#and then dropped it for lesser subplots

[northbndtrain]

Don't ever treat a customer like that again.

+1 BONUS:

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

I'm really curious about where exactly Doctor Who & spinoffs fit in to the 'scrambled universe' framework

So it's 2012. After a series of mental health events, Dan Harmon is on the rocks with his sitcom The Big Bang Theory, and is looking for a new project to do. He decides to call up his old friend Justin Roiland, who he met almost a decade earlier running Channel 101, and asks if he has any ideas for a cartoon. Roiland decides to file the serial numbers off of his old shock comedy short Miss Wonka, and the result is Adult Swim's Ms. Frizzle. Dan Harmon brings the systematic approach to story structure he honed working on The Big Bang Theory to elevate the project to something with some actual redeeming value someone could care about. The show premieres the next year, in 2013. It is acclaimed and beloved, and for a brief and golden moment in history it isn't even considered cringe.

It's 2018. Year after year, season after season, Harmon's people have edged out Roiland's people in the Ms. Frizzle writing room. Roiland has grown bored and disruptive; the show's staff only really see him anymore when he comes in to record the voices, or when he decides to play some inscrutable Epic Funny LOL Prank on them and waste their time. Meanwhile, Disney's main streaming platform, Hulu, is looking for exclusives that might draw people to subscribe, in a streaming environment that's quickly and unsustainably growing bloated. They have an easy time convincing Roiland to divert his attention to a second project. Roiland announces Dr. Who in an interview; it's the first Dan Harmon has ever heard of it. Mike McMahan (also getting picked up around this time by CBS All Access to do There And Back Again: Gollum) is the cocreator this time. Roiland has learned various bad habits while stagnating on Ms. Frizzle, so he won't put much effort into Dr. Who either, but he will at least get it going.

It's 2020. Granted a sort of captive audience by the recently-started coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Who premieres on Hulu. At a glance, it's a low-effort off-brand version of Ms. Frizzle; Roiland isn't even bothering to do a girl voice this time. If given a deeper look, there is something worthwhile there. It's a riff on an old subgenre of soft sci-fi TV, the idea of an immortal celestial time guardian figure - you see it in the BBC's long-running Quantum Leap, in Constance M. Burge's A Wrinkle In Time, and there are even elements of it in Ms. Frizzle, though they're much more concentrated in Dr. Who. The show is very episodic, though there are more serialized subplots and hints of a deeper-running plot; like Ms. Frizzle, the show is full of undisguised references to other media.

It's 2023. A legal case in which Roiland is accused of domestic abuse becomes widely publicized, followed by the dissemination of various inappropriate text messages he had apparently sent to fans. It becomes common knowledge that Roiland is a nightmare to work with, and every single project he's involved with drops him nearly simultaneously as a brand liability, even the video game development studio he founded to make Gone Home.

Every unaired project on which Roiland was set to do a voice comes up with a different strategy to replace him. Science Time: Rita & Morticia hires a new up-and-coming voice actor to play assorted versions of King Tommy, without comment. Season 7 of Ms. Frizzle replaces Roiland with Jinkx Monsoon; it's a very noticeable change, but she's still basically playing the same character, she's just doing a better job.

Dr. Who is the lesser-known knockoff living in Ms. Frizzle's shadow, so it has less to lose; it decides to make a meta joke out of the whole thing, and whips up a new sketch to start off season 4, in which the Doctor trips, falls down the stairs, and dies in front of his companion Rose Tyler. We are thereby introduced to the just-invented openly-bullshit process of "regeneration", in which the Doctor can come to the brink of death but dramatically cheat it, with the only consequence being that he'll now look and/or sound like a different guy. So, as of the opening scene of season 4, the Doctor is now voiced by Dan Stevens.

And that's how the Doctor on Dr. Who became British.

[greenerteacups]

From what I've seen online, the major consensus amongst HP fans is that Cursed Child is NOT canon ( and many simply pretend it doesn't exist). I remember when it first came out and was being promoted, both the stage show and the published script, and everyone was really excited for new HP material... until we realised that it just... wasn't canon... at all. Yeah, the idea of Voldemort as presented in the HP novels having any sort of romantic relationship with Bellatrix and having a child is simply ridiculous and certainly just exists as a way for him to have a secret child for reasons of the wacky plot... it's very tween fanfic and also very Disney channel sequel (like the og villains all having kids we never heard about is totally a real Disney channel thing).

I remember it being very clear at the time that it came out that any "pointers" or "ideas" JKR provided to the actual writer of CC must've been the very barest of bones, the tiniest of shards perhaps, because it simply read like a sort of AU fanfiction written by the most casual of fans... which, as I understand, it really was. At the time when it came out, it was pretty clear that she had very little to do with actually writing it, though I suppose more was made later of her 'involvement' to legitimise it. I heard since that someone asked her if it should be considered canon, and she said yes? Not sure how this interaction actually went down as I don't particularly care to look into it (since nothing will change my mind that the AU of CC makes no sense within the context of HP canon and lore and it was probably some kind of marketing tactic in support of the stage play) but as she clearly didn't actually write CC herself and it contradicts many things from the books she did write, I'm pretty happy to continue ignoring its existence.

What do you think of Fantastic Beasts in comparison? Personally, I put Fantastic Beasts in a separate category where I can kind of accept aspects of it as canon expansions of the lore and worldbuilding... I can see JKR's style clearly and the inconsistencies with timelines and certain characters being in places and times they shouldn't be don't bother me as much as the straight up character assassination we see in CC. To put it another way, I think CC feels like it belongs to a totally different IP and was written by a different author (because it was) while FB definitely still exists in Rowling's wizarding world, it's just the timeline is kinda off.

this is interesting context. I think she kind of has to say yes to that question in context, because like... who's going to shill out £150 to see some random dude's AU fanfiction play (if it isn't even good)? of course, JKR's stamp isn't nothing, but even she can't weld extra content into the canon by declaring it so. i see TCC like church ephemera: i'm sure SOMEONE finds it interesting or relevant to what we're doing here, but that doesn't mean it's part of the Bible.

i feel the same way about fantastic beasts, but to a lesser extent. i actually enjoyed the first fantastic beasts movie, i thought it was playful and charming and (with the exception of the dumb polyjuice plot) the perfect way to revive harry potter as a storytelling vehicle. like, yeah, it fucked up by trying to go too big too soon, but if you can remove one (1) subplot or narrative thread and have a solid movie, then as a writer, you've still done okay.

Fantastic Beasts also annoys me because it does feel like harry potter, in terms of tone and mouthfeel. it's got the sauce. it just heinously drops the ball in later installations. in particular, it starts getting nervous about holding the audience's attention and throws stuff in that just wouldn't make it in a natural, organic script — most of the shit from the original series is contrived and ill-suited to the dramatic tenor set by Movie About Funny Man Collecting Magical Animals. (e.g. going back to hogwarts? leta lestrange's secret white father revengeplot triple-rugpull? human nagini?? secret undead dumbledore brother raised by american evangelicals???). i like the idea of it very much. i'm honestly drawn to it as a creative space, because unlike TCC, there is potential there. it's just badly abused.

[livvyofthelake]

crazy to me that this person called the mortal instruments published harry potter fanfic and then in replies to a comment clarifies that they know it’s not actually published harry potter fanfiction. taking inspiration and elements from a fanfiction you wrote and dropping them into an original work you created is not “published fanfiction” babe you sound fucking ridiculous. you cannot discount the care and thought and work cassandra clare has put into the shadowhunter universe for almost 20 years as “just harry potter fanfiction” because you heard some idiot that doesn’t know how genre works say it five years ago. “steles are just wands it’s hp fanfic!” what are you talking about… steles are actually not wands and they serve a whole other purpose than wands. also wands we’re not invented by jkr for harry potter. you know that right. it’s important to me that you know that. i’m not trying to defend everything cassandra has ever done and say she didn’t take a lot from her harry potter fanfic and put it in her books, i know she did that, i know all about her problematic harry potter fanfictions. i’m saying it’s so fucking rude and disrespectful to try to write off all of the original work she’s done and the expansive universe she created as fanfiction. no it’s not, you will just make up reasons to discredit her because you think she’s hashtag problematic and deserves it. and baby i stand with my problematic wife. she only did some of that!!! you can’t say she’s a freak with an incest fetish when that’s only a subplot in ONE book series she wrote and the only character she was actually an incestuous weirdo was the bad guy. yeah it was WEIRD that clary and jace thought they were siblings for two books. WE THE AUDIENCE knew they weren’t. ok it wasn’t explicit that we were supposed to know they weren’t but anyone with sense would read the end of city of bones and go “well that’s not true lol” and even if you didn’t she only wrote that “twist” because it was 2006 and she was trying to be edgy and challenge people’s perceptions. she would never do that now be serious. i know she wrote weird ass fanfiction, she’s a weirdo and it’s fanfiction and she (and society) was stupider back then and she would not do any of that now. and trying to use a couple semi-related things about her life before she was a famous published author to try to make her original work look lesser, is insane. also half the things people point at when trying to “prove” tmi is harry potter fanfic are just like. public domain concepts and character archetypes. because harry potter fans aren’t actually fans of the fantasy genre and don’t understand that 70% of the “world” jkr created is just. public domain fantasy concepts and character archetypes. remember the time my sister (harry potter fan. not a fantasy genre fan) found out about griffins (mythical creature that has existed in the genre for like. centuries) and she thought the concept of a griffin was taken from harry potter’s hippogriff. i’m never letting her live that down btw i lost like. 40% of my respect for her that day. and the context in which she found out about griffins makes her look even worse. we don’t have to get into it. anyway. i just can’t stand it when people say stupid stuff about cassandra clare because they’re purposefully looking at her and her body of work with the most bad faith perspective imaginable. also if you’re a harry potter fan i don’t think you can really justify hating cassandra clare because she’s “problematic”. like ok…. look inside.

[unhallowedrp]

To celebrate our new site reaching 500+ posts, we have implemented a bingo and also introduced a brand new lore drop dedicated to Virginian crime! Join us as we progress through not only our current site-wide event, ALL THINGS DEVOUR, but also as members begin bingo to push for our ROAD TO 1000 POSTS CELEBRATION! Members will be awarded special prizes, as well as unlock further factions, badges and lore drops as posting goals are met! Join us today to get in on the post-apocalyptic horror fun!

Introducing our 3 new mini-subplots. . . as well as open roles we're seeking!

IF INTERESTED IN APPLYING, PLEASE DO SO HERE. FIND OUR OTHER WANTED ADS HERE.

Trigger Warnings: Blackmail, drug use, sex work and violence ahead.

1. The Viper's Nest, a brutal criminal fighting ring.

Roosting in the underbelly of The Jade Jewel is the Viper’s Nest, a vicious and consecrated fighting ring which pits its personnel against one another and infected both. Its origins are humble- a hastily constructed pit in which a debt resolved itself. From there, it has seen patronage from the upper levels and has expanded into a bustling hub of haggling bookies, notorious fighters and a flood of spectators, the Nest alive with clamour. Though once a drab and miserable place, time and investment has dredged the colour from the upper levels down into the Nest; colourful drapes and fabrics ornament every nook and open patch of ceiling, separating bookie from bookie and sectioning off the lesser-frequented areas. Odd trinkets and bits of furniture are scattered throughout, their origins unable to be pinned down, with large speakers posted both at ground-level and mounted to the ceiling, blaring announcements and metal. Substances and alcohol are traded underhanded in the privacy of darker corners or crowds, no place to turn without brushing shoulders with someone or other. Its central pit plays host to multiple levels, an array of traps - from bludgeoning, swinging axes to spurts of flame - and no shortage of infected leashed, caged, shackled or loose in the arena, all of which combatants must navigate to emerge victorious. With a page taken from the book of Roman gladiators, the Nest also has a small number of caged big cats - tigers, largely, abducted from the derelict remains of zoos and sanctuaries in the area - and venomous snakes to loose in the pit as they see fit. Rumours persist that the Viper’s Nest is presided over by a group of faceless powers - founders, perhaps, or something darker - with hands in other factions, but whether those rumours have substance is yet to be determined. It’s a difficult thing to investigate, given the Nest is invite-only, requiring a password (alecto) and a vouch from an established member. Journalists are at significant risk of abduction and forced participation in the pits (or worse), if recognised.

2. Velvet Road, a glitzy strip of businesses and the Jade Jewel casino.

The glitzy-neons can be seen on the horizon from miles away, and as the saying goes, all paths lead to the Velvet Road. The casino was constructed after the Cordyceps outbreak, built from scraps of colorful buildings, an insignia of post-apocalyptic power. The primary casino, The Jade Jewel, is a three story building, surrounded by equally bright and flashing businesses that make up the entirety of the Velvet Road; as the name suggests, the Jade Jewel’s heady neons and galvanized edges are primarily in shades of teal. Although typically used for pleasure - gambling Credit Slips and other personally sought wealth, as well as indulging in the flesh and old-world hedonism - the Velvet Road is also home to a budding empire of crime. The main level is a dizzy flood of gambling tables, slot machines - that may or may not payout - and a rotating bar with themed drinks. Its stage has been intricately cobbled together and reinforced with an astounding array of materials, ingenuity in its construction, the lights placed just-so to refract colour across the nearby tables, playing host to live music and Burlesque performances. The scent of cigars and chems hangs thick, inescapable, the air awash with curled tendrils of smoke. The lowest level is home to the Viper’s Nest, a fighting ring geared towards both infected and survivors, having grown from a rudimentary pit into the spectacle it is today. Entry to this level of the building is restricted to those who can provide the password - alecto - which is spread exclusively by word of mouth.

3. The Iron Web - a coalition of bounty hunters and chemists producing unique Cordyceps-drugs to the Virginian population.

The Iron Web is a formally recognized criminal organization with roots in Virginia and South Carolina, though much of its original formation is unknown to the public. Connected to the Velvet Road, The Iron Web’s business has partnered with the Jade Jewel Casino to expand their own interests. Most of the post-apocalyptic chems are rooted in the Iron Web labs, utilizing the Cordyceps in order to create new or more potent versions of drugs from the old world. Chems are created by the chemists employed by the Iron Web, and then distributed by the casino and chem dealers throughout Virginia. Of course, diving into the chem business comes at a price. Addiction breeds returning users; The Iron Web possesses one of the most organized bounty hunter coalitions in the state who are sent to collect missing payments, stolen product, general nuisances and targeted enemies. They serve as the primary enforcers and the eyes of the Web. Employment can range from voluntary to blackmail, The Iron Web focused on expanding their power by any means necessary.

Find our unique original chem concepts below, inspired by a variety of post-apocalyptic media! DAY TRIPPER. Mood enhancer and psychedelic. Causes euphoria, heightens sociability and inspires confidence. Delivered via spore-infused strip of paper that dissolves on the tongue. Take 30 minutes to 1 hour to set in. Effects of one strip last between 6 and 12 hours. The most commonly used, as spores do not need to be any specific kind.

BONEDUST / SUGAR. Stimulant. Heightens focus, offsets fatigue, and causes extreme dissociation- some find this experience pleasurable, and some horrifying. Delivered via nasal insufflation. Primarily made of bone-cream yellow to pure white spores harvested from Ghosts. Takes 5-20 minutes to set in. Effects of 10mg last between 3 and 6 hours.

PANACEA. Depressant. Pain suppressant and tranquilizer- though users may make strange, croaking noises, half-lucid, while under the influence. Could be used as a substitute for anaesthesia in dire situations. Delivered via intravenous injection, and requires Cordyceps harvested from Clickers. Takes 5-20 minutes to set in. Effects of 10mg last between 12 and 24 hours. Extremely addictive, even on first injection.

SPICE. A new take on traditional marijuana; can therefore be classed as a depressant, simulant or a hallucinogenic. Symptoms vary between users, but attention, judgement and coordination impairment is to be expected. To be smoked or cooked into foods for consumption; should never be consumed raw, as heat denatures the spores and makes it fit for consumption. Spores are harvested from Statues- or weed can be grown in the vicinity of pre-existing Statues. Takes 30 minutes to 2 hours to set in. How long effects last is dependent on dosage and tolerance; can linger for up to 36 hours.

SYRUP / AMBROSIA. Depressant. Causes extreme lethargy, promotes sleep and suppresses appetite. Delivered occasionally as an inhalant, but mostly as a thick, cloying, dark liquid which can be drizzled onto foods or into drinks. Rare, as the process of manufacture is exceptionally specific and laborious, with high margin for error (the drug itself is, in effect, the liquified guts and organ-matter of Statues, laced through with Cordyceps; requires time, controlled temperatures and low humidity). Takes 2-5 hours to set in. Effects last between 24-48 hours.

LIGHTNING / SHIELD. Steroid. Temporarily enhances strength, quickens reaction time, reduces inflammation and suppresses immune system. Delivered in pill form; pills are white with black flecks, and require the harvesting of Cordyceps from Swellers. Takes 30 minutes to 1 hour to set in. Effects of a 65mg pill last between 4-6 hours.

[archer3-13]

I am glad the ask are back ! i hope you won't receive anymore of this wank things because it's clear from the game and from your answer that it's not supposed to be incest and even if it was what is the worst that can happen ? anyway, would you say that Sombron is a good villain ?

thank you anon. sorry its taken a bit to awnser back.

as for sombron? i've touched on it before, but i will say that for me personally I really enjoyed sombron. if engage is awakening 2.0, i feel it really manages to improve in terms of its central villain to what grima tried to lay down in that you have all of grimas visual flair and dramatics attached to an actually realized character of a villain. plus in a way you could argue hes something of a unique first for fe, in that hes a composite of the 'gharnef' and 'medeus' archetype as it were being both a powerful evil dragon and a scheming manipulative sorcerer.

on a more objective perspective... i feel hes underutilized for the presentation and presence he brings. he makes a fantastic first appearance [love his intro cutscene after hyacinth resurrects him] but afterwards drops off the face of the game well evil veyle and zephia do the lions work of villain antagonizing until the bare last moments of the story. and well thats for the purposes of the emotional heart the story wants to deliver in veyle and alears relation, evil veyle and zephia just... aren't good antagonists. ones a cardboard prop for the veyle subplot and the others a confused mess.

and yeah, ya dont wanna overexpose sombron. obviously. but more time spent with him would have, outside of being more time spent with him and his delicious evil ham and pectoral muscles, would have been time spent away from how poor our workhorses of antagonists in evil veyle and zephia are. or alternatively they coulda written better evil veyle and zephia's.

is he deep as far as villains go? no, but then a villain need not be deep if they bring the right presence to the story and suit the role they need to fill. and sombron certainly does that with a strong flair. the problem lay in his lesser sidekick villains really.

[sailorstarr-chan4]

Manga Update: Kiss Him, Not Me!

Volumes: 14 (Anime: 12 episodes -- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, AS WELL!!!) Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars Favorite Characters: Kae Serinuma, Mutsumi-senpai, & Nishina Favorite Pairings: Kae Serinuma x Asuna Mutsumi-senpai Pros: Hilarious, heartwarming, charming, absurd, and just bloody entertaining AF Cons: Okay, so..... the weight loss subplot is problematic (mainly with the casual fatphobic rhetoric), but.... speaking as someone who had her own fair share of body image issues, I found this series' take oddly refreshing (more thoughts below) Recommended for: FANS OF THE ANIME SERIES. And any current or former BL fangirls, otaku, nerds, etc. Y'all will relate to the madness within, methinks lol

~~~

I cannot believe it took me six years after falling in love with the anime to FINALLY finish the manga, when I literally devoured volumes 3-14 (the end) in just a few days. Only a handful of manga titles make me laugh out loud, and Kiss Him, Not Me! is firmly in that category. The anime references, fandom/shipping lore and madness, and overall shenanigans are just a joy to consume.

And though I adore this series with every fiber of my being, and I say both the anime and manga are more-or-less on equal footing (with the anime being only slightly objectively "lesser" because the manga has more story, but I digress), I will say I do "prefer" the anime, but ONLY because the dubbed cast did such a fantastic job hamming up every single line of dialogue. But I definitely want to own BOTH the manga AND anime one day!! It's just so much fun and sweet and adorable and hilarious!! What's not to love?!

That aside.... let's address the elephant in the room.

So. Let's talk about the Weight Loss thing. Semi-spoilers ahead (TW: weight loss and gain, unrealistic eating habits, fatphobic reactions, etc)

The anime also covers the basics, but here's the breakdown:

Kae Serinuma is an overweight otaku who has her bestie to fangirl with, but is also mostly satisfied with remaining perpetually single, as long as she can indulge in her BL fantasies in fiction and reality.

one day, her favorite anime series kills off her favorite character, sinking her into a week-long starvation depression period

when she finally emerges, she is skinny, glowing with gorgeous skin, and Hot AF

(yes that is VERY problematic, but stay with me)

she returns to school, everyone is Shook, and immediately gains a harem of boys seeking her affection

standard harem shenanigans ensue, but with a lot more Self Awareness, which makes it even funnier

then Kae enters a chocolate character contest, eats up the leftover pieces over the weekend, and..... gains weight again

(yes, that means she literally fluctuates between Thin Perfection and Comical Fatness at the drop of the hat. Yes, that is problematic, MOVING ON)

half of her harem is horrified and demands she lose the weight (gross); the other half accepts her and is fine either way, and one member actually gains Character Development and moves up from shallow fuckboi to caring love interest (no, he's not the chosen one)

Kae is encouraged to lose weight and WANTS to, of her own volition, and doesn't seem to mind either way (important)

and so Kae loses weight again, this time a bit more realistically (albeit cliched) with exercise, and a good dosage of humor because it is fake BL shenanigans that motivate her lol

Okay. So here's the thing.

Yes, the way weight loss is literally addressed and resolved/relapsed is unbelievably unrealistic, problematic, and fatphobic AF. But that's only if we don't account for Kae herself.

Because the crux of it all is...... Kae literally does not give a shit.

She's happy in any body shape.

She never feels shame for being fat, and when others shame her, she dismisses it. If anything, she ironically feels more uncomfortable when she's thin because of the unwanted Pretty Privilege attention she constantly receives.

Two of her love interests, including (spoiler) the guy she ends up choosing and marrying, literally love her both before and after the weight loss/gain, and don't see a problem with her body, other than a vague "you probably shouldn't lose/gain weight so quickly and drastically," but still support her decisions.

The weight thing is not to be taken too seriously, even while it's still important to unpack. She's not LITERALLY gaining/losing that much weight super quickly (the series even makes jokes about how that's even possible), but she is fluctuating between what is deemed by Society as what is Attractive vs Not. Maybe in a real world setting she switches between make-up vs no make-up depending on her mood. Maybe she does gain weight, but it's actually minimal, because society is extremely fatphobic and considers anything a smidgen higher than The Perfect Thinness as Fat Slob or some sort of nonsense. Or maybe it's something entirely different, some of innocuous societal norm of Attractiveness that Kae doesn't maintain, for whatever reason.

Except....... that's also not the case? Because Kae IS abnormal, a deviant with her interests, hobbies, and fangirlish obsessions. And the best part? WEIGHT DOES NOT PLAY A FACTOR INTO IT.

Whether she's fat or skinny, she is a shameless, passionate, loud, and insane fangirl, who literally drools over hot guys and literally has "ugly" thirsty facial expressions even when she's supposed to be "hot." And that is SO GOOD.

Too often in Problematic Media that features weight loss, there's a feeling of shame vs confidence, nerdiness vs normality. And though people AROUND Kae certainly react with all kinds of fatphobia, SHE HERSELF DOES NOT AND THAT IS KEY. Her weight does not determine her worth nor her love for otakuness. He weight only ever influenced her surroundings, and before long, the shallow pettiness is set aside and her harem grows to care for her PERSON, not just her Sparkling Perfect Skinny Bod.

I completely understand why some people cannot get past the blatant fatphobic reactions of Kae's peers, but for me, Kae herself is what makes it palpable. And her friends/love interests who don't care either.

(And another important note/spoiler: her future husband literally happily marries her when she's overweight and, back when she first regained her weight at school, literally tells his fellow harem members that Kae is beautiful either way. SO LIKE. I THINK THE SERIES IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO MAKE SOME LEGIT COMMENTARY AND NOT JUST BE FATPHOBIC FOR THE LULZ, Y'ALL.)

[mortuarybees]

does make me feel mildly guilty for never finishing my massive les mis magnum opus about les amis as leftist organizers in kansas i plotted to cope with the election because i was 17

[10minuta]

Something is bothering me and I know I might be too picky (but allow me my feelings),

I hope I don't forget something but here it is:

What is their plan and do they have a plan, I really hope so, as much as I hope there will be more seasons, but

Is Gabriel a main character or is he not?

The three of them remind me of the Harry Potter trio, (in this case with added polyamory or not)

I want all three of them to be equally important characters. That's the impression they are giving us with the three of them ending the season together.

But here's the thing: the foreshadowing with the "maybe the bad times are the good times" and "I wanted to see it through to the end" tells me that they are flirting with the idea of things ending up tragically. And them just killing Gabriel because he's a lesser important character. They paid him less attention in scenes and in the script in the last few episodes except in the scenes that establish his backstory.

In the scene after Nathan's vision Annalise hugs him, but he reaches towards Gabriel and touches his arm and grips his hand as Gabriel is gripping his ankle. Emilien's face is out of focus and only after I have slowed down the speed on Netflix was I able to see that as he's doing it Gabriel is closing his eyes in anguish and fear for Nathan.

We barely see his reaction to Nathan almost dying for the second time in two days, when just a few hours before that he was so shaken he couldn't look at Nathan at all he was that sticken and didn't know how to express his emotions or what to do with them.

Even in the first scene the night before when Nathan is ill we do not see much of G's reaction. The focus is not on him, I know it's a complex scene with a lot happening but if G were an important character who will stay the focus of the show, his reaction would be important just as Annalise's.

I don't know if somebody dropped the ball on this aspect of the story or? Director, editor, cameramen do they know the game plan and the focus of the story? Arguably it's a romantic subplot but at the same time it's the emotional heart of the story, just as that conversation between Celia and Annalise reminded us - what's the only thing that really matters.

In the books (spoiler) Nabriel are the main pairing romantically or otherwise, just as much as Annalise and Nathan. (The books are kinda messy honestly in many aspects, I hope the show does better with this, idk)

In the last episode when Nathan asks them to tell him their goodbyes... Gabriel doesn't say anything. They didn't give him any lines??? We are supposed to not notice this? We are skimming over it? If him not saying anything is the point then we should have been given a close-up of his face in anguish. Yes I know when the vial of blood broke we got it but it was weird because everything is disjointed. Nathan was comforting him as if they have known each other longer than 10 days like they know each other so well. Like my dude he's not the one who's gonna potentially die, you are? What is this scene in the script, what are the director's notes?

Also which one among us can speculate why did Gabriel fall in love with Nathan or whatever they are implying throughout... Nathan is cool, I love him, but in context of the time they have spent together and their scenes?? There doesn't exist that deep of a connection established. They have hots for each other yes, they are blatantly flirting yes, but it's just the beginning idk... I think the creators of the show should pay closer attention to their intentions for the story and plotlines.

[yakumtsaki]

Welcome, dear readers, to part 1 of the finale to the BackupKingdom2 saga! We’re in our final ambition now, let’s check how Liz’s post-divorce-bloodbath is going..

Oh yes, excellent. Our path to death-achievement-glory has been paved with so many executions that wherever I look I see npcs crying..

..comforting each other..

..and in Agnes' case, coming straight to Liz to.. ask for mercy for the populace I guess?? Bruh. I can't believe we even brought down AGNES, truly this is the saddest kingdom on earth. Amazing job, Liz, you've definitely earned your place in the tyrant hall of fame!

Now a lesser player would be like "oh, maybe we should chill a little on the insane tyrant thing, finish the Pirate/Noble arc cause we've been dragging this war out so the pirates/guildsmen would keep spawning and it should have ended like 20 quests ago" and true, we could just end it, we ran a very effective operation around here, shoutout to MVPs Donius and Bellinda and their 'seductive' legendary traits:

They bedded them and Liz beheaded them, the power of teamwork! So one could say that we should consider raising kingdom morale now because everyone is so depressed but I think, if anything, now is the time to ramp it up and go for some of the other morally questionable achievements! Like Machiavelli said, you should commit all your atrocities at once! What do you think, Liz? Ready to get atrocious?

-OH FUCK YEA, I’M ENRAGED, I DROPPED MY FIDDLE IN THE PIT AND NOW I HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE SERVANT TO GET ME A NEW ONE!! WHY DOES EVERYTHING ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME >:(

Aw I’m sorry Liz, but I’m sure you the upcoming suffering of your subjects will cheer you up!

-Ok motherfuckers, by order of the Crown aka ME -you hear that Rae?? ME, NOT YOU. God I want to execute you so bad, fucking ingrate, do you remember what rags you were wearing when I hired you??  

Let’s get this back on track, Liz.

-Right, so by order of the Crown, Magus Olivia and Spymaster Spainot are given COMPLETE LEGAL IMMUNITY to do whatever the fuck they want in the interest of earning achievements, so don’t you people come crying to me cause I don’t give one tiny chinchilla crap about your health and livelihoods. If you need me for something actually important, I'll be at the gates, executing anyone who doesn't like my fiddle playing.

-Oh man, this folksy peasant hat isn’t protecting my ears enough.

-THOUGHT I WOULDN’T HEAR YOUR LITTLE MURMUR, DID YOU  -YOUR MAJESTY NO I ONLY MEANT MY EARS WERE COLD -WELL ALL OF YOUR BODY’S ABOUT TO BE COLD NOW! CONSTABLE, THROW THIS PEASANT IN THE PIT

-Death marker? I hardly know 'er!

So the Constable npc has this little Billy Elliot subplot going, I'm pretty sure he has the 'drunkard' fatal flaw because he was always at the tavern so I had Bellinda try to hire him to perform in one of her plays just to see what would happen and it actually worked, and now he moonlights as an actor! It's cute but it also takes forever for him to come arrest people.

-THEY LOVE ME ❤️😁 -CONSTABLE WHATSYOURNAME, COME OVER HERE AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB OR YOU'RE NEXT FOR THE PIT

-No one knows what it's like to be the bad man, to be the sad man, when someone dies😢

In the background you can see that Bellinda just got a pregnancy bump, it’s her lovechild with Donius, I for real can’t keep these two apart. Anyway, the time has come..

..to unleash Magus Olivia onto the populace.

-You know what, I'd rather not, this book is finally getting good and I'm sick of cursing peasants, it doesn't even drop their mood that much..

Oh no, Olivia my beloved, we're not cursing them, we're going for the 'Well Done' achievement!

-NO WAY.

WAY.

-Won't I be executed??

You have immunity! You can do whatever you want!! And, AND, once you complete it, because I know it's tiring, I'll give you a magic skeletal parrot as a gift!! Edward got all the materials for it while treasure-hunting, you'd think I'd let him keep it but that's not the kind of shop I'm running here.

-This is my face of pure, childlike happiness!

Good lord, it’s terrifying, please don’t look at me like that.

-Alright, time to roll down my sleeves so they look more sinister and do this thing.

You can do it, Olivia!

-Of course I can, save your reassurance for the flops that need it.

-I.. cast.. INFERNO!

...

-What?

I mean really, those are the words, "I cast inferno"? Can't you say something with more evil magical flair?

-Not when I have to cast it 80 fucking times I can't.

-IT BURNS, IT BURNSSSSS

Oh how the tables have turned, usually it's the witch that gets burned, huhu! Did you hear that, Olivia? Did you like my joke??

-Oh, it's beautiful!

Well it wasn't one of my best-

-Not you, you needy moron, the sight of burning flesh! I can't wait to do this 79 more times!

Alright, so everyone in the tavern has been turned into a chicken nugget, time to get some rest and check in with Spainot!

-Amazing news, Rodolfo, I just got royal permission to unlawfully lock up and interrogate whoever I want for the achievements!!!

-Darling, no offense, but aren't you a bit too shit at your job for that? -WHAT????

-FUCK YOU RODOLFO YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS OF MY SUCCESS -I WISH I WAS JEALOUS OF YOUR SUCCESS, THEN YOU'D BE SUCCESSFUL AND I WOULDN'T BE MARRIED TO A BROKE LOSER

-And then he says the only reason he hasn't dumped me is he doesn't wanna be a rando npc while Batshit Liz is on an execution spree, can you believe this bullshit? How can anyone be so hurtful??

-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NO NO PLEASE DON'T HAVE THIS CHINCHILLA MAUL ME I'LL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT

-How about you give me some marital advice, are you even listening?! Ugh.

That's right, while Olivia is inferno-ing the peasants, I've sicced Spainot on the nobility, specifically all those foreign diplomats that are always hanging in the reception hall, lagging up the place. We're going for the 100 interrogations achievement and we’ve installed a nice spiky torture chair right in the middle of the hall to save time! Now this is how we keep every stratum of society terrified enough to not realize that the person in charge is.. uh.. well you know:

-DANCE TO MY FIDDLE, PIRATE, DANCE!

-I AM!!!!!

-DANCE MORE ENTHUSIASTICALLY. ALL THE WAY TO THE PIT

After a couple days and several locations I feel we’re pretty close to 80 infernos!

I’d say we’ve burned a good 50-60% of the population at this point, everywhere I look I see singed townies-

-so we take this little barbecue to the palace because we’ve ran out of peasants and it’s time to start burning the foreign dignitaries. And it’s a good thing we do, because Olivia meets Nyrexis the Dragon!!!! 

Nyrexis is the human form of the dragon from a hilar quest where there’s a dragon in the kingdom and you can either befriend it or slay it, I had Bellinda befriend it:

So if you complete the befriend route of the quest, the human form of the dragon appears in town and is in love with whoever did the quest, in this case Bellinda. I am of course not about to waste Dragonfu on Bellinda’s basic ass, plus I feel Olivia is kind of a dragon with all the people she’s been burning so they have a lot in common! 

We dazzle Dragonfu with a coin trick! True magic at work.

-OMG IT WAS BEHIND MY EAR THE WHOLE TIME -I KNOW!

Good God, all of Olivia’s ‘happy’ expressions are terrifying, just don’t smile ever again, you’re too evil for it, you’re gonna scare the dragon away!

Or not!!!!

 AWWWWW 🐲❤️🔮

You know what, fuck it, let’s lock it down, when it’s right it’s right!

-Burn stuff with me forever?? -I WILL!!!!

-We are gathered here today, under threat of fiery death, to join two unholy abominations in holy matrimony. Yes, the irony is not lost on me. 

AW CONGRATS GUYS <3333 The wizard tower is so small and family un-friendly and Olivia is so unmaternal but come on, like I’m not gonna have her reproduce with a fucking dragon.

Back to Spainot, we’ve hit a slight bump, mainly that this Snordwich lord is proving fucking impossible to torture. 

-Um.. Are you enjoying this??? -Sure am, bad boy, but why don’t we take this somewhere more private already?

Wtf, stop sexually harassing the innocent person who’s torturing you! Does no one around here have any sense of humanity anymore??

-Come on, Spainot, throw some flesh-eating rodents at him! -I’M BUILDING UP TO IT, RAE, GAWD. No one likes a back-seat torturer!

-HA, who’s the loser now, Rodolfo? Rodolfo?? RODOLFO

Ya Spai I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure he left while you were interrogating, I haven’t seen him in like 3 days.

-WHAT. So Olivia completes one achievement and gets a dragon wife and a magic skeletal bird and I complete three and get dumped?!

Well what do you want from me, I don’t make the rules!

-YES YOU DO

Can we move on, please? And Olivia had a very rough go of it-

-she got burned in some rando quest and looked positively karma-stricken after, inferno-ing left and right while sporting this look! She deserves a magic bird!

Congrats on your success and 4 kids, Olivia! 

-I love this skeleton bird more than I thought it possible to ever love something.

-Gee, thanks mom. 

We had leftover bones so here, Spainot, you get a magic bird too.

-A bone parrot is little comfort when you’ve lost the only bone that matters! Why Rodolfo, whyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

Oh I don’t know, probably because you challenged him to duels 3 times a day?

-No, that can’t be it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you look like a man who has nothing to live for?

-Yea, I certainly don’t.

So you wouldn’t mind like, jumping into the pit multiple times so you can get the parts we need for the hardest achievement in game aka Legendary Doomsword?

-Rodolfo had one of those too, it was legendary and now that it’s gone I’m doomed!!!

Ok ya ENOUGH metaphors about Rodolfo’s absent penis, although they really are writing themselves. We’ll get him back! If you survive all the pit jumping that is. Join us next time for part 2: Legendary Doomsword!

[koreandragon]

I'm going through the upcoming Kdramas on mydramalist and I'm so tired istg, some poor soul in the comments asks if there's romance bc they like the leads and you get 10 people dropping comments like why do you always want romance my favorite dramas don't have romance, romance doesn't have to be in every drama etc. Shut the fuck up you're not special ( some of my favorite dramas don't have romance but also some of my favorite viewing experiences have been shows centered around a love story like almost every other drama loving person lmfao) the way they have been brainwashed into thinking romance is somehow a lesser genre, you never see someone be like oh why does every drama have to have comedy or action or literally any other genre. You're just hating on the thing that made Kdramas what they are, people are allowed to want romance in a particular drama it honestly reeks of "I'm not like other girls" bullshit please stop. Also why is it where there is an ensemble drama or basically any other drama we get it's a male lead a female lead and 50 other secondary male leads, like holy shit I would love if one day we get to the point where dramas have an equal amount of both or you know what more female leads for all the shit they've been putting us through for decades, I don't even get it since most screenwriters are women and aren't they the ones who choose the cast? If you're a good writer almost every role can go to both genders, why is having multiple female leads a drama genre on its own and multiple male leads is just called every other drama.

you know i actually saw a pretty good post about earnestness and romance in media nowadays. it was about bridgerton tho and period dramas but i think it applies to just romance genre in general.

op talks about how we are so ashamed of watching romance dramas that we always have to parody it, it always has to be self aware like "haha see we know this is cringe and we are doing it on purpose don't worry" and it always has to be a guilty pleasure, sadly as you have mentioned too among women as well because it's trendy to "not be like other girls". you have to consume romance in a moderate way, you can only consume romance in a certain way like as a subplot in a sci fi or fantasy e.g stranger things. there can't be any more pure romance which is actually why kdramas got so popular because western media does not do romance anymore almost at all. and since western audiences started to turn to kdramas, i can see it affecting this market too, that cynicism bleeding through to kdramas and ruining its foundation. out of all the airing dramas i'm mostly enjoying yumi's cells because it's just very unashamedly a romance drama and nothing more. it's literally only about yumi and her life and her love interests. a business proposal same deal, it reminded me so much of old school romance dramas because it had every cliche in the book.

it's always been like this lmao there's a group of friends lets's say 4 people and only one of them is a woman. if it's 5 people then the amount of women go up by one maybe. i can't go into this cause why beat the dead horse.

[lucemferto]

I have to say that, while the inclusion and expansion of the lore of previously lesser involved streamers such as Ponk and Purpled, is on the whole a big positive, something that’s definitely suffering because of that is the “pacing” in the sense that there’s never really any downtime.

While Wilbur was still in charge, you could be comfortable with the knowledge that the only events that would ultimately end up being capital-C Canon were the ones he was involved in. The narrative arc of Season 1 – for better or worse – revolved entirely around the things Wilbur wrote. You can watch Season 1 without paying any attention to the Pet Wars or the Dreamon Hunters or, yes, even the Badlands and not miss anything that’s pertinent to Season 1’s plot.

That’s of course frustrating for people invested in these streamers, but it also gave the audience time to catch up on and disseminate what was going on in the story of Season 1.

With Season 2 and the more decentralized approach it took to writing, you get the feeling that you have to be on 24/7 if you don’t want to miss anything – and this can be very tiring for the audience. Especially as these plots are still highly interconnected – it’s not like with Marvel movies where each movie tells its own closed-off narrative – the Crimson subplot becomes the main plot of Season 3 and reiterates on stuff set up in Season 2.

This can be seriously disorienting for an audience that has only limited time on its hand (aka me – I’m talking about myself).

In the very least, lest you think that I’m only here to complain, Season 3 – so far – seems to do it better than Season 2. El Rapids, Quackity’s plan to resurrect Schlatt, Karl’s plan to replace Tommy as Vice-President, Eret’s Knights and Drywaters famously ended up being big plot cul-de-sacs that didn’t matter – and that’s not a diss on these storylines by the way! It just shows the danger of decentralized storytelling in a medium where a lot of it also relies on improv – if you’re not careful, you’ll end up juggling too many storylines and are forced to unceremoniously drop some.

And if stuff like that happens, people that were invested in these storylines, end up being rightfully frustrated – see the Niki incident.

Season 3 so far handles this stuff better overall. Everything is pretty well integrated into the Crimson storyline, the Snowchester storyline, the Tales-stories or Ranboo’s quest to become a Shounen protagonist. And most importantly, it actually seems like these storylines work in tandem and are coordinated with each other. But it also means that the chance for a Drywaters or Dreamon Hunters – which in the past you could safely ignore if you wanted to concentrate on the main story – doesn’t exist anymore. If you miss something than you have to catch up … and that’s time-consuming.

Hindsight is, of course, 20-20, so who knows if this impression holds up – I hope it will – but if Dream SMP wants to continue being engaging to viewers, I think it would be best do have some sort of hub or something, where everything storyline-relevant is gathered for easy-viewing. Because right now that’s fan-led and mostly scattershot. An official “Dream SMP” YouTube channel would, I think, really help make it so that fans can appreciate how coordinated and apportioned the story has become – and help everyone be up-to-date with what’s going on.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 11 Review/Remix

Not the most action packed chapter we’ve ever had, and certainly not as dramatic as Chapter 11s from past Volumes. But this week had some wonderful surprises and existential dread and depression in equal measure and I think that’s a formula for a pretty damn good watch.

Despite the devastating energy bomb Oscar delivered last episode, we open with the city of Atlas overrun with tons of Grimm. The people are still hiding in the subway, fearing for their lives twice over now that Ironwood’s monologue is playing and showing just how off his rocker he is. Those in the crater mines take it far worse, though we see some of the humans and faunus who had previously seemed on edge with each other holding one another in solidarity and comfort. Fiona breaks down in tears and is pulled into a Happy Huntress group hug by Joanna and May, so it’s a small comfort to see they’re all still alive.

Ironwood and Winter walk the halls of Atlas command together, and Winter can’t help but notice the fearful reverence the general’s presence instills in lesser officers. The Ace Ops are talking things over in the wake of their boss’ ultimatum, and Elm is of the belief that Ironwood was just bluffing about nuking Mantle if he doesn’t get what he wants. Vine agrees it may very well be the kick in the pants Team RWBY and the others will need to finally see the right path, but we the audience are getting pretty sick of hearing this shtick. Marrow thinks Ironwood is taking this too far, and Harriet is just angrily indifferent about the whole thing. Ironwood rounds the corner and addresses the squad with their new orders: get some drones ready to drop the bomb. Winter asks why exactly they need to actually make those kind of preparations, and he makes it clear that he really does intend to remove Mantle from the equation if he is prompted to. He actually thinks committing this massacre, nay genocide, will make Penny more willing to return to his command if she no longer has an alternative job. No, dumbass, she’ll only want to defy and even kill you more! This is how he believes they will save Atlas, but Marrow has had more than enough and calls him on his shit for a line like that. All this is doing is helping Salem in her mission to divide and destroy the world, and it’s spitting in the face of everything Marrow thought the Atlas military stood for. Harriet threatens to clean his clock if he doesn’t shut up, and Vine again suggests that this would be a necessary sacrifice for the good of the Kingdom. Elm tries to agree, to say that this should be their top priority whether they like it or not, but Marrow has more to say. He can’t believe any of them actually buy the nonsense they’re spouting, and wants to know if there’s anything his teammates actually believe in anymore. With so many moral compromises, where do they draw the line of patriotism vs fascism? The faunus man gives a pretty good clincher to his tirade by calling his badge and rank nothing more than a collar. Say what you want about the writing of the faunus discrimination subplots in the prior volumes, I think this was pretty good. Ironwood isn’t about to let Marrow walk away from a rant like that without consequences and we can hear his cocking his gun. Marrow hears it too, but before he can react Winter comes in from his right with a sucker punch that knocks him to the floor. As she drops a knee on Marrow’s back to cuff him for insubordination we see Ironwood was a second away from shooting this man, one of his few trusted elite soldiers left, in the back of the head for an execution without mercy or hesitation. She just saved his goddamn life and that makes her an MVP for this Volume. The other Ace Ops realize this close encounter with death too, and they all share the same expression of shock fear dread and confusion. Not even Vine can hide how much he doesn’t like what could have just occurred. Winter says she’s going to take this “traitor” to the brig where he belongs and Ironwood allows her to leave and do so, only taking his finger off the trigger once they’ve walked past him. Those with a better understanding of trigger discipline than I could probably make something poignant out of that, so have at it if you can. What is abundantly clear to us is that Winter will be taking Marrow no such place. She has absolutely had enough and she’s about to desert with him in tow. The remaining three have to get back in line and spend a little time rethinking their positions on this job. Well, at least one of them will be, I don’t think Harriet is gonna change course after what she’s already done.

From one tense situation to another, we go to the Schnee manor dining room where Team RWBY are trying to figure out their next moves with Oscar and Emerald. They know they don’t want Ironwood getting his hands on Penny, but they don’t know what to do instead that won’t result in mass casualties. They don’t know that Robyn and Qrow have flown the coop and might come to their aid soon, and under Ironwood’s watch there’s no way to try and evacuate the people in the crater before he drops the bomb. It’s a real bad situation with no clear solutions or backup plans. Emerald can’t help but be snarky and say if the perpetual optimism engine that is Ruby can’t think of what to do then there’s no right answer at all. Weiss is annoyed that Em is giving them sass when they really don’t need any, but Yang is downright furious and her to GTFO if she doesn’t like trying to help them solve this. Emerald tenses up when Yang stomps towards her with clenched fists, and her hands go to her weapons in case she needs to defend herself. We know Yang wouldn’t actually throw a punch even if she’s mad like this, but Em doesn’t. Probably because the most substantial thing connecting the two of them was the time Emerald used her semblance to make Yang look like a heartless brute who would break a leg for no reason on live TV. Also Emerald doesn’t have the best role models for how to handle frustration... Oscar continues to insist they all just take a deep breath and remember the big picture rather than lose it over small disagreements, and reminds them that Em is going to be staying on their side cuz Salem won’t let her safely be anywhere else. But when he tries to reassure the group with a reminder that Oz is back to offer help too it just tenses the situation further. Ruby’s got her head in her arms on the table, and she’s really having a hard time of it all. Oscar muses about all the negative personal energies keeping them from a productive cohesion, and Ruby pops off. A day’s worth of their best efforts, hard fought battles and painful consequences, and nothing has gotten better. Just like at the start of the Volume, all they’ve been able to do is argue over what to try and do while Atlas heads towards its demise. Yang tries to put an encouraging hand on her shoulder but she brushes it off and runs out of the room in a huff. Everyone silently realizes how much they’ve fucked this up if Ruby is so hopeless and desperate, and Yang follows her sister out of the room.

Upstairs, Jaune is doing his best to boost Nora’s Aura and help her heal faster, but it’s not doing anything about her lightning scars. Those babies are here to stay, and I don’t mind it. It shows history, survival and a damn good story about what she’s been able to power through. Ren is sitting at the foot of the bed, and the best he’s able to offer is how glad he is Nora is okay. She seems indifferent and even passive aggressive at the diagnosis on her scars, claiming it’s just another example of her being classic dumb Nora. Ren tries to object that this wasn’t her being stupid or foolhardy, but she bites back at him with all the resentment she seems to have been holding in since they split ways yesterday. He’s got no right to say what it was or wasn’t, he wasn’t there to see it. He pushed away from her when things went wrong because he didn’t want to have to feel anything he thought would be too hard to deal with. Ren makes no effort to argue, he knows she’s right and he apologizes profusely for how he wronged both her and Jaune. He regrets the things he said to them, or more likely the things he said to Jaune out on the tundra since he and Nora haven’t exactly talked much. He admits he’s been mad at himself for not measuring up to their mentor figures in the Ace Ops, for how little he could help when Tyrian came a’ slashing at Robyn’s election rally, and for slipping up and letting Neo get away with the Lamp. Mentioning the rally of course gets Nora’s attention away from her pissed off brooding, and she does start to listen a little more sympathetically. Ren says that he tried to tunnel vision on getting stronger in the hopes it would mean he wouldn’t fail again and bring the team down with him. We know from Ironwood how bad tunnel vision is, so I’m glad Ren is realizing it was a bad choice. Ren has realized now that by doing all that he failed the worst of all, that being in his role as a member of this team and as a partner to Nora. The two of them lock eyes, and Jaune notices the deeper meaning behind this prolonged eye contact and knows he should make himself scarce for now so they can have this more important conversation sans his third wheeling ass. Good boy, but a bit over the top excusing himself.

All Nora can find the words to ask is why Ren hadn’t said anything about these personal doubts sooner so they could try and deal with it and grow as a team, and he says he wanted to try and solve it himself because it was his problem and he was the one dragging the group down because of it. She disagrees on the grounds of her own perceived failings, being silly of mind and strong of muscle and little else of value. Ren won’t hear that kind of self depreciation sitting down, so he moves further up the bed to sit by her lap. He tries his best to give her affirmations by rephrasing her qualities as great things but she’s just not willing to hear it... until he gets a little more passionate about it than he may have meant to. These are the things he loves about her. Because he loves her. Lie Ren tells Nora Valkyrie “I love you”. Nora knows in her heart he really means that, but she has some things she wants to get off her chest. In the single sentence of backstory we get, her mom apparently abandoned her and fled from a Grimm attack before she ended up in Kuroyuri meeting Ren. SInce then they’ve always been an inseparable pair, and she wouldn’t give up a day of that for anything. But now she realizes she needs some time to really learn who she is as her own person and fighter, and going back to being as close as they were wouldn’t allow that kind of growth. Because Nora loves Ren too, always has. And she can tell their separate missions have done him some good too, but she needs a little more time before she’s ready to be the partner a great guy like him deserves. She just wants to know if that kind of request is okay with him. He puts a hand against her cheek and lovingly wipes away the tear she had shed. Of course that’s okay. He’s proud of her for being mindful of her own happiness and growth, and is willing to put the relationship they both very much look forward to having on hold while she grows as a person. This is a very healthy dynamic and all meming aside we really love to see it portrayed so naturally and acceptably in media. And for good wholesome measure, Ren Boops Nora. They laugh and smile and press their foreheads together because Rooster Teeth loves showing us that as a sign of proximity and intimate comfort.

Cutting to something far less happy, Qrow is retrieving Harbinger and Robyn’s gauntlet crossbow from a locker in what I assume might be evidence lockup. He asks Robyn if she’s got the security cameras running on loop, presumably so they can sneak through the halls undetected, but she is currently distracted. At least one screen is feeding audio of Ironwood’s threat to Mantle, and others are showing he really is gearing up to do so. Qrow tries to reassure her by resolutely saying they’ll stop him before he has the chance to, but she doesn’t seem to pleased with that plan. Regardless, they make their way through the halls and head for an elevator to take them up to the Academy. After avoiding being spotted by guards, they make it to the elevator but Robyn stops Qrow before he can hit the call button. She tries to advocate for a better way to solve this, he insists there isn’t one. Robyn says it’s not just about Qrow so it isn’t his choice alone to make what is or isn’t the only solution. Qrow just keeps insisting that this is what he’s gonna do and when he does it’ll all be safe and over with, but Robyn tries to suggest success isn’t guaranteed and if they fail it’ll only doom hundreds more than if they try something else. Qrow doesn’t give a damn, he just yells that Ironwood deserves to be killed, because in case the pronoun game was too hard Qrow is dead set on doing a murder. Robyn claps a hand over Qrow’s mouth and pushes him against the wall because they ARE still trying not to get caught remember? I really have to admit on my first watch I thought this was gonna be an eruption of some kind of romantic tension I just hadn’t noticed til now and she was going to shut him up with a kiss. But no, thank god they didn’t pull that tired trick. After making sure the coast really is clear, she gets to the heart of things. She can tell Qrow is in pain, he’s mourning, and its a shroud he’s well accustomed to. But don’t act like this is righteous justice for the people at large, Qrow wants blood on his hands purely for personal vengeance. She acknowledges that Clover had a lot of qualities worth looking up to the way Qrow had, but she thinks that at the end of the day Qrow has proven to be the better man and the better Huntsman. I feel like she could have phrased that a touch better so as to not speak quite so ill of the recently deceased, but the pep talk is there. He’s got the will to fight for what he believes is the right course of action rather than just what a higher up says he needs to, and that is the sort of strength of character that’s worth a whole lot in this world, so she hopes he won’t go abandoning it now that the going is even rougher. He seems to be calmed and inspired by this, but before any more words are said the elevator pings that it’s stopping on this floor so the two ready their weapons to fight whoever emerges. The doors open, but we have the perspective of whoever is inside looking out to see the two hunters drop their guard in confusion. As that is the end of that scene we will not be finding out who they saw for at least another week, but I think it’s most likely to be Winter and Marrow and the four of them will form an unlikely alliance.

Back in Schnee manor, Yang reaches the foyer to see Ruby sitting on the stairs clutching a banister. Instead of going right up to her Yang goes past to take a look at the collapsed suit of armor. She’s heard by now how Ruby and the others managed to kill the Hound, and tries to give her little sis amused props for doing what the elder sibling couldn’t. Instead Ruby just asks if Yang knows what they saw inside the Grimm. Yang says she does, and tenses up like she wants to brush past this very depressing topic Ruby is hinting at. Ruby is having none of that and just says what we’ve all been thinking. Summer Rose was most certainly turned into a Grimm too. Fearing the possibility in her head was one thing, but to hear Ruby say it aloud with a voice so hollow and hopeless is too much and Yang falls to her knees sobbing in a second flat. Yang tries to wipe the tears away, to be calm and strong like always, but Ruby isn’t stopping. They know Salem used to want Silver Eyed Warriors dead because of Maria’s brush with death years ago, but now Salem wants Ruby brought in alive and it seems obvious why. So why wouldn’t it be the case that Summer was the turning point, that fighting her was when Salem realized she could do so much more with her mortal foes? Ruby has had enough of lying to themselves for the sake of optimistic hope, her hope that Amity could get a message out got them nowhere but further failure and she blames herself for being childish. Yang takes her hand and assures her that it wasn’t childishness but rather optimism and hope. Those are things they desperately need in this struggle, but to be blindly optimistic can certainly be bad so they need to be smart about which risks they take. Ruby still isn’t about to concede this point because the risk she took was a failure and their message didn’t bring any help. I should like to remind the reader/viewer that it took about a week for Team RWBY to get from Mistral to Atlas and this message went out... 12 hours ago? Maybe 16? You’re giving up the ghost a little soon there sweetie, though they do need that help ASAP so better late than never isn’t really a viable option. Yang reminds Ruby that her plan was a bust too, but she kept trying to do good things that weren’t part of the plan and they did some good there. Summer took a risk too, by leaving for the mission she never came back from. And there’s little question that went according to plan either, but she still did her best and Yang still considers Summer her hero. As she embraces her little sister, I get the strong feeling that Summer isn’t the only Rose she considers her hero either... and by the tears that start welling up in Ruby’s eyes she clearly knows that.

Their sweet moment is shattered by the sound of equally shattered glass, and Jaune comes rushing down the stairs to tell them to get outside immediately. Penny woke up and the virus is in control again to make her head for the Vault without delay. Ruby bursts into her path to beg her to stop, and it does get her to start struggling against her digital orders. She begs to be stopped, and Ruby wraps her arms around her because honestly she’s just trying her best and with a weapon like Crescent Rose she’s gotta have some upper body strength. But that’s pretty meaningless against Penny’s rocket boots as she takes off with Ruby in tow. Blake and Ren use Gambol Shroud and Storm Flower (thank god for the grappling hook upgrade last Volume) to try and pull her down by each arm with the rest of their teams providing tug of war style support. Weiss uses a black glyph to really hold her in place once her feet are on the ground again. Before anyone can figure out what to do to properly subdue her Penny uses her magic to summon a cold vortex and blow them all off guard so she can start flying away again, still repeating her orders to open the Vault and self-terminate, though now she sounds emotional and conflicted about it due to her mental struggle. Before she can get any farther, a new set of chains grab her shoulders. Emerald has joined in, and even if it was a small gesture I found myself very enthusiastic to see her pitching in for the rescue. She yells for someone to do something already, and Jaune lets go of Blake’s side of the struggle (guess it would have been off balance if him Nora and Oscar were all helping Ren) to boost Weiss’ Aura so she can make a stronger inertia glyph. Back on the ground, Ruby hugs Penny again and asks how she can help her friend. And Penny says Ruby should kill her. If she does, Penny guarantees Ruby will be the one she gives the Winter Maiden powers to. None of the group like hearing this idea one little bit, but she thinks it’s the only way since she can’t fight the virus. But once again Nora swoops in with the sage words about it only being a part of you and not letting that be the end of it. Penny’s more than just a robot receiving orders, she’s got human spirit and willpower that’s been resisting for so long. This gets the gears in Ruby’s head turning and she realizes the human part can be what saves her. Jaune needs to boost her Aura, which he rushes over to do immediately. It seems to do the trick, and her soul is doing a much better job of keeping the virus contained, though it’s not gone forever. Everyone comes in for a happy group huddle, and she is assured that she is far more than a machine and that humanity is what will keep her going in spite of the remaining virus. It’s a very soft and touching moment. 

Then Emerald has something to say. They’re wrong... about being in the same place they started yesterday. They’ve made progress even though they can’t quite see it right now. They’ve taken some hits, and she admits some of that has been her fault, but that’s war so you gotta roll with the punches and fight on. She just really won’t like it if they give up the moment she decides she’ll fight by their side, okay?! It’s not like she likes these friendly, kind, understanding and emotionally complex fellow teens that are willing to take her in, baka!!! Oscar points out that she’s admitted she wants to stay with them and they all have a happy laugh realizing she’s got a softer side after all. Oscar helps her back to her feet, then addresses the group. Ozpin has some things he wants to say to them all, if they’re willing to hear it. They all share a look and decide that yes, they will listen. Oz comes forth and immediately launches into a speech about a fairy tale. Typical. We can presume these are further details about “The Girl who Fell Through the World”, and he says that girl took her grand trip to run away from consequences of a choice she has to make. But her problems only grow because the initial issue was never resolved. That’s the very thing he’s done here, his problem being the consequences of the truth and his past coming to light. He regrets not trusting them with the whole story and he regrets retreating into Oscar’s mind when he was found out. The group decides they understand where he was coming from a bit since in that interim they had to make some impossible choices about trust too. Trusting in someone is a risk, and they decide they’ll take that risk on him one more time. From the look of things, that second chance is going to Emerald too, and I hope she makes them proud. Penny winces again and it’s clear that one way or the other they will need to take her to the Vault. Ruby thinks on that for a second and realizes that’s actually worth a shot considering who they have at their disposal and the likelihood of it not going exactly how Ironwood thinks it will. To that end we see Ironwood down in the Vault receiving a call from Ruby saying Penny will be there. He sets the stipulation that Penny meet him at the entrance of the Academy and she has to come alone. I’m sure no green haired illusionist will play a hand in whether or not she really is alone... But either way there will be unexpected company because Watts hooked up a broken Scroll to the wiring of an Atlas robot to listen in on Ironwood’s call and know where the meeting will be. Neo arrives in the alley where the doctor and Cinder waiting, and it seems miss Fall has a scheme to get the ice cream psycho precisely what she’s demanding of them.

But what exactly these carefully laid plans will be has to wait a little while, cuz that’s the end for this week. Great job all around for this well balanced episode with many kinds of scenes and many ways to make my heart hurt...

[adultswim2021]

Home Movies #37: “Broken Dreams” | November 17, 2002 - 10:00 PM | S03E11

Well, well, well. If it isn’t another ABSOLUTE banger from the Home Movies video crew. When an episode of Home Movies doesn’t have DVD commentary (or in the case of season 4, only one commentary), one tends to classify it as a “lesser” ‘sode. But this isn’t the case with Home Movies sometimes. Like this episode: one of my favorites of season 3. And yet? Brendon and Loren have REFUSED to record themselves talking about it. Is it just me that loves this episode?

In this one, Brendon has to study for a science test or else! But he simply can’t concentrate on it, no matter how hard he tries. This isn’t actually that strong of a story, to be honest, but it’s so much fun watching Brendon being a fuck up. They really make up for it in funny stuff. Like, I can’t remember that the stakes were in this episode. Was it simply getting a bad grade? I don’t know, man, but for some reason it works.

A subplot is Melissa breaks her arm and Jason gets jealous. And, your typical zany McGurk story here is he is trying to become a lifeguard so he can rescue a rich kid from drowning and get awarded a large sum of money. This story has so many laughs in it, including Brendon as his lifeguard school drill instructor going on a tangent about how he blows into women when he kisses them, and a part where a concussed McGurk trashes a card catalog. It’s maybe one of my favorite things to ever have happen in a TV show ever, aside from watching Maude Flanders get the electric chair on the Simpsons, or Chevy Chase dropping a cake.

The greatest gift this episode gives us is the song “Trust Yourself” which is a real nice earworm. Might as well call it Earworm Jim. Wait, no--that’s terrible. “Trust Yourself” plays during a scene where Brendon is trying to pump himself up with music while he studies but he gets too into the song and dances around instead of study. It also plays during the end credits while McGurk runs in slow motion. The song has some gratuitous swears in it towards the end, probably because they improvised the lyrics to a song that was only supposed to be heard for a few seconds in the episode. They must bleep the songs, of course. They also bleep McGurk earlier when he cusses at the library. I remember a certain segment of fans were annoyed that they put swears in Home Movies. But they are wrong. This episode rocks and it’s ONLY because they did all that cussing. I love to cuss.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

M*A*S*H: The Story

Every television show, no matter the genre, is built upon one thing: it’s foundational setup.  

When you boil it right down, the setup for a television show is the base upon which each episode grows.  The setup is what an audience is sold on, and what an audience returns to every week.  These core elements of a show, rather than individual episodes, can often make or break it, depending on its ability to allow new stories to be built onto the initial concept of the entire series.  

In a lot of cases, the setup for a show can be very tricky, because a show is often only as good as its setup.  A show’s success rides primarily on the premise, the central idea pushing each episode forward.

Unfortunately, not all shows are created equal, and sometimes, the premises behind some shows are infinitely superior to the premises behind others.  

So, how did M*A*S*H fare?

The foundational base-line for the series M*A*S*H is a simple one.  It’s a mobile army hospital stationed near the front lines in Uijeongbu, South Korea, staffed with doctors who range from incredibly talented (Hawkeye Pierce) to barely competent (Frank Burns).  That’s the location.

It’s wartime.  These people are doctors, and they are forced to save the lives of (when they can) soldiers, some of whom are barely old enough to vote.  Sooner or later, it starts getting to you, and that is the basic premise upon which the show is built.

M*A*S*H is less about the war and more about what people do when they’re confronted with something this horrible.  Every episode has tension built into it by default because of simply where and when these characters are.  Rather than the safety of the Enterprise at the start of each Star Trek or a family’s house in a sitcom, each episode of M*A*S*H opens on an already awful situation that is about to be complicated by the events of the episode.

In a way, that seems like it’d be a hard show to sell.  Every episode, your audience has to be prepared for characters to already be miserable.

M*A*S*H’s setup enabled audiences to instantly connect to a series of characters in a very simple way: these are not family members, and some of them certainly aren’t friends, but they are all in this together.  They can’t leave, but plenty want to.  They’re stuck, scared, frustrated, and angry at the country that dropped them into this war, and unlike contemporary show Hogan’s Heroes, war takes its toll on these characters.  They begin every episode already under strife, and thanks to an understandable situation, audiences immediately grasped the rawness of each character as a result.

M*A*S*H’s ‘home base’ allowed the show to start every episode with high stakes and already allow audiences to feel sympathy for certain characters, establishing traits that could work as humor, sure, but also as part of their personality, most of which is grasped fairly quickly: Hawkeye makes jokes to cover up the trauma he’s clearly dealing with.  Klinger wears dresses in order to get out of the army, because he’s scared of dying young.  We understand these things, pretty instantly, and there’s never a moment of disbelief in the characters’ abilities because this is the army, they’ve been trained to do these things.  If anything, there are moments where we wonder how people weren’t trained to do things, such as Henry Blake’s complete incompetence in regards to paperwork.  (Some liberties have to be taken with even the most realistic comedy.)

And the trick to all of this?  There’s no purpose for these characters.  There’s no mission.  There are orders, sure, but overall, the goal of everyone in the camp, (with the potential exception of Frank Burns) is to go home in one piece.

That’s pretty grim for a comedy, but it works, very well.

The interesting thing is, the creators of the show already knew this setup would work.  They’d seen it work twice before: in the novel and then in the film.  They knew that there was potential here, but the question was, how to use it.  Even if M*A*S*H’s premise was solid, there were still the stories to be built on top of it.

See, although M*A*S*H had already worked well as a film, there is a massive difference between writing a story for a movie, and writing several smaller stories for a television show, especially one that ends up lasting eleven years.  In film, there is typically one major conflict that starts and ends with the film’s runtime.  In television however, it’s a whole different ball game, and in M*A*S*H’s case, it was doubly tricky.

M*A*S*H as a film was notoriously risque, with plenty of jokes and scenes that traveled over a line that TV just couldn’t cross at the time.  The humor of the film was dark and gritty at times, and occasionally racy, in a way that couldn’t be shown on television.  The writers had to do something else.

So, they did.

M*A*S*H became a tamed, toned-down version of its former iterations.  A few jokes and lines certainly implied more of the content that the film was known for, but for the most part, the characters, relationships, and situations had to be switched up in a way to carry audience sympathy for a decade.  So, how was that done?

The original setup remained the same: The doctors and nurses at the M*A*S*H unit perform meatball surgery, saving lives while trying to preserve their own sanity, fighting off fatigue and stress (and sometimes boredom).  But while the bare-bones elements of the films remained intact, others didn’t.

The first season of M*A*S*H as a show was a pretty distinct departure, tone wise.  It was a wacky sitcom, with episodes based entirely around comedic situations.  They were madcap, full of antics and laughs, but sooner or later, things had to change.  Pretty rapidly, the show matured.  The characters grew, and ceased fitting the mold of a traditional comedy show.

Starting with the season one episode “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet”, the show changed its tune, focusing more on running comedic subplots alongside genuinely serious main storylines, leading to episodes that were both intelligent and funny.  This combination of genres led to a variety of episodes, and allowed the show to leap from moments of sobriety to moments of comedy, sometimes within a single episode.  As the show got older and ‘wiser’, this shift in genres enabled huge changes in the show to take place, without completely upending the stability of the rest of the cast.  In the end, M*A*S*H became pretty well-known for not sticking to a status-quo, and being a show that was constantly changing and evolving as time went on.

The thing with M*A*S*H was, there was no real ‘formula’ for an episode.

Unlike plenty of other sitcoms on at the time, there was no list of events that you could expect in each M*A*S*H episode.  It was always a surprise.

Some episodes, like “Yankee Doodle Doctor” are well-known and liked for being mostly comedic, with only Hawkeye’s ending monologue diving the show into a moment of sincerity.  Other episodes, such as “Hawkeye” (a twenty-five minute monologue as the titular doctor tries to keep himself conscious after a concussion), “Point of View”, (an episode told entirely from the camera POV of a wounded soldier), and “Life Time”, (an early use of ‘real time’ on television) not to mention examples like “The Interview” (a real life war correspondent interview the 4077th personnel) pushed the boundaries of what was being technically accomplished in writing and filming television at the time, changing what was ‘done’ on the small screen in terms of technology and the scripts themselves.

Other changes were more long-lasting.  Some episodes were typical sitcom plots, like “Adam’s Ribs”, with Hawkeye’s tantrum induced by the same meals of liver and fish driving him to order ribs from the states.  Others, like “Abyssinia, Henry” were gut-punches, shocker episodes that killed off a vital member of the cast on his way home from the war.  Some episodes, like two-parters “Welcome to Korea” and “Fade Out, Fade In” introduced new major cast members and set up dynamics that would stick with the show as long as it continued to air.  Other episodes like “Good-Bye, Radar” and even the finale, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” were deliberately used as appropriately sobering goodbyes to characters who had been with the show since the beginning.

In other words, no two episodes of the show were alike.  Some were mostly comedy, some were mostly drama, but all of them dealt with the same issues in different ways.

Were there bad episodes?  Of course.  Every show has them.

“Hawkeye”, despite its unique style, wasn’t a favorite, and neither was the universally unpopular “Hanky Panky”, portraying faithful-husband B.J. committing adultery and immediately regretting it.  As I’ve said before, no show is immune to bad episodes.  Thankfully, M*A*S*H’s reputation as being quality television far outweighs it’s lesser showings, and with eleven years of show to work with, that’s definitely a good thing.  

After eleven seasons of television, M*A*S*H’s reputation remained one of a smart, edgy show with a heart.  The show managed to tell over two hundred stories over the course of a decade, an example of television storytelling that has meant enough to an audience for them to stay with these characters for the entire time, to the point where the finale of the show was a national event.  For a show that inspired multiple spin-offs and homages, it makes sense that the show was as well-loved as it was, and indeed, continues to be.

Why?

Well, honestly because despite the hype, as it turns out, M*A*S*H really was that good.

M*A*S*H ran on sharp empathy, a biting, cynical look at idealism.  It was a show dedicated to the horrors of war directly contrasted against real people, about the men and women trapped in one place, dealing with the big war problems and the little personal problems, isolated away from their homes.  There wasn’t much in new concepts, in new adventures, but there were always new things to explore thanks to characters that the audience had come to know and love.  M*A*S*H survived as long as it did thanks to episodes that explored the drama and humor to be found in a situation that really wasn’t funny at all.

And it worked.   Thanks to years of empathy for these characters, the drama was gripping and compelling, and despite the ongoing number of episodes in the same old 4077th, the jokes were always different, and so were the tears, allowing the audience to see familiar characters and situations in familiar ways, allowing them to experience the stories and events that were happening to people that they cared about.

M*A*S*H had the secret ingredient to television: consistency mixed with creativity.

Despite over two hundred and fifty episodes, M*A*S*H always had another joke to tell, or a new story to show its audience.  For every episode where Radar tried to show that he’d ‘grown up’, there was always a new way to look at it.  Every time Klinger tried a new scheme to get out of the army, there was a new twist to it.  The character beats that became familiar to an audience became the basics for new stories to be told.  The show laid ground-work for new episodes as it went, constantly building to a huge archive of stories about people that the audience had watched for years.  

In the end, that’s why M*A*S*H is still well-loved.

Even when it didn’t succeed, M*A*S*H tried to be compelling and thought-provoking, using its characters to create engaging episodes, and break ground on television.  Each episode was different from the last, yet the overarching themes and ideas that were intrinsic to the early years of the show remained the same, even through the final episode.  These stories and characters still have something relevant to say, sixty years after the war they were about was over, and forty years after the show itself, stories that are just as thought-provoking and compelling as they were when the show first came to air.

Thank you guys so much for reading!  Stay tuned for the next article, where we’ll be discussing the genre and themes of M*A*S*H.   I hope to see you in the next article.

[aion-rsa]

In the Heights Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda Musical Still Lights Up

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Romance permeates Jon M. Chu’s big screen adaptation of In the Heights, like the aroma of charcoal on a summer day. Perhaps this should be obvious since the central conflict of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical remains its two star-crossed couples working things out at the northern, tip-top peak of Manhattan. Yet that’s not where the movie’s true passion lies; like the source material before it, the In the Heights film’s real ardor is for the neighborhood of Washington Heights itself. How else could a picture so endear you to what is otherwise a cup of bodega coffee?

As a jubilant and kaleidoscopic love letter to the handful of city blocks which run adjacent to the George Washington Bridge, In the Heights bursts with a life and creativity that is often blinding, and always intoxicating. It lives in a postcard Neverland version of the usually overlooked and marginalized sides of New York City, yet that does not make it fanciful. Rather this is a movie head over heels in love with its street corners above 181st Street, and the largely Latinx community which lives there. And if you go into it with an open mind, you’ll fall, too. 

Ostensibly the story of Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos) and his quest to leave New York City behind in favor of his parents’ Dominican homeland, In the Heights opens after he’s already achieved his dream. He’s older now and recounting to his daughter on a Caribbean beach his memories of a community that is obviously still his real home. For back in the day, he was the young guy who owned the corner’s favorite bodega, and he knew everyone on the block.

There’s Benny (Corey Hawkins), Usnavi’s bestie and an ambitious dispatch caller at the local taxi cab service; Kevin (Jimmy Smits), the overachieving first generation immigrant who owns said taxi service; and Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV),  Usnavi’s teenage cousin who helps out at the store. But perhaps most importantly there’s Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), the aspiring fashion designer who also has plans of getting out of the hood—if only to West 4th Street—and who’s the apple of Usnavi’s eye.

Theirs is just one of the mildly complex romances at the heart of a film, which also focuses on the return of Nina (Leslie Grace), Kevin’s daughter who is home for the summer after her first year at Stanford. She is the golden child to both her father and all of Washington Heights—one of the “good ones” who made it out. It makes telling them all she dropped out that much harder, including Benny. Because, like Usnavi and Vanessa, theirs is an entire history of everything being left unsaid. Each couple, and all the familiar faces in their lives, is about to have a whirlwind summer filled with music, heartbreak, a rolling blackout, and just maybe a winning lottery ticket.

As with many stage-to-screen transfers, Chu’s adaptation of In the Heights struggles at times with its new format. The Broadway’s musical’s creators, Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the latter of whom wrote the book for the show and has here penned the screenplay, are intimately involved in the film. And they’ve made a series of smart, savvy concessions to their new medium. Some songs have been moved around, others have been excised completely, and the wrap-around story with modern day Usnavi in his dream beach bar on a Dominican shoreline attempts to add more narrative structure for a film which is, at heart, a series of musical vignettes.

Still, In the Heights cannot wholly avoid the most familiar obstacles which have tripped up other Hollywood adaptations: the need to maintain as much of the musical material as possible from the show gives the film an occasionally shaggy quality as it meanders its way around every major set piece in its 143-minute running time, and ultimately overstays its welcome with maybe one too many toe-tappers.

With that said, it would take a real curmudgeon to focus on the minor narrative stumbles when there is so much exuberance emanating from Chu’s production and the kinetic ensemble. With its fusion of freestyle rap, salsa rhythms, and other blended Caribbean musical styles, this film erupts with an irresistible vitality every time its ensemble hits the asphalt.

Chu, who before Crazy Rich Asians cut his teeth by directing the best Step Up films, brings a familiar eye for propulsive choreography and joyful movement that made the dance sequences in those films into spectacles greater than most modern action movies. In the Heights is similarly ready to try on almost any creative hat for at least one musical number, such as when Usnavi, Benny, and Sonny break the fourth wall to sketch on the screen their wistful daydreams of what they’d do with a winning lottery ticket, or in the way Vanessa’s song about getting out leaves her entire block covered in the fabric she thinks will carry her off on a downtown train.

In lesser hands, these flourishes could fall into music video glibness, but they’re balanced by an entirely authentic ensemble and a beating heart beneath the razzle dazzle. Ramos particularly seems to be a talent on the make, trading in John Laurens’ blue coat and starched collar from Hamilton for a more laid back and movie star-ready affability. His Usnavi is charmingly big-hearted yet hints at deep waters beneath his calm surface. And, with all respect to Mr. Miranda, Ramos can sing “It Won’t Be Long Now” in a much fuller range.

Barrera’s Vanessa and Grace’s Nina also both have showstopping ballads that are sure to amass each an influx of fans. However, the solo number that lingers best belongs to Olga Merediz, whose Abuela Claudia is the surrogate grandmother to both Usnavi and the neighborhood. On paper, the part could easily be reduced to an archetype, but Merediz’s one major scene where she sings only to herself about a lifetime’s worth of regrets and slights after immigrating to the U.S. from Cuba 70 years ago elevates the films and adds texture to the Latino-American experience that In the Heights so celebrates.

More than its romantic will-they-or-won’t-they rendezvouses, it is the movie’s affection for the ties which bind first, second, and third generation Americans that becomes the picture’s real emotional resonance. The film version of In the Heights also updates that pride and anxiety with a new subplot involving Dreamers—undocumented young people who grew up and lived their entire lives in America—and the dread of being deported from the only home they’ve ever known.

Of course with a gushing heart on its sleeve, In the Heights is still a fairy tale in search of magic, not sorrow. Instead of ice castles or ancient kingdoms, however, its alchemy resides in salons with broken air conditioners and the sugar flavored ice shavings found in a Piragua guy’s cart (which, by the by, provides Miranda with a movie-stealing cameo). I’m not sure if it has the same complexity of music and narrative that propelled Miranda’s Hamilton into a phenomenon twice over, including last year’s Disney+ streaming event. But it won’t really matter to the countless new fans who will surely watch In the Heights on repeat—and hopefully on the biggest screen they can find.

In the Heights opens in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, June 11.

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