#and then in the final few scenes when its all the later arcs and all the mini frames around

[oflgtfol]

it's really such a shame this map never got as popular as five giants did because it feels like the true successor to five giants that no other map since then has been able to accomplish. some complain about the crazy editing but that just makes this thing so much more impressive to me, just 1. the logistics of organizing it, both in terms of all the people collaborating, as well as having everything synced up art style, timing, mood, story, color wise. and 2. you have to rewatch it to truly get the full scale of what exactly you're watching with all these different frames, and that makes it so much more fun to watch!! why would you complain? just rewatch it and choose which part to focus on each time. it's amazing. like 50 rewatches later i'm still discovering new things. such an amazing video

[burst-of-iridescent]

Hey does everyone remember when Aang physically hurt Katara via burning her due to his own negligence with fire because he didn't listen at all to her concerns? But all of Katara's concerns were her being worried for him getting hurt and not herself, and then he hurts her badly, this never gets addressed again in the show, but I remember this vividly.

i actually like this scene on its own.

aang burning katara is a good character building moment because it's a brutal reminder of his own capacity for destruction. he needs to understand that his reckless actions can have horrific repercussions in order to fully realize the weight of his responsibility as both a firebender and the avatar, and it makes the moment where he uses zhao's recklessness against him more impactful. it also sets up the "water = life, fire = death" dichotomy that's part of katara's arc on viewing the world in binaries, which will later be broken down in book 3.

but ultimately the incident is still of greater significance to aang, and he's the one to bring it up in the guru and western air temple episodes, telling both guru pathik and zuko about his guilt over burning katara and his refusal to firebend ever again. this experience is also what leads him to accept zuko as his firebending teacher, and then finally forgive himself when he learns the true meaning of firebending. for the most part, it's a well-sustained arc and one of the few narratives aang has that is actually brought to completion.

do i wish that katara and aang had actually talked about his actions beyond this episode? yes. do i wish the aftermath had been focused a little more on katara instead of showcasing the impact of her physical injuries mostly through aang's continued self-flagellation? yes. but as a one-off incident contained to a single episode, i don't mind it.

what i do mind, however, is that this is not the last time the show is going to use katara as a lynchpin for aang's character development.

in the book 2 premiere, katara is turned into a pawn to propel aang into the avatar state. in the guru, her imprisonment is the reason that aang chooses to go back to ba sing se instead of unlocking his chakras. that is three separate times now that katara has been damselled in order to facilitate key turning points in aang's narrative, but not once does the same apply in reverse. there is never a moment where aang is the only one put in danger solely to drive katara's arc, the way she is in his. the closest we get is katara bringing aang back to life, but even then his death is still the result of his own choices and more integral to his storyline than hers.

now, compare this to the final agni kai.

at first glance, katara being put in danger just to complete zuko's redemption looks like the same tired trope, and had the scene ended at his sacrifice, it would be. but crucially, it's katara who continues the fight. katara who defeats the scion of fire nation destruction at the height of her power. katara who saves zuko just as he saved her.

in proving herself a master waterbender powerful enough to defeat azula and save someone she loves - someone who sacrificed themselves for her - from fire nation aggression, katara brings her own arc full circle. it is in triumphing over azula by saving each other that zuko and katara become the people they were always meant to be, and so their individual arcs are brought to their narrative culmination through bookending the other. the final agni kai works where the kat.aang moments fall short because it is of equal significance to both zuko and katara's narratives.

obviously, this is not to say that it's bad for certain characters to exist just to drive another character's arc. it's inevitable that some will be written solely to fulfill that purpose because a story only has so much narrative space, and it usually can't - and shouldn't - be divided equally amongst every single character.

but if we're talking about two main characters who end up in a lifelong romantic relationship, and it's the female character being repeatedly damselled to drive the male character's storyline within an already imbalanced dynamic... perhaps it's time to rethink a few things.

[hattersarts]

gomens s2 thoughts, all spoilers!

I spent 10 hours talking to my housemate about the season after we binged the whole thing in the morning but here are the highlights and the biggest takeaways from the season.

okay i did love the ending, i love that we get the conformation of love AND going into the divorce arc next season (if they're not properly together by the end of season 3 however, i am rioting) they're slow burn and a whole season of them getting to the final 10mins was tasty.

HOWEVER. it was an extremely clunky season when it comes to writing, lots of either set ups missed OR set ups repeated 4 times that they're drilled into out heads. there was also lots of dialogue that really needed to be tightened up. the lesbians were so poorly written i thought they might have needed to be cut BUT they just needed to have more bearing on the rest of the plot AND say things like real people would say things and LITERALLY SHOW ONE SINGLE REASON WHY THEY WOULD LIKE EACH OTHER WITHIN THE FIRST EPISODE.

gabe/bulz romance was the one that should have been cut, have them do more of a oh-my-god-my-boss-sucks kind of thing, lean into them complaining about having to avert a civil war after armageddon stopped and touch on the "structural problems" the angels mention later. Have gabe/bulz be super punished for working together which puts huge fear into az and crowley about what happens if you try to team up as an angel/demon pair (but an extra reason why az takes the job at the end so he and crowley can be the same)

imo it works more if the only mirror of their romance is the HUMANS which should lean into themes to season 3 of how they need to team up with humans (re:"us vs them" line at the end of season 1) to actually achieve their happy ending.

Nina and maggies best scene was their last one telling crowley he needed to talk to az but i think that was one that needed to be cut, it would have been far more satisfying to have crowely work out it out himself that he loves az and wants to tell him (still via maggie and nina but more subtle rather than them telling him to his face AND via spending more time with az in the season)

flashbacks were all pretty good, loved the jobe one and that final "lonely" scene. the nazi one needed some trimming the most (why did all three come back to earth, it made scenes too crowed, have them fight to be a zombie)

shax was disappointing, she was kind of just incompetent the whole way through which didnt make the stakes very exciting, (that whole scene of her talking to the legion was unfunny and pointless) i wanted crowley to mentor her more like when he gave her advice in the first few meetings we saw (kind of in a very non-demonic way, not expecting anything in return) and her to then meet him on equal footing in the finale. would have been a little accidental taste for Crowley to have his good deeds come back to haunt him while showing he's different to demons.

speaking of the finale fight, that halo had NO set up, it was sick as hell but ??? the fuck did that come from. the fight should have been won by az and crowley performing another HUGE miracle together, discorporating the demons (which then would alert heaven and hell something was up in the bookshop and the final scene can happen)

az taking the job from metatron was very good, its consistent with his character where he still hasn't let go of his faith in good/god, he's only been upset by the angels running heaven and still has faith in the system while crowley has realised none of it works and it's only them together that matters. it was nice to show he still hasn't truly accepted crowley for who he is now (tho imo he knows he loves him, he just hasn't quite unrepressed himself) and him not turning down the job after crowley confesses to him shows he still thinks he can fix it. Crowley on the other hand thinks he's now lost him, az has broken he the trust he had in him, he's going to be in big depression mode

few thoughts of good directions for S3:

finally delivering on what crowley said at the end of S1 I think is the most satisfying. the final showdown should be humans Vs heaven/hell with Crowley and az on the human side, helping them win the conflict. there would be suggestions that this is actually god's ineffable plan, this is a conflict she wants to happen and the things that Crowley and az went through are what make them perfect ambassadors to help the humans.

the set up for az in S3 to finally work out he and Crowley can't work out within the unfair rules of the system and for him to abandon heaven (tho not I think, becoming a demon) is good. a sucky ending imo for season 3 is if az somehow "fixes" heaven and via bureaucracy and not via blowing it all up.

growth moments for Crowley in S3 might be having more contact with humans since he's already abandoned hell and it would put az & crowley on similar footing (as az very much loves humans already) when they decided to side with humans for a humans Vs heaven/hell conflict.

anyway, gay people

[pumpkinandcoat]

My TUA4 thoughts

Its been a week now since the final season premiered and I have finally been able to compile all my thought together

This is an essay.

Spoilers for season 4 of The Umbrella Academy

(obviously)

With the fourth and final installment of The Umbrella Academy finally released, brings the long awaited conclusion of the Hargreeves family. And suffice to say… people hated it.

Even when this show is at its weakest with its plot, the thing that makes the show so good and what many people love about the show are its characters. They are all very distinct and memorable. And in TUA3, while it's riddled with plot holes and frustrating choices, is still a lot of fun to watch because of the character moments and the relationships between the different siblings.

That is why TUA4 is so infuriating, because it takes these special and memorable characters and it morphs them into these weird versions of themselves. Every single main character falls victim to this. They regress as characters into these versions of themselves that shouldn’t exist anymore.

Luther has become a stripper. His arc has almost no dignity from the get go. This only very loosely connects with his arc in TUA2 where he works at a bar, but as a bodyman and not as a ‘professional dancer’ so as to why the writers chose to make him a stripper is weird. He has returned to live in a run down version of the academy. There is no follow up on Sloane and he mentions her only one or twice in the whole season.

Diego is somewhat resentful of fatherhood, and he misses his old life of excitement when he was a vigilante. He is unhappy with his life and he seeks the higher purpose that he thinks being a criminal deterrent will give him.

Allison yearns again to be a star and neglects her relationship with Claire in the pursuit to regain her fame. 

Klaus, as soon as he regains his power, turns back to drugs. There is no attempt for him to hold onto his sobriety, even though as we see in TUA2 and TUA3 he is (mostly) sober for three years with his powers fully intact. We don’t even get a scene of him struggling with the ghosts coming back to haunt him before he is off to go buy drugs, and then he becomes a victim to sex trafficking. 

Five’s working at the CIA. After a lifetime of hardship and struggle, after he is forced into organizations where he has to complete different missions - first as a child with Reginald in the academy, and later as an adult with the commission - and after he is ready to retire at the end of TUA3, he joins into another organization instead.

Viktor moves away to Canada and is again isolated from his siblings and alone. Shown to have no lasting and meaningful relationships in his personal life.

Every single character is reverted back to an old version of themselves that they have grown from by now. The writers strip them of all of their character growth and substance and reset them to their base characteristics. Worse than that they write them as stereotypes that they are portrayed as at the beginning of the show, in which they are shown to be more than just those stereotypes and have at this point for a lot of them grown from them all together. They are now reduced back to them but without any of the nuance or layers that they had before, and again stripping them of all of their character growth and personality. 

The writers absolutely refuse to let these characters grow in meaningful and satisfying ways.

The relationships between these characters as well are also poorly written. Many of the strong relationships we see in the past seasons barely have interactions with each other, such as Klaus and Five, Diego and Klaus, Allison and Viktor to name a few. With Allison and Viktor we only really have one meaningful scene between them where they talk about how they aren’t close anymore and then there is no further discussion or resolution between the two. And with many others at best they get fleeting minor interactions where they maybe exchange one line or comment. Then there’s the characters who we’ve been waiting to interact for a long time, like Five and Claire, where in the first season Five expresses his desire to live long enough to meet his niece but in season 4 we don’t see them interact even once.

But by far the most insulting relationship is the one between Lila and Five and Diego. 

Two fucking words: Character Assassination.

The way that they wrote Five in this season is so completely baffling. Because the writers felt the need to give Five a love interest this season they decided to pair Lila and Five up and in doing so they destroy both Five and Lilas character, and the dynamic between Five and Lila, Five and Diego, and Diego and Lila.

There are two faucets as to why this relationship doesn’t work: the in-show context and the real life implications of the pairing.

In-show: Five and Lilas relationship hinges on the fact that they are stranded together on the subway for 7 years, unable to get back to their families. In the second to last episode of the entire show they are taken away from the rest of the characters to be put in this pocket dimension for the sole purpose to develop a romantic relationship between the two of them. 

For Lila as well, but especially for Five this makes no sense for their characters and butchers everything they represent and everything they stand for. Fives' driving force for his whole character is his family. Everything that Five does, every action that he takes, everything that he endures and pushes himself though, is for his family. His family's safety and survival matter more to him than his own physical, mental and emotional well being. They are the only people in the whole world that Five cares about.

Five survives 40 years in the apocalypse, with abysmal chances to get out, where any normal person would kill themselves, Five endures for the miniscule chance to get back and save his family. He spends years working for the commission, killing hundreds of people, after being the only surviving person on earth for 4 decades, to buy time so he can get back to his family. Five spends 45 years trying to claw his way back to his family. And when he does make it back to them, Five spends 28 straight days trying to prevent three different apocalypses across three different timelines so his family would live.

After 7 years on the subway Five gives up on getting back his family, and when he discovers a way back he keeps it a secret, even when he knows they are facing the apocalypse and certain death again? It doesn’t make sense for his character at all. Yes, he was tired at the end of TUA3 and was ready to lay down and die with his family by his side, but that was again after three failed attempts at preventing the apocalypse in a very short period of time. He also isn’t with his family, separated and isolated once again.

In terms of Five and Lilas relationship - It doesn’t make sense for Five, whose sole driving force throughout the entire show is his family, to turn around and betray his brother by engaging in a relationship with his wife. 

The dynamic between Five and Lila throughout the seasons has progressed from enemies to begrudging allies to a close friendship between the two, a progression that could not have happened without Diego. At the end of TUA2 and the start of TUA3 these two hate each other's guts, but because they both love Diego they are willing to put their shit aside and be somewhat amicable. Then, because they also both have a connection through the commission they team up and to go back and investigate and it's here where they can move past their past and are able to slowly form a friendship.

Yes, they are very similar characters and they have a unique bond. They can understand each other in a way none of the others can, because of their unique experiences at the commission and as being used as tools of The Handler. But this doesn’t mean they are suited for each other romantically and in fact is exactly why they aren’t. They both have deep trust issues, paranoia, and a kind of bitterness towards the world because of their experiences. With Lila and Diego, the reason that they work so well is because Diego's trusting nature and goodwill in people shows Lila that she can open herself up to people and to trust and love.

And the showrunners take all of this characterization, all of the love and devotion and the deep bonds between these characters and they throw it away because they wanted to give Five a love story. In the second to last episode of the entire series we see a three minute montage of Five and Lila on the subway for 7 years, and then three scenes of them in the greenhouse before they return back to the main time.

The writers destroy these characters and destroy these relationships for 15 minutes of screentime.

There is no resolution to this plotline. There is no reconciliation or understanding about what happened. Lila dies on dubious terms with both Diego and Five. Five and Diego die hating each other.

In real life: The actor who plays Five, Aidan Gallagher, was a minor during the filming of TUA1/2/3, and this was the first year he filmed where he was legally an adult, being 19 years old when filming TUA4. 

From the first season of the show, when he was 14 years old when filming, he has been heavily sexualised by a certain group of the fanbase. 

And the creators of the show, who have known him since he was a young teenager, at the first opportunity they could, paired him with his 34 year old costar - They met in the filming of the second season of the show, when Aidan was 15.

They waited - literally waited - for him to turn of legal age so that they could make his character have a love story, and then regardless of morals, regardless of plot relevance, regardless of if it even made sense for the characters, proceeded to pair Five and Lila up. Completely uncaring of the story, the established relationships between the characters and the overarching arcs of these characters.

The writers literally had to completely separate and isolate Five and Lila from the rest of the characters in their own timeline for over half a decade in order for it to make sense for them to develop a romantic relationship between them.

The decisions of the creators in this season are just so insane.

In continuation of Fives character this season - he abandons his family twice. Firstly when he finds the cipher to the subway and can return home, but chooses not to. Then secondly while his family are facing a life or death situation and another apocalypse, he physically fights Diego, and when Lila intervenes and implies that their relationship is over, he abandons them in the middle of the fight, to return to the subway.

And finally we get to the finale, where Five - again whose entire character is built on the love and devotion he has for his family - decides to erase himself and his entire family's existence from not just one timeline, but across every single timeline in order to correct the universe.

Five has never cared about the timeline. In fact he has always actively been working against it for his family's survival. They are supposed to die in TUA1 but Five will not allow that to happen and he goes against everything and every one to ensure that they live. He does this in every single season - goes directly against time and the universe to make sure his family makes it out on the other side. Now he is happy to give up and give in and not just to let his family die, but to have them permanently erased as if they hadn’t existed at all.

Even with the Five diner, we see all these Fives who have given up on trying to save their family after trying and failing to save them countless times - over 100,000 times - they resign themselves to a life of solitude with only alternate versions of themselves for company. Surely some of these Five have had to make the same connection that our Five makes, but they won’t sacrifice their families existence for the sake of the main timeline. But our Five, the Five that we follow, the Five we’ve personally seen struggle and fight to make sure his family is safe is the one who does.

I just cannot express how much this season disappoints me. The fundamental misunderstanding the creators have with their own characters and their own show is unbelievable. Even at the show's weakest, what makes it so engaging, what makes it so great, is this dysfunctional ass family who love each other. Their unbreakable bonds even when they are at odds with one another. How in their own weird way they do care deeply for one another. 

And the creators when telling the final story of these dearly beloved characters, destroy the bonds between them and send them off with a big old Fuck You to the audience to boot.

I cannot fathom how the same people who made TUA1 and TUA2, created this. Truly I cannot.

The conclusion from all of this I have come to is that the creators of this show are obsessed with writing perverse storylines. More subtle in the beginning, but now at the expense of the story and the characters themselves. Even since TUA1 there have been very weird romance story lines. Luther and Allison, and though not explicitly stated, the dynamic between Five and The Handler in the first two seasons is extremely uncomfortable.

And in TUA4 it all comes to the forefront where despite all of the complexity and nuance in the previous seasons of the show, they are willing to throw it all away to write these weird creepy storylines that nobody but themselves asked for or wanted. Luther becoming a stripper, Klaus being sex trafficked, Lila and Fives whole relationship.

Again I cannot express how much this season disappoints me. I cannot comprehend the decisions the creators of this show made. I cannot understand why they chose to destroy everything that made this show great. I cannot fathom how they could end this show in such a way and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

This has made me so deeply upset in a way that I just can't express. I have completely lost all respect for the creators of this show. I’m glad that it's finally come to an end so the creators can’t keep continuing to ruin this show and its characters.

Goodbye, Hargreeves family. You all deserve so much better.

[lokiondisneyplus]

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Loki season 2 finale, "Glorious Purpose."

Loki ends with its titular god claiming his throne — just not the one he expected.

The Marvel Disney+ show concluded its second season this week, seemingly saying goodbye to Tom Hiddleston's Loki. In an effort to stop the universe from collapsing in on itself, Loki learns to control his "time-slipping," using it to go back further and further in time. With help from Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), Mobius (Owen Wilson), and O.B. (Ke Huy Quan), he tries again and again to fix the TVA's temporal loom and prevent a meltdown. But every time he goes back, he fails, and he spends literal centuries reliving the same events over and over.

Eventually, Loki admits defeat and chooses to sacrifice himself to save every universe. Walking toward the temporal loom, he grabs the very fabric of space-time and uses it to build a throne of his own, weaving the threads together to create a tree. (It's a nod to the legendary world tree Yggdrasil from Norse mythology.) With that, Loki essentially crowns himself master of the multiverse, watching over every timeline as a lonely god. It's the ultimate selfless act from one of Marvel's most notorious villains — a villain who once sicced an alien invasion on New York to get his dad's attention.

Here, executive producer Kevin Wright breaks down the series' emotional finale — from the throwback line that Hiddleston improvised to whether this is really the end for Loki.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you decide this was how you wanted Loki's story to end?

KEVIN WRIGHT: I think we knew in season 1. Once we were going to do a season 2, we knew that Loki would end up on the throne. That was always the easy thing. The question was: How do you want that to feel for the audience? There's a version that's triumphant and super heroic. There's a version where it's an evil turn. But it was always about the emotional journey we wanted people to go on. It was about building that journey to be as cathartic as possible and to feel like a payoff for six movies and 12 episodes over 12 years with this guy. It was always about building that arc to be as fulfilling as possible.

Most of the episode is dedicated to this sort of time loop, where we see Loki trying over and over again to get things right and fix the loom, almost in a Groundhog Day kind of situation. What was fun about getting to do that endless loop?

Even in season 1, we always wanted to do a Run Lola Run thing, but there was never space for it. So once we started going into loops this season in the writing process, we thought, "Oh, let's finally do it." So much of that is total credit to Paul Zucker, the editor of the episode. That montage wasn't scripted per se. We knew Loki was going to be rerunning things, but it wasn't written exactly the way that it played.

A really fun thing, though, was that our cast — outside of Tom — had no idea what we were doing. They understood that he was rerunning time, but we shot a very different ending to episode 4 that was not the real ending. All the cast thought something very different would happen. We would send them away on lunch breaks, and Tom would take his lunch later, and he would just keep shooting with [directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead] with a skeleton crew. There were very few people that fully understood what we were building in that finale. So, for that core team, I think there was a lot of satisfaction when everybody was able to sit down and see how it came together. It just felt like this little secret.

What do you remember most about watching Tom film those final scenes?

Two moments really jump to mind. The first is a little bit of a longer story. There's the scene with He Who Remains, and that was scripted one way. We had this fear, like, "Is this going to feel like we're retreading the same ground as season 1?" Would it be fulfilling? We started shooting one day, and anybody in any creative field will understand this: There are days where the words are right, they way you're doing it is right, but it's just not adding up. Something was missing. We knew we weren't nailing it, and I had to make the call. That is really scary, when your first AD just wants to keep moving, and I said we were going to stop shooting.

Tom went and sat down with our script supervisor and basically did this insane crash course in 30 minutes of every line that had been said on the whole series. Then, he went for a run around the lot at Pinewood [Studios], and when he came back, he was like, "I know what this needs to be now." Then, he and Jonathan worked out what it was going to be, and they sat down with Justin and Aaron and me and Katie Blair, our production writer. They just quickly rewrote this new scene and shot it. It was just the pinnacle of what Tom does. He has such a finger on the pulse of this entire series and how that scene had to go. In a moment, he was able to reconfigure it with all of our collaborators.

The other thing is that final line before he steps out toward the loom, which is the Thor line, which was not scripted. Right before we were going to shoot that, Tom came and pitched it to me, like, "Should we do this?" We were like, "God, why did we not write that?" It was perfect, and it was 100 percent Tom.

I wanted to ask about that line, where Loki turns to Sylvie and Mobius and says he has to do this "for you, for all of us." It's a direct throwback to one of his lines in the original 2011 Thor. So that was a Tom Hiddleston improvisation?

It was 100 percent Tom. We had already done a few takes of the first part of that line, which was, "I know what kind of god I need to be." And on the final take, Tom said, "Hey, can I try this?" As soon as he said it, all of us were like, "This is going to be the take." It almost gave me Truman Show vibes, that final sign-off, looking straight down the camera. But that story gets to the heart of how Tom is always trying to make things better. We just had to build a series that could give him the framework to have those creative pivots. Everyone would just kind of throw their hands up and say, "Geez, this is why this guy is fantastic."

With Loki in charge of the multiverse, this could affect how (and if) we might see Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conqueror in future Marvel projects. For you, where does this finale leave Kang and his future in the MCU?

I'm going to tread probably infuriatingly lightly, but for me — and I know all the filmmakers agree — we think everything is there on screen. I think all the details are there, and there is a lot that people haven't picked up on, or haven't fully understood what is being said. The key to the future is in that conversation with Sylvie, and this doesn't necessarily undo any of those threats. In my mind, it's what Sylvie said: "At least give us a chance. Let us fight that battle for ourselves and define our own destiny."

I also wanted to ask about that final shot of Mobius in Ohio, where he's standing there silently, watching time pass. Why was that the right ending for Mobius?

In the big picture of the show, we wanted this to feel like a real ending. We wanted to give closure on a number of things, and we didn't want to do anything that felt like it was just teeing up a new story. But you could plant new seeds that could become new stories. My feeling with that scene in Ohio is that it's Mobius overcoming a personal obstacle. He just had to go and look. The show is not telling you whether he's going to stay there, or whether he's going to go back to the TVA. I think both are possibilities. But the important thing was the character growth of him going to do the thing he has been avoiding. I think it took what Loki did to cause Mobius to go, "I have this opportunity. This opportunity was given to me by Loki. The least I can do is go."

So that being said, is this the end for Loki? Is this a season finale, or is it a series finale?

I'm thinking of it kind of like a comic run, and this is the end of that comic run. I know [head writer Eric Martin] has said this a lot: These two seasons were two chapters of the same book, and we wanted to close the book. That was a challenge from Owen in between seasons: He was like, "Nobody has the courage to close the book! Let's close the book!"

Again, I speak for myself and not Marvel, but I am certainly pitching ideas of where I could see certain stories going. I think there are a lot of stories you can tell at the TVA, and we are just scratching the surface on that. I would love to see more stories with Loki, and I think Tom would continue to play this character until he is Richard E. Grant's Classic Loki [laughs]. But I don't think that means you need to have this story every year or every two years. It's about doing it when we have a good story to tell. I would love to keep working with these filmmakers.

We built a really awesome team, and if Loki is Breaking Bad, maybe there's a way for this team to keep telling stories with our version of Better Call Saul — whether that's with Sylvie, with the TVA, or with a new Loki. But we only want to do that if we have the right story and it can be just as fulfilling as this one. After all, you can't be the God of Stories if you're not going to tell more stories.

[entrop-y]

**click for better quality!**

BY THE NUMBERS: CRIMINAL MINDS

a brief analysis of ratings, complacency, and the future of the police procedural

THE TRENDS

looking at general trends across the seasons 1-15, airing in Criminal Minds initial 2005-2020 run, the trends in ratings*, while not drastic, do reflect a decline in quality as the seasons progressed.

In the earlier seasons, most episodes were generally well received, with 2-4 “stand out” episodes—typically multi part episodes or season finales—per season. Notably, the stand out episodes often strayed from the constraints of the procedural format that structures the majority of episodes of Criminal Minds.

As the seasons progress, the majority of episodes in a season are mediocre in the eyes of the audience, with a few episodes being received quite poorly (ratings below 7.0). This is especially obvious in seasons 10-14. When thinking about the future of Criminal Minds: Evolution, it’s important (and fun!) to think about what was successful and unsuccessful in the shows original run.

WHY THIS IS

After season 5, but unequivocally after season 7, there was a noticeable decline in the quality of the writing, directing, and cinematography of Criminal Minds. The episodes felt increasingly fantastical—with storylines like evil twins, prince charming, and reid’s prison arc—making it difficult for audiences to suspend their disbelief. The early seasons focused on the profiling aspect of Criminal Minds, setting apart from other network police procedurals at the time. Criminal Minds felt smart and engaging, playing on real life cases and giving the viewer an insight into the unsub’s mind and the science* of profiling. In its infancy, the show did not rely on the gratuitous violence or drawn out take down scenes of the later seasons to keep viewers attention. Instead, Criminal Minds assumes its viewer is smart, immersing them in the word of profiling and building suspense by revealing the unsub to the viewer as the BAU identifies them.

As the show lost the elements that set it apart from similarly successful procedurals like NCIS or Law and Order, the episodes felt stale and unoriginal. This departure from its earlier premises created a bit of an identity crisis in the type of show Criminal Minds was.

There was also a notable decline in the direction and cinematography of the show. While the early seasons were admittedly rife with continuity errors and now dated editing, it was creative and ultimately, showed a degree of care and forethought that became lost in the later seasons. The yellow-grey color grading and uninteresting shots make the show less enjoyable. They are the opposite of inventive. The creativity and trials of the early seasons somewhere diminished, being replaced with an over reliance on the procedural format, becoming very formulaic.

This is particularly evident in season 10, which has generally low ratings and unmemorable episode, aside from “Mr. Scratch” dir. Matthew Grey Gubler. “Mr. Scratch” was so wildly different from all of the episodes of season ten, with writing and direction reminiscent of a full length horror film, it performed significantly better than the other episodes in its season. It demonstrated that criminal minds could still balance a fantastical premise with a genuinely terrifying unsub. Like earlier seasons, it also did not spell out the entire story for the audience from the beginning, instead highlighting Hotch as an unreliable narrator who under the influence of Scratch’s deliriant cannot decipher what is real.

FAN SERVICE, FINALES, AND THE FUTURE

As ratings slipped in seasons 13-15, the writers tried everything to keep audience’s attention. This included bringing back old unsubs (Lucky Strikes, Date Night) and the fan service disaster that was “Truth or Dare”. “Truth or Dare” reflected Criminal Minds’ inability to even make the interpersonal relationships between team members feel natural and realistic. The team bonding scenes became more frequent, but they felt unnatural in comparison to similar scenes (for example the bar scene in “The Big Game”).

The finale was an unsatisfying yet long overdue end to the Everett Lynch storyline, with the teams actions being overshadowed by Reid’s umpteenth near death experience—a sequence that for the first time since like season 4, was terribly impacted by the lack of Mandy Patinkin—making the entire episode feel disjointed.

The bad finale left especially pre covid viewers of Criminal Minds apprehensive at the prospect of a reboot/revival. It awkwardly fell somewhere in between being another soulless money-grab hollywood reboot devoid of its original spark, and an overdue “revival” more akin to a pause in filming because of the pandemic. Audiences also had to navigate “the paramount+ of it all”, which was more accurately a reflection of the lack of faith cbs executives had in this project. It being exclusive to their own streaming service made it perfectly low stakes.

Nevertheless, Criminal Minds: Evolution, was a success among audiences. The freedom of a limited series, as opposed to a procedural, meant the show got to be more experimental in its direction, which was refreshing. It was renewed quickly, and despite its flaws, seems to signify the possibility of a positive reception and legacy of the show.

NOTES:

*throughout this post, “ratings” refers only to the rating of an episode as listed on IMDb, not taking into account viewership and any other metrics CBS used to determine audience reception

**the phrase “the science of profiling” is used only for simplicity and to align with the language of the show; criminal profiling is pseudoscientific and should not hold any weight in the criminal justice system.

END

I hope you all enjoyed this analysis, it got a little out of hand but also did not even scratch the surface of what I could say about Criminal Minds from a media studies point of view. I would love to hear any and all thoughts people have, even if you disagree with me!!

[wesleysniperking]

One Piece Film: Red and What It Meant for Usopp

Part 2 (TL;DR)

(beware spoilers!!!) | Part 1

If there’s one fandom consensus that I wholeheartedly agree with, it’s regarding Usopp’s screen time in the One Piece movies. He’s a scene-stealer and always manages to do something cool or worthwhile. If you’ve watched the movies, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The movie I want to focus on is "One Piece Film: Red." This is the movie where Usopp meets his dad amid battle, and they do that iconic Observation Haki thing together. It’s a scene I rewatch time and time again.

"One Piece Film: Red" is many things: fun, ambitious, messy, high-budget, and a wild ride. Uta’s character design was rad, and the overall vibe with the other characters was well-executed.

But in hindsight, I noticed that the movie did a lot of foreshadowing, especially concerning the final battle where everyone tries to take down Tot Musica. We see most of the Straw Hats with power-ups and battle moves that weren’t canonically revealed until the Wano arc was nearing its end. Here are some of the foreshadowed power-ups:

Luffy: We get a preview of Luffy’s Gear 5.

Zoro: Demonstrates his mastery of Enma and Conqueror’s Haki.

Sanji: Uses advanced fire attacks, reminiscent of "Ifrit Jambe."

Nami: Shows her integration with Zeus, who finally gets to shine.

Robin: Showcases "Demonio Fleur," which she uses against Black Maria.

Brook: Utilizes more of his soul-related abilities, similar to his actions in Wano.

Koby: Even Koby had a bit of foreshadowing regarding his growth, hinting at his future role as a Garp-like figure to Luffy’s Roger.

Given all this, I wondered why Usopp didn’t receive a similar foreshadowing in the movie. The answer seems clear: Usopp’s “power-up” or significant moment is being saved for a much later, possibly even more impactful, event.

Many fans speculate (and yes, I’m using some “Oda said” hearsay as a source here) that the people behind the One Piece movies have insight into how the series will end or what the One Piece actually is. If Usopp didn’t showcase his Observation Haki in the Wano arc like he did in the movie, it likely means Oda is reserving his moment for a bigger payoff.

Consider the scene where Usopp and Yasopp perform incredible Observation Haki feats together—something we haven’t seen canonically. Not even Katakuri could maintain such a level of Observation Haki for long. There’s also the part where Katakuri tells Shanks he can see through his sister’s eyes, but only for a few seconds, to which Shanks replies, “You’re not the only one who has Observation Haki.” It then cuts to Yasopp saying, “Yeah. My son has it, but he’s too panicked.”

This interaction might hint at the unique potential of Usopp’s Haki. Perhaps Observation Haki users can link up with others they’re related to, or maybe it’s just a matter of Usopp honing his abilities. Either way, the fact that this was showcased in the movie but not yet in the manga suggests that Usopp’s true power is yet to be revealed.

Another point that stands out to me is the conversation between Katakuri and Shanks. Shanks’ words wouldn’t necessarily lead anyone to believe he was specifically talking about Yasopp. We didn't even know if Yasopp was aware of his son's abilities. Yes, the movies aren’t canonical, but still, it’s intriguing. When Yasopp mentions that his son has Observation Haki but is too nervous to use it effectively, it raises questions. How does Yasopp know this about Usopp, given they haven’t spoken in over a decade (if ever)?

What also stood out was the scene where Usopp is running and says, "If we only did something to Tot Musica’s legs, we could defeat him” (paraphrasing here). Usopp then stops, tells himself to stay calm, presses his fingers to his temples, and suddenly, he’s seeing through his dad’s eyes. Yasopp exclaims, "D*mn, son! You finally managed to link up with me?! Finally!” (Paraphrasing here). They then guide everyone on where to attack Tot Musica’s limbs, resulting in a spectacular team effort. Afterward, Shanks remarks, “Yasopp and his son work well together,” with a thoughtful and brooding expression.

None of this is canonical, but it makes me wonder about Usopp’s story in the main series. Does Shanks know the limits of Yasopp’s Observation Haki? Can Yasopp do things with it that even Shanks can’t? Given Yasopp’s role as a sniper, it makes sense. In real-world terms, snipers use spotters to help locate targets and assess their surroundings. Yasopp’s Observation Haki might serve a similar purpose, acting as a “spotter” for pinpoint accuracy.

Additionally, considering the non-canonical nature of the movies (last time I'll mention this), what if they have their own internal canon? In "One Piece: Red," what if Yasopp and Usopp had already talked before the events of the movie? Yasopp might have advised Usopp to train his Observation Haki and stay calm to tap into its full potential. That’s why, during the fight with Tot Musica, Usopp reminds himself to stay calm before successfully linking up with his father. Usopp’s smile when he realizes he’s connected with his dad, and Yasopp calling him a “knucklehead,” suggests a prior relationship and training.

This scenario could potentially work in the canon of the main story. It opens up possibilities for Usopp’s future development, hinting at a deeper mastery of Observation Haki and a stronger connection with his father.

next part

Part 3

link credits:

Video to gif credit (youtube: SnyapTV offcial)

gif credit Uta (drawing from Amino: @Mommy Issues cora)

Usopp fan club (feel free to join)

[miss-musings]

The Official CrossDad Ranking of The Bad Batch Season 3 Episodes

I love TBB Season 3 so much, and it's partly because of Crosshair's arc and his growing bond with Omega. His attitude toward life in general and her specifically really evolves throughout the season, to the point where he becomes CrossDad™️.

So I thought I'd rank all the S3 episodes by how many and how significant of CrossDad moments we get.

Disclaimer: I'll only be counting episodes where Crosshair and Omega have screentime together (Ep 1, 3-9 and 11).

So, starting with the least CrossDad episode and working our way to the most:

9. Episode 3.01 "Confinement"

Crosshair literally tells Omega that if he had a chance to escape he wouldn't think twice about leaving her behind. Ouch. I’m 99% sure he’s lying, but it’s still not very CrossDad of him to say that.

He also says "I'm not them" when Omega says he's her brother.

But, I guess bro had to start somewhere.

Grade: F

8. Episode 3.03 "Shadows of Tantiss"

Unsurprisingly this is only slightly better. Crosshair's definitely mad at Omega for just winging an escape, but he goes along with it and watches her back. He's definitely not as protective of her here as he is later in the season, but I guess that's to be expected.

The one highlight is, once she thinks they've failed and they'll be killed or recaptured, his Dad instincts kick in and he praises her for getting them as far as she did.

Grade: D

7. Episode 3.08 "Bad Territory"

As much as I love Crosshair and Omega's scenes in Bad Territory -- in fact, they're the only good parts of the whole episode -- I don't think Crosshair acts much like Omega's dad in this episode. More like that older sister-younger brother dynamic she's teased him about before.

However, there are a few crumbs I can highlight:

Crosshair telling her she needs to stay safe and Hunter agreeing with him.

Crosshair's unenthused look when Omega talks about Phee.

As Hunter correctly deduces, Omega is the *only* person Crosshair would listen to about getting his hand examined.

Omega telling Crosshair he doesn't like anything and him agreeing with her.

Crosshair looking very sad and upset when he realizes just how much time he's missed with Omega.

Still, overall, definitely not the most CrossDad episode of the season.

Grade: C

TIE-5. Episode 3.11 "Point of No Return"

This is a weird one, because while we don't get a lot of CrossDad moments with Omega, the episode goes out of its way to make parallels between Crosshair and Hunter to show they're both parental figures to Omega.

I'll talk about this more later on, but one of the ways S3 really solidifies CrossDad is by putting him alongside Hunter so it feels like they're co-parenting Omega together.

This episode does that, in part, by sidelining Wrecker the entire episode. Crosshair and Hunter go up to the colonnade together to get Omega while Wrecker loads the ship, and they watch over Omega together after Wrecker's incapacitated.

And then, we have the parallel between Hunter watching Hemlock's shuttle take Omega away in 2.16 "Plan 99" and Crosshair watching CX-2's shuttle take Omega away from Pabu.

Another poignant parallel that shows Crosshair has become a parental figure to Omega, the way Hunter has been the entire show.

However, I feel like Crosshair ultimately agreeing with Omega's plan to turn herself in is something Hunter would never do. I get that Crosshair was reluctant, tried to talk her out of it and only agreed because he didn't see any better options. But, I still feel like Hunter would never have done that.

Ultimately, I feel like this one's a mixed bag.

Grade: C+

TIE-5. Episode 3.06 "Infiltration"

Admittedly there aren't many CrossDad moments in this one, as the bulk of the runtime is focused on the CX assassins and Rex's clone underground.

But we do get a few:

Omega copies Crosshair's toothpick thing, just like she did with Hunter in 1.01 Aftermath (and her other brothers throughout the series). Now, she's finally copying him, and he takes note of it.

He just nonchalantly tells Omega the Empire's after her again, but once it's clear there's an operative nearby, he freaks out.

Again, the show pairs Crosshair up with Hunter as co-parents talking about Omega's safety and the bigger problems with Hemlock, Tantiss and the CX operatives. Meanwhile Wrecker hangs out with Omega -- like a big brother distracting/entertaining his sister while the "grown-ups" talk.

Not a lot to work with, but it's cute for what we do have.

Grade: C+

4. Episode 3.05 "The Return"

This is another episode where we don't get a ton of one-on-one interactions between Crosshair and Omega, and some of the ones we do get fall more into that brother-sister dynamic (ie, "He started it," and Omega sighing in frustration).

But there are some big CrossDad moments in this episode:

When Omega first approaches the beach and Crosshair looks up at her, his expression definitely changes. It's hard to tell because the focus switches as Batcher comes into the foreground, but it honestly looks like he smiles when he sees her. Or at least his expression "lightens up."

Crosshair has a nice teaching moment with Omega where he describes what it takes to be a good sniper!! :)

Despite his resentment and anger toward Hunter, it's clear that Crosshair agrees with Hunter about not wanting to endanger Omega. In fact, he even defends Hunter's stance to Omega and tells her not to hold it against him.

The "you let Omega be taken to Tantiss" exchange is *chef's kiss*. I feel like I could write entire essays about it.

It's clear that, for the first half of the episode, Hunter doesn't like that Omega and Crosshair are so close. Not only does he not trust Crosshair, but he definitely resents Crosshair for helping Omega escape when he couldn't. I think he's also a bit jealous (???) of all the attention Omega shows Crosshair after she and Hunter have been separated for months. Like, she couldn't even spend one minute having breakfast with him and Wrecker before asking where Crosshair was and immediately going to find him. Hunter also needlessly threw Crosshair a dirty look for seeing how much Omega was following him around before they left for Barton IV. Again, I know it's because he and Crosshair have their own issues -- which they resolve by the end of the episode -- but he never seemed insecure/jealous/resentful of Omega spending so much time with Wrecker, Echo or Tech before.

Overall, this is the one episode where it's clear that, despite their personal differences, Crosshair and Hunter both care about Omega and prioritize her safety. Because they're *both* her dads now.

Side note: the little exchange where Crosshair says he'll handle getting the creature outside the perimeter and Hunter saying "Not alone -- we'll do it together" and then Crosshair asking him if he's sure... you can definitely read that more than one way... :)

Grade: B-

3. Episode 3.04 "A Different Approach"

This episode isn't the *most* CrossDad episode, but I feel like it's the one where Crosshair first starts down the CrossDad path thanks to two big moments:

THE FIRST:

As I said, the show goes out of its way several times to show that Crosshair is on the same path as Hunter -- just two seasons later. While Hunter acted like Omega's dad pretty much from Day 1, Crosshair's just starting his journey in Season 3.

In 1.01 Aftermath, after TBB fails Tarkin's mission, Hunter decides to go back to Kamino for Omega. Even though there's a possibility TBB could be captured or killed if they return to Kamino, Hunter chooses Omega's safety and well-being over his and his squad's freedom.

At the time, Crosshair argued against returning for Omega. But, here in 3.04, he faces the same decision as Hunter: Ensure his own freedom by going to the spaceport OR follow Omega despite the risk of both of them getting (re)captured or killed.

And like Hunter, he chooses Omega over his own freedom and safety.

This was his own Point of No Return, if you will. The moment he first takes up the CrossDad mantle -- never to let it go again.

THE SECOND:

Additionally, in this episode, we have the Imperial officer mistaking Crosshair for Omega's dad. I'm 99% sure that Hunter is the only Bad Batcher who was assumed to be Omega's dad before this episode. I can't recall anyone ever doing that with Echo, Wrecker or Tech before -- just Hunter. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

The fact that another character in-universe believes Crosshair is Omega's dad is a purposeful choice by the writers. The captain could've easily said "I've never seen you two around here before," and the conversation could've continued the same way. The fact that he says "dad" is significant, because again, we're drawing parallels between Crosshair and Hunter.

And in this episode, where Crosshair ultimately makes the same "Omega>freedom" choice Hunter did, that seems poignant.

ADDITIONAL POINTS:

Outside of the two big items, I'll only say that there are a few other CrossDad elements in this episode, like him being ready to square up against anyone who threatens Omega. Including a poor street kid. LOL

But, the bulk of the time, he follows her lead. She tells him they need new clothes; she has the idea to bribe the spaceport employee; she decides to "hustle" people at the cantina; and she refuses to go with Crosshair after the Imperials take Batcher. Heck, even the "Let's try things your way" line is still HER decision.

Hunter definitely has his moments where he defers to Omega's judgment (and moments when she just 100% defies or disobeys him), but the narrative and other characters definitely see him as the one who has the final say as the squad leader and her guardian.

So, we can see that Crosshair might be transitioning into a "dad" role, but he's definitely not there yet.

I also like how he grabs the briefcase of credits, even though they didn't really need it anymore. He was like, "I'm not going to let all of Omega's hard work go to waste." LOL

The final moment I want to highlight is Crosshair trying to emotionally prepare Omega that Hunter and Wrecker might not be there. Of course he was wrong, but I appreciate that he was not only looking out for her physical well-being in this episode, but also her emotional well-being too.

Overall, this is one worth being in the Top 3 of Most CrossDad episodes.

Grade: B

2. Episode 3.09 "The Harbinger"

Like 3.05 The Return, we don't have a lot of one-on-one interactions between Crosshair and Omega. But, again, the narrative and other characters go out of their way to treat Crosshair as a full member of The Dad Batch.

Asajj seems to view all three brothers as equally problematic toward Omega's possible Force training. She doesn't single Hunter or Crosshair or Wrecker out more than the other two -- they're all "overprotective shadows" in her eyes.

If anything, I think that shows just how well Crosshair has slotted into the family dynamic in such a short amount of time. Hunter and Wrecker have been with Omega longer and arguably know her better, but Crosshair is just as fiercely protective of her as they are.

It also demonstrates how far he's come in just half a season. Seven episodes ago he said he'd leave her behind without a second thought (although he was probably lying), and now he's fighting a former Sith apprentice because she might be a threat to Omega's safety.

But, while Asajj might view all three brothers the same way -- and to a certain degree they are -- the narrative once again has Wrecker playing a different role in Omega's life while putting Crosshair and Hunter on (near) equal footing.

Multiple times throughout the episode -- namely the family meeting in the Marauder and the final conversation with Asajj -- we see Hunter and Crosshair are framed more as co-parents while Wrecker acts as either guard dog or Omega's distraction while the "grown-ups" talk.

One final point I'll make is that, while Crosshair nominally agreed with Hunter's plan to let Omega train with Asajj alone, he also made it clear he disagreed with Hunter’s decision. He basically gave himself an out. Like: "You might've agreed to let Omega train with a former Separatist assassin unsupervised, but I made no such promise so I can intervene if I see fit. I'm only up here with you guys because of peer pressure."

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a big fan of this episode in general, and honestly wish we could've consolidated it with 3.08 Bad Territory somehow. But, it's definitely a CrossDad heavy episode, and in that respect, I *am* here for it!

Grade: A

1. Episode 3.07 "Extraction"

You all knew this had to be No. 1. It's THE quintessential CrossDad episode!!

I love the little touch of Omega going to look down the spire alongside Crosshair. She really is trying to learn from him, and he doesn't seem to be opposed to it.

As we see later in this episode and again in the finale, once Crosshair knows a CX operative is after them, he volunteers to face him. I know he has all sorts of reasons for wanting to confront CX-2 by himself, but protecting Omega must be one of them.

Once they get away and crash-land in the jungle, we get THE CrossDad conversation -- which was apparently a late addition by the production team.

Once again, he's checking on Omega's physical and emotional well-being. He makes sure she's safe and knows what to do, even though they've been in at least two firefights together at this point.

And once again, we get another parallel between him and Hunter, this time by Omega herself!

Omega: You're as bad as Hunter. Crosshair: Oh, I'm much worse.

He's so fully embraced the CrossDad path that it convinces Howzer (who understandably didn't trust Crosshair earlier in the two-parter) that Crosshair really is different.

Once those Jango Fett "dad genes" kick in, all the clones are practically different people, and Howzer clearly sees that in Crosshair. I'm sure it reminded Howzer of his own time on Ryloth and how much he cared about the Syndulla family and Hera specifically.

We also get a nice allusion to Crosshair's own journey of loyalty. He said earlier in the two-parter that he wasn't loyal to the Empire any longer, but didn't really specify who he was loyal to now. But, Howzer clearly sees Crosshair's now 100% dedicated to his family, especially Omega.

During the first skirmish between the protagonists and the Imperial troops, Crosshair unnecessarily tells Omega, "Stay by my side and stay down."

I say unnecessarily because 1) he should know by now Omega can handle herself and 2) neither Hunter nor Wrecker felt compelled to give her similar directions. But, he's full CrossDad™️ in this episode, so his first priority is her safety. It was also objectively a good idea for Omega to stay with Crosshair, considering he has an infrared sight and could see enemies the others couldn't.

Which is exactly what happens when Crosshair realizes CX-2 is after them. So, once again, he takes on the responsibility of distracting CX-2 so Omega and the others can get to safety.

Omega doesn't like his decision, and in the perfect CrossDad™️ move -- in that it combines all of Crosshair's quintessential traits with those of the quintessential dad -- he turns off his comm and says under his breath: "Too bad." LOL

The fight against CX-2 is so well-done, in part because we see exactly who Crosshair used to be in S1 and who he could've become in S3 if he hadn't resisted Hemlock's "re-education" efforts.

Granted, this was a headcanon someone else shared, but I like the thought that Crosshair was able to resist specifically because of Omega.

Either:

Hemlock controls the CX operatives by enhancing the effects of their inhibitor chips (like what Tarkin & co did to Crosshair in S1); in which case, Crosshair is immune because he took Omega's advice in S1 and removed his inhibitor chip.

OR

While he'd never admit it, I'm sure seeing Omega regularly (probably daily) on Tantiss gave him some amount of hope and comfort in an otherwise desolate and isolated environment. In which case, he had something to hold onto mentally and emotionally while he was being tortured. This would be a nice parallel to Hemlock interrogating him in S2. He didn't break then because he was clearly thinking about his family, and it'd poignant if that was the case again in S3.

In any case, 3.07 Extraction is, without a doubt, the most CrossDad episode in S3. I honestly wish we could've gotten more episodes like it, or just more S3 episodes in general. But, I'm thankful we got to see Crosshair and Omega grow so much -- both individually and together -- this season.

Grade: A+

EDIT/UPDATE:

Episode 3.15 "The Cavalry Has Arrived"

I initially said I wasn't going to grade the finale, because I felt like it'd be too hard. But I kinda had a change of heart:

While I won't put it in the official ranking, I will share some thoughts and give it a general score.

This is another episode that falls into same category as 3.05 "The Return": Omega and Crosshair might not have a lot of screentime together, but the narrative and other characters go out of their way to reinforce Crosshair's role as a co-parent to Omega.

The first time Crosshair mentions Omega is in the "change of plans" scene. It's genuinely heartbreaking for a myriad of reasons, but one is that Crosshair doesn't feel like Omega needs him the way she needs Hunter and Wrecker.

I personally don't feel like this is a very CrossDad moment. Him doing whatever it took to infiltrate Tantiss and rescue Omega -- absolutely. But deprecating himself and saying he deserves to die -- definitely not.

(Tech's sacrifice was different, because there was no alternative. That definitely wasn't the case for Crosshair.)

Look, I know why he says it. He must feel like Hunter and Wrecker genuinely mean more to her, and after letting her surrender on Pabu and missing the shot to track her ship, he probably also feels like he failed her and doesn't deserve to be in her life anymore.

Thank goodness Hunter and Wrecker talk sense into him! (Btw, I love their little look at each other when he says "Omega needs you both." They're like, "Buddy, she'd be devastated if you died. That ain't happening.")

And I love that it's Hunter who emphasizes to him that Omega needs all three of them in her life. This moment -- plus the final confrontation later -- shows how far Hunter and Crosshair's dynamic has evolved, especially regarding Omega.

Moving on, the next time we get a real CrossDad moment is when Hunter says he's going after Omega and recommends Crosshair stay behind.

Considering that Echo and Wrecker were still fighting the CX clones, Crosshair covering them from above would've been helpful. So it wasn't a terrible suggestion on Hunter's part, but that's not Crosshair's place emotionally or narratively.

If Hunter's going after Omega, he is too. They're going to do it together, as they've said since 3.05.

And I'll say: once again, the narrative sidelines Wrecker while putting Hunter and Crosshair on (near) equal footing.

Wrecker stepped into his role as the team's Tank and fought off the CX clones long enough to give Hunter (and Crosshair) a chance to save Omega. His role in the story -- just like in Omega's life -- is important, but it is different from Hunter and Crosshair's roles.

And now we have THE SCENE.

Holy crap. I can't tell you, as a CrossDad fan or just a TBB fan in general, how much I adore this scene!!!

Hunter and Crosshair take out CX-2's Dagger together. I'm sure they both had their respective flashbacks of helplessly watching Omega be taken away, and they both thought, "OH HELL NO!! We're not letting that happen again!"

They take every move together. They destroy the Dagger; they shoot Scorch; they take a knee on the bridge after Hemlock puts the blaster to Omega's head. They're in total lock step.

Until Hunter catches Omega's signal, but Crosshair apparently doesn't.

So, Hunter tells him what he needs to do. He physically and emotionally supports him in that moment.

It's also crazy to think that Hunter is trusting Crosshair with Omega's life, and the fact that Crosshair is hesitant to shoot while Hunter is encouraging him. How far these kids have come since 1.01 Aftermath!

As I've alluded to before, Crosshair has been kind of speed-running through Hunter's Dad arc from S1-2. Now, he gets to the moment where he must fully accept how capable Omega is and trust her. This is something Hunter has understandably struggled with before, but he seems to have made his peace with it by this point.

But, Crosshair hasn't.

He loves Omega so much AND has lost so much confidence in his own abilities for numerous reasons that he can't stand the thought of potentially hurting her.

It's a far cry from the shot he made to save her in 1.16, when he had full confidence in his abilities and didn't seem to realize or care that he might endanger her if he missed.

But, with Hunter's support and Omega's faith, he makes it!

And now the hug:

Omega runs toward them, but rather than flinging herself onto one or both of them, she stops a few feet away and smiles. It's only when she sees Crosshair's missing his right hand that she goes to hug him first.

(BTW, the English-Audio Description version confirms that Crosshair's eyes well with tears in that moment.)

Crosshair definitely doesn't like to be touched. We've seen this as far back as 1.01 Aftermath, when Wrecker's messing with him. His brothers and Omega seem to be the only people he'll accept physical affection from, and even then, he doesn't really reciprocate it.

Until now.

He doesn't use his arms, but he closes his eyes and presses his head against Omega's as she hugs him. Also, once they start walking back, he puts his right stump on her shoulder.

Side note: others have pointed out how Hunter's body language in that scene suggested he wanted Omega to hug Crosshair first, that he was happy when she did, and that he hugged both Omega and Crosshair back. I agree with this assessment. Hunter clearly understands how important Crosshair and Omega are to each other, and really reinforces how all of them are a family together.

Now, I really wish we could've gotten one post-Tantiss conversation between Omega and Crosshair, because they haven't had an onscreen conversation since 3.11. (Although that's better than poor Wrecker, who hasn't had an onscreen conversation with Omega since 3.09.)

But, I do love that, once Crosshair and Wrecker settle into their "family portrait" pose, Crosshair is on Hunter's side. Again, it's significant to their relationship as brothers, as well as co-parents to Omega. They're going to be supporting each other for the long run. (Wrecker too, but I would imagine in a different way based on his role in the narrative.)

One final thing I'll mention is that, in the epilogue, Hunter says, "You're our kid, Omega. You always will be."

Hunter might've been the first one to step into the role of Omega's Dad, but he also recognizes that he didn't raise her alone. She's not just his kid. She's Crosshair and Wrecker and Tech and Echo's kid too. They all raised her, together.

It reinforces the same point as 3.09: Crosshair might've been the last brother to officially join the Dad Batch, but he was a full member all the same. Even Hunter acknowledges that.

Anyway, looking at the finale on the CrossDad ranking, it's a weird one, because we only have a few CrossDad moments in the hourlong episode. But, man, do those moments really pack a punch!

If I have to grade it, I think it'd put it in the same ballpark as 3.05 "The Return." It hits a lot of similar beats as far as the Hunter-Crosshair dynamic and how the narrative once again frames them as co-parents to Omega.

But, we got the long-awaited Crosshair-Omega hug, so I think that automatically bumps it up from a B- to a B!

Grade: B

*****

Here's to hoping that, somewhere down the line, we'll get a Bad Batch comic, novel, spin-off show, cameo... something! I'd love to get more CrossDad content, but I suppose fanfics will have to do for now! LOL

Thanks for reading 'til the end, especially now that I've added in the super-long finale analysis. :)

[jakes3resin]

Can you tell us about your other fics if you already have an established plot?

I'd love to! So there's quite a number of them I won't lie. I tend to get inspired by the randomest things. These are all in various stages of plotted out and written.

A/B/O fic (technically turning into 3 fics) that follows Bucky & Buck through the war, described below.

Courting Arc (top of my list to finish writing) - Bucky POV as he is anonymously courted during his time in the states just before he gets sent over to England (there's a post I'm basing my writing around I'll link it in a moment) <- published

England Arc- a quick look into their lives as they run missions with A/B/O elements (this will be pretty short I think) mostly snippets of scenes from the show just now with Omega Bucky and Alpha Buck <- published

Stalag Arc - Omega Bucky and his awful time in Germany. Here is where we see what being an Omega in war is really like in my omegaverse. Bucky is the highest ranked Omega in the camp meaning he's technically 'in charge' of keeping those Omegas in line. He's tested by his heats, keeping his pack together, and finally by a German order that could tear Buck and Bucky apart. This is a big fic for me to prepare for, and I'm building up to it by writing the Courting Arc first <- next on deck

Biker Gale AU (my beloved, genuinely obsessed with this AU) - this was inspired by one of hogans-heroes AUs. So, Gale leads an outlaw-esque biker club, and Bucky used to be his right hand (and lover) except one day out of the blue he just disappeared. Gale does everything he can to find Bucky, but there's no trail to follow, no clues to put together, nothing. Fast forward about two years, Bucky arrives on Curt's doorstep holding a small baby with the brightest blue eyes and prettiest blonde curls and begs Curt to watch his baby for 5 days. 5 days later Bucky comes back in town bruised to all hell with the FBI on his tail with their own nefarious reasons for tracking Bucky down. Bucky has nowhere else to turn especially since when he comes back to Curt's he finds Gale holding his little baby. (This could be A/B/O I haven't decided, but it's definitely at least mpreg)

Amnesia fic - this is based off of a post I made about the effects of Bucky getting hit over the head like 3 times in the span of two days, its... somewhere (edit: here). But its about Bucky waking up with no memory of who he is just before he gets interrogated by the Germans and sent to Stalag Luft III where he meets a man that his heart rejoices at seeing but his mind doesn't recognize. Buck of course has to deal with the love of his life forgetting him.

Magic AU - Bucky is a Scamander and its now everyone's problem to deal with it. The tag to find all of my ramblings for it is magic au (not that Tumblr's tag system works), and @getinthefuckingjaeger just wrote the best ever fic of Bucky and Theseus so go read that.

I've also got a few paragraphs written of Foster Kid Bucky somewhere but that might never see the light of day (that's also from a hogans-heroes AU) where Bucky is a jaded teenager just trying to make it to 18 to get out of his shitty foster placement when in comes Buck whose mother finally divorced his dad, got custody of her kids, and moved to her hometown to escape. It's about a Bright Buck meeting a Jaded Bucky (a flip on their usual dynamics)

Blonde Bucky AU - I wrote a blurb on the Twin Cleven AU post, and the idea of Bucky bleaching his hair on a drunken night out with Curt and Bubbles has haunted me since <- published as well

There might be more? But these are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head right now that are plotted out beyond oh that'd be a good fic. I have a lot of time spent sitting and waiting right now, so I have the ability to write a multitude of fics. I'm happy to talk about any of these fics if you want to come into my inbox or my messages.

[mashithamel]

When I first heard Rand would be working in a sanitarium in season 2 and he’d have a friend named Errol, I was kind of annoyed. Why would they spend precious time in a location and on a character that aren’t in the books, when there is so much ground to cover and so many characters to introduce?

But they used this setting and this character so economically, and so efficiently, that I have been completely converted. They didn’t waste a moment of screentime for Errol, and in only a few minutes justified his creation as a terrific vehicle for exposition and to introduce so many important concepts.

As soon as Rand walks in the door we’re introduced to the Aiel War (specifically—I means we got Blood Snow last season but it wasn’t put in a lot of context). We get a personal view into how much Cairhein specifically was affected by it (the effects of which are mentioned a couple more times this season), as well as giving it a relative timeframe—Errol is much older than Rand, so it wasn’t just a few years ago.

We are reminded that Rand looks like the Aiel even with shaving his head, reminding us about his adoption and that he’s an outsider. Here in Cairhein, even when people know and like him, the citizens are likely to have a gut reaction of surprise or fear when they first see him, something that may contribute to his difficulties ruling the place down the road. We are reminded that they are considered fierce fighters, and introduce that their women also fight and are considered deadly.

We are introduced to sword forms! We didn’t get Lan training Rand in either season (although it sounds like we will finally get it next season!), so it’s nice to learn he’s been getting at least some introductory training if he’s going to be a blademaster eventually. It’s also very consistent with the books for Rand to take advantage of opportunities to learn whatever and from whoever he can. We’re reminded about Rand’s heron-marked blade (before it does its important thing and melts in episode 8) and make the connection that it is carried by blademasters.

So importantly, we see how kind Rand is. He clearly knows and likes this crazy old man who’s calling for the guards. He speaks to him kindly without a trace of annoyance that they’re having the same conversation they do everyday (anyone who cares for people with dementia can probably understand that is really hard at times!). He puts Errol’s shoes on for him. This isn’t quite washing feet, which Biblically speaking is an act of humbling one’s self, but it’s definitely the sort of thing you wouldn’t expect the Promised One to be doing routinely. Right now it’s his job to do, but he does it with the care and compassion you might have for an elderly family member. He defends and comforts Errol when another employee is cruel. At heart Rand is kind and loving. Killing, ordering executions, sending people into danger where some will definitely die are all things he will need to do as Dragon Reborn, and his struggle with this will inform a large part of his arc over the next few seasons.

We see the inequality of the Cairheinin system (and then more blatently at the dinner party). Unsurprisingly the Cairheinin separate their health care by wealth and power, and it sounds like the poor ones may not even have a garden to walk around in? The Two Rivers doesn’t really have this type of inequality, and some of the first things Rand does in the books as the Dragon Reborn is make the elite start treating the poor and lower classes more fairly.

And of course we get PTSD and mental illness. Both PTSD and fears of going mad are important for Rand later, so this early introduction helps define the stakes for him.

It was such a short scene, and I’m sure there are other details those with more skill could expand on (the horse that Rand sets upright? the color palate?). I just really appreciated how much the writers crammed into an original character to help lay the groundwork not just for this season but for seasons (hopefully) to come.

[gx-gameon]

I keep thinking about how you said the gang will pretty much take Chazz in after he finds out and keep imagining a scene like this

https://youtu.be/zFr_uosNXpo?si=J8OdwjN-lGF478pH

Chazz: I just...wanna keep everyone safe.

Jaden: Same...and that includes you too.

Chazz: What?

Jaden: Yeah gotta make sure you're safe too Chazz, you're family now.

Chazz voice cracking: Oh...huh...*trying desperately not to cry.*

Ya pretty much. I think this little tournament they are all at will turn into its own arc.

Jaden tells Chazz. He and Jesse stay with Jaden’s family. But during the final duel of the tournament something happens.

It’s the final duel and of course it’s come down to Jaden and Yugi. (The tournament had different levels I’m not sure yet is the DM crew was participating or spectating. But a Duel against the King of Games is the prize for the winner of the tournament. A shot at the title)

But some magic happens that splits reality.

Jaden sees Yugi shatter and screams “Dad!” Which is how the rest of the Gx cast find out who Jaden is.

At the same time

Yugi sees Jaden shatter and thinks he lost his son.

Cue the Gx cast working on their side and the DM cast working on theirs trying to find and fight the Big bad to put the two sides back together.

This forces the Gx crew to pull their weight as Jaden is distraught at seeing his dad shatter, and then seeing his whole family is gone.

Jesse and Chazz are both trying to help him through the panic. Jesse goes to take charge, (hes a good leader and naturally steps into the role in the Dark World) but Chazz stops him “the slacker is on the verge of a break down. You focus on him, I’ll take care of the others.” Chazz rallies the others.

There is some shock and hurt feelings about “waaan Jaden didn’t tell us :(“ Chazz is the one that yells at them to get their act together. We’re in a crisis now, hurt feelings later.

Mind you Jim and Axel were surprised but are taking care of business. They didn’t know Jaden as long and honestly it’s more surprising they didn’t figure it out given everything that happened in the Dark World.

Some of the others are upset but get over it. Some need to talk to Jaden to clear the air. And some are just mad. But none of that can happen right now because Jaden is super out of it and they are in a crisis.

On the DM side

They are furious.

At first they thought Jaden was gone. And that nearly broke Yugi. But when they realized the other kids were gone as well and that the air reeked of Magic. Well it’s a villain that they can beat the breaks off of. And hopefully that will bring Jaden and the others back.

They are quite brutal in their efficacy. If anything has happened to Jaden or the other kids the villain isn’t walking away.

It’s to soon after the Dark World for them not to be in a hard panic right now.

I have a few ideas but this is in its infancy as an arc.

But at the end of the

Chazz and Jaden are together outside of the Manor. Everything is back to normal and Chazz is thinking about where he can go next. The league isn’t starting up for another month and he’s still out of cash. He can’t stay here now that the tournaments over.

Jaden walks over and sits down with him and tanks him for taking charge when Jaden was out of it. That he didn’t know what he would do if he lost anyone.

And Chazz finally gets it. The pressure they had put on Jaden for years the stress he’s been under. He gets it. He just spent however long it took for Jaden to get his feet back under him playing that role. It wasn’t fun being the leader everyone turns to.

“I just…wanted to keep everyone safe.” He feels worried having Jaden thank him. How many times had they just expected Jaden to do this and never thanked him?

Jaden nods because he understand that statement. But he also remembers Chazz doing something stupid and risking where they almost lost him. “Same…that includes you.”

Chazz is suprised. What is Jaden talking about right now.

But Jaden just rest a hand on his shoulder and smiles “ya got to make sure your safe to Chazz. Your family now.”

And Chazz’s brain must have misfired because what?

And Jadne just laughs. “I told my Dads about you back in our first year. About your brothers and all the crap they put on you. Oto-san wanted to ruin their business but I made him wait since I didn’t want anything to affect you. But we decided that if you wanted it, you would always have a place here. And after everything we’ve been through. Everything you just did for us. How can I not call you family.” He looks back over to just see Chazz in tears. He gives him a warm smile and wraps his arm around his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home. Dad’s waiting for us.”

And this is how Chazz became a permeant resident at Kaiba Manor.

Mind you the family had already decided that was Chazz’s room and that he was staying from the moment he walked into the house. They had known about the kid for years and Jaden basically acted like Chazz was his brother. They were just waiting to make the offer. Then everything went upside down, but hey we got here anyways.

[pancake-breakfast]

The last page of this chapter's got me mulling again over a theory I've had since I first went through the Shibuya arc regarding Yuuji's domain expansion....

Warning: Major manga spoilers ahead through chapter 264

With the end of this chapter, we finally get to see something I'm sure many people have anticipated: Yuuji's domain. When Sukuna gets swooped up in it, there's a bit of an expectation that Yuuji will immediately start using its automatic hit function to beat the everloving crap out of him. But instead, we get this.

That's right. No taking advantage of the situation to launch a first attack. Just Yuuji smiling and extending a friendly fist to Sukuna as if they weren't in a life-or-death battle five seconds earlier.

We've had a few instances where people have been seemingly transported to different locations. It's pretty common with domain expansions, though it's worth noting that even most of the human-cast domains (as opposed to the curse-cast ones) have a distinctly otherworldly appearance.

In contrast, Yuuji's is amazingly mundane. It's just a train station. It doesn't appear to go on forever. Nothing is changing or fluctuating oddly in it. We're not even given its name. It's just... here.

Perhaps in the next chapter or two we'll find that the train station itself is an integral part of Yuuji's domain, but right now, I think it's significance is more in that it's a place of transition. I'll get to that in a bit. First, I want to mention a few other times we've seen people seemingly transported elsewhere, specifically with or around Yuuji.

I'm sure we all remember the first.

Dear delusional Todoh.... Suddenly, he has memories of something that never happened, and because it's Todoh, it's easy to write this off as his own delusion. He already has a very active imagination when it comes to his idol encouraging him as he fights.

But then it happens again to someone else.

Gotta love how Todoh's fake memories are in anamorphic widescreen while Choso's are in 4:3 like he's watching something on broadcast television in the 90's.

Anyway.

While Choso's behavior in the fight against Kenjaku near the end of the Shibuya arc seems very similar to Todoh's, with them both insisting they're Yuuji's brother despite Yuuji's protests and becoming incredibly dedicated to looking after Yuuji because of it, the thing is, Choso lacks Todoh's tendency toward overactive imagination. In fact, while the exact scene that plays out in Choso's fake memory of course never happened (and Choso is well aware of that fact afterward), it turns out they indeed share a parent.

There's one more scene of this sort that I want to highlight, and that's this one.

This final conversation always struck me as a bit odd, and the further I get into JJK, the more odd it seems. We have a bit of a precedent for characters having strange visions right before they die, first with Nanami, then this scene, and then of course the Airport Scene that comes much later... but two things really stand out to me with this one. First, it's the only instance of a curse having a reflective, out-of-location moment like this just before their death. (Mahito's moment is very clearly imagined, and he doesn't even die from it since it's Kenny who finally does him in.) Second, Sukuna is there.

In the Airport Scene, the only people who join Gojo are those who are already dead, and Jojo's scene starts out that way. Both Hanami and our little squid friend were killed earlier in Shibuya. Jogo is the only one left. And then Sukuna shows up to... give him a pep talk and congratulate him on a job well done? To give him so much comfort right before his demise that this cursed spirit of fire and volcanoes finds himself crying?

That doesn't sound very Sukuna-like.

I dunno, maybe it is. He did congratulate Gojo's corpse after their fight, and at the point of Jojo's death, the volcano curse is the first one to aside from Gojo to pose anything resembling a challenge to Sukuna.

Or maybe Yuuji, who took to heart his grandfather's dying wish, is rubbing off on Sukuna a bit.

We tend to forget that this clause about being surrounded by people who care about him is just as much a part of Yuuji's grandfather's dying wish as the part about protecting others. (I think Yuuji himself mentions it again somewhere else, but for the life of me I can't remember where.) Yuuji enters Jujutsu Society with a death sentence on his head. And while he doesn't understand that sentence at the time, he tells Gojo he's already decided how he's going to die.

Point being, dying surrounded by those he cares about is immensely important to Yuuji.

Now's a good time to point out that both Todoh and Choso nearly killed Yuuji right before they each had their vision. A vision of friendship and camaraderie, where no one was dying or alone, but instead both Todoh and Choso found themselves surrounded by people they cared about... and Yuuji, who cared about them each in the way that most mattered to their souls.

So then we see a similar thing with Jogo. Just before his death, Sukuna standing before him, he sees himself standing with those he lost but considers as friends. And he sees Sukuna, someone he holds in utmost respect, who manages to both point out his flaws and laud his work in a way I suspect even Jogo didn't know he wanted to hear.

Given all that, and given that a person's domain expansion isn't simply a manifestation of a person's technique, but also of their soul, I've long suspected these visions that others have had around Yuuji when death is near have been a reflexive use of his own technique. And because it's Yuuji's technique and Yuuji wants so much to die surrounded by friends, this technique doesn't simply project a nice scene for people, but also creates an air of friendliness and acceptance between Yuuji and the person who is either killing him or dying. (I'll note again that Yuuji only softened Mahito up, but did not quite bring him to the brink of death.)

The one seeming outlier to this that I can think of is the Airport scene. To the best of our knowledge, Yuuji was nowhere near Gojo at the time of Gojo's death.

But Sukuna was.

Perhaps that same resonance between him and Sukuna that allows Yuuji to make use of Sukuna's techniques has extended such that Sukuna is unconsciously using Yuuji's technique at the moment of Gojo's death.

Which is something I literally just put together now, so hang on a second. I need to process for a bit.

Ok, I'm back.

If this theory's true, then what could possibly be of comfort to the King of Curses himself? He claims his only passion now is chasing his own hedonism. But we really don't know very much about him. He seeks pleasure in food, fighting, and sex, but what made him decide that was the path to go down? Was he always like this, or did something happen to make him let go of any ideals or strong connections he might have had?

Which brings me back to my previous post where I discuss the theory that Yuuji and Sukuna are more similar in personality than one might immediately guess.

I'm not exactly sure how that will manifest. One would think Ura-ume at least is close enough to Sukuna that they'd show up at the train station at some point. But the relationship between Sukuna and Yuuji has always been strained. It seems unlikely that they'll suddenly be uncle and nephew suddenly going on an amicable adventure together.

Then again, Yuuji is standing here now in front of Sukuna, fist held out in a friendly gesture rather than in an aggressive one, smiling as if he's asking any of his classmates if they want to go out for ramen real quick.

So I suppose we'll see.

[cellarspider]

20/30 Special delivery

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We return to a movie that has never been to medical school, Prometheus. 

Here it is. The scene that everybody remembers because it gave a fair few people the screaming heebies. This is the movie's take on the chestburster scene–except for the less impactful, more literal version of the chestburster scene we’ll get later, I mean. This one, though, this one, they got it right.

Content warnings for gore, nudity, nude gore, exhaustive discussions of the place of chestbursting in franchise history.

But first! I saw a tag with a desire to see the scene with David and the star map. To spare everyone from watching the rest of the movie to get there, here it is!

[See previous post for lengthy description of the events. I didn’t talk about the music in this before though! It really adds to the sense of wonder in this scene. It reminds me of Daft Punk’s Overture to Tron Legacy (2010), another beautiful and flawed movie. Given the modern use of temporary music in editing that definitely sneaks into what directors demand of scores, there’s a chance this was a direct influence. In terms of the “oh wow, space!” feeling it gives me, I’d also mention the Star Trek TNG opening theme.]

Anyway! On with the horror.

In Alien, the creature’s life cycle was developed by writer Dan O'Bannon, who had two major ideas for its early appearances: sexual, reproductive threat directed at a male character, and Crohn’s disease. O’Bannon had Crohn’s, and he said that inspired the idea of a critter chewing its way out of a man’s guts. 

That personal connection has been lost through subsequent media, in part because the series has continued to use the same creature and the same method of killing, minor deviations like in Covenant and tasteless ones like AvP Requiem notwithstanding. The chestburster is a thing that can only ever really work once in a movie. The first time is relatively drawn out, made a setpiece of the movie, and is a horrifying plot twist for anyone who goes in blind. After that? Drawing it out may risk becoming meaningless gore or boring, so most movies have chosen to just have the little bugger pop out within seconds. It’s the sideshow before you get to the main event, despite being the iconic scene of Alien.

Prometheus’ equivalent scene wins back a fair amount of tension by altering the details of the event, if not the general arc of it. It certainly hammers on the reproductive horror aspect, but loses the original subversion of targeting a male character. Which is a shame, because male-targeted reproductive horror is still boundary-pushing. From the world of horror gaming, Outlast: Whistleblower produced some notably panicked reactions from male players when they encountered the emasculating, specifically reproductive threat of Eddie Gluskin. (Content warning for gore, death, forced feminization, misogynistic language, censored nudity.)

Regardless, we have The Chestburster Scene again, but now it’s in the back half of the movie, and happens to the main human protagonist.

I find it very odd that this movie is so self-consciously iterating over things that were first done in Alien. It’s like watching a devout Catholic pray at the Stations of the Cross.

Speaking of crosses

Before we get to the main event, there’s the first actual attempt at character work between David and Shaw in the movie, as we’re in the final act. David confiscates Shaw’s cross as she wakes up from her post-boyfriend-barbeque faint. “It may be contaminated,” he says.

Shaw’s christianity is one of the few character traits in the film that ties into one of the themes, and has its own arc. She’s giving up her cross to the person who killed her partner, a metaphor for a crisis of faith which is so blatant as to barely be a metaphor at all. And, given the general arc of how these things go, means she’s going to get it back at some point. The context for it is going to be confusing and disappointing, frankly.

And it’s especially weird given the other metaphor going on simultaneously: David runs some scans on her, and declares she’s three months pregnant. This is a non-virgin virgin pregnancy. She is Alien Mary. This, then, is the narrative reason why Shaw is infertile–so that she could be the Mary figure, and, more practically for the plot, have foreknowledge that something was wrong. 

Except it really didn’t have to be that way to make this work. While christian allegory and the creation of life are themes in this movie, Shaw’s infertility was handled with zero grace. And honestly, the movie could work without it–Shaw and Holloway did not have romantic chemistry, as far as I could tell. Lean into that! Just say they haven’t had sex in ages. This scene would actually flow better, because Shaw explicitly objects that she only had sex with Holloway “ten hours ago. There's no bloody way I'm three months pregnant.”

Which again hammers in how stupid fast this movie has been racing its characters toward their doom, but I’m immediately distracted by David pronouncing “it's not exactly a traditional fetus.”

It certainly isn’t. It’s an alien squid, placed there by the holy spirit of black goo. She’s all set to give birth to Squesus. 

I think that’s the only worse way he possibly could’ve said it.

David, frankly, gets some of his worst dialog of the movie here, because he is infected by The Plot for a bit. “It must feel like your God has abandoned you,” he says, after sedating her, “to loose Dr. Holloway after your father died under such similar circumstances.” Which leaves one momentarily with the wild mental image of Dad Shaw sacrificing himself to a flamethrower-welding corpo, but no, David means ebola. David found this out via that dream-watching tech that exists solely to be a mildly unnecessary plot point. Blessedly, this is the last time we see any mention of it.

It’s very strange, how the movie is stuffed full of plot and edited so tightly around the plot that characters barely have room to breathe, yet what it prioritizes as plot-relevant is so scattershot. This failing is also inflicted upon the part of the otherwise very effective Chestburster: The Prequel scene.

Shaw attacks the people who come to take her away to cryo, running in her underwear to the PAULING MED-POD the movie very loudly announced earlier, so that you wouldn’t forget it exists. She tells the PAULING MED-POD that she needs an emergency caesarian. The PLOTPOINT MED-POD informs her that it’s only formatted for male patients.

I’ve seen many people complain this makes no sense. It’s in Vickers’ quarters,  why would she have an expensive medical device that she can’t fully use? Others counter that no, it makes sense, because the med-pod was actually installed for Peter Weyland, thus justifying its male specificity. He’s a selfish bastard, he got it for himself, plot hole avoided.

…Except that doesn’t address the more fundamental problem: What does this add to this scene, to balance out the fact that the audience is now distracted by this information? It slows Shaw down a bit as she figures out how to cue up a foreign body extraction from the abdominal cavity, adding to the tension. But you don’t need that to be what draws out the scene. Maybe the PAULING MED-POD has a slow boot-up sequence. Maybe someone follows her there, and she has to fight them off, possibly killing them in her panic. A dead body in the room would solve an actual logical problem with a later scene.

It’s frustrating, because the pacing of this scene is actually excellent, as is its premise. Shaw has to forego anesthesia and make do with self-administered local painkillers, because the prosthetics and CG teams have done a bang-up job making her stomach writhe unpleasantly, making it very clear that whatever’s in there is mobile enough to be a danger to her, even if it’s removed. 

The pods instruments are mostly CG, but its combination of unhurried routine and abrupt, industrial roboticism adds to the uncomfortable nature of the scene. Sound design is also important here, with all sound effects well-chosen, and mixed to imply claustrophobic closeness and how trapped Shaw is.

The creature itself? Eh. It’s a slightly phallic squid, and squids were already slightly phallic to begin with. They added on a slightly vaginal mouth, which is also a lateral move--squid mouths already look quite a lot like an unworksafe orifice with a beak tucked away in it. Unless you're looking at Promachoteuthis sulcus, whose inner lip structures fold into patterns that look distressingly like human teeth.

Honestly, this is freakier than the actual prop. Good job, Promachoteuthis sulcus. You're only 25 mm long, and a delightful tiny terror.

...But the fact that Shaw’s stuck in the pod with her flailing squid-child is what actually adds another minute of fear and wince-worthy pain, as the almost comically brutal medical staple gun closes her incision and the pod slowly opens up.

She tries to kill it with what appears to be a soothing mist of decontamination spray. This is the one other stumble of the scene, because it’s just… I mean, look at it.

It’s just been spritzed with Febreze. There’s nothing that leaves you wondering if the thing’s still alive for later, you know it’s still alive.

But overall, a well-done scene. The standout horror scene of the movie, which is light on scares. That sparsity wouldn’t even be worth mentioning if the movie were going for slow tension, but with its strange blend of existential quandaries and unremarkable horror tropes, it takes a very strong, singular scene to feel like the tension has actually paid off. I don’t think it completely balances out the deficits of the rest of the horror, but it very nearly manages it, and does manage to be memorable.

Next time: An entirely underwhelming horror scene, and the movie takes another swing at having themes.

⛬

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/30/memory-the-origins-of-alien-review-francis-bacon-greek-myth-dan-o-bannon-sci-fi-classic-film 

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/aliens-chestburster-mechanism-behind-the-scenes 

https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Seegson 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3314219/how-do-u-v-coordinates-work 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_staple (medical gore cw)

https://sites.uw.edu/pauling2020/ 

https://www.paulinamarket.com/

Overflow Ramble #1

A shot of the screen on Chekhov’s g–I mean the PAULING MED-POD, showing the text “EMERGENCY PROCEDURE”, and that it is “AWT VERBAL CMD”. The med-pod turns out to be a Weyland product, because all corporations in Alien movies are either Weyland, Yutani, or Seegson, if you’re particularly unlucky (cite 3). 

They made the mistake of putting more actual words on here, and so I’m squinting at the top right corner at “CARDIAC STRESS TEST”, “ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHY” AND “MECH ALGN TCH”, which means the pod appears to think she needs to have her heart checked or her wheels aligned.

But what I find funniest is that there’s coordinate sliders in the center bottom: X/Y/Z and U/W. You know where I recognize that from? 3D modeling. U/V/W are used as an alternate coordinate system in that context (cite 4). Somebody was designing this, thinking “well, we need more buttons. Where can I get more buttons?” and then looked at the horrid mass of options and sliders in their modeling software and realized they had the answer.

Overflow Ramble #2

A close-up of David’s hands, holding a sample container and placing Shaw’s necklace inside. Two details, one of them insane, the other just plain funny: First of all, this is a different set of hands than the one when David was messing with the black goo–there was a small but notable blemish on the fingerprint that wasn’t there, proving once again that hand and arm doubles are one of the odder things you don’t think about in film production.

Second: The container is turned so that the label on it is facing away. This allows you to see the necklace, but it also highlights a completely flat Braille label, reading “PN#ZTZouSthe#Z”, which is obviously very informative.

But the real reason why the label is facing away is because it almost hides the fact that the label says “PRODUCT CODE” on it, which means he may have just put Shaw’s necklace in an empty peanut butter jar.

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[deathmetalunicorn1]

Hi its me! Cupcake berserker reader anon!

Can we get readee during the whole cake arc since she's rather new to the crew big mom isnt fully aware of who she is.

Reader tries to sneak around the island trying to find sanji and she bumps into general katakuri. She knows hes the enemy but she cant help but be amazed by him.

Hijinxs ensue as reader accidentally impress big mom and her family starts to adore reader

At the end I really want her to comfort and violently head butt sanji when he yells at luffy when judge leaves. Ive always wanted to do that she could say something along the lines of " I'm the dumbest person I know sanji but right now your the dumb one! You say that you hate everything about your heartless brothers yet you're allowing your shitty daddy get to you?! Hes right! Youre nothing that he planned but those are the parts are what I love you big dummy!!!" She would head butt him a few more times to get the message across.

I also think she would be really cold to nami after that one scene when sanji and the strawhats reunite. Think of the coldness of marika from " chilling in my 30s" if you dont know her you can get a clip of her on youtube!

I hope this is alright!

-It was supposed to be an easy mission, get to Whole Cake Island, find Sanji, then meet up with the rest of the crew in Wano!

-However, with your captain being Luffy, nothing ever goes to plan. You knew this well, but when you found yourself alone, apart from Nami and Luffy and now staring up at one of the Charlotte Family’s Sweet Commanders, Katakuri.

-He didn’t know what to make of you when you literally ran into him and almost took him off his feet, despite not even reaching his knees.

-He felt a pull towards you, you were so strong, but so soft and delicate looking, choosing to ignore the battle axe you were dragging behind you, wearing a cute, fluffy dress and looking just downright adorable!!

-Big Mom didn’t know what to make of you when her son brought you to her, she knew that you were a part of the Straw Hat Crew, much like Judge’s son who was due to marry Pudding soon, but she didn’t know much about you, since you were new to Luffy’s crew.

However, you looked so adorable! You didn’t look like a pirate at all! How could someone as dainty and adorable looking as you be a pirate?!

-However, Big Mom shocked everyone, as Katakuri had never shown any interest in women before, “You should marry Katakuri!!”

-Katakuri wasn’t against it, actually happy, but he wasn’t showing it, but you were polite in your refusal, “I apologize, but I’m not looking to marry anyone right now.” Many were surprised of your refusal, as most would never think to, but this showed how naïve you were, you needed to be protected!!

-However, when Katakuri went to grab you, you showed off your skills, showing why you were in Luffy’s crew as you easily knocked Katakuri back, using the blunt edge of your axe, showing your strength and unfortunately getting a lot of attention on you.

-Big Mom and Katakuri both were impressed with your raw strength, Big Mom knew that any children you had, especially with Katakuri, were going to be insanely powerful!!

-An hour later you were finally reunited with your crew, including Sanji, and you cheerfully called out to him, “Sanji!!” his brothers saw you and you instantly took all four of them off their feet.

-You held your hand over your lips, “Ah~? There’s four of you?” Nami and Luffy were both yelling at Sanji as you noticed a larger man walking away and Sanji sneered down at them, telling them all to leave.

-You knew this was just a front, as Sanji would never talk to Nami like that, and he had way more respect for Luffy than to talk to him like that.

-You glared hard as you leapt up, leaving your axe by Nami, “You big- DUMMY!!” as you shouted your head came down hard on his own head, head-butting him and sending him to the ground hard.

-His brothers were in shock, as you didn’t look like a fighter as you shouted down at Sanji, hands on your hips, “You’re going to let him get to you even though you can’t stand a thing about them? You big dummy! Nobody is going to be perfect- those imperfections are what I love about you- what we all love about you- except maybe Zoro.”

-You calmed down towards the end of your little rant, losing steam as he stared up at you in shock from his spot on the ground.

-Sanji then flew back, blood spurting front him nose as he got an eyeful as you turned, hearing Luffy call out your name and saw your panties and you turned, rushing over, “Sanji- are you okay?!”

-You didn’t see what hurt him, not realizing what he had seen, as his brothers were surrounded by flames of rage as you held him up, resting his head against your chest, unintentionally making things worse as Sanji felt like he could die happy.

-Nami held her hand to her face, shaking her head, a bit exasperated, but she knew that you got through to Sanji more, but that didn’t mean he was off the hook!!

-Once you were all sailing away to Wano, Sanji waited on you and Nami hand and foot, trying to appease you both, as he knew you were both upset with him.

-Nami was pettier than you were, trying to drag it out, while you were showering him with love and attention, so he would never want to leave ever again.

-He didn’t, especially if he might get to have a glimpse of heaven again, but nobody else needed to know that.

[ninjakk]

The song within WWX's heart

Hearing LWJ softly singing Wangxian for the first time, back when they were trapped in the Xuanwu of Slaughter's cave, left a profound impression on WWX. Even if he was slipping in and out of consciousness at the time, it still affected him deeply. On a subconscious level, this melody means so much to WWX and the way MXTX weaves this delicately throughout the plot is just perfection.

The first time we see WWX play Wangxian he is using a hastily improvised bamboo flute, while on Dafan Mountain. This is prior to WWX or indeed the reader (on a first read) being aware of its name or the significance it holds.

To stifle it, Wei WuXian calmed his feelings and assuredly played another melody. The melody had drifted over his mind naturally. It was relaxed and tranquil, contrasting with the bizarre and ear-piercing one from before

Chapter 10 ExR translations

WWX calms his emotions and tires to relax. Trying to think of something happy, something soothing, that will quell WNs killing intent. Which is when this tune naturally comes to his mind. Hearing the song instantly pacifies WN and he begins to follow WWX.

Just prior to this, WWXs emotions were incredibly high and very raw. Only a few days ago, he was forcefully resurrected into a stranger's body. He's had an altercation with JC and inadvertently upset his beloved late shijie's son. Then he bumps into the man he's been subconsciously pining for since they were teenagers. With his mind stirring up painful memories from his past life, it's so poignant that this is the song that resurfaces in his subconscious. As something that makes him feel safe and secure.

After the above, it's not* until the Xuanwu of Slaughter cave arc that we are finally unofficially introduced to Wangxian. In this chapter LWJ showcases his beautiful singing voice to a very drowsy WWX, who is slipping in and out of consciousness. We later find out that this is the aptly named Wangxian, a love song that LWJ has composed especially for WWX.

It had originally been an offhand remark. He was chatting with Lan WangJi to pass the time and didn’t at all expect him to agree. Yet, after a few moments of silence, a low yet mild voice echoed softly through the hollow cave. Lan WangJi really did begin to sing. Wei WuXian closed his eyes, turned around, and spread out his limbs, “It sounds nice.” He asked, “What’s it called?” Lan WangJi seemed to murmur something. Wei WuXian opened his eyes, “What was it called again?”

Chapter 55

MXTX doesn't give us much in terms of a description of the melody at this point, probably in an attempt to keep most of the readers guessing a little longer with regards to how LWJ knew it was WWX back on Dafan Mountain. But we can see WWX appreciates the tune and seems quite content with everything at that very moment. Over the past few days, since beating the legendary beast, WWX has been running a fever. LWJ has been diligently looking after him, passing him spiritual energy and keeping a fire lit in order to keep him warm - which WWX obviously appreciates. There is also a very sweet moment where he questions if LWJ had been allowing him to lie on his lap while he was drowsy. It's a very tender scene and marks a definite turning point in their relationship - especially on LWJ's behalf.

The next time we see WWX play Wangxian, is back in his second life - where he's very much starting to accept his feelings for LWJ. The feelings he's had since they were young are flooding to the surface and he's blissfully content just being around the other. They are on their way to the very place he died years ago, but he's so drunk on the way he is feeling about LWJ, he doesn't care at all. He feels incredibly safe and happy with him - which is when he inadvertently plays their love song once more.

He even had the spirit to enjoy the fields under the moonlight, pulling out the bamboo flute at his waist. As natural as ever, he played a tune. The flute had a limpid timbre. Lan WangJi’s footsteps hesitated slightly as Wei WuXian felt something inside of him suddenly light up.

Chapter 66

Just prior to the above scene, WWX is feeling loved, cared for and so happy his heart won't stop fluttering! He's remembering his parents, the love they had for each other and for him. All of these lovely images filling his head and beautiful feelings flooding his heart. Just as he is so happy and content, a melody comes drifting in his mind and he plays it on the flute under the moonlight once again.

It comes so naturally to him, because this is how he felt when he heard it originally. He felt happy, even though he was stuck in a cave and suffering from a fever - which is quite telling about how he must feel at LP at times! He felt cared for. He felt quite content rolling around on someone's LWJ's lap, while his head was tenderly stroked. He was lulled back to an unconscious state, hearing LWJ sing this melody to him as he felt all of these sweet emotions. He felt these so strongly, that the tune imprinted on his heart, and in turn his memory for all these years. A song can be a powerful thing, especially when associated with strong emotions.

WWX finally remembers where he has heard the tune before and is absolutely ecstatic to learn that LWJ not only composed the melody, but he is the only one to have heard it.

To me, there is definitely a strong chance that WWX also plays Wangxian during the Phoenix Mountain arc. This is probably more apparent on a re-read, once you are more familiar with the description of Wangxian later in the novel.

He held up Chenqing and blew into it, fingers shifting. The clear sound of the flute rushed into the sky as though it was a bird, lingering as it echoed through the mountain.

Chapter 69

WWX has just been flirting with LWJ, throwing flowers at him and trying to attract his attention. So it's safe to assume LWJ is on his mind, even if he is currently participating in a competition. Taking up a comfy spot on a low hanging branch of a tree, he basks in the sunlight feeling relaxed and comfortable. He is about to calm the fierce corpses and ghosts, summoning them to surrender in the Jiang sect's name. As such, he plays a soothing song on Chenqing that is clear, melodious and soared like birds in the sky. To me, at least on a re-read, it is quite obvious WWX is playing Wangxian here. As we are given more descriptions of the tune later in the novel, it all pieces together quite nicely.

WWX playing Wangxian at this moment in time also adds to why LWJ simply lost control and kissed him not long after he played on his flute. WWX had inadvertently played their love song! The very song LWJ had composed just for him! Not to mention the teasing and flirting WWX subject him to earlier on as well. Of course I'm not condoning LWJ's actions, but considering his character, it's no wonder he lost control and forcibly kissed WWX after all of this. Especially if he heard the almost teasing tune of his love song being played on a flute in the distance.

The last time we see Wangxian being played is of course at the end of the novel, when we finally learn what the melody is called.

Swaying left and right atop the donkey, Wei WuXian took the flute from his waist and placed it by his lips. The limpid notes flew across the sky like birds. Lan WangJi halted and listened quietly. It was the song he sang for Wei WuXian when they were stuck in the Xuanwu cave. It was also the song that Wei WuXian just so happened to have played at Dafan Mountain, the song that enabled Lan WangJi to confirm his identity.

Chapter 113

We can see the melody is described as limpid (or clear) in tone and the song evokes images of birds flying in the sky. This description is very similar to the quotes referenced above, which I think is very much intentional. If WWX did play Wangxian to calm the entities down on Phoenix Mountain, as he did with WN at the beginning of the novel, how sweet is it that he uses this song to soothe the poor souls that are in turmoil and full of resentment.

I think there is quite a lot of subtext hinting that WWX playing Wangxian at the beginning of the novel is far from a happy accident. That it is in fact something he has done since hearing the tune all those years ago. It even states in the novel, he plays the tune "as natural as ever", which could be interpreted as he's played this tune many, many times in the past - during both of his lives.

*Honourable mention:

Another scene that could possibly include WWX playing Wangxian once again, is during the chapter when we first meet DrunkJi.

Stopping at a desolated area, Wei WuXian took out his flute by his waist, placed it by his lips, and played a melody. After this, he waited silently.

Chapter 30

Obviously we don't have enough of a description here to tell if WWX just played Wangxian to summon WN. But it would add to the reason why an inebriated LWJ reacts in such a jealous way towards WN when he appears on the scene. Especially as he seems particularly annoyed at WWX playing his flute for WN. Granted, it might just be because he drunkenly stumbled upon WWX and WN together when he woke up from his intoxicated catnap. With LWJ still feeling the sting from WWX unwittingly playing their exclusive love song to another man back on Dafan Mountain. Awkward...

But it could also be LWJ being roused from his drunken slumber to the tantalising sound of a flute playing their song.

I totally headcanon WWX humming the melody throughout his first life. Soothing an upset A-Yuan with this lovely tune. Harvesting radishes while he sings to himself quietly. Tinkering with his inventions in the cave, while whistling the melody and hearing it reverberate all around him. The Wen remnants and the crazy Yiling Laozu cultists camping out at the base of the mountain with their little banner, would even swear they could hear a calming song softly echo around the burial mounds in the middle of the night at times.

There's just no way he didn't hum or play Wangxian after her heard it drifting in and out of consciousness. Especially as he can remember it so clearly in his second life, whenever he's really happy or needs to calm down.

In fact, I really wouldn't be surprised if LWJ hummed Wangxian to WWX while passing him spiritual energy when they were hiding in a cave after escaping Nightless City.

It also makes me wonder if WWX used this melody to calm the entities in the Burial Mounds back when he was trapped there. Every time we have seen WWX use a tune to calm corpses, it's (possibly) been this tune. It's not too much of a jump to assume he used it in the Burial Mounds to suppress the resentful energy at the time. It was probably very much fresh in his memory still at this point - only a month or so since he first heard the tune.

How beautiful would it be if the song that LWJ composed out of love for WWX is what essentially helped calm the resentful entities and save his soulmate's life while he was trapped in a literal hell on earth.

[pyrotechnicarus]

what's your experience re: the difference between writing prose and scripts 😭 i have to write plays for the first time for school and i miss my wife Purple Prose

Congrats on writing your first play! And I definitely empathize -- switching from one form to the other was hard for me, and something I still struggle with. Musical theater is arguably the novelist's crutch into scriptwriting because we have access to songs -- the kind of access to the characters' thoughts and intentions you get throughout a novel, you can inject into a song, whereas straight playwrights (especially realist playwrights) don't always have that built-in genre convention for theatricalizing their character's minds.

Unless you're working at a level of heightened text in your play that allows interior monologues to be spoken aloud or narrators to describe things (which, hey, you might want to consider!) then you'll have to really work on externalizing both beauty (your beautiful descriptions of things in your short stories? now someone has to say them out loud. Who would? What sort of person would speak this way? Would anyone?) and character development (often my playwriting teacher says that every shift in a piece has to be signaled through an action. A character can't just change their mind. That change doesn't exist to the audience until they do something with that new perspective -- hurt another character, avoid a situation, indulge in something they've opposed before, etc.) Writing for theater really forces you to make your character arcs visible in a way that prose doesn't.

On the other hand, you now have access to a ton of other tools that you didn't have as a prose writer! These usually fall under the broad umbrella of "theatricalization," but really just mean everything you can do in the theater that you can't do in any other medium. The intercut scene before Me, Myself, and I in Adamandi -- the casual, silent cohabitation of the past couple and the present couple at the start of Ghost Story -- the use of the edge of the stage to represent suicide in Adamandi -- all only work because the theatrical audience is willing to accept thematic intersections of space, time, and character because of the boundaries of the stage. When can two things happen simultaneously? When can your character make eye contact with an audience member? When can they leave the stage? What does having collective physical bodies perceiving your art allow you to do - when are they crying together, laughing together, when does their pulse race? Can you make them feel scared? Try out writing scenes that take place in the dark, in a spotlight, with a silent actor onstage, or with significant costume changes that can carry an equal amount of the story to your stage directions and spoken text.

Finally, I guess my overall advice would be to study plays you admire (my benchmarks are currently Is God Is, Escaped Alone, Streetcar Named Desire, M. Butterfly, and various Paula Vogel plays -- And Baby Makes Seven is my fave but The Baltimore Waltz is probably a gentler introduction to her) for their conventions and copy the shit out of them. Imitate their formatting, for a bit. Steal a staging that works in your context. Cut your dialogue down viciously -- words and exchanges that take a few seconds to read on the page take precious minutes to say out loud. Watch out for conversational cul-de-sacs -- ideally each line should advance the scene, advance the characters, and advance the plot. If your character is saying stuff like "What's your name?" then maybe the scene needs to start later -- you want every line to be one that only that character would be able to say.

Relatedly, and I think a failing of mine when I made the switch that is now getting better: don't rely on tone indicators to do the work of adaptation. Your actors and directors will ignore them, first of all, but also each line should contain its proper reading -- it should be clear from the context of the scene whether your character is saying "Hello." (angrily) or "Hello." (haughtily). I try to limit myself to 10-20 tone lines per 90-page musical script, if that's a helpful benchmark for you (this is different from stage directions, but you should also not be using stage directions to take the place of good dialogue. Anything inconsequential -- he paces or chewing his lip or with a sly grin -- ought to be cut.)

Anyway, overall, have fun and do whatever it takes (including disobeying all the advice above) to FINISH IT! You'll only know once you have a full draft A. whether you want to keep going with this medium and B. what your storytelling is Like; how you can improve it. Good luck!