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bloodgulchblog · 2 years ago

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I feel like Pandora opening the fucking box here but I have to ask- What the fuck is Red vs. Blue. What is it? I've seen the first season twice I think but have never been able to watch past that. It's funny, sure. The first episode is iconic. But I still don't understand it, you feel? Do things happen in the later seasons? What is the appeal?

Shit, fuck, okay, so...

(This is a long post, and nobody concerned is at all surprised.)

You've seen the first season so I don't have to go over the very basic starting premise, at least. I'll try and avoid glaring spoilers.

ANYWAY.

Red vs Blue was only supposed to last for a couple of episodes, but it got away from them and the first arc (seasons 1-5) ran from '03-'07 and it's like 9.5 hours of content all together. Part way in, it found its legs and started telling a funny story about how this pile of color coded idiots in Blood Gulch got tangled up loosely in some stuff pointing vaguely in the direction of the alien war and saved the day. They go through some portals. They get wildly lost. They think they've traveled in time. There are a lot of stupid jokes that become plot points. They fight a guy who is a lot better at fighting than them. There's a big explosion. It's stupid, extremely 2000s in both good ways and terrible ways, and incredibly dear to my heart, all in equal measure.

After it ended and had been silent for a while, RT decided to continue Red vs Blue but this time it was going to have an actual plot on purpose! From the beginning! For real this time!

The way they did this was by retconning and adding onto the only backstory anyone in the Blood Gulch Chronicles had: Agent Texas was from a top secret military project (Project Freelancer) where she got paired with an aggressive artificial intelligence for space war reasons.

Seasons 6-8 (about 6 hours of content) form an arc that is called The Recollection. It starts a while after Season 5 ends, and introduces the character of Agent Washington (from the same project as Tex, naturally.) Wash is trying to investigate what happened back in Blood Gulch (and specifically where the character Church has ended up) while also contending with a mysterious, aggressive, mute man called the Meta who's been hunting down and killing agents for their AIs.

A lot of shit happens, there's A Twist that idk if you've already heard but it's fun if you haven't. It ends with some strong forgiveness and power of friendship vibes.

After that, seasons 9 and 10 are the Project Freelancer Saga (about 5 hours, can you tell episodes were getting longer) which has big flashbacks to what actually went down during the project. Season 9 is plagued (for me) by having the "current" events mostly be a bunch of stuff that happens as a dream sequence (more or less) for one character and nobody else in it is real. (It's interesting if you care about him, but otherwise it's a lot of sitting through things that don't matter.) 10 gets back to things happening in the present and it has problems from being ten pounds of plot in a five pound bag, but also I love Agent Carolina a lot and much of the plot is about her dragging the gang into a revenge quest to try to get closure so... *raises and lowers one shoulder.* (I have a lot of unpopular opinions because the flashback characters are some of the most popular in this fandom, but I think the flashbacks are one of the weakest parts of the whole show.)

The show ended there for a while, having resolved the Project Freelancer plot and given the characters a theoretical sendoff. Then, seasons 11-13 (The Chorus Trilogy, about 8 hours) were produced by a new showrunner and, quite frankly, it was better than RvB ever deserved. After heroically bringing down what remained of the super shady Project Freelancer, the gang is finally richly rewarded with being able to go home to Earth! Unfortunately, they get stranded on a colony world called Chorus instead and dragged into the civil war currently plaguing the planet. It is the best-handled arc in the whole show, really nicely done, and I very honestly think that Season 11 is the best place to start RvB if you aren't sure whether you want to or not. It stands alone really well, it came at a point where the show had matured a lot, and Season 11 actually does the work of re-introducing the characters and gives you enough information that you don't have to see anything prior in order to understand about them. If you like 11-13, then you can decide if you care enough to go back for the rest of it. If not, you can safely say you saw the best of the show.

The characters have responsibility and have to deal with what it means to have people depending on and looking up to you (especially when you're still mostly the same pile of idiots you've always been.) There's a lot of great shit in here about friendship and being flawed people trying their best. It's still dumb, RvB is always dumb, but it has a good heart.

15 and 16 were by a new guy, and were such badly-received seasons they took the guy who wrote them off the show. 16 is, hands down, the worst. 17 felt like an apology. It was really good, but oh god at what cost?

I figure if you end up caring enough about RvB you'll find out about this period on your own, otherwise summarizing it beyond "there's a lot of bad characterization and unfunny humor and there's a time travel plot, then the apology season was actually great" is wasting your time.

We don't speak of RvB Zero. It was so poorly received that neither does RT, now.

OKAY BUT WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF RED VS BLUE?

Full disclosure: While RvB matured some over time and got less bad about some of its jokes, the humor has aged badly in a lot of places and wasn't okay in the first place (looking @ u, homophobic jokes and the only black character is a guy who sleeps around and probably has a bunch of kids he doesn't support jokes, I cannot blame anyone for being put off especially by the early material) but when it's good it's witty, the breakneck pacing of jokes is great. When RvB is funny, it's really funny.

The characters are all very flawed and remain flawed, but most of them grow and you get to see them as people struggling with situations that are so much bigger and scarier and more important than the world at large has told them they're ever going to be allowed to be. The Blood Gulch crew are not just losers, but a specifically selected pack of losers. But the thing that matters about them is they can, despite their flaws and their frequently shitty personalities and their petty squabbling, band together when it matters. And when some very damaged characters who are supposedly "better" and more important than they are crash and burn and are at their lowest? The Blood Gulch gang goes "hey, you can sit with us" and offers some pretty unconditional acceptance and friendship that is pretty much lifesaving.

RvB isn't deep, the Freelancer plot is full of holes so big you can drive a tank through them, the first showrunner couldn't write female characters, I've mentioned how much of it was in poor taste, and I could go on...

But I bonded with RvB when I was young and a lot of the things in it have meaning to me, it's quotable as hell, and I owe RvB for a lot of enjoyment I had over the years messing around with ideas and characters in it and talking for hours to my friends about it.

#rvb tag #ask #measlyfurball13

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absolutebl · 3 years ago

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I never even heard that Color Rush 2 was coming out until the whole thing had already aired and was available. I’ve been kind of wanting to watch it for months because Yeonwoo is a babe, but I’m a little put off because of the idea that Yoohan won’t be there. And of course, everything that happened with poor Hyunjun makes me depressed. He deserved better from his fans. It’s the same reason I find Love By Chance 2 hard to watch without Saint - it’s a glaring gap and I’m just really worried honestly.

Have you seen it? What did you think of it? 😊

I have seen it.

So Color Rush is one of my top favorite BLs of all time (10/10), primarily based on concept. What I liked about 2 is it continued the concept, got some resolution (the mom thread), and frankly, Hyuk is a better actor than Hwall. (Comparison is warranted, although they do not play the same character, they do play the same BL TYPE of character.)

Turns out several things I feared going into this installment were wrong:

This is definitely a BL and not a bromance

It’s neither unhappy nor a cliffhanger

but I wouldn’t call it happy either

It resolves certain story threads from the first season but that's it. It's not all that ROMANTIC. Narratively:

It works well as the second installment of a trilogy.

But it does NOT work as the final installment of a duology.

I'm not sure this is helpful, I ended up giving it a 7/10.

Honestly, I liked it a lot more than I expected too, and it's not its fault. But like LBC2 YooHan's absence is NOTED and obvious and never resolved, and never could be unless they recast. Actually (unlike LBC) I think they could recast, this is a magical realism show after all, a boy could get a new face and it'd be easily explained by the narrative, but I don't think season 2 did well enough for us to ever get a season 3.

You can read my full review here. I don't think it spoils anything.

#color rush #color rush 2 #korean bl #kbl #k-bl

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cosmicangst · 2 years ago

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out of all the ya book-to-series/movie pipeline picks that were never made, libba bray’s gemma doyle trilogy is the most underrated and deserving. like period setting boarding school backdrop, secret order of witches premise, rage and tragedy undergirding the narrative, proto-feminist themes… plus a male lead doubling as love interest and antagonist who challenges the racism and colonialism coconstitutive to victorian patriarchy that’s inherent to the heroine’s thinking. and grounding all that: a female ensemble that really explores the deep friendship, love, rivalry, the sometimes toxic and frankly terrifying intensity imbricated in dynamics between young women both platonic and romantic without lowering itself to contrived melodrama.

plus! it has the best “mean” lesbian character to ever grace young queer fiction and the legions of wlw readers who don’t know about felicity worthington is a genuine shame

the selling points are a no brainer but these books were first published in 2003, predating even the tvtropes site itself, and it’s honestly doing all these ya for-marketing gimmicks better than whatever current booktok pick is offering these days. i’m not saying i’d ever want it to be adapted and inevitably dried and sanitized to social media sterility, but it absolutely deserves a bigger audience than it ever got

#notes.

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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

Follow Dom on Letterboxd

#the mummy #brendan fraser #stephen sommers #action adventure #fantasy adventure #action adventure film #the green knight #david lowery #dominic corry #letterboxd

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seavoice · 4 years ago

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mister impossible thoughts!!

I really loved the book, do NOT click read more if you don’t want to get utterly, utterly spoiled. I just want to upload my initial thoughts here for safekeeping until I go and (hopefully, eventually) reread MI.

SPOILERS

yeah this is going to be chock full of spoilers

I need to reread (with my eyes this time) before I form any useful thoughts on this book, but initial review: I loved it! It was such an enjoyable read, the pacing was very tight and it was a solid follow up to CDTH. It was tonally much darker and the ramifications were more high stakes than your usual Birdverse books.

Disclaimer: I’ve only listened to the audiobook so it’s very likely I glossed over stuff/misread some plot points/straight up forgot and/or didn’t register certain things. anyway lmao it’s reading just for fun? Keeping this as a refresher on what happened in this book because I can feel it leaving my brain as I type <3 it’s just gushing and rambling and seriously so fucking long.

CHARACTERS:

HENNESSY, FAROOQ-LANE AND LILIANA

—We got SO much more Hennessy POV this time around, and I just. I love her <3

I love her causing problems, I love her trying to fix these problems by going to people she thinks may help her, then going “fuck you guys, you suck” when they suck and finding other people who help her in a little better way. And then causing more problems, but this time with INTENT. You go girl! Love her monologues, and from the bottom of my heart fuck Jay Hennessy, Bill Dower and State of Pennsylvania. And also Bryde. Hennessy deserves so much better and I hope she finds that better with herself, her dreaming, Jordan and the new wlw murder couple which hopefully will progress into the wlw murder threesome (a girl can hope, a girl has been hoping since CDTH) and also become friends with Ronan again.

Mainly I want her to acknowledge how fucked up her abuse/neglect was and acknowledge how much that hurt her, and be happy and in a good place at the end of it, with a solid support system. I love her so incredibly much. Both the most heartbreaking scenes in this book for me were her scenes, and frankly so were most of the badass scenes. Her painting her own portrait because Jay abandoned it completely broke me (if you talk to me about Jordan in White and how it’s a sweetmetal I will start crying that is a threat) and so did the scene where she brings out the Lace in the kids’ house (also lmao the only place where I feel Bryde unequivocally said and did the right thing!).

Also the final dream showdown and the Game with Jordan were both awesome as fuck. I Love Women. It’s going to be very interesting to see how she fixes her relationship with Jordan and Ronan next book, and how her relationship with Farooq-Lane and Liliana progresses. They have a sword and an intent to kill the Lace, I do not think we are looking at failure here❤️I believe in the power of swords and love and (homoerotic?) friendship.

I feel her arc was definitely my favourite in this book, because it felt like she did complete a mini character arc in this book while reaching the climax point of her trilogy arc. And she was treated so kindly and sympathetically this book, by both the narrative and (most of) the characters and yeah, I’m going to get emo about her now. I can’t believe she just yanked out the ley line from under Ronan and Bryde, literal girlboss shit❤️

She has ways to go, but she did make some progress, start taking matters into her own hand and came to reasonable-ish conclusions by the end of it. It was good, she was so good.

—I really love the other characters in the book too, they were all great!! Farooq-Lane especially. She was the breakout star in my eyes, I will never get over this cowboy former-financial adviser with secret sword-fighting abilities. Using advice from her mentor on how to bridge the gap between the customer’s present and future selves to help time splitting visionaries. Like LEGEND. I love her and how outstandingly kind she is even if she makes some weird, ill-advised choices at times; but it’s okay because she’s so good at course-correcting and acknowledging when she fucks up. Her trying to keep promises to people she just met, doing her best to help lost dreamers, peppering in Young Professional advice🥰🥰.

Her and Liliana are very cute but I was gunning for Hennessy to join them since CDTH so I am...vibrating with excitement. And vindication. This trio is so good. I will read a whole book only about them. Also I am OBSESSED with that sword-fight with Bryde, but she deserved to shoot Ramsey too. Also is she the ONLY undreamt moderator?? FAROOQ-LANE WHAT ARE YOU HIDING.

—I can’t get a grip on Liliana but I do think it’s more by design than anything, I love that she’s like fuck you all I am not self-sacrificing myself for you guys. If you blow up, you blow up🙄CORRECT energy. This is the wisdom we need. I hope we get to know more about her, a little backstory, a little...frontstory, maybe a POV. I have a feeling she’s linked with Persephone/her brand of psychicness but no idea how that’d work. Carliana is cute, but with Hennessy their dynamic is vastly superior so I’m thrilled. The Lace is going to cause complications here and it’ll be delicious.

JORDAN, DECLAN AND MATTHEW

— Jordan and Declan were also so so good this book. They were mostly happy (and so fucking HORNY) for a fair chunk of this book, which they deserve, but the way things ended i’m very very excited to see how they deal with the storm that seems eminent. Also Declan. Jordan. They’re so insane, they’re like one minute away from fucking in the museum. They’ve decided JSS is the third person in the relationship. They are talking about getting married. They have known each other for a month. Maybe two.

— I love nice and kind characters, but I don’t necessarily need characters to be nice and kind. HOWEVER can we all give it up for Jordan, who is nice and kind, and is not actively making the worst decisions of her life?

I do not blame anyone too much for the decisions they are making and I think they’re all, at least a little bit justified in why they make their decisions, but Jordan is actively and with single-minded focus figuring her shit out! Dealing with the girls’ deaths! Her own episodes! Even makes good money on the side! She steals a car, learns about how to keep herself awake in case the worst happens, learns to make a sweetmetal herself and generally is just doing her best. I want her and Hennessy to make up and be close again I cannot take them fighting for any longer :( That reunion scene was heartbreaking but it was also simply the best, and I can’t wait for them to work their shit out.

Really hope Hennessy and her reunite again early next book and they are doing shit together! Crime, dream magic, switcheroo shenanigans, anything! Also the missing Jay memories was one thing that I felt was definitely more about Hennessy than Jordan, but then at the end of the book she is awake? The whole world goes to shit and she’s awake??? Is she a sweetmetal herself? Did she get separated from Hennessy? Is she somehow not a dream (anymore?)?

Also Jordan flirting with the bartender in the beginning <3

— Declan, for all his lapses in judgement, is actually quite good at course-correcting too? Not Farooq-Lane level good, but it was nice to see him think about the Aurora and Niall situation and his own relationship with the criminal underground with is a level of reflection that’s pretty impressive considering how much he’s still repressing. Also he got to be bitchy and an asshole this book, and poor Matthew, yeah, but also Declan’s literally earned this. Love him, he’s truly insane <3

He’s going to have a fucked-up time in the first part of next book, and it’s going to be interesting to see how he deals with it, considering his whole thing about “letting my guard down/living for myself will get my brothers killed” and then kind of living for himself for a second there and his brothers being in danger. And also the fact that he made an idiotic decision that put Ronan in danger and made him distrust Declan (and made Ronan push away the little support system he was willing to accept)! Like, of course only one of those things is considerably more his fault than the other, he does deserve to live for himself and he shouldn’t have to sacrifice that, it’s not causation, it’s barley correlation, but I’m wondering how he is going to see the situation? Anyway, big sad for him and his brothers at the end, he’s literally the last Lynch awake :(

— Matthew was also generally kind and nice. I was so, so proud of him in the end with him deciding that he’s real. He deserves to punch Declan <3 But I do love their relationship and am so fascinated by it because it’s genuinely a messy, messy situation. Like Declan’s essentially been Matthew’s sole parental figure since Matt’s been in middle school?? He’s only four years older to Matthew, but Matthew just has to accept him as his legal guardian! That’s an age difference that works quite differently when you’re thirteen and your older brother is seventeen, and differently when you’re almost eighteen and he’s twenty-one, so it’s messy there because his older brothers have “oh Matthew is a baby” bias already, which can get grating on its own.

But then he’s also a dream. He’s a dream and they’ve known all this while! That makes everything infinitely more complicated. His friendship with Jordan is so cute. I’m glad she tells him about how a lot of it is also just growing up, because a lot of Matthew’s inner narration pointed at that as well!! It’s interesting to see a growing up, teen-angst arc in a book mostly about young twenty-somethings, it’s a lot of the problems TRC characters faced, but through a different lens. I do wish we’d gotten his thoughts on other stuff too (getting kidnapped! Aurora!) but it’s okay he’s in existential crisis mode, I’ll let it slide.

And WTF why are you throwing yourself into the security system, Matthew? Lynch brothers are fucking insane. But also welp, he’s asleep now. Do NOT go towards the voice Matthew D:

RONAN AND BRYDE

—Ronan!! Ronan, babe, what the hell. I felt so bad for Ronan this book, especially towards the end. He was being a little short-sighted, but ultimately it was a sympathetic arc. It’s also so deeply an arc about loneliness and community and something I want to look at more closely when I reread (not only through Ronan’s arc, but also Hennessy’s and Declan’s and Jordan’s and Farooq-Lane’s). Where much about Ronan trying to figure out how and where he fits in the world—his whole what am I please tell me what I am crisis gets front seat this book.

The implication of Bryde being a manifestation of Ronan’s want for a utter loneliness/father figure/guide/freedom-to-dream that’s being nurtured in secret for more than a decade is really heartbreaking, and also the whole situation...just really fucking sucks for Ronan dude. He’s been dealing with so much for so long.

Bryde being an amalgamation of his need for freedom + Ronan’s loneliness and (self)isolation + need to do something and make it meaningful + need for a guiding force + the whole what am i please tell me what i am crisis, all put together in the shiny veneer of your classic hero figure is very sad but also super uh, sexy (?) from a narrative choice point of view. Very apt for the Lynch family.

Also, what felt worse was that Ronan has been clearly dealing with self-worth issues as well as the feeling that he’s not built for this world the way his brothers and friends are (and that the world is not built for him), insecurities with relationships, his fraught control between reality and dreaming, the plethora of parental neglect issues and has just given a voice/physical form to it and have that form make it seem...better? Different?

Instead of dealing with those issues as things that need to be addressed, Bryde is dealing with them as non-issues or very black and white problems (and also pushes most of the time that the problem is that the others don’t care? Which we know isn’t true, and it’s not really their fault here at all, but the implications of that being Ronan’s mindspace is saddening. Also a mindfuck. Bryde’s isolation tactics are Ronan self-isolating?). It feels pretty par for the course, with Ronan himself seeing issues as black or white a lot of the times! We’ve been told this multiple times.

I do think there’s more to Bryde though. I think he may also be an ancient existing entity separate of Ronan and Lindenmere. Just given a man-suit (like the tree suit).

(also now I do think as I’m writing this I don’t think this arc is necessarily a lot of steps back for Ronan. I think it’s an improvement in a certain way—I don’t think it necessarily erased Ronan’s progress in TDT—while still being realistically sad and difficult. Recovery isn’t linear! Like yes, he runs away from everyone he loves but at first it’s with a surprising layer of [thin] optimism. But then it gets bad again.).

I’m sorry but I think it’s a little funny too, honestly, Ronan all but joining an ecoterrorist cult with he, himself and Bryde, but the implication of why Bryde was dreamt was pretty 🤧.

The way his dreaming was stifled in his childhood developing into a manifestation of a figure who could teach him how to dream is one thing, but the fact that it gets manifested not when he needed it the most (around TRB-TDT??) but after he figured out the ropes a bit and wanted to help other dreamers in terrible situations? RONAN🥺. Ronan really internalised the hero stories, which makes perfect sense to be honest, and is a neat little metaphor for the Lynch family and the book’s stance on dreaming/stories as a whole, mythic as they come. I think Maggie a long time ago said that this series is about the “stories we tell about ourselves” so this is like. Well, first rate taking control of the narrative, Ronan! Dreamt a whole hero and villain and...an entire governmental agency? (That part is not confirmed I guess). He’s hungry for something more, we know this, the metaphor was not subtle in the least lol.

Anyway, he was good, really good. Corruption arc my beloved. He’s not in the best head space, he’s making bad decisions and slowly pushing people away, and with what happened at the end, with the mods and Declan and Adam, and then Hennessy and the ley line, and THEN Bryde’s reveal, he’s just straight up just not having a good time this last hundred pages! While he was hasty in the end, he was not unreasonable in feeling betrayed or hurt by Declan and Adam (and while we know the reason why they did that didn’t have anything to do with stifling Ronan/ensuring he’s a controlled dreamer—Ronan (through Bryde) has shown to struggle with that line of thought! So this probably feels like a worse betrayal for that reason). Like, yeah I guess I wish he’d talked about it more in the end, but also obviously I don’t, because we need a third book.

The Lynch brothers are wrong about each other a truly impressive number of times, but I do think Declan hit it right on the head when he was giving that monologue to Farooq-Lane. Ronan is a bit of a follower, and he does wrap himself up in his “Person” at the time, and I think dreaming up his inherent wants as Bryde hints at both this and his avoidance issues.

But I have faith in him and that he will stop eco-terrorising and learn from this and emerge triumphant and face his issues head-on and all that good stuff, so I know that getting from where we are currently to where we have to go will be a good, worthwhile journey, and I’m excited! Endgame for him will be helping other dreamers, but in his own way, and I can’t wait for it.

Other Stuff:

1. The book is so much about chronic illness, and being hungry for creation, and art and control and community and the loneliness of early adulthood and what stories mean to people and it’s all so well done. It’s also a gut punch. Multiple gut punches one after the other. Magic as a metaphor is my favourite concept in fantastical novels, and it’s a huge part of these books, and Mister Impossible does an amazing, amazing job running with that.

2. lmaoo Adam scamming his college mates with tarot cards. Good for him! But also this web of lies is definitely going to end up collapsing on him at some point. He’s insane. I cannot believe that both Ronan and Adam went, basically, I will help the other Ronan/Adams of the world! And then one decided to become a cult leader via proxy dream and the other decided to spin a fake personality for himself and lie about every facet of his life while joylessly buying his acquaintances $14 dollar waffles. Iconic behaviour legends <3 Learning curve!

3. Speaking of which! Oh god, Hennessy and Ronan! I love Gansey, he’s a good friend mostly, but even in his bluntest moments he does not call out Ronan the way Hennessy does. I love Ronan, but also he deserves that 100% from Hennessy, he is often times a major asshole. The things they said to each other! That dreamt phone store! That final showdown! They’re at two extreme ends of what is (I hope? Maggie come throughhhh) a complex problem and they need to meet in the middle eventually until they can become the fast friends they saw in Rhiannon Martin’s mirrors. Learning curve.

4. lmao the thing is, after CDTH, I had kind of called Declan getting sort of desperate, being in cahoots with the moderators/joining up with them because he thinks he can help Ronan like that but the whole plan massively backfiring in their face, and also causing Lynch Brothers Split 2.0. Not exactly what happened, but close enough! I think the initial plan is absolutely the well-meaning but utterly presumptuous sort that’s in character for Declan, and tbh it was after the Museum scene when Bryde really started ringing those danger signals, like that guy’s monologue and orbs are fucked up, so I’m not. Surprised. I am a little more curious about Farooq-Lane doing what she did but then again not surprised. However I am incredibly surprised that the plan didn’t fuck up due to terminal overthinking but instead due to terminal underthinking. Learning curve?

5. Uh oh sisters, now there is like. Actual cause for Adam concern, coupled with definite cause of concern for Ronan. Dream space arguments? Dreaming up copies? What is in storeee

6. Ronan not knowing the difference between dream and reality FUCKED ME UP. That’s hands down the trope that fucks me up the most, so I was stressed the whole time for that trope. I was worried it would happen with Hennessy tbh. It wasn’t so bad though—I was expecting season 3 Teen Wolf-esque fuckery.

7. Rhiannon Martin’s mirrors. Rhiannon Martin as a whole. That whole sequence was batshit and I am just. Feeling things.

8. The scene after the dreamer kids house where Hennessy is just. Done and broken and Ronan hugs her? 😔🤧besties❤️

9. Hey, Bill Dower you entered late but with a bang on TRC’s Running List of Shitty Dads

10. Farooq-Lane lying in the shallow icy fountain with a straw and a sword. Just. BABE. what the fuck.

11. declan 🤝farooq-lane when it comes to basing off their entire life mantra on pieces of generic day planner advice from their overworked “mentor” figures. insane young professionals.

12. Also NATHAN. FAROOQ. LANE. WTF is up with him and his scissors and his “explosive” murders which seem visionary-esque and his weird relationship with trees and what is the backstory/family situation there and mainly why doesn’t Carmen fall asleep like the rest of the moderators? She is the only undreamt moderator? Who even dreamt the moderators? What is UP with her. We need more Farooq-Lane family lore.

13. Lynch brothers have got to hug once at least, otherwise this is kind of unacceptable you know? :/ They all deserve a huge hug and a fucking break.

14. Mór Ó Corra please come back and cause problems, thanks.

15. Originally I had only Bryde and the New Fenian on the list of possibe deaths, I didn’t think Hennessy OR Declan would genuinely be in danger of dying in this series (who were the only two main characters with actual death foreshadowing). I think Hennessy is truly safe at this point, but I’m putting Declan back on the chopping block 😔rip dude, you had a good run. I hope it’s not the case, and I still think it’s unlikely, but likelier than post-CDTH me had thought.

16. Last thing, I do think the Ronan and Bryde plot is going to involve...mostly Ronan and Bryde and maaaybe Adam’s uh, severed consciousness in dreamspace (Chekhov’s shared dreams!) but also I think the comedy potential of Jordan, Declan, Matthew (?) + Hennessy, Liliana, Farooq-Lane meeting up and trying to deal with a liberated Bryde on their own for a bit is just. Extremely good. Four out of those six people have actually tried to murder Bryde.

17. Sorry I lied. Actual last thing. HOW THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS TO THE WORLD NOW THAT AIRPLANES ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY??? And....the beetles...

Other other stuff!! (ramblings? weirdness? questions? criticism?)

1. We got nothing of Blue or Henry, and just a couple of mentions of Gansey and the Gray Man, and I don’t really mind, but the TRC people I was most surprised to see were absent were the Foxway ladies. I thought there was a snippet with Maura? Hopefully next book!

2. I’ll be honest—the Bryde reveal was not a surprise one bit, because 1) we all cycled through so many Bryde theories we hit that one a fair few times, and 2) we have had a “this entity is a dream” reveal as a plot twist literally every book, so it was a little expected. But it didn’t really need to be completely unexpected because it made thematic sense, and the logistics of Ronan dreaming Bryde provides enough “twist” to it.

I just hope that we get to know about the logistics. Those rumours at the Fairy Market? The moderators? Based on past experience, this has potential to go super unresolved at the end of the series😬But, like, hopefully it will end up making sense!

2. I overall really loved the pacing, plot, character development, relationship development and so on! It was a good sequel, and it took us to dark but, I think, logical places. HOWEVER I do feel, later on when I’m judging this series and this book, a lot is going to depend on how well Maggie manages to resolve the plot in third book.

3. Because even leaving alone the new/side plots (the Lace, Mór Ó Corra, Jordan not falling asleep, Farooq-Lane not falling asleep, whatever the fuck is up with Liliana, the sweetmetal lore, just a bunch of character arcs in general, maybe more lore about the three dreamer families—there’s a fair chunk) the Bryde plot itself has a lot of mind fuck moments that I generally liked, but felt a liiittle plot holey to me. Anyway! We’ll see. I just hope the plot is satisfactory, because character stuff is Maggie’s strong suit and as much as I LOVE Bryde’s character and the implications of his character, I do want concrete answers.

4. There’s so much mis/non-communication here to make this plot work (surprisingly I have more issue with off screen non-communication than anything that happened in the book), and usually I’m not a fan of that, but considering who the characters are, it...honestly makes sense. The story really is about non-communication, at the core, so yeah. But I can also see how people may get annoyed at it, and that’s fair, because a truly ridiculous amount of the plot depends on that. I’m just going to try to take it as a feature instead of a bug, so to speak. It’s fine, the plot we get out of the non-communication is mostly worth it!

5. I think Ronan and Hennessy struggling with whether or not they want to reach out to their loved ones is [while obviously contrived, I don’t fault Stief it. We do need a novel] makes a ton of sense with their arcs and where their characters are at mentally, BUT a lot of other non-communication, with regards to information that characters would logically have/conversations that would have taken place, kind of took me out of the story at times—and I am not really here for the logistics! I can totally imagine people who perhaps read Mister Impossible more casually/more objectively taking issue with the book for it and again, honestly. That’s fair.

6. Same vein, with any spinoff series, there’s a little retcon. Personally, I didn’t care about the retcons, because they were minor and generally I don’t care much about them even in books I don’t like (and I really liked this book!) but again I can see why people might be a little confused about it. I was kind of surprised we didn’t talk about a lot of things in certain characters POVs though (Matthew not thinking about the kidnapping, not much about Hennessy’s girls from either Jordan or Hennessy’s perspectives, a few other stuff like that) .

7. I admit I got distracted by Will Patton and his terrible accents for a little bit, but I think we didn’t really get confirmation about what the Greywaren is? We got an explanation of a sort—about it meaning Protector and that tree (Illidorin?), but still a little vague in the details. How did Niall know about it? Why did he know about it? Also did he know about sweetmetals? I feel there are references to it in Opal and that Declan short story but I cannot explain to myself why he would not stock up on those OR at least tell his sons about it! It doesn’t seem to be a huge secret! Just. More answers about the Greywaren business.

8. Also a little more clarity in the magical system would be nice, because I’ve been bugged by these things for years and would like some answers! Also Bryde’s existence raises some very interesting points, but also a couple of wait what? moments, and I hope that also starts to makes little more sense! I feel the Lace and Mór and Liliana are all plot points we’ll definitely cover next book, but Nathan Farooq-Lane is the mystery I am most curious about, and Moderators being dreams was for some reason, the more unexpected dream reveal in this book? DREAMS HUNTING DREAMERS. I’m just worried we may not go back to this plot point lmao. It’s fine, it’s f😔✌️

ANYWAY! Immensely enjoyed this read, I cannot wait for book three and see how the plots gets resolved. Loved it💖 I’m going to just use this Rambling as a refresher when the time comes I guess!

#mi spoilers #mister impossible spoilers #jordan hennessy #ronan lynch #declan lynch #carmen farooq lane #liliana #matthew lynch #birdverse #this is for future me and anon if they so wish #hope to GOD that read notes work here. otherwise please keep scrolling I’m sorry😭#read more*

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st-just · 4 years ago

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Semi-coherent Thoughts on the Poppy War Series

(Because I really need to start forcing myself to write semi-consistently again)

So I’ll say outright that I actually liked the series quite a bit, which does mean I actually got engaged and invested enough to start turning it over and picking it apart in my head after I finished it. So, like, this is probably going to come across as more negative overall than my actual opinions of the books.

Anyway, first off I really do adore Rin as a protagonist (I’d say ‘heroine’, but, well, no). Now partially this is because I always love even minimally sympathetic morally grey (..grey like coal soot, in this case) protagonists. But she’s just also such a complete garbage fire of a person, it’s kind of endearing. Well, that’s a bit callous – her entire personality is more or less a conflict between different kinds of unhealthy responses to powerlessness and trauma. Be she’s also just such a mess, and when she really starts leaning into delusions of grandeur you can’t help but root for her and hope things do actually turn out okay, regardless of how many fivers of blood she’s currently fantasizing about creating.

A big part of that is just how thoroughly awful the entire setting is, and how terrible everyone in it are, of course. Like, there are basically exactly three developed character in the entire trilogy who are unambiguously at least mostly good people (Chen, probably Venka, specifically the amnesiac and semi-delusional version of Jiang, but that’s being generous), and the fact that they stick around with Rin right to the end kind of puts that into doubt, honestly. Beyond that – almost every family has negligent or abusive parents, and literally every political figure is a bloody-handed tyrant ruling through violence and fear. The Hesperians are racist imperialists convinced they have a divine mandate to conquer the world, the Mugenese are every horror story from the IJA during WW2 translated to a pre-industrial fantasy setting, the ruling elite of Nikara are so many racist, scheming, power-hungry snakes with no concerns except their own position....

And, part and parcel with how terrible the setting is, Kuang does an incredible job of making all the worst things Rin does (until the final act, anyway) incredibly cathartic and badass and fun-in-a-fucked-up-way to read. There’s a terrible sort of awe while she turns the main islands of not!Japan into a pyroclastic hellscape. And whenever she gets a chance to enact any of her numerous revenges on some of the many people who abused and betrayed her it’s always poetic, in a Count-of-Monte-Cristo sort of way, and so kind of sickly compelling, even beyond it being some of the only times Rin’s really hopeful and happy. (Also, there are fun villainous monologues and quippy post-murder one-liners!)

Also, all forms of love are a terrible idea 100% of the time and is only going to end in at least one of the parties dead, abused, or (more or less literally) killing themselves in order to keep up with the other/earn their approval/try to keep them together. (I mean, Rin mostly had horrible taste in men, but Chen wasn’t able to stay mad at her for longer than a few months even after the whole ‘genocide’ thing, which he’s just about the only person to react to with any horror whatsoever. And look at how that ended up working out for him, so-)

I’m sure comparing grimdark fantasy to A Song of Ice And Fire is thoroughly out of fashion by now, but the overall perspective really did strike me as incredibly similar to Martin’s, a lot of the time. ‘Legitimate’ power and ‘lawful’ authority are ultimately nothing but polite fictions maintained by violence, terror and brutal oppression. War is a hell suffered most keenly by civilians with the misfortune to live and die in the middle of it, and least of all by the people with the power who actually start and end them. A flawed and unequal peace is very often preferable to dragging everything to hell with you as you die for the sake of freedom. And so on.

Now, to start the nitpicking – this is entirely personal and aesthetic, but it was kind of annoying how each of the first two books ended in moments of megalomaniac grandeur and terrifying empowerment, and then the next book started with a timeskip of things having gone to shit and her back under someone else’s thumb, and then a solid majority of the text is spent getting manipulated, betrayed, and finally crawling and clawing her way back out to the same point (both emotionally and in terms of independence/vision) that she had been at the previous book’s climax.

This isn’t anything even close to unique to TPW, of course – everything going to shit between the end of one story and the start of the sequel is kind of endemic to a lot of genres, really. And it is frankly incredibly in character for Rin to go through cycles flipping between resentment at being manipulated and used, and desperately craving authority figures to tell her what she should do and give her validation as valuable or useful. Still a bit annoying to read, though.

I’m sure it’s more me than the books – not like they didn’t put in the effort – but I could just never get really invested in the whole enemies-to-almost-lovers-to-enemies-again-to-? Thing with Nezha. Like, he’s interesting in that you can do a 180 perspective flip and he’d clearly be just as suitable a protagonist as Rin is, and his life’s very sad and everything. But, like, we get a front row seat to Rin’s internal monologue, and she gets thirsty for plenty of terrible men (and one awful woman), the only thing that makes Nezha special is that he’s not at least twice her age. So I never really got nearly as emotionally invested in them as the books seemed to expect me to. Which does kind of hurt the whole final act of book three.

Speaking of – okay, the ending isn’t awful or anything, but it is kind of disappointing in being exactly what you would expect it to be, as far as Rin’s character arc goes? Which might be just because I was already primed to compare this to ASOIF and she just literally pulls a Daenerys (fire-aligned vengeance/justice character with revolutionary impulses and an autocratic sensibility is willing to burn down the world in the process of freeing it, goes mad with power and paranoia, needs to be put down for the good of the country), but still. Her reading Venka throwing her to the ground to avoid an assassination attempt as a betrayal and burning her to death before she realized what was happening was just really heavy handed, you know? Same with turning on Kitay, who at this point is her actual literal soulmate. (Also sad in a broader sense, because those two are like literally two of the only characters in the entire series I’d actually peg as worthy of/capable of being trusted with political power.)

The specifics aside, I’m a miserable enough person to appreciate how unsatisfying the actual resolution at the end of the book is – imperialism wins! Literally no choice but to sign those unequal treaties and hope you’re eventually able to grow strong enough to force them out! Everything is the same as before this forty-year cycle of wars except much, much worse! - but yeah, I really just don’t actually care about Nezha enough as a character for it to really land. Also Kitay and Venka deserved better, even if literally no one else did.

Anyway, yeah, good series. Would recommend if you like the genre and can stomach all the, well, everything.

#books #the poppy war #the dragon republic #the burning god #r. f. kuang #book review #in this essay I will #this is theoretically a writing blog

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zeawesomebirdie · 3 years ago

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Right? Hux is my go-to example of the mess that happened because of the back and forth between two directors because the change between ep7 and ep8, and then whatever the fuck was ep9, that was uuh... It was. Like the bar wasn't even that high but they really managed to fuck it up. Of course they weren't going to detail his comics backstory and give him 20 minutes of screen time but some vague respect for the characters y'know? The minute of screen time and then Pryde shoots him and he dies off screen, like - come ON. The mere thing where he immediately becomes a traitor when that's the last decision he would make?? I can't write to save my life and I'm terrible at characterisation but even I could tell you that's bad! Unless you want to make it canon he and Kylo had a thing to justify the change of heart, but we all know what a bunch of cowards Disney is. ANYWAY you're right he deserved so much better

Okay I have so much to say about this topic, I literally waited until this morning to answer this so I could try to get my words as clear as possible lmao. Thanks for your patience Ram, and thanks for the ask <3

Before we begin though, this is all my opinion please dont flame me lmao

I can understand that having multiple directors over the course of a trilogy will be difficult, especially in the case of the sequels, where the story and vision for the trilogy was not clearly defined at the beginning. (We've all seen the meme of that one interview with the one director who was like, paraphrased, making it up as he went along). But considering this is d*sney, one of the largest corporations in the world failing this much on a massive franchise that they decided to buy? Thats unexcusable. They clearly were not prepared for these movies, and its really unfortunate because there is a lot of good that can be said of the sequels.

Now, im sure after the prequels being what they were we shouldn't have expected too much. (I say that like the prequels aren't my favorite trilogy of the three). Im sure we're all familiar with the prequels hate, and I honestly have to say I'm not sure how much of that is deserved and how much of it is simply a fandom who had their headcanons squashed. Someone older than me, whos been around long enough to see that fallout, might have better insight. So perhaps we should have expected that the sequels would fall short of our expectations, right? Not necessarily, actually.

Im not sure about you, (or anyone reading this), but I remember finding TFA an excellent movie, as did the majority of tumblr at the time. It wasn't until the reddit bros and the more inflammatory people in fandom started to recognize the potential of the reylo ship, along with the release of TLJ that the sequels started getting shit. There was also definitely a massive shift in tone from TFA to TLJ, which you totally noticed, particularly in Hux's story arc.

Then the story started to not make sense entirely, up until we get to TRoS, where,,,,, well,,,, nothing makes sense in the context of the rest of the franchise. There was clearly a lack of cohesion, but you also nailed it with it being a disrespect of the characters and a disrespect of the franchise as a whole. Theres definitely been a push in the last 5-10 years to push out more and more mediocre movies that, as long as they hold the name "Marvel" or "Disney" or "Star Wars," will still do well. And there's definitely a point to that, ofc, considering the sequels got the SW fandom so much more interest, to the point of reylo being one of the top ships on tumblr for the last several years.

So how does this all boil down to how we analyze Armitage Hux? Well, quite frankly, the movies didn't offer enough of his story to really say anything about him. Disrepect for the character aside, there's also been a recent (as in, the last 15-20 years) push to leave "unnecessary" details out of the source material. The first example to come to mind is JK Rowling's tweeting and interviews saying that Dumbledore is gay, despite nothing in any of the books or movies saying so. That d*sney has Hux's entire backstory, of which there isn't very much, confined to the comics, shouldn't be entirely surprising.

But it also opens up issues, such as, how did this character, who we see for less than 20 minutes over over course of a 6+ hour trilogy, end up betraying the very thing he is said to have helped build? We as fans can make up theories all we like, but there is never a canon explanation beyond "Kylo Ren must lose," which, is the dumbest reason and im glad we can all agree on that. The only real logic that can come from that is that yes, he and Kylo had a failed thing, becuase this is exactly the petty shit both of them would do.

And when I say he deserved better, its not just the treatment of him being a traitor. Everything with Brendol abusing him from such a young age, to being a child soldier on Jakku, to being born into a war that should have ended with Palp's death; all of that could have made a dynamic, fascinating villain that we could have all rooted for when he betrayed the First Order. Instead we got,,, this. And its really quite pathetic, to see this character that has been slowly fleshed out since the sequels came out through the comics, with the knowledge that unless one happens to be aware of the comics they will have no idea the depths of trauma this character has been through.

Now, im just a fanfiction writer. I know nothing about movies. But I have to say, the sequels did not have anything close to a consistent characterization, especially in regards to Hux and Kylo towards the end. Again, lack of cohesion, disrespect of the characters and the franchise, etc. But it really is incredibly frustrating to know that us fans put more effort into our backstories for these characters than d*sney themselves. And we can all joke around and say we'd be better at making the movies than d*sney and George Lucas and etc, but yknow, maybe we're a little right about that.

All of this to say, im incredibly disappointed in d*sney's approach to the sequels, especially in regards to Hux, but the entire trilogy really suffered from this.

#i dont know what to tag this #i hope you dont mind me like #info dumping at you lmao #im incredibly passionate about this honestly #(if that wasnt obvious)#hux deserved better #thats what im trying to get at here #thanks for the ask though lmao #asks #damn this took forever to type up

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subjecta5newtella · 4 years ago

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alright fuck it it’s been about a week the blinding rage has simmered down into a tasteful anger stew so I’m gonna talk about the crank palace a little. technically this is probably spoilery, but I don’t really go into specific plot points

there’s... a lot of shit I can point to that’s wrong in the crank palace. blatant contradictions to things in the original trilogy. pacing. weirdly explicit descriptions of violence. some truly baffling choices made when it comes to dialogue. newt forgetting glader slang for some reason? everything about how sonya and newt’s sibling relationship is handled, which is still probably something I can’t talk about without going nuclear so i’m just gonna direct you to point 4 on sami newtedison’s excellent post here.

some of these things just make it hard to read and enjoy from a technical perspective, and some of them show that there wasn’t enough care taken to make sure basic established in-universe facts weren’t directly overwritten. while all of those are warning flags in their own right, the issue at the core of tcp is, in my distinctly less than humble opinion, that newt himself is barely a character in his own novella.

obviously at the point where the story starts, he’s not going to be the exact same newt we’ve seen throughout the trilogy. partly that’s because we’re now actually in his perspective, partly it’s because the flare is progressing so quickly, and that would create some understandable differences. the problem here is not just that he’s kind of different; the problem is he’s hardly an actual character at all.

one of The Most Basic things about characters is that their history has an impact on them. this is not fucking groundbreaking, but I say this because I literally do not think it’s achieved here. aside from his resurfacing memories (which... even then is basically all stuff we already know from tfc) we do not learn anything about newt that is not established in the trilogy, which is an incredible waste. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that when people have expressed interest in newt’s POV, it’s to get information we don’t have from the earlier books, like his time in the glade, conversations he had that thomas didn’t see, anything we couldn’t see or easily extrapolate from thomas’ perspective.

thomas in book 1 has no memories. newt, theoretically, has over two years of them at this point, so why doesn’t it feel like his pre-series past exists any more than thomas’ does? i’m not about to subject myself to a reread just to 100% fact check this, but I don’t think we get any meaningful recollection of his time in the glade before main series canon begins. there would’ve been plenty of opportunities for these kinds of things to be woven in naturally, but more crucially, there are a couple places where I think pieces of his past should have absolutely come up, and they just... don’t.

newt obviously has leadership experience as the glade’s second in command, and yet in tst is very vocal about not wanting to be the leader. when he’s kind of thrust into a leadership position in tcp, both of those things should affect the way he acts, and yet they don’t really seem to. if we’re looking for places to sprinkle in memories, this would be a really good one. he could be thinking about the point at which he became alby’s second, the reasons he accepted, and the anxieties associated with that, all in relation to his current situation. in tcp, becoming the leader of the group of cranks is just... straight up something that happens to him because he was a WICKED subject, with no real internal strife about it. I do not like the vibe of this whole plot point anyway, but im not gonna get into that.

in a similar vein, I swear to god dashner forgot newt used to be a runner, because there are times where it should have logically come up. there’s a point at which newt talks about minho as a runner while giving absolutely no indication that he himself also used to be one, even though during the situation in question it would be relevant for him to have the skills and memories of his time as a runner (you could argue this was forgotten in any meaningful way as of tst because a similar thing happens, but i’m not gonna go on that rant rn). this is a crucial fucking character piece! based on a loose timeline, newt was a runner until probably ~6 months before tcp. it should have an impact on the way he acts and the way he evaluates situations.

regarding minho himself, newt’s descriptions of him feel like he read the wikipedia page, not like this was a) someone he’s been through over 2 years of highs and lows with and b) one of his only surviving friends in the first place, let alone one of the only ones from that original group. and minho’s hardly the only one that gets fucked over. alby? newt’s best friend as of the first book, with whom he co-ran the glade and who literally saved his life? mentioned once, as part of a list of the dead. those are the two that immediately come to mind as deserving better based on the way we’ve seen newt interact with them previously, but none of newt’s dynamics with existing characters feel lived-in at all. I think that contributes significantly to the fact that he feels so off, and frankly, not really wildly compelling a lot of the time despite being one of the most interesting and well written trilogy characters (there’s also times where his dialogue is just... weird and ooc, but im trying to stay out of nitpicking to that degree).

and to what end?? was dashner just too lazy to write in anything more than what’s established after this long? was it because creating any too-meaningful relationships with other characters could potentially take away from the thomas/newt dynamic that it seems like he’s relying on in order to stay relevant? even for people who go hard for newtmas, I can’t imagine it could really be considered a bonus to have one character’s past and other significant relationships stripped away. also?? even though he mentioned thomas’ name a lot, I don’t feel like we got that much of a sense of a meaningful connection there either.

there were parts I liked about tcp, which may come as a fucking shock at this point, but still. keisha was a good character, a good break from the mold in terms of anything we’d seen before in the series, and I did honestly appreciate some of her interactions with newt. some of the minor characters were kind of interesting, and there were a couple small pieces that were... surprisingly well written? i think in terms of word choice and description, his writing has improved from what we see in the trilogy, so there’s my positive feedback. also, newt bitching about the lack of fruit and vegetable offerings at the crank palace was objectively funny as shit. one of the most genuine moments of Personality in the whole thing.

this could have been something. I think some pieces would’ve worked well as a short story, in which case I wouldn’t have expected nearly as much in terms of characterization and utilization of backstory. instead we just get a lot of suffering and not much out of it, because the one thing that could’ve made it worth it was an actual deeper understanding of this character and I truly don’t feel like we got that.

#the crank palace #if you’re one of the people I’ve already ranted to I’m so sorry but at least this version is... cleaner #maybe #getting back into tmr is kind of fun in that I have gotten so much better at articulating my anger jkhfdsjkhdfjhk #love to be full of rage but with a College Degree #not that this like. Requires a college degree but still. it’s all gotta count for something might as well be this

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sanstropfremir · 4 years ago

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Okay I’ve gotta stop bothering you with all these questions but I don’t have anyone to talk with about kpop and you seem like someone who *knows* their shit about performance arts and I love reading your stuff so I’m going to keep asking questions. I was recently very obsessed with OnlyOneOf’s most recent comeback, Libido. Like from the song to the music video (my god did that make my queer little heart happy), to the DANCE. Like I’ve had dreams about this comeback (and I don’t usually even remember my dreams). So I was wondering how you felt about it cause there was a lot of backlash (though almost entirely undeserved from any angle people tried to take it from).

frankly i’m so surprised these boys are out there promoting with a fucking dick grab. actually i think its been censored but i definitely remember watching at least two music show stages with the full grab. i think the choreo is fun and doesn't at all deserve the backlash that's been leveled at it. regardless of if it is actually intended to be gay, this softer, more explicit take on adolescent male sexuality is nice to see and deserves to be seen as much any other aggressive red-blooded boy group concept. do i think it's outrage marketing or they're being forced to be overly skinshippy or whatever people are complaining about (i don't actually know the specifics i very carefully curate my online experiences)? no, not really. everything kpop is already optimized for marketability anyways so i don’t think it's that much of an issue if they want to put out something that’s aimed at a deliberately specific audience. if they were willing to take the risk with something like this it means they were probably pretty set on the idea regardless of what the backlash was going to be. i've watched a couple of their behind the scenes clips and they all look pretty chill about it; tbh my opinion is the artists should be allowed to do whatever they want (as long as they’re not being exploited, obviously), and it's the fans’ responsibility to respect artists’ boundaries between their public and private lives.

artistically, although i think the choreo is fun, it's a bit messy for me. there's a couple of transitions that could have been done better but eh. i think retconning tape measures and hiding them in their gloves is ingenious and I'm absolutely stealing that idea for reference. obviously this has big chained up vibes, so I'm not sure why people are so pressed about this because it's not like this is the first bdsm-y choreo kpop has ever seen (I know why people are pressed about this, vixx got shit for chained up and like every other comeback they did lmao). i LOVE the mv though, i think it's really beautifully shot and a lot more cinematic than we normally see from kpop group mvs. visually it's got the same feel as troye sivan’s blue neighbourhood trilogy, this soft-blue-filter-close-up-hands aesthetic that we’ve seen a lot of in younger generation lgbt content, so i have to assume its at least not an accidental reference? (it's common in holland’s mvs).

like i said, this soft-explicit adolescent male sexuality is a nice change from the more aggressive takes we’ve seen come before and these boys have stones of fucking steel to be promoting with this choreo, so they’ve got all the respect from me.

#tbh any time i watch it i just get distracted by junji's hair #i had that pretty blue grey for a couple of months and i miss it......#but also i love my orange mullet #also the costumes are so weird i kinda love them #very late 80s/early 90s lounge suit vibes #onlyoneof #kpop questions #text #rainbowchild421 #group analysis #ooo w

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beeblackburn · 4 years ago

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The First Law for the fandom ask! 😁

The first character I ever fell in love with: In hindsight, Logen Ninefingers, given how much he eviscerates his character trope so completely even then, but in the immediate, at the time, sense? The moment Sand dan Glokta first complained about the steps, my heart was gripped and it took awhile.

A character that I used to love/like, but now do not: On a personal level, too many to count, everyone’s either such a piece of shit or were written sympathetically enough before Abercrombie knocked the pedestal off them in this series. That being said, Sand dan Glokta. I still really like him, partly thanks to The Trouble with Peace and one hell of a choice scene, but after what he did near the end of Last Argument of Kings, and revising the series, I can’t help, but realize what I liked about him was the potential that he’d grow a heart and stop doing awful things, and him doubling down at the end was disappointing, if not surprising.

A ship that I used to love/like, but now do not: Jezal/Ardee. It was cute when I first read it, and I generally think Jezal had enough strength of character to try to do right by her, if the kingmaking business hadn’t been a thing, but I think it’s super telling that, upon being king, he thought about making her his mistress instead of realizing that wouldn’t have placated Ardee and she’d be bitter about the broken promise. In the end, they never fully knew each other, Jezal never knew the full extent of Ardee’s past, and what attracted them to each other was the dream of something better rather than anything substantial. I pity them, but they absolutely wouldn’t have worked out like Glokta/Ardee ended up doing.

My ultimate favorite character™: Logen “The Bloody-Nine” Ninefingers. But Black Calder and Crown Prince Orso are really close behind and they could easily climb overhead Logen with The Wisdom of Crowds. I’m expecting it with Crown Prince Orso, depending on how his character goes.

Prettiest character: Probably Crown Prince Orso? I know Leo dan Brock, Jappo mon Rogont Murcatto, and Stour Nightfall (though Jappo and Stour’s more my type) are objectively more handsome, but I like a little pudge in my handsome boys and Orso’s got that while having a prettier personality.

My most hated character: Collem West, easily, but I think Malacus Quai could've been better, character-wise.

My OTP: Everyone/Therapy. Seriously, Shy/Temple. Abercrombie can write some really sweet couples for such a self-professed cynic, given Calder/Seff, Bethod/Ursi, and Shenkt/Vitari.

My NOTP: Bayaz/Power. Seriously, Shev/Carcolf. Shev, please stop going after someone you know is toxic. Walk away and close that door forever. You deserve so much better, you gay babe.

Favorite episode: Red Country or The Heroes.

Red Country has such a somber tone of bittersweet past and longing for redemption that I just ate up and broke my heart against. Lamb, Temple, Cosca, Shivers, Shy and the Felllowship, so many people want to do better from their pasts like in his past books but this time, maybe, just maybe, Abercrombie lets some of them win against their inner demons. It’s such a haunting book, men with the ghosts of their pasts hanging around them and the inevitability of changing times creeping onto them as they trek the Near and Far Country.

The Heroes is basically a typical cookie-cutter war story except it’s Abercrombie writing it. The entire Northern subplot of The First Law distilled into a narratively and thematically tight book, with some tremendously strong supporting characters, some of my favorite POVs (PRINCE CALDER! FINREE DAN BROCK! BREMER DAN GORST!) and carrying some of my favorite scenes of the entire series! It’s such a treat and I’ve loved each and all of my five rereads. This book puts all other war stories to shame for not even coming close.

Saddest death: Count Foscar (Monza relating him to the boy Benna was, laughing in the wheat, breaks me every time). Antaup (how dare you take a chapter to establish how heartbreaking a cock-blocker’s death would be, Abercrombie!), Tul Duru Thunderhead and Scale Ironhand. Oh, those hurt. Those hurt so much. And, despite how much of a shithead he was, Nicomo Cosca’s death hit me surprisingly hard. Sad and pathetic and broken.

Favorite season: Tricky. Because The Great Leveller and The Age of Madness have my favorite books in the entire series and the former’s got The Heroes and Red Country... but it’s also got Best Served Cold, which was I admittedly colder (heh) on. I’ll take the bullet that it’s a me problem and it’s still a fundamentally well-written book. The latter’s got A Little Hatred, which was a far better The Blade Itself in some ways, and, especially The Trouble with Peace, which was a roller-goddamn-coaster of a book with absolutely some of my favorite material by far. I’d say The Great Leveller for now, but I’m holding my breath on The Age of Madness usurping The Great Leveller in the end, given The Wisdom of Crowds sounds like it’s getting into all the revolutionary and freaky stuff I love about the trilogy, a relentless inferno for society and the soul.

Least favorite season: Look, I love every book in the Circle of the World, but The First Law was the result of Abercrombie stretching his legs for the first time, writing-wise, and it shows. Logen’s wife and children never fully breathe as a necessary part of him and his early magic shows growing pains in Abercrombie’s writing, West’s material isn’t as incisive a character deconstruction as it could’ve been (dude should’ve been more insidiously a piece of shit in his mind to subvert his “good commoner” trope), Dogman’s only gets by himself particularly interesting at the leg end of Last Argument of Kings, and Craw does his character better I’d say, Cathil and Ferro were underwritten (though I think Ferro’s got interesting stuff in her POV), and everything to do with Terez. Just. That. Ugh. The writing bones are solid and the main trio, Logen, Glokta, and Jezal, are all wonderful POVs, but I think it’s safe to say The First Law is Abercrombie’s freshmen writing, compared to his more affecting material in The Great Leveller and The Age of Madness.

Character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: ... Shivers? I do love him in The Heroes, Red Country, and The Age of Madness, but it always drives me a little crazy how much Shivers’ worsening moral decline is linked to Monza fucking Rogont and not him instead, making him out to be an entitled hyper-jealous asshole, and I ended up being disgusted by him. Add in the fact that he knew what he was getting into when he took a violent job and kept going, despite at least two targets, and kept caving into Monza’s higher payments, Shivers was always a piece of shit in his own right. He fell, he wasn’t pushed by Monza. I like enough of Shivers’ Best Served Cold material, but I just like his later material far more, even if I respect his earlier journey.

That being said, if he sacrifices himself for Rikke’s life in The Wisdom of Crowds, I’m going to rescind all this, because that’s the sort of perfect grace note to the anti-Logen and paaaaaaaaaaaaain. So let’s just go with Threetrees because, by god, he’s a relative snooze compared to the other “straight edges” of the series.

My ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: This could define almost anyone in this series, frankly. I guess Logen or Gorst? I really love their material, but they both definitely belong in a landfill.

My ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Can it be anyone but Crown Prince Orso? Dude’s the only one in this world who thinks “there’s a moral question” to rulership aloud to another and isn’t homophobic, racist, or sexist (looking at you, Leo). Even Calder’s got murdering Forley and Reachey in his dark deeds and Temple’s spent years helping Cosca, which... shudders.

My ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Monza/Shivers. It’s got some good material and I really hope they can make peace in The Wisdom of Crowds, but also *waves hands* everything else about them, honestly. God, they really did both suck to each other.

Also, Leo/Stour. It’s so wrong, yet so right. I don’t even know if it’d be hate-fucking if they got together at this point, but these two morrions deserve each other.

My ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Jurand/Glaward, Rikke/Orso, and Cas/Vick? They’re pretty cute and could easily give each other some happiness, I feel.

#the first law #the age of madness #the great leveller #joe abercrombie

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radramblog · 3 years ago

Text

Halo Through its Guns: Halo 3

This and the last one were actually the articles I was least sure about when thinking this whole series up. A bit awkward, considering it makes it look a bit one-hit-wondery. Unlike the franchise it describes.

Halo 3 was another big step up in complexity from its predecessors. Everything gets to look and sound bigger and better, what with the shift in console generation increasing audiovisual fidelity and how much shit the game could be running at once. Processing power, that’s the term I was looking for.

This coupled with the grand finale to the Halo Trilogy, something that is kinda funny to think about this many games later. But because of that, Bungie wanted to make sure this game was more bombastic than ever, with so much more stuff going on, and much of this effort paid off.

However, Halo 3 also hits a bit of a stumbling block on account of all that new Stuff. It’s one that would be corrected, then perfected, and then doubled down on as the series progressed.

But that’s well and truly ahead of ourselves. This is Halo 3 through it’s gun: The Spike Rifle.

Brutal.

If you’re somehow reading this and don’t know Halo 2/3’s plot, hello and also, what? But Halo 3 takes place after the Schism, a civil war within the Covenant in which the Jiralhanae (Brutes) replace the Sangheili (Elites) within the hierarchy and the latter start getting massacred. This means two things: one, you’re going to be fighting a lot of Brutes in this game. And two, you aren’t going to be fighting a lot of Elites in this game. Excluding Flood-infected ones, in fact, you don’t fight any.

Halo 2 gave the Brutes somewhat of a distinct flavour, seeing as they had to be distinguished from the Elites who were also enemies you were fighting, sometimes in the same level. They soaked up automatic fire like a sponge, were vulnerable to headshotting once you popped off their helmet, and would occasionally get pissed off and barrel towards you, furry fists at the ready.

Their weapons carried this further, but in 2 there really weren’t very many of them. I’d argue the Brute Plasma Rifle doesn’t really count, though the parallel is fun (higher fire rate but it overheats quicker- it’s an “angrier” gun), and Tartarus’s own Fist of Rukt isn’t exactly something you get to play around with. There was, however, the Brute Shot, a huge grenade launcher with a wicked bayonet built into the stock, a relatively powerful weapon befitting the stature of the big monkes. It was the Brute Shot whose aesthetic carried over to the following game.

The Spike Rifle (or just Spiker) is one of the new Brute-held weapons included with Halo 3. It’s an automatic, dual-wieldable projectile weapon whose spikes embed themselves in object and foe alike. Unlike the alien purple and pink of the Needler, the Spiker is a dull gunmetal and brown that feels akin to a human weapon, were it not for the twin bayonets and the, well, shooting fucking spikes at people.

The aesthetic of the Spiker and its companions in the Brute arsenal, the Brute Shot, Mauler, Gravity Hammer, and Spike Grenade (we’re just going to ignore the Firebomb) as well as the new vehicles they bring to Halo 3 perfectly suit the feel of the Brutes. These weapons are pragmatic and classless, with literally all of the guns having bayonets (including the Gravity Hammer!) and having magazine-based reloads. They’re simple, from both a design and gameplay perspective, but they server to seriously distinguish the Brutes from both the Elite enemies in previous games as well as the Grunt, Jackal, and Drone underlings they command over.

The Spiker is a standby of the lower-ranked Brutes, much like the Plasma Rifle was of the Elites previous. From this, however, stems part of the first issue with their handling in Halo 3. As much as they were unique in 2, Halo 3 doesn’t have Elites to balance them off of, and it seems the development team wanted to maintain that core enemy deployment structure that worked so well in the previous games. What this means is that the Brutes in this game are kind of just Elites most of the time, seeing as they play very similarly and have been given energy shields. There are subtle differences- Brutes can’t regenerate their shields, and they’re much more likely to rush you and attack in melee. Higher-ranking members, such as Chieftains, can actually shrug off a headshot after their shields break as their helmets stay on, and the new Equipment system (we’ll get there) means they can pull some really interesting tricks.

But like. A Chieftain with a Gravity Hammer isn’t far off a Zealot with an Energy Sword, and a Spec Ops Brute with a Mauler (only one for some reason) isn’t that different to a Spec Ops Elite with…an Energy Sword. Both wield Carbines in H2 and H3, and the Spike Grenade and Plasma Grenade are pretty similar as well. The Brutes are effectively the parallelization of an entire enemy class to fit a mould that doesn’t even exist in the game they’re in.

And as thematically appropriate as the Brute weapons are, the simplicity is kind of their downfall. The Spike Grenade is just a Plasma, stickiness and all, but trading the sheer lethality for a bit of extra range that you aren’t going to notice when you’re attaching it to someone. The Mauler is basically only useful when dual wielding, since if you aren’t then you might as well just melee someone- it’s not like the gun has any more range than the average arm. The Spiker is basically just another Plasma Rifle/SMG, though with a slightly higher DPS. Did you know that? It actually hits harder.

Arguably one of Halo 3’s biggest problems is weapon bloat. There’s simply too many guns and not enough room to let them all shine, such that a lot of them are confined to a single enemy subtype or a handful of multiplayer maps. The aforementioned Mauler only appears on the stealthy brutes that appear in maybe two levels, the returning Flamethrower and new Spartan Laser only show up in one each. And this is bad enough with the weapons that are actually cool and good, but when we get down to the Spiker? It just doesn’t matter.

The dual-wieldable weapons are pretty much universally bad in Halo 3, save maybe the Plasma Pistol. At this point, the drawbacks- not being able to conveniently melee, throw a grenade, switch weapons, or use equipment- just make them much too inconvenient to bother with. On top of that, for whatever reason, the game actually nerfs the damage of many of the weapons while they’re being dual wielded, so while you do technically get more bang for your tick, you certainly don’t get more bang for your buck, and the inaccuracy of a lot of these weapons means every miss hurts more. I think some amount of this is a result of the dominance of the Battle Rifle in just about every form of multiplayer, but very rarely will you see anyone deign to pick up anything short of an actual “power weapon”. Hell, most people never bother using the Assault Rifle they spawn in with, unless things get very desparate. The result of this is that weapons like the SMG, Spiker, and Magnum just get left on the dirt where they spawned in most of the time, unable to shine or make the game as interesting as they potentially could.

Of course, the dual-wieldable Spikers and the like were not the only thing clogging up Halo 3’s sandbox. There was also the Heavy Weapons, four very large guns that had the same restrictions as dual wielding and also slow your character down in exchange for being able to hold 3 guns at once as well as raw power. These were honestly pretty okay, adding an extra dimension to the turrets that littered Halo 2’s maps, as well as the Missile Pod replacing the homing function of 2’s Rocket Launcher. But because of that speed drop, as well as other issues (not being able to zoom in, the third-person perspective being awkward, lack of range), they just didn’t end up being worthwhile either except as defensive tools in objective modes. As insanely powerful as the Flamethrower is (seriously, fire damage is absurd in this game, if you shoot it on the ground and walk on the flames you will die very quick) it doesn’t matter if you can’t reach the guy you want to use it on while he peppers you with bullets.

The other axis on this equation is equipment. Equipment are a fun and interesting addition to the gameplay! But a lot of them are niche, terrible, or both. I can’t say I’ve seen many people effectively use the Deployable Cover, and I don’t know if there are any maps where the Trip Mine is both available and relevant. It’s not surprising that this is literally the only game with them, frankly, though a few would be adapted into future games in the form of Armour Abilities.

There is a lot going on in Halo 3’s gameplay. The game was ambitious with its additions to the franchise seeing as it was both the last of a trilogy and the first of a console generation. And while I don’t think any individual piece is bad per se, they frustratingly form less than the sum of their parts. It’s still a frankly excellent game, well-deserving of its long-time heritage and praise, but things like the awkwardness of some mechanics and the arguable needlessness of weapons like the Spiker somewhat weigh it down, much like the 12 grenades 2 guns many spare magazines and giant flamethrower Chief can carry should probably be doing to him.

The trilogy might have been over after 3, but the franchise certainly was not. Before we return to the Master Chief’s (hopefully) comfortable shoes, though, we’ve got a couple side trips to make. I hope to see you, reader, here for the next two entries of this article series, where we cover my favourite two Halo games.

#ramble #halo #halo 3 #spiker #video games

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