about the Senate.”

Jango grunts. “Better now than later,” he says. “The Queen can think of contingency plans then, instead of just relying on the Senate.” He pauses, then asks, “Did she...pass any judgments?”

Kenobi hums, looking off into the distance with a thoughtful expression.

“She was horrified, of course. But I hope she understands better that Jedi are just like any other sentient being. We make mistakes, just like anyone else does. Unfortunately, with the power that we have, those mistakes come at terrible costs.” He turns to look at Jango. “It’s why we begin our learning when we are children. It’s why we make the sacrifices that we do and take the vows that we do.”

Lumi and others have said this in way better terms than me, but Jedi younglings are babies with incredible psychic powers. Jedi are individuals with psychic powers. Control is important if you don’t want a building coming down on you and people getting hurt. 

“How early do you start training?”

“We start learning the Code and our philosophy as early as we can understand it, through stories and songs. We start learning to control the Force through games," Kenobi says. "Coincidentally, we start combat training, among other things, at five years old.”

“Hm.” Coincidentally, because Mandalorians also begin training children when they reach five. Before then, they are taught the Resol'nare and other aspects of being Mando’ade. Apparently, similar to the jetiise. Jango doesn’t know how he should feel about that. 

He saves the thought for later, as Kenobi sends him a knowing look. 

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I love the parallels between Jedi and Mando’ade. And I will cram in as many parallels between them as I can because I LOVE.

“And did you tell her who I was?” Jango asks. He had not thought Kenobi would, but wants to check regardless.

“No,” Kenobi replies, looking baffled at even the thought of it. “It’s not my right. It’s your decision if or when you tell her.”

“Fair enough,” he says. 

“...while you were resting, my master commed with news,” Kenobi says, though he strangely doesn’t look too pleased.  

“And?”

“Do you know about the Boonta Eve?”

“Yes…oh.” Jango puts two and two together. “He’s betting on a podrace to get us our parts?”

“The local boy he befriended has offered to enter the race on our behalf,” Kenobi says. “Master Qui-gon has submitted our ship in a gamble with the junk shop’s owner. If the boy wins the race, the owner gets the winnings and we get the parts. If he loses, we lose the ship.” He frowns, clearly not approving of the plan. 

Jango curses under his breath.

“Is your master mad?” he hisses. “He’s staking everything on a local boy winning a podrace? Not just that, but one of the biggest podraces in the galaxy?”

“He seems to have confidence that the plan will work, but yes, I understand that it seems quite...ambitious,” Kenobi says. He sighs the tired sigh of the long-suffering. It seems like his master is dini’la even by jetii standards. 

Okay, like we know Anakin wins, but from the perspective of the characters, Qui-gon placing everything they had (the ship, their only transport off the planet) on the chance that this random 9 or 10 years old boy they’d only just met, who has never completed a race, will come in first place in the podrace is BONKERS. 

Jango wonders how long Kenobi has had to put up with Jinn’s madness -- and if Jinn is either more or less infuriating to other jetiise than to non-Force-sensitives.

“Do you think it will work?” Jango asks.

“While I have...misgivings, I must trust in the Force. My master thinks this boy will win the race, so I must have faith that is the case.”

Jango grunts. Kriffing mad jetiise. He tells himself that either way, they are stranded without the parts. They’re also a resourceful group of people; they’d figure something out if they need to.

He and Kenobi head back into the ship, closing up the ramp behind them.

“Have you ever seen podracing?” Jango asks purely out of curiosity.

Kenobi nods. “On Malastare,” he says. “I’m grateful my master didn’t decide to hop into a podracer himself. Though I suppose he’s much too tall for it.”

Jango arches a brow at him. “He would have done it if he wasn’t?”

“Rumor has it, my master used to drag race in his youth. One of the many things that drove his master spare, I heard.”

I vaguely remember Qui-gon drag racing as a thing in a few fics I read during one of my fic binges and loved the idea so definitely had to include it.

“Drag racing? You jetiise?” 

“We have the reflexes for it of course, but it’s highly frowned upon for obvious reasons. I can neither confirm nor deny that he did, but I would not have been surprised.”

Jango tries to imagine a younger Jinn drag racing, and yes, alright, it might be plausible. 

“And what does your...Council  think of it?” Jango asks. “He sounds like quite a rule breaker.”

“Yes, he has a reputation,” Kenobi admits.

“What about you? Do you have a reputation?” Jango is genuinely curious.

Kenobi grimaces. “Probably nothing good, I imagine,” he says.

Jango frowns, feeling doubtful that’s the case. “Because of Jinn?”

“...in part…” Kenobi hedges, clearly not wanting to discuss it. Jango doesn’t press.

Obi has, in fact, a good reputation with the Council. He just thinks he doesn’t because he’s Obi. :< I headcanon that with all the troubles he’s had in his initiate years, and then with Qui-gon re: Melida/Daan, leaving the Order, etc, he tries to act more by the book, especially with the way Qui-gon butts heads with the Council.

aaand /END LOL

[kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog]

SEES, the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves as SHSLs/Ultimates Part 3:

Up next is everyone’s favorite protein guzzling boxer, the white-haired lightning bruiser, the guy who I still haven’t forgiven Atlas for bastardizing in their spinoffs (particularly the arena series), Akihiko Sanada.

Seriously, the poor guy did not deserve the simplistic treatment of his character in Arena. ...Though than again, the sad truth is that seemed to happen to most of the cast, huh?

ANYWAY, enough about that, you’re not here to hear me gripe, you’re here to hear about how he’d fit into the DR-verse!

Akihiko Sanada:

SHSL Boxer/Ultimate Boxer: As we know from DRV3, Ultimate titles can be used more than once. It’s why I honestly like the SHSL moniker more, it doesn’t imply the same level of insuperable expertise as Ultimate does. Regardless, we know Akihiko is an amazing fighter with his fists; frankly if you’re able to punch out Eldritch Abominations from the human psyche with nothing but boxing gloves you probably deserve Ultimate Boxer. Plus, he is the boxing club’s leader.

Akihiko has probably the absolute WORST reputation out of all the students for breaking things in the dojo. Mitsuru and Shinjiro hold far more shame over this than he does of course.

Just like in Persona canon, Akihiko has a LOT of female admirers in Hope’s Peak. Even plenty of girl’s from the reserve course are probably head over heels. He reacts just as he does in canon. (I would almost want to see someone write up interactions between him and Miu because seeing him getting flustered from how explicitly thirsty she would be over him would be hilarious.)

Not a relationship thing because I really don’t know enough about her to do a full one, but I do think the dynamic between Akihiko and Tenko Chabashira could be extremely interesting. Anyone who knows more about her, feel free to write up how you think their interactions and views of each other would be and do let me know.

Major Relationships within the DR cast: -Sakura Ogami: Akhiko and Sakura are sparring partners and have an immense mutual respect. I imagine their first meeting was somewhat comical in a way, Akihiko striding right up to Sakura despite his issues speaking with girls, and asking for a fight with her, having heard of her abilities. I can’t honestly see him beating her outright without using his Persona powers (considering how she actually defeated Mukuro in DR: IF and how Kodaka said she could defeat Juzo, though admittedly Akihiko isn’t just a normal human) but I do think he’d give her a good match and the two would hit it off immediately. Expect a lot of talk about about training and protein. However, I think Sakura would be a major driving force for Akihiko to re-examine himself and how he views strength. After all, Sakura isn’t just strong, she is very wise and I have no doubt she’d challenge Akihiko to try and help him figure out what strength really is and why he desires it. She may become a sort of ‘sensei’ for him. (I also find the idea of Sakura eventually asking why Akihiko doesn’t seem to have issues interacting with her despite his very clear issues interacting with girls hilarious because there is no way Akihiko could answer that without saying SOMETHING wrong. Shinjiro would mock him remorselessly.) If I’m being honest, this is even a sort of crack-ship for me, the only thing keeping it from a full ship the fact that Sakura is in a relationship with Kenshiro and the fact that I’m too invested in Akihiko/Mitsuru. -Akane Owari: I’m sure absolutely no one is suprised by this. Just like Sakura, Akihiko and Akane are sparring partners, though their relationship is far more a rivalry than Akihiko’s with Sakura’s. Not that the two aren’t friends, they are, but Akane’s personality lends itself more towards the two being intense rivals. However, I happen to think that how they formed their rivalry is VERY different to how Akihiko and Sakura first engaged each other. Akane had to challenge Akihiko, not the other way around. I see this happening for two reasons. First, Akane is known as the Ultimate Gymnest. Akihiko likely would not have immidiately thought of her as a fighter the same way he did Sakura. Second, Akihiko’s own issues with dealing with woman would have been a roadblock at first because Akane is far more obviously feminine than Sakura is. I think this would have caused an initial roadblock for Akihiko, one that was easily overcome though after Akane challenged him to a fight. And this time, Akihiko would have absolutely won. The two actually have an inverse relationship to the one Akihiko has with Sakura, as Akihiko would honestly be the one teaching Akane, both about fighting and about the nature of strength. I have no doubt Akihiko would challenge Akane’s own beliefs on what strength means, just like Sakura would do for him. I can also see a repeat of how in his social link with Hamuko he sees her like he used to see his younger sister and could have a very similar case of trying to protect Akane, particuarly due to her somewhat oblivious nature. As you could imagine, that would go about as well as you’d expect. However that mess would resolve itself, Akihiko would have once again taken another step to moving forward and being at ease with his past, while I believe Akane would learn to be okay with showing vulnerability and being helped. Also, you can’t convince me that Akihiko would TRY (emphasis on that word there) to help Akane with school work. He is a good student after all.  -Nekomaru Nidai: Yet another ‘I’m sure you all saw this coming’ case. Nidai and Akihiko are yet again sparring partners, though in Nidai’s case it’s less for him and more for Akihiko’s own development. In all likelyhood, he’s probably why Akane even got interested in Akihiko as she probably heard about the boxer from him. For his part, Akihiko has a decent bit of respect for Nidai, even if he finds his... openess about some topics a bit much. He also is, just like everyone else, a major fan of Nidai’s deep tissue massage. (I can also see Akihiko bothering Shinjiro to try and help Nidai with his Dyspepsia in the form of some cooking help though I have no doubt that would piss off Teruteru. Of course, Shinjiro might even see that as a bonus... but more on that later.) -Byakuya Togami: Not really a major relationship, but it is worth a mention. Togami is one of the few people Akihiko is outright disdainful of (and perhaps even despises, but that might be a bit much for him). This is of course due to Togami’s insistence on asking Mitsuru to help produce Togami’s heirs which infuriates and disgusts Akihiko. (Whether this is simply due to how good of friends the two are, the amount of respect Akihiko has for Mitsuru or perhaps is something more is entirely up to interpretation. Again, MAJOR Akihiko/Mitsuru shipper here.) For his part, Togami doesn’t view Akihiko as anyone of import or as being worth his time. Funnily enough, that specificaly wouldn’t bother Akihiko too much on his own, he wouldn’t really give a damn what someone like Byakuya thinks of him. It’s just his attitude towards everyone and the stuff with Mitsuru that caused the immense disdain. - Juzo Sakakura: Juzo is a difficult case. While he may not have any issues with someone else getting the Boxer moniker as well, his entire general attitude clashes with Akihiko’s immensely. Juzo is used to throwing his weight around and near bullying others to get what he wants, as opposed to Akihiko who is an upstanding guy and, while competitive, would never go about acting like Juzo does. Juzo is also a VERY prideful man, so getting called out on his s*** may not go well, and Akihiko may very well call him out on his s***. Doesn’t helpt that I’m certain Akihiko could beat Juzo in a fair fight.  All this being said though, Juzo would honestly admire several of Akihiko’s qualities, for example how Akihiko protects others without thought of his own safety. Ultimately, I think Juzo would have some respect for Akihiko but would never admit it and Akihiko ould respect the man’s skills but recognize that he’s very much flawed and that there isn’t much he could do about it.

Now, that’s it for Akihiko. But before I go, there’s two things that needed to be covered.  The first is that I need to quickly circle back to Mitsuru because there is a MAJOR relationship that I forgot to discuss when I was writing her profile up.

You can probably guess who I’m talking about:

Kyosuke Munakata: How I missed this the first time shocks me. Seriously, Kyosuke is so similar to Mitsuru I’m embaressed this slipped by me. Let’s start with the obvious: His own talent reflects what Mitsuru spends a lot of her time dealing with as a student. She is the Student Council President at Gekkokan in canon and I said in her profile that she would get involved in student goverment here. It’s only a matter of time before she runs into Kyosuke, particuarly if they ever went to school at the same time. In such a case I could see Kyosuke taking on a sort of mentor roll for Mitsuru and even a sort of big brother one where Mitsuru would likely confide in him if she felt overburderned and stressed with her own numerous responsibilities. Afterall, we do know that pre-tradgedy he is described as being kinder than his post tragdey self so I could see him taking on Mitsuru as a kohai/younger-sister. Plus, he would also be a great sword fighting partner for her. (Note, this fobviously would happen only if they attended Hope’s Peak at the same time, which would make it near impossible for her to also have relationships with the 78th class. The only way this could really theoretically work was, assuming the typical 3 year high school system used in Japan, Mitsuru and her year were all the 76th class, meaning that she’d be a first year when Kyosuke was a senior and would then be a senior when the 78th class came along. Which could work and liekly wouldn’t change much of her already established relationships).

Now for the second bit. You probably all notice that I’m dealing with Pre-Tragedy stuff for everyone so far and haven’t touched Post-Tragedy. The first and most honest reason is that I kinda forgot to touch that bit when I was writing everyone. The second bit though is that it’s honestly VERY hard for me to see the tragedy happening if the Persona cast were in the DR world and the Persona-verse rules were still in affect. With the way the Collective Unconciousness works I can’t see Junko winning without eliminating SEES, the IT and the PT and well... she’s good, but she’d be fighting ALL of them on their turf. The same group we know are capable of taking down gods. And hey, worse comes to worse, Door-kun can door-kun or something. Besides the fact that someone like Akechi would have absouletly no qualms about just murdering her. And once again, not a whole lot she can do about the way he goes about killing people. 

This being said, I may make an addenendum post later which details what would be going on with everyone post-tragedy. Spoiler though: everyone pretty much becomes shadow operatives full-time for a long while and they sort of are their own third-party group, seperate from the Future Foundation. I’d go more in depth though if I do make a follow-up.

Anyway, you all can probably guess who’s up next. We did two of the the original three members, up next will be the third. Shinjiro Aragaki will be coming soon... hopefully. My next semester is starting later today and it is a doozy. I am going to do everything I can to make sure this continues, but it will be slightly slower.

[hdnprplflwrs]

(1/2) So I’ve been getting into Miraculous Ladybug,

And let’s rate some ships, shall we? These are just the ones with the most material to work with and are the most interesting and are (as I see it) canon to the show. I’m not including ships where, canonically, one side actively dislikes the other or there was no interaction or a clear definition of a friendship between the two parties. This list also does not include polyamorous ships because there are no polyamorous relationships canonically.

1. Adrienette: Marinette kind of flickers between seeing Adrien as a friend and as her numbero uno, especially as the series progresses. Currently, with season 3 finished, she sees him as a mix of both but would still rather see that he’s happy and without her than with her and unhappy (example: her letting Kagami be with Adrien — also showing that there’s no beef between her and Kagami !!! kinda). Adrien, on the other hand, is such a confused boy™️ about his feelings and him stating ALL THE TIME that Marinette is “jUsT a FrIeNd” is very infuriating, but he never actually sees Marinette as more than a friend because the moment he starts developing that crush he’s already with Kagami and she’s already with Luka. As a ship, they just have terrible timing and they are great friends, but we all know they’re endgame (somehow). 5/10.

2. Ladynoir: Everyone and their grandmother knows that Chat Noir loves Ladybug (as if that isn’t mentioned every two episodes); Ladybug, in the other hand, sticks to the superhero code and firmly roots herself in the friendzone. I know there’s a lot of debate within the fandom about whether or not their relationship is toxic because they both don’t know each other’s true identities and, consequently, the complete picture of themselves. However, in the Oblivio episode, we see that Marinette and Adrien have an incredibly strong bond, as superheroes and as their normal selves. Because they were relieved of all the baggage from their past history (because hello, they forgot it all), they were able to build that relationship rather quickly and show a version of what could be. But in the Timetagger episode, Bunnyx mentions that their relationship is basically all over the place. Maybe with the added complications of Luka and Kagami in the mix, Ladybug and Chat Noir go on a wild adventure through the years, also not finding the right timing like Adrien and Marinette. But Timetagger implies that Ladybug and Chat Noir are endgame because Bunnyx has only seen their relationship up until Timetagger in her present, because she is sent back to the past (this time stuff just makes everything confusing), so she wouldn’t exactly know Ladybug’s and Chat Noir’s future until she’s back in her Burrow with the fixed Bunny Miraculous, and even then she can’t tell them exactly what will happen. As of the S3 finale, we know that Chat Noir and Ladybug are still partner-in-crime goals. However, Marinette is kind of moving on from seeing Adrien as a crush with Luka, and we all know Chat Noir will always love Ladybug, so it really depends on their decisions on who they want to pursue a relationship with the next few season to determine their future. 7/10.

3. Ladybug and Adrien: THIS IS TOXIC. LET ME JUST GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM. Ladybug and Adrien both see the other as without fault even though they aren’t perfect. Ladybug has her moments where she’s star struck by Adrien, and Adrien has his moments where he’s star struck by Ladybug. In the Christmas special, Ladybug causes Santa Claus to get akumatized (but she also made the wrong assumption that Chat Noir was protecting Adrien from a baddie) because she attacks first and asks questions after. Her crush on Adrien got in the way of her usual analysis of the situation: if the Santa was akumatized, why is he delivering Adrien to his own house? Her views of Adrien and Chat Noir also affect her decisions this episode: the thought of Adrien being Chat Noir doesn’t even cross her mind because her perception of Chat Noir is so different from Adrien that she doesn’t question why there’s a Catacylsmed object next to her gift wrap and can’t put together that Adrien is Chat Noir. (Idk how exactly to explain it. Does this even make sense?) On Adrien’s side, his desperation for Ladybug to like both Chat Noir and Adrien Agreste can complicate things further. In the Desperada episode, he doesn’t stick to his guns and refuse the Snake Miraculous in the first place because HE ALREADY HAS ONE; instead, he spends MONTHS subjecting himself to saving Ladybug because he wants Ladybug to like Adrien, which is not how the Snake Miraculous should be used, as Master Fu describes. Basically, Ladybug’s and Adrien’s idolization of each other leads to them making extreme decisions regardless of the consequences to others; really this ship is just extremely toxic and I don’t like it. 3/10.

4. Chat Noir and Marinette: Probably the most wholesome out of the Marinette/Adrien/Ladybug/Chat Noir square. It is essentially the complete opposite of Ladybug and Adrien because neither have feelings for the other (in the sense that they won’t admit it). Marinette can see through all of Chat Noir’s bullshit because as Ladybug she’s spent so much time with him; Chat Noir gets to know Marinette better than Adrien could get to know Marinette because she doesn’t know he’s actually Adrien. Marinette also gets to know the sides of Chat Noir he would never show Ladybug as we see in the Glaciator (or something like that) episode; she also gets to know the extent of his love for Ladybug and acts upon the knowledge that she doesn’t want to hurt a friend as Ladybug. Chat Noir is able to get to know Marinette and you can kind of see that he’s began to crush on her (possibly because she so much like Ladybug except without the teasing **coughing fit ensues**). I mean, you saw that eye pop in Evilliustrator, don’t pretend you didn’t. He shows Marinette the surprise he planned for Ladybug, which is already, like, dambro. I honestly don’t think he would have shared that with anyone else. In Frozer, he ditches Kagami for Marinette and he’s getting more concerned about her well-being as time progresses. Chat Noir and Marianette is also when they found out about their secret identities in the Chat Blanc episode, so there’s a strong chance this relationship is going to play a part in the future. 8.5/10.

5. Kagadrien: This is another ship where the fandom is divided. Kagami receives a lot of hate for preventing the Adrienette ship from occuring as well as directly competing against Marinette for Adrien. However, I find her character intriguing. Her mother is incredibly strict and demands a lot from Kagami; she is a master of fencing and I assume she is also a master of everything else Kagami can do while blind, upping her anti. Because of this, Kagami grew up without true friends and into a decisive and brutally honest character. Her mother probably helped enforce this mindset of black-and-white, that if you aren’t right, you’re automatically wrong. Adrien is the first to offer her friendship and their shared experiences of growing up in a restrictive household without any friends allowed for a common ground. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Kagami is outgoing because that implies that she knows how to talk to people; her interactions at the beginning of the Ikari Gozen episode with Marinette demonstrate her isolated childhood as she doesn’t know how to comfortably converse with Marinette. On Adrien’s side, Kagami is one of the few people who look past his model career and pretty face and is the only person who can relate to him and his life. Kagami is also the only person his father has no qualms about him hanging out with and as fencing partners, they build a level of comradeship that Marinette and Adrien (if they never received their Miraculouses) couldn’t necessarily replicate. Kagami has already chosen Adrien and I think she lowkey blames Marinette for Adrien not being able to pick her or Marinette, but in the Captain Hardrock episode, Alya brought up the point that Adrien (Luka doesn’t really count because we all know he chooses Marinette) has a choice to make as well. Really, the only thing keeping this ship from happening is Adrien’s conflicting feelings for Ladybug, Marinette, and Kagami. If Adrien does choose Kagami, their parents would approve of the union as it combines their two strong families (GoT vibes anyone?) and their relationship would be able to flourish. The only other downside as a whole is that neither of them have a healthy relationship to model theirs off of as Adrien’s mother is missing and Kagami’s father isn’t even mentioned at all, but it creates an interesting dynamic of them learning how to navigate a relationship with another person. 7.5/10.

I got five more, but this is already pretty long. I’ll post the next five soon, but thoughts on these so far?

[seenashwrite]

Notes From Nash: Season 15, Episode 3

It's ep three, and was third try the charm? Well, we're still in that little town, which is infuriating. But don't lose hope, chickadees. There was some character arc action and some plot advancing, and just drama in general, and it moved at a decently quick clip, all of which is refreshing after last week's ass-disaster of an episode. 

If I were grading this ep, all things considered (including some damn fine acting moments that elevated the material), it's an A-. (Five points were docked immediately because we were still in the little town.) But seriously, this week's writer(s) had a LOT to make up for given the aforementioned last week as well as a largely lackluster premiere, so you know what? Props to them. 

We got a loose end from season past tied up, got rid of some dead weight, and then there was a thing that happened that I’m not entirely sure was necessary at this interval, but I get why it happened. Of course, we had our requisite random hamfisted “solution(s)” and still-unexplained bits that should’ve been clarified ages ago, can’t not have those, it seems. Regardless, this episode was actually fairly interesting to watch. I’m still wary about the state of the season after the first two, but this one had some spark.

Spoilers below the cut, you know the drill.  

This one's in order, I was jotting stuff down as I watched. Past ep breakdowns linked at the bottom. If you’re new, hello, welcome, etc., I don’t do meta shit or reading into the symbolism of the color of a blurry wallpaper just over someone’s shoulder, I look at writing and cohesiveness and structure and flow and all that jazz. I basically just call things as I see ‘em. 

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More spooky-scary still seems to be pouring from the hellpit, but at least this crypt is pretty, and Harry Potter tent-esque because the square feet inside is seemingly bigger than the outside.  

Rowena appears to be outfitted in one of my grandmother's housedresses, or a coffin lining, or a 1980s prom dress, whichever you prefer, and none of them have been pressed. I'm trying to say I don't like it. They also continue to do Ruthie's makeup in such a manner that she perpetually looks approximately fifteen years older than she actually is, so in a way I'm thankful this is likely her last episode. On the other hand, I trust these writers and the people who assemble/green light the promos about as far as I can throw them, so we shall see. In any event, Ruthie is quite the good actor and I hope she gets a million gigs after all this is done.  

This Sam-Dean moment with Creased Brow Sam and Gruff Voice Dean is falling so flat, not because of them, but because we're hearing The Same Damn Thing We've Already Heard. Move the plot along, please----- Oh wait here comes Belphagor once again with a solution, this time a nice little plot rescue MacGuffin! Lilith's Crook. Just gotta blow it like a horn. 

Motherbitch, this is stupid.

I got a thought: make it Gabriel's horn, so it calls in all the angels who should've come back with the reverse-y switch-a-roo, and they deal with sealing the hole, but bonus! At end of ep last scene is that it's also called Gabriel back, too. I'd announce to the universe that this show needs to hire me, but, welp.

Oh look, Ketch is in a hospital gown. Oh look, I bet Ketch is about to die in that hospital gown, instead of a badass suit like it should be. It looked like DHJ accidentally spoiled via a tweet that I happened to see----- 

I dodge the promo images and articles and such so I can give a view of someone who doesn't know what is coming in these things. 

-----because he talked about coming back just to leave again, that it was a pleasure, whatever, and y'all will have to fill me in on that because I kinda can't believe he whiffed that hard. I'm not looking it up, is my point. Did he whiff? Actually, don't answer that, I don't care. I mean, don’t go to trouble looking into it on my account.  

Hmmm. Was Ketch’s death entirely necessary? At least, right now? I dunno. Maybe. I’m 50/50 whether this, or have him be double-crossy then get killed later. In any event, well-acted by DHJ. He's quite fantastic. He is wasted in all the Hallmark dreck he's been in, I really hope he gets some good work after this. That's that. Moving on. 

We're 1/4 in, and I'll give it this: we've gotten some action, some drama, but they've GOT to make up for the lack of plot progression in episode 2. Belphagor is shady as shit, which we knew, and this just got reinforced by that demon who has such a hard-on for Belphagor getting axed. 

I do not mind rando badass lady hunter having lines and playing a tangentially-important role in the ep, but this means if we ever see her again, she'll likely get killed, so I'm not getting attached. 

So hell is an angry vagina. SFX, are y'all okay? Is that prick whose tweets occasionally come across my feed still working there? Y'all need some hugs? I know y'all need some better budget, that all the DC shows got it, but oh well, that ship's sailed.  

Well done set dec, I dig the ghoulish statues in that hallway. And hey costume design, I like the ring that dude was wearing, I would wear that in real life. It would also look great as a wrist cuff. I digress. 

We know this demon is not going to succeed in killing Belphagor, so once more we have a pointless halftime cliffhanger. Also, have I mentioned I'm done with Cas being a weak puss? I'm telling you, if stuff got rewound, he should be incrementally getting his mojo back, that tracks logically. See Ep. 1 notes for what I thought should've happened for a legit "Whoa" moment. 

"Do you have any idea what he is?" --- he's a poop demon. Again, see the first episode of @youtotallymadethatup​    /shameless plug

[sighs]

Is this show gonna end with a Jack vs. Jack battle royale? Because fuck that noise. But! Writing-wise, it's okay that ol’ Belph may become the big bad. Nash, why would you say that, you ask. Easy.

IT WILL GET US THE FUCK OUT OF THIS LITTLE TOWN

A. Ny. Thing. to get us the fuck out of this little town. I am so goddamned bored.

Cas, this is a mistake. You should leave. What are you doing. Leave. Don't fall for that. Leave. Go now. Whoosh. Okay, or glow worm and barbeque the body. That was a nice little catch of emotion by Misha at the end. Except are the demons now gonna jump into his body? Better not, we've seen that season. 

Commercials! Cannot believe I've not been inundated with the adverts for the convention here in the spring, that's usually the jam. Imma go get some frozen yogurt. Highly rec strawberry with a little warmed-up Nutella. Try it, then tell me I'm crazy. I'm not. It's heavenly. 

Aaaaand, we're back!

Don't look so distressed Cas, y’all were gonna burn it anyway. But this takes Jack v. Jack off the table. Hopefully this means we'll be headed back to the Empty to get some progress on that hanging thread from last season sooner rather than later. Still, I'm glad we are down a character for awhile, this character in particular was starting to work my nerves and honestly, is just dead weight. I want it back to Sam and Dean for the most part this final season with sprinklings of Cas. Everyone else is secondary.

[claps] Very excellent Ruthie and Jared. One critique: Wish there could've been some sort of line from Rowena, re: "And perhaps I'll get to see my boy again", something of that ilk.

But I want to say this, and say it emphatically:

The nonsensical spells pulled from asses must stop

The soul-catcher thing is an example of a great move because it drew upon the past, then built upon for the present. This heart and angel blood and salt shit, and then this “Oh by the way it needs my dying breath” stuff is just obvious “um um um well how about bleh” writing stumbles, and it shows. The only reason that lameness worked? Ruthie and Jared’s performances. Period. Because y’all gave them absolute garbage to work with, and they made it shine.

Hey! There's the two convention promos with one short local ad in between, followed by the same local ad again! I was beginning to think they'd forgotten! 

WE ARE OUT OF THE LITTLE TOWN, I REPEAT, WE ARE OUT OF THE LITTLE TOWN 

DEAN IS IN A HENLEY, I REPEAT, DEAN IS IN A HENLEY 

Oof, Dean. I mean, I figured this convo would have to happen one day, it's been building, because even though his intentions are good, Cas has been involved in his fair share of shit taking left turns. Hopefully Cas is going to go seek out other angels. Also, re: Cas saying he's getting weaker - because, why? WHY. This has never been addressed in a definitive, satisfactory manner. 

Right, so, like we do each time, let's check in to see if we've had any character development and/or plot progression: 

Do Ketch and Rowena and Belphagor count, since they've progressed to being dead? Dunno, that's more of a finality to their overall arcs. Dean's being an asshole and Sam's being weepy and Cas is being an Eeyore, that's about par. Meh. Okay. So did the plot get advanced? 

YES THANK YOU FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER SWEET LORD YES. But, eh... a little weaksauce. Yes, that chapter of the initial onslaught is closed, yet we know it's not over. So I feel like the ep should've ended with, after the bunker door slams, a cut to a little scene that serves as a clue about what lies ahead. I mean, ahead-ahead, season-wise. Like, twenty second blip, not even, then hard cut to black screen, then on to promo which appears to be MotW. 

So that's it, really. More adept writers could've made the material of #1 and #2 into the premiere (minus several things, most specifically minus Kevin, should've saved Osric for something else down the line), then this should've been episode #2 instead of #3. Can't unring that bell, though. Let's hope we hit some speed before Buckleming comes along to run us into a ditch, then (fingers crossed) we have a few eps after that to rebound for the finale.

See you next week.

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Past posts, from newest to oldest (and I sometimes do addendums if a response warrants)

Episode 2

Episode 1

[bellaelisabeth95]

A reminder of the toxicity that plagues the legacy of Marlene King and Pretty Little Liars

TW: Self harm and suicide

I know that this coming week starts the Pretty Little Liars spinoff “The Perfectionists,” also directed by Marlene King and starring two cast members from the original show. PLL has been over for years now, but that doesn’t mean some of its most…… passionate? fans have forgotten it. I know many of us haven’t. Who could forget the disaster that was the end of Pretty Little Liars, as a small but very loud subgroup of fans decided to viciously attack anyone who stood in the way of their beloved ship? Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that everyone knows it was not all emison fans. If you are a person who shipped emison but did not bully other cast members or fans, then I feel truly sorry that you were in the same group as them. And I thank you for not taking part in what some of them did.   

  The reason I’m making this post is because of the Lindsey Shaw Fiasco. I know every single PLL fan on social media knows what this is, regardless of who you shipped/didn’t ship. I want to make sure in light of MK’s new show no one forgets what happened to her, and what could happen again. Marlene King watched as one of her own actors, as well as many of the fans of her show, were mercilessly harassed and said NOTHING. In fact, she pandered to the same people doing the harassing. Both Shay Mitchell and Sasha Pieterse, the two parts of the emison ship, said nothing, despite the harassers being their fans. Now, maybe you’ll say all the ships had crazy fans. They did. But none like this one. Because these people went beyond the typical mean comments about looks or weight. These people aimed to cause real, true harm, and in some cases they almost succeeded. And now, after PLL being over for two years, with the chance for this rabid fanbase to lose their flame, another show targeted at the SAME PEOPLE is airing next week. Another chance to bring them together, to attack anyone they see as getting in the way of their ship.  

   Fans of the ship Paily were targeted. And even more so than us, Paige’s actress, Lindsey Shaw, was targeted the most relentlessly and disgustingly of all. Whether you are a fan of Lindsey’s or not, you cannot justify what happened to her. Not even if you still choose to believe she “supports Trump,” which she made clear she does not. As a fan of hers, I will agree it was dumb of her to joke about that, and I think she forgot that people don’t always get her sense of humor. Not to mention, there were always people who weren’t fans waiting to pounce. But did you ever stop to think about what led to that little breakdown? (I think right around this time 3 years ago). At that point, Lindsey had already been taking abuse for YEARS, although it certainly got worse as emison became a possibility. She would post something unrelated to the show and be flooded with “kill yourself”, “die pigskin,” and “drink bleach.” How long can someone take that kind of harassment without snapping a little? I was always impressed it didn’t happen sooner. It was clear to me, as well as many of her other fans, that she was going through something personal at the time, and all of the abuse on top of it was a little too much. This all came to a head March 2016. No one from the show said anything.   

  Fast forward to May 2016, when I lost every ounce of respect for every single cast member of PLL. I used to be a huge fan of Shay. That started fading as she failed to even acknowledge her Paily fans as time went on. It was obvious she cared far more about being popular than she did about standing up for her fans or a co-star she claimed to love. And I don’t know, maybe she and Lindsey had some kind of personal falling out. I always wondered if that was the case, because how else could they all be cold enough to ignore someone’s obvious suffering? Even if that is the case, it isn’t an excuse for her never speaking up. On one day in early May, Lindsey retweeted something that got a portion of the emison base in a frenzy, with them claiming she called Sasha ugly (the tweet did no such thing. It was calling Paily a beautiful couple). Anyway, they POUNCED with a level of venom I had never even seen before. It was horrifying. There were lots of death threats, calls for her to hurt herself. But the one that stood out most came from a user who I won’t name because I don’t want her to have the satisfaction. She literally started a petition with Lindsey’s twitter handle in it, telling people to RT to get her to commit suicide. To which Lindsey responded that she had already tried. Anyone outside of that small pocket of emisons was HORRIFIED, frantically tweeting Marlene, Shay, Troian, all the big name people from the show to address this. Even if they didn’t address Lindsey, to just make an overall statement about how this behavior wasn’t okay. Fans from every ship were taking part. I was sure Shay, or at least Marlene, would say something.

  None of them did. Not a single one. It was obvious at that point how much Lindsey was suffering. But still no one said a word.

  These are all adults. Grown women acting like a group of middle school bystanders, too cowardly to stand up for the bullied. There is no excuse for them never addressing this. Especially since with a new show, it’s likely to just start up where it left off. In glancing through instagram comments, these same fans have already found a new target: Evan Bittencourt. I don’t know who he is or why they hate him, and frankly I don’t care, because I’m sure it’s bogus, just like their reasons for hating Lindsey. The point is, just like I was afraid of the second I heard Marlene was doing another show, they have already found a new target. I have literally seen them refer to him as “The new Lindsey Shaw.” And anyone who watched PLL knows that’s not a good thing. Just some snooping has already revealed some pretty ugly tweets/comments, which I’m sure he is seeing. We saw first hand how over time being bombarded with hatred took its toll on someone who was once very proud and passionate about the character they played.

  Mental health is important. Suicide is very serious. I won’t even get into why seeing Lindsey’s tweet that night shattered my heart or why it to this day infuriates me that none of those women said anything. The fact that so many people think it’s a joke, or that it’s okay running around telling people to hurt themselves, will forever remain a mystery.

  Marlene shouldn’t be allowed to have another show after what she encouraged during her last one, and especially not one directed at the same group of fans. PLL needs to be dead and buried forever. No spinoffs. The show, and the people working on it, became toxic, and that same toxicity will be revived the moment these characters are brought back to life next week. Real people got hurt last time. Real people almost died. Think of how crazy and serious that is. I shudder to think what social media is going to look like once this gets under way, especially if the fans of the emison ship feel threatened. I know I will not watch even a second of this show. I hope it is short lived and these characters, and the toxicity they bring with them, can finally be put to rest.

  So what happens if things get bad again, Marlene? Will you say something? Will you ever try to make this right? We haven’t forgotten what you let happen to us, or happen to Lindsey. We will never forget how badly she was struggling personally, or that she was driven off social media because of your fans that you never EVER addressed. It breaks my heart what you let happen to her, and it breaks my heart that with this new show comes the opportunity for it to happen again. I hope you’ve become a better person since the Lindsey Shaw Fiasco. It’s too late for you to ever make that right, and honestly, I don’t think you have any desire to. But I do hope that you at least have enough remorse, however small it may be, to make sure it never happens again.

Please share this. Here, to twitter, instagram, everywhere. Let’s make sure we stand up this time.

[thesffcorner]

Windwitch

Windiwitch is the second book in the Witchlands fantasy series written by Susan Dennard. Like in Truthwitch we follow the characters of Merik, Safi, Iseult and Aeduan, expect now we have a new addition: Princes Vivia of Nubrevna, Merik’s older sister. I gave both books the same rating, but I can’t decide which one I enjoyed more. On the one hand this book expanded the world and the characters, but on the other I really disliked some of the plot-lines following said characters. Having all the characters be separate is a good way to explore more of the world and expand the cast, but it also means we follow 5 separate story-lines, and that’s where things got messy. Let’s start with the world-building and work our way up. Also obviously, since this is book 2 in a series, there will be SPOILERS for book 1.

In the first book, we set up the war and the Truce, which was broken at the end, when Empress Varness essentially declared war on Cartora by kidnapping Safi, the Emperor’s betrothed. We got to see Nubrevna and some of Cartora, namely Venaza City. This time, we expand into the Contested Lands, as well as the Pirate Republic of Sadonica. Now, I have never been a great map person, but I studied the map thoroughly this time, because geographically? I was confused. At the end of book 1 both Merik and Safi are on ships sailing from Lejna, and at the start of this book, they are both forced back on land. And yet, even though neither got really far from Lejna, somehow they are on completely opposite ends of the peninsula? Then we have Iseult, who is tracking Safi through the Contested Lands on foot, and somehow she ends up being roughly around the same area Safi is, who sailed on a ship, and… what? The way the characters move in this book is like the teleporting they do in the GoT show. They did this in the first book as well, but it hadn’t bothered me as much, because the plot wasn’t so closely tied to geography. Here, everyone expect Merik and Vivia is somewhere in the Contested Lands, which are at once small enough for Iseult to reach to Sadonica from Lejna in less than 2 weeks, and large enough for 2 entire armies to circumvent Safi and her group at the same time. Then we have the actual Pirate Republic of Sadonica. I was pretty disappointed in how little of it we actually see; we are mostly confined to single rooms and the big arena at the end which is a free for all mess of a fight that wasn’t very interesting or comprehensible, considering how many things were happening at once. The other issue was a grander discussion Dennard is trying to have about monarchy vs. anarchy. We are introduced to Hell-Bards as characters in this book; in book 1 they were just a background element, an elite fighting force tasked with rooting out illegal witches in Cartora. I’m still not entirely sure how this works in this world; are only Firewitches illegal? If not, then how do witches become illegal? Are Iseult and Aeduan illegal witches? Their powers come from the Void after all, and they are hated. Regardless, the Hell-bards, or rather their leader Caden has a debate with Safi about freedom and control. The Pirate Republic of Sadonica is divided between the Baedyed and Red Sea Factions; I imagine these were kind of like the Brotherhood of Steel and the Raiders in Fallout. The Baedyed have rules and some kind of governance, but they are still pirates and they are still separate from the Marstok Empire; the Red Sea are true pirates who have no rules, no rulers and have no care about the conditions in which they live, they pillage, they steal, the kill. Pirates. I found the idea that complete freedom from an oppressive monarchy would immediately lead to anarchy really frustrating and wrong sighted; pirates after all are not a great model on which to base your idea of governing. This whole conversation is an attempt to show Safi that the Hell-bards aren’t all bad, but it fell so flat for me because if the idea is that without a monarch humans will fall into chaos, that’s both a) not true in the real world, and b) not true in this world since we very clearly have the Baedyed right there as a counterargument! The most frustrating thing with this series, which I was hoping would be improved in the second book, but it has in fact only become more glaring, it’s that it tries to have these discussions on serious topics like rule, control, freedom, monarchy, slavery, bigotry, familial discontent, etc, but it has a very simplistic, not at all nuanced view of these things. Safi’s story-line suffered extremely because of this, and I have a feeling it’s because Dennard doesn’t really know what to do with Safi. On the one hand, she wants Safi to be this physically powerful and capable fighter, a character full of restless energy who wants to be free to explore the world, but on the other she also wants her to be this damsel, princess and political tool, and instead of writing this tension within Safi’s character, we get a whole book of Safi being captured, Safi being physically tortured, Safi being manipulated, and Safi starting to develop feelings for her jailors. This happened in book 1 too with Merik, and I hated it there too, but Caden here was so SO much worse. Why would Safi care what happens to him? Why would she care if he dies going back empty handed? He literary tells her at the end of the book that he will never betray the Emperor and will drag her back to him, and he’s not at all sympathetic to her disgust at being pawned off to a man who is 40 years her senior and is only willing to use her as a puppet. Hell, Caden himself uses Safi as a puppet! Every time Safi tries to regain some agency from him, the book shoves her back in her place, and at no point is she allowed to drive her OWN plot forward, instead being incapacitated or dragged around aimlessly for 300 pages. Moreover, Caden is the direct cause for all of Safi’s misery; he's the one who betrays her secret to Emperor Hendrick, and she’s willing to save him from the death he so rightfully deserves and let him tag along as her bodyguard? This was infuriating! I really dislike when authors have to have their characters regress, and then repeat the same character arc again just to pad out the run-time of the book. At the end of book 1 Safi was kidnapped by the Marstock and forced to sail to their capital; at the end of this book she is still with the Marstock sailing to their capital. None of the fighting with pirates, and getting dragged across an entire jungle have contributed anything to the overall plot or Safi’s development as a character. Empress Varness was the only bright spot in that entire plot-line, and it’s because she was the only character with any agency or even a hint of a character arc. She makes a plan, executes it and then actually reacts like a normal human would react after being kidnapped, shackled, dragged across a jungle, starved, depraved of water and then yanked back to an Empire that started an entire plot to destroy your homeland and very possibly orchestrated the attack on your ship which killed your entire crew. Just think about what I’m saying there; there’s so much complex anger and emotion in that, and we barely see any of it, because we are too busy jumping from one action set piece to another. I said in my review of book 1 that Dennard was strongest when writing action and character dynamics, not politics. That’s possibly why I liked Aeduan and Iseult’s story-line the most. Seeing the two of them slowly start to trust and commit to help each other in spite of having entirely opposing motivations was well done and interesting to read about, Iseult as a character is actually flawed because she’s insecure, selfish and weak, which is a good starting point for a character arc. She has spent her entire life trying to be something she is not, and only at the end of this book does she realize she is something else entirely. As for Aeduan, though he’s still a mysterious character and we don’t know too much about him, his interactions with Iseult kept me invested in learning more about him. However, this book is called Windwitch, and that’s because the main focus is entirely on Nubrevna and Merik. I have mixed feelings on this story-line; on the one hand I really enjoyed Nubrevna and Lovats as the setting, but on the other I still don’t like Merik as a character. There is something about overcrowded, squalid cities that’s an excellent setting for a fantasy, and if this plot-line didn’t have to fight for time with 3 others, and we actually got to spend more time learning about the city, the different gangs and fractions that control it and how they are all connected to this grander political plot, this book would have been a 5 star read. As is, we get some exploration of the city and the Nines, and we get some answers as to what is happening to Merik, but it’s mostly very surface level stuff. The same is true for Merik’s character arc; he changes some, but not by much, and there is little indication that he has learned the right lessons at the end of the novel. Like, he’s angry with Ryber for leaving the crew and going to find a cure for what happens to Kullen because she’s not following orders? Yeah, no, he’s learned nothing. I’m not sure where this idea that he wants to be King came from; in book 1, his main motivation is keeping Vivia off the throne because he is afraid she will be a bad ruler and hurt his people, not because he thinks he can do better. He does at least examine some of the biases he holds against her, and in general some of the behaviors he displayed in book 1 is here questioned. However he still acts like a complete prick the entire time in this, and he is rather horrible to Cam, the only crew member left who’s helping him. The scene where Cam explodes at him was really good though; it was probably my favorite scene in the book. Vivia was about as interesting and likable as Merik, so at least that stayed consistent. There were some good ideas at play with her; I like that they hate each other for very different and very valid reasons, and that we could see exactly how King Serafim manipulated them against each other their whole lives. I liked that Vivia was a proto-feminist, and had to get very creative on how to get things done with the Council who was sabotaging her at every step. However, like with Merik, a lot of her stuff was surface level; her blaming Merik for killing their mother was straight out of Game of Thrones, and in fact a lot of her plot reminded me of the early seasons of Cersei; I guess the comparisons aren’t as unwarranted as I originally thought. The thing I found most engaging about this book, was weirdly enough, the plot. Again, I wasn’t super interested in the political maneuvering of the different Kingdoms, but I was very curious to learn more about the Puppeteer, Ragnor, who’s helping Leopold, etc. We get some vague answers in this book, but nothing concrete yet and that’s what I’m interested in. So I guess I’ll have to keep on reading. Overall, I can’t say I love this series, but I’m invested enough to keep reading. I really want to love it, and if Dennard went a little deeper into the characters and their motivations and emotions maybe I will. As is, I can only recommend it if you just want a cool world and some fast action; and don’t think too much about anything else.

[smokeybrand]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Stop, It's Already Dead

I’ve been trying to watch Army of the Dead since it came out but every time i start, i end of bailing on it because it’s trash. Yeah, that’s it. This movie is trash. You can literally stop reading this review right now because that’s the verdict. Army of the Dead is shallow, inconsequential, zombie murder porn wit that trademark Zack Snyder, edgelord, spice. It’s f*cking ridiculous and i hated every minute of it. That’s it. That’s the review. Don’t watch this rancid spooge. Now, if you want to know why i hated it so much, read on. But it really is one of the worst things i have seen all year.

The Adequate

Dave Batista works magic with the material on hand. Zack Snyder isn’t know for having emotional bite or a realistic edge to any of the characters in his films but Batista was able to hone in on something and does a decent job of letting me tolerate this clusterf*ck. His Scott Ward is easily the best thing about this flick.

The carnage displayed while the opening credits rolled was almost as dope as Zombieland and i appreciated that. Literally the only time during the film where i didn’t feel like someone was standing on my sack and twisting.

Also, Hiroyuki Sanada is in this. I don’t know the name of his character and i don’t care i just genuinely enjoy Sanada’s work. He is an excellent actor and, similarly to Ken Watanabe, makes everything he’s in better, regardless of his role’s size or relevance.

The integration of Tig Notaro was kind of seamless. That sh*t was surprising because every one of her scenes was added in post. She had no interaction with any of the cast, not even in pick-ups. That’s just her, in front of a green screen, talking to herself. Of course, there are scenes where that is very apparent but the fact she was even able to replaces an entire actor wrapped month beforehand, is kind of a miracle and testament to the absurd technical skill Snyder wields as movie maker.

The Horrid

Zack Snyder. Literally everything i am about to unload, is Zack Snyder’s fault. This “film” is pure Zack Snyder. More so than the Snyder cut of Justice League. More so than BvS. Even more than f*cking Sucker Punch. Netflix gave this man a bunch of money and told he to go “create” and, to his credit, Snyder did just that. Unfortunately, he created hot dumpster water topped with soggy diarrhea.

Seriously, everything i have a problem with, has Zack Snyder’s name on it. He was the director, the writer, the screenplay writer, AND the f*cking cinematographer. What the f*ck, dude? Like, you want to be an auteur director, fine. Be good at it. Be good at movies if you’re trying to wear all of those hats. Zack, as a filmmaker, is bad at ALL of them. At best, he’s pedestrian, so doing all of that, just infuses abject mediocrity throughout this movie and it shows.

I’ve seen a lot of cats haring of Snyder’s depth of field choices but I'll take it one step further; What the f*ck was up with the shot composition as a whole, in this film? It was bad! All of it was so bad! There was no substance, no dynamism in the camerawork or the way the shots were set up. I’m not going to sit here and say it was just a bunch of static work, like how someone would film a play for theatrical exhibition, but it wasn’t that much better. I was watching this sh*t and thought to myself, “Hamilton had better camera work than this. F*ck.”

The whole ass plot is paper thing. I’m watching these first few minutes and it’s readily apparent that the guv’ment knows zombies be doing a zombie and Vegas is lost. Why the f*ck didn’t they nuke that motherf*cker off the face of the earth. Straight up Raccoon City that b*tch. There is nothing, no plot contrivance or mental gymnastics that could make believe that Las Vegas wouldn’t have been scrubbed off the map, within a week of this outbreak. Not after seeing actual paratroopers floating in to their deaths and straight up napalm strikes on the Strip. Why did anyone think building a fence out of shipping containers was a good long term option for containment! And that’s literally just in the opening credits! It gets worse as the flick progresses, man! The actual plot is trash!

Now, the actual premise? Interesting. It could have been interesting. But then Zack Snyder snyder’ed it up with the f*cking execution. Look, in order to write a great zombie flick, you need a strong human element. That’s where the audience is going to focus. They’re going to try and find the humanity in a sea of despair. Every great Zombie flick has a laughably strong lead and fantastic supporting characters you come to care about, usually withing the first act. 28 Days later is a fantastic example of how to execute your Zombie disaster apocalypse. You do not give a sh*t about any of the characters in Army. Snyder tries with Batista, thus the father-daughter relationship, but that cliche sh*t was cookie cutter from a whole different movie, which I'm going to get into next...

Army of the Dead is Aliens. It’s just a popularization of Aliens. It’s the same f*cking movie, but worse. There are shot-for-shot recreations in this movie, with just enough changed so Snyder won’t get sued. Just, off the top of my head, the ending. It’s exactly the same as f*cking Aliens! Literally the same goddamn ending! Heroes survive a gauntlet of monsters, rush to the top of or roof. Pilot of escape flying contraption kissing. Hero curses pilot of said whirly dervish. Queen Alien or Zombie King shows up. Pilot returns at the last minute to save survivors. Same. F*cking. Scene. And that’s just one. There are SO many in this thing you’d think Snyder watched Aliens everyday on set and just stole sh*t from that flick to add to his. It’s real bad. Real f*cking bad, man. which exasperates my next point...

This movie is f*cking boring. i was bored. If you’re stealing the entirety of Aliens, how do you f*ck that it up so bad? The same movie, which thrilled and entertained me thirty years ago, sh*t the bed so hard, today, and i don’t know how that happened. It’s infuriating when i think about it for too long. Speaking of long...

Why the f*ck is this anal prolapse, two and half hours long?? Why did you need this much movie to tell so little story? Seriously, how the f*ck is there this much run time yet, no actual f*cking characters outside of whatever the f*ck Batista was able to save with his sheer screen presence? How do you have all of this time and still not craft a character in which to invest?? In a f*cking Zombie movie?!

Also, he hired a rapist.

The Verdict

This movie sucks. For all of the reasons outlined above. I told you that in the beginning. You didn’t have to rad this far. You knew i hated this movie within the first sentence. This sh*t was a waste of my life. Batista is good in it and that sh* Snyder did with Tig was pretty cool, but everything else is bad. All of it. None of this movie is good. It was boring. It wasn’t entertaining. There are no characters. The plot is dumb. The execution is worse. The run time is absurd. Did i mention how bored i was? Army of the Dead is garbage. This is a bad movie. This is what you get when you just let Zack Snyder do whatever the f*ck he wants with no limits or boundaries. Snyder is bad at movies and he keeps proving it. I have no idea why people keep giving this obvious fraud work.

[once-upon-a-time-psychblog-blog]

I’m finding all the CS wedding hype rather amusing… I said I was done with this show a while back but split Queen lured me back in. I bailed again because the show hasn’t redeemed itself and I don’t believe this wedding is an indication of a happy ending. I’m not going to talk about that today. Today is for the upcoming musical episode, where the fan focus hasn’t really been about the musical element at all, it’s been the Captain Swan wedding. Captain Swan are getting married! They are endgame and SwanQueeners will just have to deal with it and accept that Captain Swan is the most beautiful love story ever told, and oh my god Jen chose a wedding dress Grace Kelly wore in a movie called “The Swan” and Grace Kelly was such a style icon that this wedding is so iconic because Captain Swan is the purest of true loves and that must be why Jen chose the dress and they are gonna live happily ever after and they’ll finally have sex on their honeymoon and have CS babies and won’t that be just so wonderfully fantastic! 🙄 I wonder if my fake fangirling and heavily sarcastic tone was detectable in that speech… My response to the first part, about the wedding actually happening is… it may happen, and it may not. Even when couples say “I do” and wear rings after tying the knot, it does not necessarily mean that it is true love and they will live happily ever after. Princess Diana wasn’t happy in her marriage to Prince Charles and look how that ended, which was also dubbed as a fairytale once upon a time by those who knew nothing of Diana’s life or her marriage. 👸🏼 Aside from the fact that all true love’s kisses on OUAT happen during a curse, and it’s always been the first kiss shared that breaks a curse, Captain Swan have had their first kiss outside of a relationship and outside a curse in Neverland so I wouldn’t expect a rainbow blast then. Snowing only get those happen when they are in a curse. In Ruby Slippers, Red kissed Dorothy to break her out of a sleeping curse - first kiss rainbow blast. Hades and Zelena’s first kiss broke the curse Hades brother placed upon him so they got their rainbow blast. Aurora was woken by Phillip and it was the first kiss we saw between them… the only time where a curse has been broken without a kiss was during the frozen arc with but it wasn’t a curse as such, it was a spell. The spell of shattered sight. Spells are different to curses. ✨ So Captain Swan had their first kiss and subsequently been in curses & true love’s kiss has never actually worked for them. You can argue all the other red herrings of Captain Swan being true love but the fact is a true love’s kiss is what is meant to break any curse, true love being the strongest magic of all and that still has not happened. Why is that??? Maybe they are saving it for the wedding day CSers cry. Maybe they are, it is a possibility. But in my opinion it’s highly unlikely. You should know Adam and Eddy’s way of writing by now. What they show you in canon text is NEVER what is intended. Unless of course you refer to the Snowing ship. This is why SUBTEXT is so important. I’m not talking about SwanQueen subtext. I’m not even going to go into a SwanQueen is endgame argument, which may shock you. No, I’m going to just use the OUAT storytelling as it has always been to make my point without bringing SwanQueen into it. 😧 Firstly, this is Adam and Eddy we are talking about. The same guys who gave us the mysterious Lost series, where we were trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this strange island that attracted planes to crash into it that people miraculously survived from. The people were stranded and trying to find a way off the island. The island at first seemed like some sort of conspiracy. There was a Dhama project and the word Dhama in Buddhism means TRUTH. So there was this element of trying to figure out what the truth was. This place didn’t make any sense and was totally confusing. Turns out that it wasn’t a reality as such. Seeing as many years have passed since then I think I am safe to say it… the island was some form of purgatory. They were held there and when some vanished in whatever fate was bestowed upon them, that was their soul moving from purgatory. At least that’s how it was interpreted. The ending actually infuriated a lot of viewers. 😤 So if you aren’t familiar with Adam and Eddy’s work, I suggest that you get to know it and understand that nothing is as straightforward as it seems where those two are involved in the writing. If they are happy with a wedding spoiler to be released (the guys who are strictly “no comment no spoilers”) then it’s safe to say that this wedding isn’t actually going to be as it seems. 💍🙊 Do you remember when Rumple’s dad played “Follow the Lady” before he became Peter Pan? It’s the three card trick where the player must keep their eyes on the marked card (the Queen) whilst it is shuffled around with two joker cards though some use aces. This is also called three card monte. When the swindler has finished moving them around, the player must choose the marked card (the Queen). The players watch carefully trying to keep an eye on that marked card focusing so hard on what they are told to focus on. Only when they turn the card over they believe is the marked card, it turns out they have been focused on one of the two jokers. This is Adam and Eddy’s game when they tell a story. They are telling you to focus so hard on the wedding. It’s the marked card. But when the wedding scene actually happens, you can bet your bottom dollar that when that card gets turned over, you’ll end up with a joker, and the wedding isn’t what it seems. ♠️♥️♣️♦️🃏 This is why SUBTEXT is actually more important than CANON TEXT! Things that are canon because they are written and verbally stated by characters, are generally what they WANT you to focus on, so when they flip that card (the plot) you feel like a fool staring down at a joker. So when it comes to that episode I think I’m gonna sit back, sip my tea, and have a giggle at all these CSers flipping their shit because they truly believed they are actually going to get what they want. 🐸☕️ Naturally they won’t direct their frustration with Adam on twitter, oh no, the’ll misdirect that anger at Swen because they’ll convince themselves that Adam and Eddy listened to us and gave in. But if it goes the way Adam and Eddy like to play, Swen won’t get what they want out of this episode which would be for Emma to realise she is making a mistake at the very least, and as a bonus run off with Regina. Yeah that’s not going to happen either, although it is nice to dream it at this point. What happens in the future who knows? The thing with Adam and Eddy is they aren’t afraid to give nobody what they want or hope for. OutlawQueen didn’t have a true love’s kiss, they didn’t even utter the words “I love you” - funny how that without saying I love you that their relationship can be seen as canon love because of the obvious subtext, whereas something like SwanQueen can’t because they aren’t dating. 🙃 But not going there. 😋 Realistically, it’s been 6 years, and in that time nobody ever gets what they want, and only side characters have ever had true love’s kiss because other wise the story would be over and done with quick if all the mains got their happy endings. I mean, y'all should have learned the routine by now CSers. Oh but what am I thinking, of course you haven’t learned the routine because only canon written things are important to you. Silly me! 🐸☕️ As for the Grace Kelly wedding dress, and the movie The Swan in which Grace Kelly appeared in… let me clear up a few things, seeing as I tend to watch a lot of vintage movies. I love to watch Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day… not only to see such a difference with acting back then to how it is today, but because these women were fashion icons of their time and are still icons in history. I have a particular interest in styles of those eras and how very different they were compared to the styles around today. But the movies… the actresses were great, but the messages of them weren’t always. Some were quite degrading to women in my opinion; The Swan being one of them. 🐥 The premise of the Swan… Prince Albert, visits a banished family of nobles. Their matriarch ( to spell it out for you this means the head of the family) Princess Beatrix (who seemed to act like more of a domineering queen), wants her daughter Alexandra, to marry her own cousin Albert so that the family will be welcomed back into the kingdom. So Alexandra’s mother encourages her to flirt with Albert to gain his affections to regain regal status as she believes he will fall in love with her, marry her, and they can finally rule a kingdom again. (Reiterating this point to CSers because generally they only focus of context rather than any subtext… this is not love, because love is not a choice and love isn’t manipulation in order to gain status or material possessions). 🙄 Princess Beatrix: Oh my dear child, this is the one thing, the one opportunity that all your life I’ve been praying for - for you to become a queen. - Doesn’t she sound like Cora! Not at all like Snow. The one opportunity in all YOUR life that I’VE been praying for. Never mind whether Alexandra has any feelings of her own. I’ll just dream your life for you and you do as I say to fulfil my own dreams for your life. This is such a common thing. When you think in terms of sexuality, though this has nothing to do with sexuality, a lot of homophobic parents like to do, control and force their child to be in straight relationships they don’t want to be in. Controlling and forcing relationships is something a parent should never do, regardless of whether or not their child is heterosexual or otherwise. Control and manipulation is not an act of unconditional love. Anyway, I digress. So back to the story… 😑 Much to her Beatrix’s dismay, Albert doesn’t show much of an interest in Alexandra. So Beatrix encourages Alexandra to flirt with her tutor, Nicholas in order to rouse Albert’s attention. 😧 Princess Beatrix: My dear child, how do you suppose I came to marry your father? You can’t think a man just gets an idea into his head and asks a woman to marry him? Of course not! All your father ever cared for was horses. He wouldn’t even look at me. So I looked once or twice at the riding master. Your father proposed the very next afternoon - on horseback. 🤔 Don’t you just love pushy manipulative people who become parents who then try to manipulate force their children into a relationship where there is no feeling not to mention the fact that Albert was Alexandra’s cousin? I know you CSers are so quick to jump on an incest wagon when you compare Regina who was no blood relation to Snow, was forced into a marriage with Snow’s father, man she didn’t love and therefore was forced to be a stepmother very temporarily to Snow, whom she didn’t want to be a step parent to, rather than also accept the fact that Hook actually had a relationship with Henry’s biological grandmother by choice, and was Baelfire’s/Neal’s step father by your own logic, was even trying to act as such whilst Baelfire was aboard the Jolly Roger, and therefore acted unbeknown to him as Emma’s step father-in-law… so this marrying of a cousin thing should really be a pleasant thing for you guys to hear. Anyway…. 🙃 Dropping the prince and princess titles as writing that is becoming rather monotonous, Alexandra does as her mother wishes and flirts with her attractive tutor Nicholas. However, later the plan backfires when she develops genuine feelings for Nicholas. Nicholas is already quite taken with Alexandra, so when she invites him to the farewell ball for Albert (her last chance for the plan to work) he eagerly accepts. Later when they are dancing at the ball it appears that Albert is getting jealous, (how very possessive considering his apparent lack of interest) but instead of saying something, he appears to show more interest in playing the bass viol in the orchestra. 🎶🎵🎶 Despite the original intention of using Nicholas, Alexandra realises she is quite taken with Nicholas. Here you can see her conflict where she expresses feelings for him but you can see that she is bound by her ploy in order to gain the Kingdom for her family… 💔 Dr. Nicholas Agi: You’re so sweet and so beautiful… Princess Alexandra: Don’t come any closer Nicholas… I’ve never seen a man in love and… he happens to be in love with me. Dr. Nicholas Agi: Are you so afraid of me? Princess Alexandra: Oh, if I am I want always to be afraid. I want to be so good to you. I want a hundred things. I want to tell you everything that’s in my heart… I want to look after you and spoil you and… oh, eat something. The wanting to always be afraid is a hint of saying I want to always be afraid that I will lose you because that’s how I know, in this confusing time where I feel things for you but I’m trying to gain my cousin’s affections, that my feelings for you are genuine. But obviously she cannot be so transparent and say this aloud because of her mission set by her mother. 😔 Eventually, she tells Nicholas that it was all a ploy to get Albert to propose to her and she suspected he felt this way. She realizes that she has some feelings for him but he feels used and that Alexandra has been disingenuous, so refuses her affection. Albert comes to find out about this situation and is a little taken aback. Albert and Nicholas trade insults, and Nicholas then storms out and tries to leave the next morning. 😭 Alexandra, distraught over what happened, tries to leave with him, but he refuses her again. YES… SHE WANTED NICHOLAS NOT ALBERT! Albert’s mother shows up and gets the entire story and is aghast. Albert actually GIVES HIS BLESSING to the pair and says that when he is king he will allow them back into the country. However, Nicholas is still hurt ends up leaving the mansion without Alexandra. 😭💔 So… there you have it. She didn’t actually want to marry Albert, because she actually loved Nicholas. But royalty being what it is, marrying for love is rare. She did end up marrying Albert but it wasn’t for love. These are the last lines where Albert tries to console Alexandra… 😭 Prince Albert: Your father used to call you his swan, so I am told. I think that’s a good thing to remember. Think what it means to be a swan: to glide like a dream on the smooth surface of the lake, and never go to the shore. On dry land, where ordinary people walk, the swan is awkward, even ridiculous. When she waddles up the bank she painfully resembles a different kind of bird, n'est-ce-pas? Princess Alexandra: A goose. Prince Albert: I’m afraid so. And there she must stay, out on the lake: silent, white, majestic. Be a bird, but never fly. Know one song, but never sing it until the moment of death. And so it must be for you, Alexandra: cool indifference to the staring crowds along the bank. And the song? Never. 😭😭😭💔💔💔 Now… first off, Albert insulted Alexandra. She is graceful but only where she belongs… he doesn’t see her gracefulness in any other circumstance. Out of her natural habitat (i.e. with Nicholas whom she actually had romantic feelings for) she would be awkward and ridiculous. Instead of being the regal beauty that she is, she would be more like a goose. It’s all metaphoric to suggest that she is far too good for a man who was actually a nice guy, but not royal and therefore not worthy, despite the fact that she genuinely loves Nicholas. It was suggesting that her life was to be unfulfilled, and that her cousin who wasn’t interested in her to begin with, and who only did become interested when another man was on the scene, who will give her a life where she can be regal and graceful, but she as a Swan cannot sing her (Swan) song and must be silent and subservient to preserve the perfection illusion for the Kingdom. This is the life she was born into and she should just accept it. 😤 What kind of message is that really to women? To settle for a guy you’re actually related to, in a loveless marriage, living a life where the surface everything looks perfectly regal and wonderful, but she can’t even express herself… sounds like such a wonderful happily ever after, doesn’t it? [Oh sorry, insert sarcastic tone here again!] 🙃 And wouldn’t you know it, beautiful blonde woman with a Swan wearing a crown was the poster for that 1950’s movie. Seems to depict the oppressive nature of how royal romances are more of a transaction than of genuine love. Not saying that some aren’t for love, it’s just not often that a royal will marry someone for love. Though I do believe that Kate and William in the UK did marry for love. I guess time will tell. 🙃 Ironically, Grace Kelly was courting her own prince while making The Swan. She met Prince Rainier during April 1955 Cannes Film Festival. By December that year, he proposed to her. Royals do work fast and this is usually down to external pressures in retaining their kingdoms. It was speculated that he was seeking a wife, as a treaty with France in 1918 stated that if he did not produce an heir to the throne, Monaco would revert to France. However this was neither confirmed nor denied. It was also rumoured he had an affair with three different women and the first was during Grace’s first pregnancy, but that was also neither confirmed or denied so we cannot say for sure whether it was a faithful marriage. 😕 Also ironically, that movie featured several eerie similarities to Kelly’s future. Her white lace costumes are quite similar to her wedding dress, and Alec Guinness who plays Prince Albert in The Swan, actually looks a great deal like Grace Kelly’s husband, Prince Rainier in this movie. 🤔 Interestingly enough, Grace Kelly actually did some work for ABC! Yes, she narrated ABC’s made-for-television film The Poppy is Also a Flower (1966). She and Rainier worked together in a 33-minute independent film called Rearranged in 1979, which received interest from ABC TV executives in 1982 after premiering in Monaco, on the condition that it be extended to an hour. Before more scenes could be shot, Kelly died and the film was never released or shown publicly again. Grace Kelly died in a car accident. The beautiful blonde princess lost control of her car after suffering a minor stroke that caused her to lose control of the vehicle. Her daughter, Stephanie, one of her three children, was in the car with her and she tried to regain control by taking the wheel after her mother lost consciousness, but failed to do so. Grace was alive but unconscious, with injuries to her brain, thorax and a femur fracture, she was in a coma on life support until the following day when Rainer decided to terminate the life support as doctors determined that she would not recover. Stephanie suffered bruising, concussion and a fracture to her spine. She didn’t attend her mother’s funeral due to these injuries. 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢 A tragic way for a princess to die, a tragic way for anyone to die really. Her life was cut short, so the happily ever after bit didn’t really happen for them. 😔😔😔😔😔😔 During her marriage to Rainer, Grace was not permitted to act anymore, a decision that Rainer himself imposed after an outcry in Monaco when Hitchcock offered Grace a part which would depict her fictional character as a kleptomaniac. So Grace had no choice but to decline Hitchcock’s offer. Despite acting being her dream and pleasure in life, the only way she could do it would be to divorce Rainer, which would mean leaving her three children in Monaco, and she would never do that. So she threw herself into her role as a princess and engaged in charitable work. Grace Kelly’s dream was to act and it had been her dream from being a very young child, much to her parents initial displeasure. However, her life changed, and she had to put not only her children and husband first, but the reputation of Monaco before herself too. She was no longer in a position to pursue her dreams. After her death, Rainer lived out his life, but never remarried and he is buried alongside her. ☹️ Most see Grace Kelly as this gorgeous blonde woman, who got lucky and married her own Prince Charming in a fairytale come true. But what I see is this whirlwind romance where a proposal was made after 8 months of not actually spending a lot of time together what with their individual commitments (particularly Grace’s as she was filming at the time). She accepted it meant that she had to give up her dreams, sadly her tragic death meant the apparent on the surface perfect fairytale (which it really wasn’t) ended prematurely to what a happily ever after is meant to be. Fairytales don’t end in tragedy. So I really find it somewhat interesting that Jennifer Morrison chose a Grace Kelly wedding dress of all the dresses she could have chosen. It will be interesting to see just how this pans out. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 Follow the lady does not mean follow Emma into the canon plot spoiler that they don’t mind you seeing with blind faith that it will happen. The truth and the clues as to what will happen have already been shown to us, but you guys are too busy focusing on what they tell you to look at. It’s not the big obvious canon things where the truth is found, it’s in the details and the subtext, in the small things. Even in the things you believe are not canon because they haven’t been said. But what do I matter huh? I’m just a fan who ships SwanQueen and as YNB said once only canon ships are worth talking about 🙃 I wonder if that statement will still hold up after all of this is over, or whether Adam and Eddy’s storytelling will teach the lesson that just because something is canon, doesn’t mean it’s set in stone and that it always will be.