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randomfoggytiger · 5 months ago

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React: A Late-Canon Reviler Gives the Revival a Try (Founder's Mutation), Part II

This is gonna be quick and dirty because my keyboard’s acting up--

IT’S A CONTINUATION FROM MY STRUGGLE I?????????? NO WHY NO, PLEASE NO.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

WHY do those glasses not fit anymore?? If Mulder lifts his eyebrows, they don’t even touch his cheekbones. But they were fine last episode, what happened.

Mulder reminding us about William in yet another opening monologue. I may have the memory of a goldfish, Mulder, but I don’t have brain damage.

I’m already so tired.

Narration, narration, sudden voice change and drop, “Bringing Scully and I back together”-- okay, that’s straight-up David's voice.

Oh, good. A bloody eyeball. How marvelous.

If this is the brain Morse Code episode, I will throw hands.

I’m Dr. Sanjay. We’re both too tired.

WHAT’S WITH THE SHAKY CAM AS DR. SANJAY DETERIORATES.

I’m not gonna be nit-picky… okay, I am.

The X-Files has a certain style, aesthetically. Because of that, one has to operate inside the rules in order to cleverly bend them. Shaky cam AND close-up break two rules back-to-back.

This "modernization" isn’t a limbered stretch so much as a spinal dislocation.

Ghost in the Machine and Blood 2.0, I see. But worse.

The “Sanjay losing control” scene is… not too different from similar 90s ones.

But that’s the problem-- the visuals have updated, but not the method. And that leaves us with the impression that the director or screenwriter or both are either amateur or outdated.

It’s also incredibly cluttered and confusing. Not confusing in a way that would expertly translate the meltdown in Sanjay’s brain, but confusing in a way that bombards us, the audience, with compounding “lost in translation” errors.

Okay, welp, he’s dead.

WHY do Mulder and Scully sound so old? Was it absolutely necessary to suck the life force out of the actors every time they walked on set? For Pete’s sake, I’ve heard more life in David’s voice while reading a Lexus ad.

Okay, DD’s picking up a bit, and GA’s compensating with her expressions but none of this is engaging.

Minor nitpick-- and I know both actors complained about wardrobe later-- but the second Mulder gets pants that fit him and Scully remembers to finish buttoning up her top, the sooner I’ll get a glimpse of the old show. Just sayin’.

His pants will eventually swing to the opposite tragedy, copping a feel while forcing him to do a little Marilyn Monroe shimmy.

I shall call them Patriarchy Pants.

Scully knows Indian?

She really is the series’ language OC, isn’t she.

Mulder got this informant to trust him by flashing his puppy eyes. I mean… it’s always worked on Scully.

Speaking of which… where’s Scully?

I’m wracking my brain, but I thiiiiiiiiiiink it’s consistent, even pre-S9 canon, for Mulder to sneak off and fill Scully in later. So, no complaints. I think.

What is it about the comedy scene that didn’t work…?

Hm.

‘Kay, so, if this guy (Gupta, looked it up) is no longer a repressed homosexual-- like he chastises Mulder for being-- then why was he so skittish in the bar?

He didn’t know Sanjay was dead, so therefore he didn’t know he was in danger (note from the future: he isn't in danger... which explains his skittishness even less.)

So, is his jumpiness because of repressed or hidden homosexuality? But he says he's out and urges Mulder to come out, as well.

Perhaps he's saying one thing and living another, i.e. pretending to be out and proud to save face in front of Mulder.

But then... that would be the comedy in this scene-- that he would have to eat his words (ex. another guy opens the door on them and Gupta makes a big fuss trying to cover up the homosexuality of it all-- “no homo” dialed up to 11, etc.)

So, he was either scared to be on a hit list-- yet wasn’t aware he might be on one-- or scared of being outed-- yet didn't signal this in his actions or dialogue.

If this is Gupta’s only scene, it was a waste.

It was a waste of an introduction, regardless. But.

Oh, Scully’s doing an autopsy, got it.

Characters are playing by their strengths, got it.

Also, forgot to note, Mulder sensing the guys in the bar were bad news points to his years spent on the job. A great touch.

…Unless, now that I think of it, Gupta invited him to a gay or hookup bar, consequently making Mulder look like an out-of-touch old buffoon. Which… fits his characterization in My Struggle I, but I hope for better things.

I didn’t see any tension in Scully’s arms while pulling the instrument out of Sanjay’s ear, but, ya know, there weren’t perfect moments in OG canon, either.

Gupta’s still here, okay. (DD getting away with a bit of humor by having Mulder act slightly out-of-place chuggin down in a bar-- I see you.)

IT IS A GAY BAR.

MULDER’S AN IDIOT, CONFIRMED.

“He lived two lives.” Okay, that’s f-- “In two separate places.” NO, no, nonono-- get back over the unsubtle line before I whip out the broom, shooshooshooshooshoo.

Wait, why is Mulder explaining the autopsy results instead of Scully?

Even when he had a… siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Even when Mulder had a brewing theory in mind, he always let Scully explain all her results before asking pointed questions, hearing her findings, then crafting a theory and running it by her.

Here, Scully says, “I broke fingers to find words on palm"/"instrument went into these parts of the brain” and Mulder says “It went in at that angle then turned at this angle"/"[insert theory].”

When it SHOULD be: Scully explains fingers and cause of death, Mulder points at the pics and asks why the instrument’s angle changed, Scully says “it went in 90 degree angle then turned 60 degrees”, and Mulder concludes “Like he was hunting for something.”

The shots widen out or cut back for shock value, it seems. Sanjay’s body is shown obliquely until Scully says she “looked everywhere” for clues, which prompts the camera to cut to a wide shot and hang on his sawed-open skull. The timing’s oddly comedic, the music is light, and nothing about the scene meshes. It quickly pancakes, leaving us and the characters with dead (heh) air.

The dialogue leans “we’re gonna do this next” telling rather than natural conversation showing.

And-- I’ve gotta be frank-- I’ve not caught an ounce of chemistry from DD and GA aside from the scene where they were talk about phone stealing and Indian languages.

The car scene contributed nothing... except a kid accidentally fell over the hood. Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal covert set-up, I tell ya.

Sanjay’s other apartment scene was… weird. They walk around, find pictures of experiments on kids, barely react, trip the silent alarm so the police show up--

Sorry, no, wait. The police show up ASAP, in THIS part of town? NAH. Not happening.

Okay, the scene where Mulder has a… brain… thingy WORKS because it uses just the right amount of “new trick”: closeups without disorienting lens action slapped on top. THAT’s how you integrate a modernized technique into an older show; and it fits seamlessly into The X-Files.

SO WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS FROM THE GET-GO?

Also, Scully may have had cancer, but she never had migraines. Those seem to be reserved for Mulder.

Oh, we’re in Skinner’s office now. I guess.

The clips are so poorly paced, switching or holding or integrating at the weirdest times. It even undercuts Mulder’s quips or Scully’s reactions.

On a side note, DD and GA probably had a hard time finding their characters-- as they mentioned for both IWTB and the Revival-- because all they had to work off of was plot regurgitation. ....What do you do with that?

I love the touch of Skinner playing hardball until Corporate Interest Guy leaves, then immediately switching to, “I assume you’re going to need [classified] copies, right?”

…

…..

…….

Scully really doesn’t have much to add, does she?

OH, we’re in the basement now. We're just... here. The first scene of these two back down here and they're just. Here. ...'Kay.

Mulder and Scully talking over his experience is the closest I’ve gotten to mature MSR… and it’s ruined by Scully stating the obvious, “There were no sounds. I didn’t hear anything.”

LOOK, OKAY? Mulder became CATATONIC before with these exact same symptoms and was only saved by a secret science mumbo jumbo brain surgery, WHY ISN’T SHE WORRIED. It’s equivalent to her getting a nosebleed and just wiping it away, no big deal.

“Mulder, what are you hiding?”

He’s not hiding anything, Scully, he’s telling you.

But if he were, that’d be outta character even for Beanpole Sneakybritches. By this point, he’d have a functioning theory to share with the class-- which he did, lest we forget.

...Or developed a taste for Hercule Poirot drama while holed up in depressed isolation, I guess (which you left him to, Scully; so this is your fault, tangentially.) Which would be stupid.

(Note from the future: He was hiding something, but it didn't make sense how he leaped to that conclusion, anyway; so, logically, he has nothing to hide from her in this scene.)

But when's that stopped the show before?

“What are you hiding?”

“Sanjay heard sounds right before he died. It could be you, Mulder.”

WHAT.

Scully and Mulder established in the lab that Sanjay heard noises right before he died.

Mulder heard noises.

Tells Scully in the basement.

Scully: “I didn’t hear noises.” No reaction.

Scully: “What are you hiding?”

Mulder explains his frequency theory.

Scully doesn’t see how it fits.

Mulder: “What are you hiding?”

Scully: “Sanjay heard sounds right before he died. It could be you, Mulder.” No reaction.

PLEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE END MY SUFFERING.

16 min. in.

Been typing nearly an hour (a dying keyboard’ll do it to ya.)

“This is dangerous,” Scully says, flatly.

“When has that ever stopped us?” Mulder asks, brightly.

He is quite literally trying to pump life back into her-- WHO directed GA this way? You can tell which scenes she is given freer reign in (more natural, less muted) and which ones she is more tightly “guided” (less alive, more dead.)

How is she spry enough to be a field agent? How is Mulder? Skinner hasn’t aged a day but these two have been MOWED. DOWN. DD and GA aren’t like this in real life, so what gives?

Our Lady of Sorrows, go away.

It’s Karen Kosseff except it isn’t.

Mulder and Scully sneakily scare the daylights outta a Conservative-adjacent medical personnel with the dreaded threat of an “Obamacare” witchhunt... and at this point, the social commentary seems performative rather than intelligent.

I’m not gonna break it down by politics; but suffice to say, while Mulder and Scully were never above a little “campaign of misinformation”, but they've never stooped low enough to fearmonger-- in fact, they looked down on those who did.

CC-- he wrote this episode, too, right?-- turned them from FBI agents with ethics into Secret Agents with a dose of Krycekian immorality.

Just when I think I’ve “found” MSR, the writing snatches them back from me.

…And ANOTHER THING.

Ever since IWTB, Our Lady of Sorrows has been an awful, horrible, no-good, close-minded facility stuffed to the brim with egos and bottom-of-the-barrel intelligence. At least they’ve been upgraded from “let the kid die” psychopaths to “OBAMACARE?? INVESTIGATING OUR SAINTED, CONSERVATIVE COLLEAGUE????” Which makes them stupidly impressionable and stupendously ignorant of the law. Which they would know… because it affects their hospital.

There’s no hint (thus far) that Scully has some dirt on them and maneuvers them into compliance by hinting at certain shortcuts they wouldn’t want investigated. No. Instead, she weaponizes their faith-- calling the guy they want to interview a “godsend”-- despite sharing it, and despite taking all matters of belief very seriously; then lets Mulder slip in the Obamacare line because… Conservative medical professionals would cow in the face of that implication instead of, I don’t know, stonewalling to protect their ranks?

It’s such a silly, nonsensical line.

I just want old Mulder and Scully back, is that too much to ask for?

And the lady almost stonewalled, anyway. It was pure luck that Scully pulled the right emotional strings.

UGH.

“I’ll agree to relay a message,” Not-Karen says… then walks off before asking what that message would be. …Sure, fine, that makes sense.

Pregnant teen or young woman and….

And….

WHAT, IS THIS A CONTINUED PLOT POINT???????????

ANOTHER PREGNANCY PLOTLINE?????????? DO THE POWERS-THAT-BE NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO TUBES OR JARS OR WHATHAVEYOU TO GROW THEIR EXPERIMENTS, OR DID THEY ALL COPYPASTE THE EVES' AND DR. PARENTI’S VERY SPECIFIC NICHE?????

Hate the camera angles, too, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Used and abused women, dismissed young mothers, callous Catholic hospitals…. It’s so… vitriolic. And all so poorly handled.

“Desire is the devil’s pitchfork,” oh, great, the Catholic nun? lady is eeeeeeeeeeevil, who would have knooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooown--

WHY. DOES. MULDER. SOUND. SO. OLD.

No wonder DD and GA think the series isn’t really about happy endings, they were shuffling around like geriatric Eeyores half the time.

Scully pushing back against Mulder protecting her from the incubation theory right after he tells her the incubation theory: in a word, disjointed. She needed to confront him BEFORE he spells it out to her--

…My brain melted and I lost the thought…. Wait…. Nope, it’s gone.

“Is this what you believe happened to me, fifteen years ago? When I got pregnant, when I had my baby?” WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAT.

“Mybaby”??????????? After all this time, MY BABY.

WHY ISN’T GA ACTING APPROPRIATELY, SHE’S GIVING US NOTHING DESPITE BEING THE SOLE EMOTIVE PERSON ON THIS TEAM.

IF THAT LINE IS MEANT TO IMPLY SHE’S CREATING DISTANCE WITH “MY BABY” BECAUSE SHE THINKS MULDER IS DISOWNING WILLIAM, YOU’VE NOT ESTABLISHED, AT ALL, THAT RETICENCE IS PART OF HER SELF-PRESERVATION-- NOT ONE TIME, SINCE THE REVIVAL STARTED.

AND IF THAT WERE THE CASE, SCULLY WOULD HAVE ACCUSED HIM DIFFERENTLY: NOT FLAT AND TIRED, BUT FLAT AND ANGRY. WHERE’S SCULLY’S ANGER THAT SHE’S HAD FROM DAY ONE, THAT SHE LOST RIGHT AFTER EXISTENCE SAID HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER????????

GIVE ME GUMPTION, GIVE ME SPIT, GIVE ME FIRE, GIVE ME RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION!!!!

SO THEY ABANDONED THE INCUBATOR TALK TO TALK ABOUT HER REGRETS, I GUESS.

THERE WAS NO POINT A TO POINT B, WE’RE JUST HERE NOW.

I don’t mind the rehash-- Mulder and Scully both had a habit of doing that, back in the day… but I’m not getting any of MULDER or SCULLY from these two… Revival robots.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, this is the “what could have been” episode. Thanks, I’m gonna hate it.

“Do you think he could have been an experiment?”

“I don’t know,” GET OUTTA HERE, ACTUALLY GET OUTTA HERE.

MULDER’S WHOLE ARC IN ESSENCE-EXISTENCE WAS THAT HE KNEW THE MATH ADDED UP TO BEING WILLIAM’S FATHER (though the writers did their best to obfuscate that issue) BUT WAS AFRAID SCULLY’S BABY WOULD BE BORN WITH SURPRISES. INSTEAD, HE WAS A NORMAL, HEALTHY BABY; AND MULDER CALLED HIS SON A MIRACLE BECAUSE OF IT.

BEFORE SEASON 9 RETCONNED IT, ANYWAY. BUT EVEN THEN, WILLIAM WAS UNDENIABLY HIS MINI MULDER.

Even in IWTB, how many years later, Mulder still considered William theirs.

Also, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait.

Pause.

Rewind.

Stop.

Mulder misses William but had to put that “behind him.”

That. has got to be. The most. antithetical statement to Mulder’s character that I have ever. Ever. heard.

You can’t have it both ways, CC: Mulder can’t be pushed by the ghosts of his past into wrecking his and Scully’s relationship, twice (IWTB and the Revival), while also putting HIS CHILD behind him.

nnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOnonononononNONONONONONONO.

THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

YOU’RE A LIAR, A LYING LIAR LIAR FACE.

THAT’S NOT MULDER.

MULDER WOULD NEVER SAY THAT.

SCULLY MIGHT, BUT EVEN THEN SHE’D STILL BE LYING TO HERSELF.

Scully was shattered into a million pieces in My Struggle I, and Mulder is obliterated in this one.

How.

Absolutely.

Lovely.

Also, again, Scully isn’t emoting fear or terror for her son. At all.

NORMAL SCULLY VOICE??????????????????????????????????

NORMAL. SCULLY. VOICE????????????????????????????????????????

WHAT.

I’M, I’M, WHAT.

FOR THE FLASHBACKS, BUT NOT FOR THE SERIES????????????????????????

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The cutback from the flashback-dreamsequence-whatever to Scully just… sitting there. Not napping. Not dreaming, just. Thinking, I guess.

But the sequence was obviously a dream, so.

Can you imagine if she snapped upright from her dream, possibly at her desk? The gifs sets that could have been made mirroring this moment to Mulder’s nightmare in Paper Hearts.

THERE’S THE SAME “OPEN THE DESK DRAWER TO SEE A PHOTO” MOTIF, TOO.

...WHY IS THAT ASSISTANT WALKING LIKE SHE'S ON A CATWALK?

That actress said, “This is my big shot, I’m gonna stick out” (literally), and dressed to kill.

…Or she’s a piece of commentary on the Evil Scientist Doctor and the male gaze, or something.

Guys, no facility would have kids kept behind glass cages for their entire lifespan.

That’s dumb.

Scully tells the scientist he’s testing (trying to isolate) for alien DNA. He shows them out.

Agnes (the teen or young mother) got killed and her baby taken, of course.

At least Scully’s no longer pretending medical people aren’t stealing babies or creating mutants, I guess.

I GUESS.

Mulder had to wiggle his way over to the printer because his Patriarchy Pants (first sighting!) are too tight. (Told you his fashion swings in the opposite direction.)

Mulder said, “This is my skinny jean era”, and I think I’m traumatized.

Syndicate wanted to colonize the world with alien-human hybrids, says Mulder. And though it was unsuccessful--

(HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT)

--he doubts they stopped trying.

So, that sweeps away the Supersoldiers, I guess.

Since, y’know, the Revival said the aliens were never involved to begin with.

So it was just the government making a hoax of the government hiding aliens but pretending they weren’t but really were but weren’t.

Got it.

What did Scully’s study about all European men being traced back to three individuals in the Bronze age (that’s a reference to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, isn’t it CC?) have to do with Mulder’s point other than for her to talk about her study.

An illustrative hypothetical:

Mulder: “Everyone loves juice.”

Scully: “I read a paper last year that found the three most favored juice flavors tie back to the Whirligig tastebud genome.”

…’Kay.

I HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES LEFT, LET IT EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEND.

Jackie (Evil Scientist Man's “insane” wife) doesn’t like cats and threw an apple at it. …Why’s there a loose cat in the “mental asylum”?

They put in the spooky track from the original show-- the tinkling symbol sound-- when she recounted her daughter breathing underwater, but I liked that bit.

Good filming, good bit.

Jackie was being used for experiments, crashed her car, was forced via the brain thingy to cut her child out, the end.

…Oh, right, this plot was supposed to be about Sanjay.

My bad.

You forgot, too, didn’t you.

…Why doesn’t Jackie like cats again?

(Note from the future: Jackie feared her biological daughter because she had supernatural abilities; and ran away hoping to save her son from the same experimentation and fate. ...But her son? (or her daughter?) already had powers and forced her to cut him out??? by manipulating her brain????????? to find his way back to his sister??????????????? Even though he was a baby??????????????????? (She still doesn't know this and wishes she could see him again...????????????????????????????????????????)

This is such a BAD. SCRIPT.

It has no direction, it swings wildly from topic to topic, nothing really connects together, it’s all… nonsensical garbage.

Mulder gets closeted at a gay bar, the Catholic lady hates men and thinks unwed mothers are damaged, women are made to cut babies out of their stomachs, Mulder put William behind him, Scully has a waking dream instead of a sleeping one, aaaaaaaaaaaaand… Jackie hates cats.

No, you will not get a logical explanation for any of this.

Awwww, look, Jackie’s talking about her missing boy because she thinks about him “every day” but hasn’t seen him since and so does Scully, of course, and Mulder can sense that so he, looks, too, and this case will make him cling to William’s memory again and--

One word. Riverdale.

��All my training-- everything that I know about psychology--” WHAT. Scully, you’re a medical doctor, not a psychologist. Definitely not a psychiatrist.

So Mulder can read x-rays with medical accuracy, and Scully can read Indian and diagnose someone’s psychological state.

Great.

Just peachy.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Mulder keeps getting bumped into or keeps peripherally noticing janitorial staff at each location, here’s your payoff (NO, IT WASN’T HAMFISTED, YOU JUST DIDN’T NOTICE THAT THIS WAS A PLOT POINT AT ALL, IT'S SO CLEVER):

The janitors work for a larger company that also services the hospitals. And Sanjay’s company.

….Eh? Eh? Clever isn’t it??

NOITISN’T.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so the kids are dying and inadvertently killing… off… their… parent? Or something? Or the reverse?

(Note from the future: Jackie feared her biological daughter because she had supernatural abilities; and ran away hoping to save her son from the same experimentation and fate. ...But her son?-- or her daughter?-- already had powers and forced her to cut him out??? by manipulating her brain????????? to find his way back to his sister??????????????? Even though he was a baby??????????????????? And she still doesn't know this, hoping to see him again someday...????????????????????????????????????????

THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY THE TEEN/YOUNG WOMAN WAS ALSO FORCED TO CUT HER BABY OUT AFTER BEING HIT BY A CAR, per the baby's instructions. Because that's what the episode says happens.

DO THESE ALIEN BABIES HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER OR WHAT????)

Guys, this is dumb.

Mulder’s stupid sunglasses.

But he looks goofy overall, so I’ll CHOOSE to be endeared rather than angry or petulant.

(IchoosethisIchoosethisIchoosethisIchoosethis--)

Wait, why does Mulder keep getting affected by the brain thing?

More importantly.

The episode is setting up a few, blatant parallels:

These parents are having brain problems.

Their kids are experimentation kids.

William's probably an experimentation kid.

Which is stupid, but would then prove Mulder is the biological father.

They will sacrifice this parallel to the plot but also because Scully, not Mulder, ends up being the one to communicate constantly with William.

Which would prove William-Jackson is still Scully's biologically.

(Note from the future: This complete theory is debunked in about two seconds; but will be recycled later for Scully's Morse Code seizure. Wonderful.)

It’s all.

So.

Stupid.

Stupid sunglasses.

I…

I died laughing.

Guys.

I’m gonna include a clip because it’s so goofy.

Context: Mulder’s brain thingy is acting up, so Scully has to run around to find a kid-- Kyle-- so he’ll… help? her partner. Hence, we have Gillian trying to keep up her Revival smoker voice whilst running off and shouting, “KYyyYYyyyyYYLLllelleleee”:

This is The X-Files.

Weep and gnash your teeth in torment.

This is old.

Sorry, Mulder’s ears should be busted by now. Gimme fic where he now has to use hearing aids.

They grabbed Kyle and stuffed him in the car.

Ahh, this is the scene where Mulder looks back at Kyle and someone mentioned it looks like Mulder looking back at William in another, better universe (post here.)

Okay, so, this kid doesn’t mean to hurt people by communicating with his mind, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut was or wasn’t responsible for Sanjay’s death (who was helping him.)

Scully decides “LET’S PRETEND TO HAND HIM OVER TO HIS EVIL SCIENTIST DAD IN ORDER TO FIND HIS SISTER” and that sounds reasonable. As reasonable as a starving pig at a pie fair.

Wait.

The kid was a janitor.

Sanjay was helping him.

Sanjay was working for Evil Scientist dude.

Sanjay was trying to figure out where the kid's sister was, or he knew where she was but wasn't telling the kid?

The kid-- Kyle-- accidentally killed Sanjay because his... powers were outta control?

And... the kid can connect with different people's minds and that's how he hacked Mulder's brain (which retracts my biological theory... until, again, Scully's Morse Code seizure reinforces it.)

But the kid attacked Mulder when Mulder and Scully questioned his (adopted) mom... didn't he already know who Mulder was?

And the kid kept pressuring Sanjay to find his sister, so much so that Sanjay hadn't been able to sleep well or function in weeks?

So, this kid's... questionable, at best.

Evil Scientist, M.D., pretended to introduce the kid to his sister, but Kyle wasn't BAMBOOZLED nor FOOLED.

Oh, btw, this kid is Jackie’s son. Looks an awful lot like William-Jackson... but anyway. (Jackson's storyline is brazenly ripped off from CC's own material, wow-- right down to the "never saw my son again" line. The writers have charming things to say about adopted families in The X-Files.)

Now he’s running around the hospital looking for Molly (the sister who scared Jackie because she can breathe underwater, etc. etc.)

Reunited with Molly.

Now the kids are throwing the adults with their minds and killing Evil Scientist Badman with the brain thing in order to stay reunited, I guess. Like the Eves. (Another rip-off recycle of their own source material.)

SO, anyway, the Evil Scientist Father died a very gruesome death.

Cut to the place swarmed with FBI.

Another guy said, “Skinner, keep your sfjfkfsdfksj behind the red tape.” I think. Can’t understand him.

Guys, this is the first Mulder-and-Scully posturing I’ve seen since the series began. Praise be, they’re not mannequins.

Here's the Mulder and William "could have been"s.

See, guys? His faith is back. He’s choosing to remember his son and reengage with his past~.

Yeah, and where did THAT come from.

To recap:

Mulder had depression sometime after 2012, so bad that it made Scully… leave, I guess (which would have been a death sentence for someone with a temperament like Mulder’s.)

But he shouldn't have had depression after 2012 because 2012 just reset the Colonization clock (according to he, himself, and his theory.)

So, he’s got "no reason" depression, then disconnects from Conspiracies and shoves away memories of William.

But he hadn’t had a breakdown or disconnect from reality before My Struggle I (which made Scully’s decision to leave even stupider.)

And Scully worries he’ll have a breakdown in My Struggle I.

And he actually didn’t leave Conspiracyville despite also leaving it and knowing things he shouldn’t and not knowing things he should.

Following?

Conspiracy guy calls up Skinner who calls up Scully who calls up Mulder; and he and she don't hesitate to investigate despite putting “that life” behind them.

There were no aliens, period, only men in government wearing suits or planting false memories or whathaveyou.

He’s still got depression but doesn’t, actually, in My Struggle I despite Scully thinking he does and worrying he’ll have a breakdown despite knowing he left Conspiracyville; but also won't be coming home, etc. etc.

Both are let into the FBI.

Still following?

He put William behind him but engages in conspiracies now (despite still engaging in them while not engaging in them-- you get it.)

Let me reiterate: Mulder. put someone that he loved. behind him.

Mulder makes peace with the thought that William’s his son regardless and daydreams about movies and rocket ships.

And that’s that on all his hangups, I guess. His crops are watered and his depression is cured.

And now he and Scully are installed at the FBI... despite the unlikelihood either of them would pass the physical tests, let alone the training they'd need to requalify. To put them on the field otherwise would be very, very dangerous... right, Skinner?

The End.

Just make this easier for me next time and beat a bat over my head.

I do have another nitpick.

Mulder is too downcast in his “happier times” flashbacks, especially compared to Scully’s buoyant, sweet, upbeat persona. So, basically, he has a stunning lack of imagination, I guess.

Which, jokes aside, is an interesting thought: Mulder creating realities in his mind so convincingly mapped onto his current one that it’s even more devastating to snap out of them and face each and every unsatisfying day.

Also, both he and Scully have the same sort of nightmare....

This had BETTER be Jackson’s way of reaching out to them for help, or so help me I’m going to label these moments as narrative clickbait.

EYYYYYY, we got an actual Mulder “NO!” It sounded like him, too! FINALLY! SPIRIT! SPUNK! THE MULDER ESSENCE.

Oh, yeah, that William can get yeeted-- he doesn’t fit my headcanon, anyway.

Mulder's sitting upright, too, without having woken from a nightmare.

…So this was a deliberate choice on the filmmakers’ part.

So this is setting up for something. Like William communicating to them BOTH in waking dreams.

We all know that won’t happen, but, anyway.

CONCLUSION

YOU’RE NOT GETTING ME WITH THE HAPPY FAMILY TIMES, YOU MANIPULATORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

YOU CAN’T TAKE ME ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE.

Also: very rarely do I like movie kitchens, but Mulder's... is alright.

Lastly: again, I am so tired.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #React #mine #A Late-Canon Reviler Gives the Revival a Try #Part II #S10 #Founder's Mutation #Revival Reviler's first-time watch through #Revival #x-files #the x files #xfiles #Mulder #Scully #William #first-time watch through #thoughts #xf meta #uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

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pinkpastels113 · 1 month ago

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Tell us how you feel about arcane. Use your emotion words! Use a visual aid if you must, too lol.

you want some visual aid? i'll give you some visual aid:

that describes perfectly ab how i am feeling rn

first of all the LESBIAN SEX SCENE????!! I-??!! i knew that something was bound to happen (esp after meljay and the rated for sex warning in season 2) and i celebrated when they (finally) kissed but oh my god?? an actual lesbian sex scene? in a prison?? in vi's sister's prison?? after a parallel about how cait is always finding her in a prison and expected her to be there?? (with dramatic music and banter and soft giggling and the ANGLES and HAND PLACEMENTS??) I AM NOT OKAY

just that scene alone is enough to nudge me off a cliff. but moving on

how is JAYVIK more homoerotic than now-100%-canon caitvi?? that's all i have to say. (what do you MEAN that love conquers all?? that he loved and admired viktor for all his imperfections and that was what made him special and beautiful?? GET OUTTA HERE)

i did not know that i needed timebomb until this season but HOLY FUCKING SHIT why must you make ekko fall (surprisingly, even to himself) in love with jinx/older powder and have that ripped away from him not like two days later?? WHYYYYY (the dance. the "can we pretend it's like the first time?" the "oh and he's got lines." the nervous wave after he fucked up in that scene with dead vi and powder was like hmp and he goes :(. the mural. im sent. im gone. nobody speak to me.)

ISHA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (she was just trying to be like jinx and copy everything that she does and is and looked up to her as a hero STOP WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME. also the song?? IM CHINESE BRO AND I WAS SOOOO EMOTIONAL OVER THE LYRICS like hit me where it fucking hurts why dont you)

i cried at how vander suffered a fate worse than death. @becasbelt can attest to that

caitlyn adfshjk i knew she would come around and she was and always has been my blorbo (even if she stayed evil) MWAH my female rage filled, slightly wild, grief clouded, confident, "im an excellent shot," sexy, " i am a decorated officer, leader of house kiramman, address me with respect, or keep your mouth shut." dictator, vampire, badass, mofo. YES

the way she said "no amount of good deeds can undo our crimes" hit me bc she's acknowledging that she went off the rails and did some pretty bad things to justify and achieve (which she didn't. not really) her goals

i LOVED jinx in this season. she single-handedly made it a comedy show and was the sole focus of a lot of the emotional damage the storytellers and animators wanted to convey

the way jesus came to be and then quickly became evil SDFHSDKJ i was legit like WEEO WEEO ABORT ABORT JESUS HAS TURNED EVIL (also want to point out the "no you wont" sky dialogue bc DAMN she really called you out huh viktor)

that alternate universe timebomb episode had me gasping so much (like SILCO?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?? WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?? what do you mean everyone is well and happy but at the cost of vi's death???) i think i had asthma for a split second there

MELLLL MY GODDESS MVP PLAYER you saved cait's ass so many times it's not even funny and ugh the way you finally stood up to your mom (very cleverly too, i might add) ugh i applaud

EKKO MY KINGGG the way he hurts himself so bad turning back time and specifically saving jinx from offing herself BYE

HEIMERDINGER MY TINY ANNOYING/affectionate FURBALL WHYY

no but yea i am ruined and my emotions have faded away into numbness and i hope this post was relatable to the people in the arcane fandom and i also agree that this season was way too condensed and rushed and the last episodes in particular needed at least a couple more to drag out the events and character development bc at times when i am supposed to be cheering i am crying and at times i am supposed to be crying i am screaming and at times i am supposed to be screaming i am Horny and at times i am supposed to be Horny my heart is wrenching but only a few tears slip out bc IT IS CUT TO THE NEXT SCENE AGAIN??? does that make sense??

(also do we think jinx is actually dead or no. im still not sure but obv i would hope/am hoping that she is lmao)

#ALSO THE WAY JINX WAS SHIPPING CAITVI THE ENTIRE TIMEEE scream #wenz can talk #anon ask #arcane #arcane season 2 #arcane spoilers #caitvi #jayvik #timebomb #piltover's finest #caitlyn kiramman #vi arcane #jinx arcane #ekko arcane #mel medarda #viktor arcane #jayce talis #isha arcane

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unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff · 1 year ago

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Apparently at some point MCU fans collectively agreed that the Blip takes place on October 17th, 2023. Which is today. So I figured I'd take the time to detail the four biggest reasons why the time jump in Endgame was a universe-shatteringly horrible idea that should never have seen the light of day

the absolute biggest problem, of which there are many, is the fact that countless people died as collateral damage in the initial Snap. Hell, we are shown it in the Infinity War post-credit scene with those multiple car accidents and that helicopter slamming into a building. And that was just the tip of the iceberg; imagine how many planes crashed because the pilots were dusted, or how many babies starved because both their parents were dusted, or people who may have died on the operating table because a surgeon got dusted. All of these people are totally ignored. It's never so much as mentioned when talking about bringing everyone back, and Tony insisting that the last five years remain unchanged is implicitly saying all of those people remained dead when the dusted returned.

the second big problem with this plot point is that it's used as an excuse for every character except Nat to be totally unrecognizable. Bruce becomes Professor Hulk, Thor gets fat, Tony has a family (and I fucking love how the movie inadvertently says he just let the world rot for five years instead of using his billions of help. That is 100% in character for him), Clint went on a mass killing spree, and Steve... I actually have no idea what made him change so radically. None of this is shown to us at all, it's just told to us.

this is less a problem with Endgame and more a problem with Phases 4 and 5, but the other worse thing about this development is that absolutely nothing has been done with it. Far From Home played the time-jump for comedy, WandaVision had that one great scene in the hospital and then did nothing else, Shang-Chi had a singular throwaway line about the Blip, Hawkeye had that one neat visual of getting Snapped from Yelena's POV and then nothing else, Multiverse of Madness had a single conversation where Strange wonders if letting Tony have his way was the only way to save the universe, Quantumania had a single scene addressing the homelessness issue and then nothing else, and I think Secret Invasion tried to do a bit of a look at how Talos reacted to the Blip, but that show was so awful that I'd rather not think about it. The only projects to do anything at all with the Blip as a major plot point are Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Eternals.

the fourth and final massive problem with the Blip is pretty simple yet complicated; it ignores the absolutely insurmountable societal implications both the Snap and the Blip would have. Think about it; half the fucking universe disintegrates into ash. There are SO many things that would do to just human society alone. But even more importantly, five years after all those people were declared dead (meaning wills are executed, spouses remarried, jobs and homes redistributed, etc) those people suddenly reappear, and from their POV it's only been a second. Just to put it in perspective, the Snap happened on April 29th, 2018. Doesn't that feel like forever ago? If the Snap were real, all those people would have been gone until today. That is such a huge mindfuck that I'm shocked no one went insane. And even looking aside from the psychological impact, all those people are pretty fucking screwed. Far From Home had a single scene addressing this, then promptly forgot about it.

My final point is less of a problem and more of an amusing byproduct; since Tony directly forbids Bruce from undoing the last five years, that means the events of WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, and Secret Invasion are on some level his fault. That’s fucking hysterical.

I suppose I'll be absolutely fair and say that rewinding time isn't a morally perfect solution either, as you would be erasing any maturity the survivors gained during those five years, as well as anyone born in that time. But that's just all the more reason to NOT HAVE A FUCKING TIME-SKIP!!! I still think the only reason it was done was for cheap shock value.

All in all, the five-year time jump is the single worst major plot point in the MCU. Fight me.

#anti endgame #the blip was an awful idea #anti tony stark

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literary-illuminati · 1 month ago

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2024 Book Review #63 – Saga, Book 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

I first starting reading Saga a literal decade ago (I think literally because Rachel Maddow recommended it on a podcast? Which, god, what a 2010s sort of sentence). I absolutely loved it at the time, and read intermittently until it went on an extended hiatus. So extended, in fact, that I’d kind of assumed the series was dead and only learned it had restarted a couple years ago quite recently. So, seeing as I am now in need of a new comic, I figured I’d restart from scratch and work up to the new stuff. It holds up! (and the letters to the editor are a fascinating cultural time capsule).

The series follows Alana and Marko – star-crossed lovers who eloped together from opposite sides of a brutal and galaxy-spanning race-war – and their newborn daughter Hazel as they evade the numerous forces trying to see them all murdered before than can become an embarrassment. The first arcs of this are most one long blind panic finding transport off-world and only afterwards deciding upon a destination, it’s only in the last volume (with the pointed assistance of Marko’s parents) that there’s any thought of finding stability or a status quo. Along the way, both the family and the series collect a wider and wider circle of colourful hangers-on – and the narrative begins switching focus to give real narrative focus and character arcs to three different groups that find themselves tracking down the family. None of them are particularly happy lives, but they all make for very compelling drama.

The best way to describe this is I suppose a ‘science-fantasy dramedy’. Which sounds viscerally and violently wrong, but the comedy and the drama are both absolutely vital motors keeping it running. And this is the incredibly rare work that actually makes them work together seamlessly. It’s an incredibly vulgar book in a dozen different ways, but the characters are all plausible and compelling, and once you have granted the slightly contrived explanation for why both governments care so immensely about Marko and Alana the plot coheres enough to never take you out of the story. Which is helped by the pacing being fast and tight in a way that always kept me (at least) engaged. I do deduct points for the wise author character basically looking directly at the fourth wall and saying ‘and the profound message of my work is-’ (moreso because said message is truly eye-roll-inducingly vapid and dumb, granted), but that’s easily forgiven.

The comedy was...more hit-or-miss. There is a lot of clever wordplay and funny, high-context character beats. There are also a bunch of just absurd or striking visual gags or background details that really work. And then there is the giant with balls so big and hideous that they almost crush someone to death.

It’s been said (by people with far more knowledge of and investment in the medium than I) that mainstream American comics are these incredible wells of repressed sexuality – full of physically implausible women dressed for a burlesque and with panels framed by a particularly sleazy tabloid photographer, but oddly coy about actually talking about or including sex itself. Which tracks with my limited experiences, but might just be bullshit I don’t know – what I do know is that Saga is basically the exact opposite of that.

Which is to say, this is an intensely sexual comic, but an atypically non-sexualized one. Which is a bit of an odd distinction, but compare how Saga shows an uncensored orgy and how any given artist at a con draws prints of Power Girl and you’ll get the idea. This is on balance a very good thing, occasional junior-high-level visual gags and gross-out humour aside. Sex is a part of life, of varying importance to different people but something present and shaping the world regardless (and Marko and Alana very much do believably seem like a couple that’d have a kid together without a huge excess of planning beforehand).

Aside from Alana, Marko and Hazel (and hangers-on including a phantom babysitter and Marko’s somewhat-approving parents), the various groups hunting them get a really surprising amount of page-count – The Will, Lying Cat and Prince Robot are all basically main characters in their own right, and Gwendolyn, Sophie, Upsher and Doff aren’t fair off. It’s an immense accomplishment that a series of 28-30 page comics manages to bounce between so many characters and always keep them all moving, both physically and emotionally. (The character work and character design of this is worth at least the price of admission on its own, really).

The thing that most makes me love the comic is, I think, how it will introduce characters and tell you explicitly they are murderers and monsters – and then show them struggling and risking their life out of guilt or altruism or love, show them falling for people and being part of rich social worlds, show the trauma and baggage and shitty relationships that made them who they are. Make you care about them and root for them, want them to accomplish what they need to to get a happy ending – and then have them destroy something or kill someone else you’ve grown to care about. Aside from the really obvious stuff about intolerance and war, it’s one of the most consistent themes of the series that monsters have lives and loves too, which is frankly something I wish more stories (and just, people) took to heart.

The setting is glorious, in a ‘mural on the side of a stoner van’ sort of way. Laser guns and spaceships that are giant flying trees, a kingdom of robots with TVs for heads and the planet-sized egg of what’s basically a living black hole – nothing that’s designed to bear scrutiny, but endlessly inventive and evocative and clearly very fun for the artist.

The most striking thing is that – even for now, let alone fucking 2012 – the comic is just incredibly diverse. Even leaving aside the really weird or cartoonishy exaggerated species there’s more diversity in body type and silhouette in one crowd scene of Saga than in most Hollywood movies I’ve seen recently. Same with race and sexuality—the whole setting seeming functionally queernorm except for the one couple whose character arc requires that they come from Planet Homophobia is slightly eyeroll inducing but again, compared to the early 2010s norm it’s soaring so high above the bar you can’t even see the ground.

So yeah, have fallen entirely back in love with it. Can’t wait to start in on Book Two.

#book review #saga #brian k. vaughan #fiona staples #comic

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maxwell-grant · 10 months ago

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Thoughts on the master of fear, Scarecrow? Also, fave design, he has so many good ones (second BTAS, his trading card one, mistress of fear, Gaslight,, fear for sale, the Arkham Games etc)?

Hey so, do any of you remember Batman Live? It was this really fun, extravagant stage show that touched on a lot of Batman hallmarks and was generally a really fun time as far as I recall. I went to the São Paulo premiere with my family, and I was a little too young to really recall most of it now, but some things I definitely remember like the huge Joker hot air balloon made of performers in bodypaint, or the comedy sequences in the Iceberg Lounge. The one thing that stuck with me the most was when the Scarecrow showed up. Batman goes to Arkham Asylum and the entire comedy camp tone drops dead, as he walks in and finds all these bodies in straightjackets hanging from chains, and the doors open as The Scarecrow walks towards him in stilts, summoning loud smoke eruptions that are poisoning and weakening Batman as he leers over him. That part actually did scare me as a kid, and it was probably the first time I had any kind of feelings on Scarecrow imprinted in me.

I was introduced to The Scarecrow as this uniquely horrifying villain who could terrify through presentation alone. I didn't particularly understand what the fear gas was, I was too taken with that ungainly thing up there with the stilts and all those people turned into cadaverous decorations, lurking from the endless halls of the asylum, who towered over everyone and placed Batman into a writhing breakdown with a few gestures, and never appeared again until the cast roll, completely absent from the rogues gatherings after. Granted, of course that's because the stilts prevented him from joining the fight scenes, but that helped to reinforce his mystery. He wasn't someone Batman was going to punch back, no no, the Scarecrow simply vanished as soon as he was done with disarming Batman, and you'd just have to pray for that unfathomable creep to never show up again.

And I'd say this might be part of why I've never been too big on the fear gas, in part because I was first enraptured by a version of The Scarecrow who clearly didn't need it that much, or at least, could do much more besides it. The Scarecrow is, I'd say actually one of my top 10 DC characters, half of that on the basis of his designs, but he's a character who tends to really, really struggle under a lack of cohesion and being subordinate to his gimmick, much more so than the other rogues. The fear gas is a good gimmick, but it is just that, a gimmick, and one that's usually reliant on how far can the story push the horror and the visuals to at least make it effectively scary for us, otherwise it gets incredibly boring very fast, and it's not even a gimmick exclusive to him since so many other characters have similar mind control/illusion abilities/gadgetry at hand (and to say nothing of Hugo Strange, who first used fear gas and who quite frankly kicks the Scarecrow's ass in terms of quality storylines, although Hugo does that to most of the other Batman villains too)

The Scarecrow has become the go-to character for hallucination sequences / revisiting character traumas, which frequently makes him less of a character and more so a convenient plot device, a problem heightened by the larger issue here that is his inconsistent motivation, or lack thereof. He lacks the kind of "breakout" stories that his fellow major Batman villains have had that usually cement an ongoing characterization, and his most famous/celebrated appearences in mass media don't really do much to combat the assertion that he is shallow and weak and whose only asset is the gas (namely, his boss fights in Arkham Asylum, which are all about the fear gas hallucination scares, and his role in Nolan's Batman, which is very fun, but also purposefully plays him up for ridicule and lack of depth next to the other villains)

These days, the Scarecrow is a tedious pip-squeak. His schemes lack verve, his cruelties stir little in the way of frissons. Haunted by cliché to an even greater extent than the other rogues, he’s often brought low with a single sock to the jaw delivered by Batman, or by finding himself on the receiving end of his own fear-inducing concoctions. He often acts as a pawn in the hands of bigger, badder third parties. He’s ostensibly a stand-in for the figure of the reductive, smug and hypocritical psychologist, nicely bundled up for the audience to humiliate in effigy - TheMindlessOnes's rogue review for Scarecrow

In "Nothing to Fear" it is explained that Jonathan Crane has always had this "thing" for scaring people. (Just as Snidely Whiplash had his "thing" for tying women to railroad tracks, I suppose.) But this is a wan kind of motive. One senses sadly that the real motive for the Scarecrow's behavior lies in the writer's need for someone to do something reprehensible. At the root of the matter may be a difficulty in sorting out the Scarecrow's ends from his means, with a consequent confusion between the goals the Scarecrow intends to reach and the tactics he employs in reaching them.

As a psychologist specializing in phobic disorders, Crane knows how to induce fear and trembling in his victims. But this tells us nothing about what the Scarecrow wants to accomplish. And without a sense or statement of what those goals are, the writer will be tempted to substitute means for end and make the Scarecrow's goal simply the scaring of people. Usually his actions are woefully underexplained - Dreams in Darkness' review by Toonzone

You might think that I'd be advocating for the Scarecrow, then, to disregard a need for a motivation and become as unknowable and horrific as possible, to recapture the awe I felt at his Batman Live self, but no, not at all. For one, I don't think the best version of anything is necessarily the one that made the most impact on me as a kid. Two, there have been some attempts over the years to remove Scarecrow from the toxin or seriously amp him up as a threat, and frankly, most of those have only made the character dramatically worse and more boring (I don't remember the name, but there was a Batman story a while ago where he goes on a big scary killing spree with no toxin just to prove he can and it was fucking terrible). Three, and the big one here, is that this pretty much forces you to get rid of Dr. Jonathan Crane, and I think that does a disservice to the character's potential. I think that's giving up on trying to make him work as a character and I don't think you have to do that.

My preferred characterization for Crane is one that emphasizes his nature as a scholar turned supervillain. The cold and misanthropic and neurotic nerd professor who spent most of his salary on books and took to terrorizing the city as a costumed criminal in part because he wanted money to buy more books. Who takes off the costume mid-crime spree to school his henchmen on specifics of brain chemistry, who gets revenge on those that wrong his students or even employs them as henchmen, still the same guy who thinks there's nothing wrong with firing a loaded gun in a packed classroom as a demonstration. Far less interested in human connections than he is in human reactions, things that can surprise him or that he can catalogue or research or write about. Someone who's not a sadist for sadism's sake, but who doesn't really see you as a person so much as he sees a test subject. I like Crane as a snarky humorous heel who thinks of himself as amoral and mature while doing horribly immoral and childish things, the Herbert West or Rusty Venture of Batman villains (James Urbaniak is definitely the voice I'd pick for him).

My preferred kind of motivation for him is something along the lines of how he's portrayed in most of Kings of Fear, where he puts Batman through the wringer in part as an attempt to get to him and cure him once and for all, or issues #4-5 of The Batman Adventures where he induces city-wide illiteracy in part as a protest against the city's failing education. In Gothtopia he makes all of Gotham hallucinate their perfect ideal lives, eliminating the crime rate but causing the suicide rate to spike up in return, and yes it does turn out to be the set-up for a really generic "fear gas everyone with blimps and make everyone twice as scared" pay off when his involvement is revealed, but I always thought Scarecrow being able and willing to do that, to create these huge and even benevolent-seeming social experiments, as an idea with legs. Fear State was frustratingly halfway there, with the initial set-up of Scarecrow pursuing a theory for fear-based social upheaval, but on top of not being very good, it also wound up that he was just doing the same old thing again and had Batman call him out as someone who just wanted to gas the city and make everyone scared again and never changes and does anything different, which seemed like Tynion defeating his own purpose of trying to make a defining Scarecrow story and address his lack of one, completely failing to address the why the character has that kind of problem and upending itself for meta commentary before doing anything interesting.

Even Kings of Fear, easily the best Scarecrow story of the past decades if not outright ever, kinda ends in a bit of a cop-out where The Scarecrow has to be wrong ("Even when he's telling the truth, he's lying, and even when he's right, he's wrong", Gordon tells Batman to reassure him, to nullify the past 5 issues criticizing and tearing into Batman from every angle imaginable), and he has to be a sadist who just wanted to fuck with Batman and uncover his worst fears because it's what he does. Why does Scarecrow want to unravel people and wrench their worst fears into the surface? Because he's a sadist who gets off on it? I guess that's the canon answer most of the time, but it's such a boring, weak one. Because he wants revenge on the world / bullies? Still weak, done better by other villains even. Because of an unspeakably traumatic childhood that taught him the world was ruled by fear and therefore driving him to become it's master? Okay, but it still doesn't actually answer what he wants to get out of doing what he does.

We know that Jonathan Crane was a fragile youth routinely terrorized and abused by others and plainly traumatized by his experiences. We know that he is learned and brilliant and given to introspection and fantasy.

From this base it is not hard to imagine Crane turning into a man fiercely devoted to solitude and study and capable of a murderous rage when his privacy is violated. It is possible, in other words, to imagine him as a reactive force, in the mold of Freeze, systematically terrorizing and destroying anyone who crosses him but rarely wanting to start trouble himself.

Or we can imagine him as a mercenary, a specialist hired by others for nefarious purposes, but who is not himself strongly motivated by particular rages or desires.

But if the Scarecrow is going to remain a sadist and a sadist only—if he is going to be moved only by the psychotic desire to harm others—we ought to be made to feel the seductive power that sadism has over its practitioners; we should be made to feel and appreciate the hot and sour joy that comes from the purposeful humiliation of another - Dreams in Darkness review by Toonzone

It's kind of a frustrating pattern in a lot of his stories where he gives a reason for doing something, and it turns out to be a cover for yet another sadistic fear gas attack, but his cover reason was a more interesting motivation for him than what he actually was going for. A villain who mainly just gets a kick out of hurting people and concocts bullshit excuses and reasons to justify said hurting? The Joker does that already, but the Joker always clearly states what he wants and has all those ways to make cruelty for cruelty's sake entertaining. If that's all The Scarecrow is also, no wonder he's going to be so incredibly lacking most of the time (nevermind the fact that he's never going to be the guy most infamous for gassing Gotham City).

Yes, he may be sadistic and cruel, he may enjoy what he does too much, and maybe there really isn't any kind of realistic explanation as to why a man would dress up as a scarecrow to commit terrorism and spray innocent people with chemicals to make them terrified, but refer to the guy he's fighting. "Realistic" is the wrong term. The issue here is less "why" the Scarecrow does what he does, and more what is he hoping to get out of it. Granted, this is less of a concern if you're playing The Scarecrow as a figure of horror, someone who's not even really human underneath that outfit. But I think that locks away much of his versatility. The Scarecrow needs Jonathan Crane, and I think there's good stuff to like about that awful man.

I like Jonathan Crane the sardonic pragmatic scientist who still embraces his hopelessly ridiculous life, a guy who's not nearly as above it all as he'd like to be and has wants and needs moreso than he really likes to admit. I like him as a book lover, as a fan of horror, I like him as the kind of guy who'd send fan mail to Elvira and break out of Arkham just to catch a Halloween parade and guest star in a Scooby-Doo movie for a change. I like him as someone who'd have a decent working relationship with the other rogues and pal with the Legion of Doom and get into a physical spat with Riddler over a chess game. Someone who custom-makes his own outfits and equipment, who makes scythes out of animal bones to fight Batman with, who picked the scarecrow motif in part because it was a term of derision his colleagues used on him.

Who pours himself over his research as he records his theories in a tape recorder, the kind of guy who grouses at having to clean another cell because he's getting annoyed at his test subjects killing themselves, seriously guys the cleaning supplies for this batch were as fresh as they could be, and the iguana amygdalas I used should be stopping your neocortexes from overreacting this strongly. Subject #3 over there got over his fear of centipedes yesterday and he hasn't screamed all morning, I'm gonna need the rest of you to stop being such babies, okay?

It must be terribly liberating for Crane, to transcend mere ugliness and become inhuman. Of all the rogues, he’s easily the one who takes Batman’s “I need a disguise; I shall become a beast of the night” schtick and runs with it the farthest - TheMindlessOnes's rogue review for Scarecrow

And that's for Jonathan Crane, man of science. The Scarecrow, however, is not science, he is unreason incarnate, and to me what most makes The Scarecrow work as a Batman villain has nothing to do with "they both use fear as a weapon", I always thought that was a bit shallow of an angle to pursue (most, if not all, the villains rely on fear, it comes with the whole "crime" thing). The two have a stronger connection via the costume, the theatricality, the becoming a creature of the night angle. None of the other major Batman villains are going into their costumes the way The Scarecrow is. They have their personas and varying degrees of division between them and their "real selves", but few of them are wearing outright identity-separating Halloween Monster Costumes with separate names and personalities they can dip in and out of at their convenience.

And I'm gonna interrupt myself to answer your second question. I couldn't pick just one design, so counting the Batman Live one above, I picked 10. These are not in order and they're not necessarily how I'd design him, I'd say my actual favorite Scarecrow designs are fan-made, but if I was going to pick out of "official" material these are the ones I'd go for. It's time for:

(Left-to-right: George Pratt's Scarecrow pin-up, Phil Jimenez's Scarecrow design, Ed Natividad's concept art for Suicide Squad)

(Left-to-right: His TNBA design by Bruce Timm as drawn by Luciano Vecchio, Alex Ross's design for Justice, and Tim Sale's Scarecrow)

(Left-to-right: Kelley Jones' design for Kings of Fear, Jeremy Raapack's design for Legends of the Dark Knight #25, Scarecrow's design in Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!)

*cough*, anyway: Most of the other rogues with their signature suits or masks or body distortions don't tend to have closets full of different variant Batsuits and scarecrow costumes to choose and devote to their cause and ideal, that they sit at night tailoring on how to make scarier or more loaded with weapons, that they might even have conversations with, things that sit in their closets waiting because both of these brilliant men, men who have (or at least had) different civilian lives, men who could stop doing this at any time, who both decided that becoming a Halloween monster prowling the streets to inflict terror is a necessary, even productive use of their time.

And I think that's the key word I want to end here, productive. I think The Scarecrow needs to be more productive. Because even if he's not aware of it, he is achieving progress via his research, and there is one way he's proved his ideas: Batman walks out of every fight they have stronger. Every encounter they have is a test that Batman resists and walks out of more able to cope with his own traumas, or at least, better able to resist them being weaponized against him. I always wanted to explore the idea that Crane is genuinely convinced he's doing people a favor or at least achieving something via all these horrible Scarecrow campaigns, and one thing he has achieved is that Batman is never not prepared for chemical attacks or assaults on his mind, Batman resists ungodly trials of willpower and determination and courage, in part because he has to deal with the Scarecrow pumping terror juice in his brain semi-regularly.

The fact that Crane loses and gets beaten up and has to retry schemes again and again and kill people and join the costume parade just to lure Batman is fairly inconsequential to him, so long as it gets results. He's not interested in dissecting Batman's brain or being more like Batman, that's Hugo Strange's thing. Hugo Strange needs Batman to be fearless, allmighty and perfect, where as Jonathan Crane wants nothing more than to unearth and study the fears and kinks in the armor, the dead last thing he wants is a perfect man. Hugo Strange wants to crawl naked into the mask of the great and terrible fascist and never come out, where as The Scarecrow wants to crack open all the masks in the world and feast luridly on whatever seeps out.

Batman isn't just the ultimate trial against his fear-ruled worldview (or even affirmation), and he isn't just a breakthrough waiting to happen: he might be his greatest success as of yet. A case study on the success of exposure therapy, proof of potential medicinal applications for his formula, the greatest guinea pig of all time because he won't die no matter what you pump into him, you name it. So what if all those other people couldn't stomach the procedure, so what if those precious innocents are too weak and stupid and useless to not get in the way of research, it's clearly worked wonders for those who could take it.

And if the future belongs to men like Batman, if all of these superheroes and supervillains are the way things are going to be like forever, if the future is Bat-shaped and as vast and uncertain and horrible as the forces shaping it, the future needs to be prepared. The future needs to grapple with it's past and face it's greatest horrors and become stronger for it. There is no such thing as overcoming fear, there is only living with it, embracing it, bowing to the primordial instinct that knows the answer before you do. Mankind grew and developed it's intelligence and tools out of fear, fear of the bigger predators out there, fear of the other cavemen, fear of starvation and death and everything they couldn't understand and master until they learned to fear it. What better knowledge to pass along than fear? And who is better qualified to teach about fear?

Maybe Crane isn't just another monster with a grudge, maybe he isn't another costumed revenge killer, maybe he isn't just a power-tripping sadist bully out to torment others because he can, and maybe he isn't a hopeless traumatized madman who destroyed his professional and personal life in a monstrous quest to satisfy an obsession ruling his soul.

Maybe he is a sane response to an insane situation. Ever heard that one before?

#replies tag #superheroes #batman #dc comics #scarecrow #the scarecrow #jonathan crane #gotham city

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velvet-vox · 9 months ago

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Why Doll perfectly exemplifies all of the strengths and flaws of Murder Drones as a series.

From the amount of posts present on my blog about the specific individual, it is rather obvious to assume that Doll Yurikova (I'm still convinced the fandom made up this surname) is my favourite character from Murder Drones and you wouldn't be wrong.

She just simply tickles my needy scratch for weird, cool complex villainess characters.

However, eventually I also realised that she more than any other character embodies everything that makes murder drones a great show and everything that detracts the show from being genuinely amazing.

Let's start off with the good, anything I say applies to the both of them:

Doll/Murder drones are generally cool, unconventionally attractive, have great potential (this point will be elaborated upon) and are very complex in both the themes that they bring to the table and the philosophical standpoints discussed.

Coolness factor is mostly subjective, but I am sure any Murder drones fan will tell you that the sci-fi/horror/mystery/romance/comedy show about sentient cannibalistic robots who fight against eldritch atrocities with Portal 2-esque music is an absolute blast conceptually and visually. In the same way the russian robo vampire who was previously a cheerleader before deciding to commit cannibalism to avenge her dead parents has swarms of fans simping for her.

Unconventionally attractive is determined by unconventional people, said people also have rewatched the show seventeen different times.

Now, regarding the great potential, although I've also elaborated the previous points, this is one that will carry over when discussing the negatives of both the character and the show, but as for positive, you can just feel that Murder Drones is so much different from anything else you have ever watched, it truly gives me haunted Ghibli vibes in the way the story plays out. It could really be amazing. As for Doll, every time I watch her in the show up to her death I just get really sad thinking about what could have been if she had a redemption arc or just a better life in general.

Murder drones has abuse as his main theme and how it circulates into destructive chains and Doll is definitely one of the more interesting examples of said theme, being part of the abused and mauled drone designation that became an abuser herself. I say one of the more interesting examples because her story is fleshed out better than someone else's, say Tessa or Alice.

And now for the negatives, we need to bring out the big elephant in the room:

The show is only 8 episodes long and they are writing the season one finale in the same way you would write a series finale since making Murder drones costs Glitch a crap ton of money when they could just lower the animation quality and allow the story more time to breathe (mind you this is also Liam Vickers fault). I just hate the 8 episodes 20 minute long formula, it has, in my opinion, destroyed modern show telling and I honestly can't bear it any longer.

Besides that, 8 episodes of 20 minutes means that Doll's arc has to be paced quickly in order to get all the other characters (particularly the main ones) and elements to shine and that unfortunately leads to the fact that both Doll and Murder drones lack the one thing that separates Doll from being a human being and Murder Drones from being an amazing show, and that thing is (drum rolls) the tissue.

To explain, they have the (exo)skeleton, the organs, the mandibles and all the things that would make a piece of fiction feel truly human, but without the connective tissue, the skin, they both end up just short of those standards and as a result I can't confidently say that they are truly evocative individuals. Tissue of course is a metaphor for quote on quote "filler" in regards to the show and "villain at rest" moments in regards to Doll and her arc. And let's talk about the ending of said arc because of its possibility of paralleling the conclusion of the show;

You can say a lot of things about Doll's death but one thing that's impossible to deny is the impact of her death in your mind, everything about its execution is just so brutal that it leaves you a lasting feeling in your body; in a similar manner, the show could end with an absolute gut punch that remains impressed in your mind for months to come.

Want more?

#murder drones doll #murder drones tessa #murder drones uzi #murder drones alice #murder drones spoilers #murder drones analysis #glitch productions #liam vickers animation #murder drones ep 7 #murder drones

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lildoodlenoodle · 1 year ago

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Not to be That Bitch but I’ve seen people talking about this so,,,

Who is actually most likely to die in BTSV?

Yep, yikes I’m going there. Again all theories so I’m open to conversation/opinions on this!

Jessica - She’s not gonna die. There’s no way. Spiderverse is known for breaking boundaries but they aren’t going to kill a pregnant woman.

Miles - Again spiderverse is known for breaking boundaries so killing a protagonist is not outside of their range but I do not think they can kill Miles because of how integral he is to the trilogy and general synergy with comics and video games. Miles is too important of a character outside of this film in a monetary and societal way for them to kill him off in my opinion. He is the character that people associate with ‘Anyone can wear the mask’

Peter B. - The man has a baby. They aren’t gonna kill him. It just isn’t gonna happen. Nor will they kill said baby.

Hobie - They won’t do it. I love him but I don’t think his death would be enough of a catalyst or whatever. Like I just can’t see it. Not to say he isn’t important to the story but with the role he takes on, his death wouldn’t make sense.

Ben Reilly - I’m not even sure he’s currently alive lol. Gwen broke his watch and then tossed him into a random ass dimension. He’s probably fine… He’s fine.

Noir - unlikely. It wouldn’t have the emotional impact a death would need in the next movie. If, for whatever reason, multiple members of the team die then I could see it, but just him? No.(either way bro’s been resurrected multiple times in the comics, he’s fine.)

Ham - ok I could see it, but only in the comedy angel wings ‘death’ way. Like it wouldn’t be real, it’d be a gag.

Peni - ugh I can kinda see this ngl. She was the only member of team B we saw in the society and had a speaking role. Maybe I’m jaded but doesn’t bode well for a young female character… she will most likely be fine though.

Pavitr - People have said it and I do understand it. I don’t think they’ll do it but I could see it happening in a couple of different ways. His death would have be a perfect mid-late movie catalyst simply because of the parallels between him and Miles, ‘being spiderman is easy!’, and inspector Singh and Gayatri ‘escaping’ death. Will be crying in the theatre.

The Spot - I’m 50/50 on this. Like he could totally be too far gone where the only way out is him imploding but also he just wanted attention 😢

Gwen - God I can see this happening. I really hope it doesn’t but,,, Specifically, her saving Miles or one of his parents and that somehow being it for her. Her home storyline is tied up, her only remaining loose thread is with Miles, and once that’s done her ‘arc’ is over, and also the foreshadowing. Like if it happens that’s how it’s gonna happen and it’ll parallel when Miles was saving inspector Singh and that moment where we can’t see him god,,,,,,

Miguel - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t know what they are going to do with this man by the end of the next movie. Dude has put his whole being into his canon events theory, cause remember he genuinely believes or is in heavy denial about this. I don’t think being visually proven wrong will fix anything for him. I genuinely believe it’ll destroy him. I could definitely see him dying in the next movie by saving Miles/his dad in some desperate attempt to do the right thing, or taking down the spot with him type thing.

Jeff - Look, we all know it’s a possibility. It’s like algorithmically predestined, so it definitely could happen and I wouldn’t be surprised necessarily. But do I actually think it will happen? No. It’s too built up, especially with Miles going to 42 where his dad IS dead.

Rio - I’m gonna be so honest, she’s more likely to die than Jeff. SORRY! She’s the one that dies in the comics, she’s the one alive in 42, and she has that big speech about Miles not being with her any more and to look out for himself for her. I really hope they don’t do it, I really hope cause I will sob in the theatre but if one of Mile’s parents is going to die, it’ll be Rio.

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crooked-wasteland · 11 months ago

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Hazbin Hotel Live Blog: Overture

. While I am being kind to the show as it is, I cannot push out of my mind the fact that this is still Vivienne Medrano, and while this seems to be an interesting direction the series is considering to take the story, I am lacking any intrigue. Medrano has a knack for interesting ideas, but once executed are often trimmed down from all nuance and then played in the most straight forward and storybook fashion.

Evil existed before and separate from Lucifer

Eve is linked to the root of evil through the animation

Dichotomy of Lilith and Lucifer

Why does Heaven think Hell will rise up?

Charlie is reading the storybook to herself. Aloud. And the reason is because she’s like a child seeking comfort. Also Charlie’s delivery of “Pretty worked up” is just feeling off. Like isn’t this supposed to be a somber moment? Why is it delivered so chipper? The pilot had her crying and singing a lamentation. Downgrade.

Info dump dialogue

“This kingdom was something she really cared about.”

Vaggie’s voice is such a downgrade. She sounds so uninterested.

“Daddy issues by fixing you” So alastor knows about Charlie’s family situation already.

The lineart around Alastor is so distracting. It’s so bizarrely thick.

I wish there was no dialogue

Her dad calls her but she is supposed to have a strained relationship.

I feel like Medrano doesn’t know what Angel Dust is. As in the actual drug. PCP is not Cocaine.

That was the worst segue into a song I ever saw.

“If you dont mind the smell, it’s a happy day in hell.” I hate this line.

Vaggie just never sounds right, does she? Her singing is so nasal dominate it doesn’t sound like her throaty modal voice.

What was the contract? What did it say? Why even have Charlie sign anything if we have no concept of what that is? It is such a rip off from Ariel’s contract in the Little Mermaid that it feels more like an Easter egg than relevant to the story actively being told. You need to show why the actions happening are taking place, you cant just do things and expect us to pick up the pieces for you. Are you trying to get across that Heaven is full of bureaucracy and paperwork? There is no receptionist and no other person in the building until she signs ONE paper. You failed at portraying an overabundance of bureaucratic red tape and it is distracting and infuriating. All I see are the better DISNEY MOVIES that were clearly just plagiarized. Not an homage, not inspired. Plagiarized.

Lucifer calls Charlie to meet Adam. Adam says he knows. So this doesn’t feel like this is Charlie filling in, the way the dialogue is written is that it was specifically planned for Charlie to meet Adam.

Everything has a gradient.

I bet $15 that the Dickmaster portion of Adam’s dialogue was Alex Brightman’s improv. I was not impressed by his Kaiju Dick improv in Oops and this is just as flaccid. Pun intended.

There is a clear discccrepency in talent between Alex and Erika. He has such a smoother voice and range while Erika feels like a Disney understudy where every delivery is pretty much identical to the last. Like the songs themselves are not doing her any favors. They range from bad to mediocre, and even in the better songs, there is always one horrifically bad lyric that just ruins the entire experience.

I like Lute. She feels like Peridot.

RIP Katie Killjoy.

Nifty is cute. The joke for her had a lot of potential of being hilarious but didn’t meet my threshold of comedy due to lacking a feel for Nifty. Imagine if she was in every scene with Vaggie talking her head off and never shutting up. Then when Vaggie is like, “If anyone can sell this hotel, it’s Nifty.” And we had this foundation that Nifty is known for being a huge chatterbox only to then be dead silent when the camera is on her. It would have been hilarious. But we see her once and she has one singular line previous. So it just feels like a cheap visual gag.

As a musical, it is lackluster. I see that Evil is something separate from Lucifer and something he dislikes. Lucifer is said to see free will as a spring of creativity, but humans used it to suck and that killed Lucifer’s love of life. In the meantime, Lilith is empowered by Hell. Hell fuels her sense of freedom, which she spreads through her “songs”. Only for her to just vanish I guess. She just hopes out without a word, Charlie says she must be doing something important over the last 7 years, but no inclination on what important things Lilith would be doing. Additionally, Lilith is said to have loved Hell, like Charlie. So it sets up this idea that Lucifer dislikes Hell or even hates it, while Lilith revels in it. Alluding to their marriage falling apart from this dissonance. At the same time, Lucifer calls Charlie to meet with Heaven, despite the pilot being canon. So we get the impression that Charlie and Lucifer had a falling out (“Maybe dad was right.”) but she doesn’t have much more than surprise at her father calling. Then he just sets up this meeting for her to meet with Adam off screen entirely. It is unclear how this was conveyed, but Lucifer doesn’t believe in Charlie and her meeting Adam has nothing at all to do with her hotel.

But the way Adam talks about the meeting is unusual in that it gives the impression that it wasn’t about Charlie “filling in”, but that this whole meeting was specifically set for Charlie and Adam. This is compounded by how the ending reads like they didn’t know if the angel was dead until that moment. So the extermination being moved up has nothing to do with the angel’s death. Maybe I’m wrong, but this all feels really disjointed.

But Lute really is just Peridot. So much so that when asked what I liked about the episode, I literally said “Peridot”, not Lute. The one good aspect of this episode is another stolen concept from a better show with a more competent creator. But I also like Alex Brightman’s singing. He is very talented and he does elevate the material by really playing with his delivery, but it’s still at best Mid due to the weak lyrics,

3/10

#hazbin hotel liveblog #hazbin critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel critique #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel #vivziepop critical #vivziepop #vivienne medrano #spindlehorse critical #vivziepop criticism #Hazbin Hotel episode 1

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swallowtailed · 4 days ago

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misericorde vol 2 (full 100% spoilers, i’m so serious)

ooooh i’m so compelled by angela. she sucks so bad, but in a perfectly clear and logical way. very well written character

on a related note it is SO funny how unpitchable this visual novel is. “sex comedy about an anchoress who discovers that all the nuns in the abbey think she’s cute” is both exactly and not at all what it’s about, and also, somehow, a gigantic spoiler

it’s really good.

it didn’t click for me that the abbey was supposed to burn down, and therefore it didn’t make any sense for hedwig to be back in the cell, until i heard the keys jangling in the cell door. excellent.

i… don’t think i believe flora is dead, actually. we haven’t seen a body, and the pacing of it doesn’t make much sense. something else is yet to be revealed there.

hidden chapter! HI EUSTACE <3

with the introduction of another suspiciously familiar individual i gotta say i’ve now got no idea what’s going on at all. catherine inventing time travel or reincarnation or both feels as likely as anything

i think the biggest missing piece, for me, is what catherine wants. all we know is “to kill the antichrist”, which… frankly could mean anything. a question i have about her is how ontologically correct she is: did she really have the means to kill the antichrist? if not, what was/is she wrong about?

do have to say i’m ultimately not that compelled by “the devil did it”. as a solution to the mystery, that feels like it reneges on a promise of the narrative (that it was one of the sisters). but who’s to say

i am satisfied by eustace’s explanation—as of vol 1 my assessment was that she knew something was up and so genuinely didn’t want hedwig to get involved, which seems to bear out. now, the question that does remain is, does she have a clearer idea of what really happened to catherine. unclear as yet imo.

i do still really think that not getting charity’s account of finding the body is sus. not that i think charity did something, i just feel like that’s hidden information

also in hidden information: what’s in the last sherry cask!!! with the odd little note about the massive sale i’m still suspicious

really good handling of distinct plotlines in this volume, also—i felt the wheels turning outside hedwig’s perception.

i don’t have a single clue what’s up with the disappearing shelves in the back of the library, although it does bear some thematic similarities to whatever tatiana/catherine is up to, and new!eustace’s appearance is also rather suggestive

on that note, i’m curious about the physical structure of linbarrow abbey. the name suggests it’s built on burial grounds, there are passages in the walls, something is up with the library, and we were told early in vol 1 that neither the plan nor the architectural styles line up. burning it down also seems to indicate some significance of the structure. so… hm.

thinking about where the mystery stands now. hedwig was made to promise not to investigate further, but of course the field of play has changed greatly. (god, poor james.) the abbey still has to burn down in the year 1434, and moira still has to be killed with the sword. angela as superior would surely want to keep pursuing suspicions of witchcraft. and hedwig is getting dragged back out of her cell, rupturing the framing device and narration. fascinating. perhaps someone else will be taking over as narrator?

sure, i’ll bite. why is there a picture of christopher columbus in a book about english nuns?

#misericorde #misericorde spoilers #hello world

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team7-headquarter · 1 year ago

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Now that I'm reading One Piece, let me say this: even when I think One Piece is better written, the comparison between both mangas in their pre timeskip period is often done poorly.

Naruto decides to be immediately a more explicit and visceral story in terms of cruelty, with a main cast of 12 year old children. While One Piece takes its time building the foundation for its characters and future arcs, Naruto jumps right into the issue at hand. The first chapter is practically spelling it out to you, the reason why Naruto could and even should be a villain, given the circumstances. He's a sad sight, the loneliness and general dark feelings coating Naruto as a story are strong from the very start. I'm not saying that One Piece doesn't have a lot of dark themes and feelings too, but Oda style is to use comedy and good humor to balance it first. One Piece is lighter at the beginning.

For example, compare the East Blue saga and the Land of the Waves arc. Unfair, I know, but I want to prove a certain point here.

Each arc of the East Blue has a bit of cruelty in it, the worst being Arlong Park. In the 3 first arcs, when Luffy meets his three first nakamas, we can say it is more comedy than tragedy. No one dies, there is cruelty and battles, but it's kept on the "safe side". The villains are shown to be more "evil" than anything else. Morgan, Buggy and Kuro are pirates after all. Then they reach the Baratie and things start to get serious. Sanji's backstory is heavy (everything Sanji and Zeff went through is dark, from the starvation to the amputation and the grey scale of their animosity turned bond). You have the first hint at Nami's complexity as a character, you get a taste of the Grand Line in the Mihawk and Zoro encounter where Zoro almost dies, there's explicit sacrifice...

Like I said, Arlong Park is the worst of it all. The story of the town, of Bell-Mere and her children, of what the fish-men did to Nami... It would be incorrect to say that comedy is out aside. First of all, because one of the most common purposes of comedy is to build the ground for drama. You will need a light mood to present the gravity of the situation at hand. The reader must be desperate to see the characters laughing and joking again, to recover the good times, to preserve the bonds and friendships. All the previous arcs needed to be so silly for Arlong Park to be impactful. Nami lived through hell. There's war and discrimination, abuse, manipulation, government corruption and betrayal. I'd never dare to say it's a light arc.

With Naruto, it's like they went straight to their own Arlong Park. It doesn't get clearer than the explanation Tazuna gave about what was going on with Kato and the bridge. They step out of the gates and there's an assassination attempt where Kakashi pretends to get explicitly murdered in front of the kids so he can figure out what they're dealing with. You have the story of how the local town hero was basically crucified to get his arms ripped by Kato's men. Hell, before all of these you have things like the Uchiha massacre and Sasuke saying his goal is to kill someone.

Then the top of the cake: Zabuza and Haku. They end up dead, both of them. Suddenly the enemy is not just "evil" or "ambitious" but also very very human. Kids killing kids or refusing to kill kids, it's a nightmare. Kakashi kills Haku with a chidori to the chest and the manga lingers on the blood of it all. There's a panel when Sasuke takes a hit meant for Naruto— the visual impact is insane. That one panel of Naruto awakening the kyubi's chakra and threatening to kill Haku? This is not a story about pirates and treasures and dreams. This is a story about survival and murder and duty, where a kid happens to want to dream above all the misery of his world.

Compare now the Arabasta saga and the Chuning Exams. Both are about politics, foul play to take a country/hidden village down, how normal people are nothing but pieces of a bigger game, how the world is baster and more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.

The difference is that the straw hats choose to participate and choose how to do so. Every step is one they take conscious of the risk. They are teenagers still, sure, but they have their agency and they're powerful enough to not let anyone else push them around. They're at the heart of the conflict, they know what's going on behind the curtains. One Piece is about freedom, something that people in Naruto clearly lack. Even when there's death and sacrifices and a lot of cruelty, it's shown differently than in Naruto.

Team 7 gets thrown into the mess of Konoha's crush knowing nothing. The Chunning Exams are a shit show. The horror of Orochimaru and the cursed mark, the Hyuuga's plotline about family branches and slavery, arms exploding, Rock Lee's fight, Hiruzen's death, Gaara's backstory... Team 7 (at least the kids) move on such a different scale. It's terrifying. The Chunning Exams are war in a micro scale, designed to keep the power balance using their lower class soldiers, children included.

I can keep going, but well. I feel like I made my point clear with this post.

While Naruto's story pace is faster, the characters and the themes aren't rushed per se. It fits that in a world in constant conflict, things keep coming faster and the characters can't catch a break. The journey of the straw hats allows them more time to build the foundations of the crew, going from island to island. The way the stories are told are different too, so it'd be futile to compare them if you don't acknowledge that. What are the core values of the story? What is the general feeling? What is it trying to tell and how it corresponds to the way the story is told?

You either ask yourself those questions or you'll get a half-assed analysis, at most.

#shan's naruto posts #shan blogs about one piece!#shan posts about one piece!#naruto #one piece

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rbp-art · 1 year ago

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“BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.”

After reading this book, I was struck with the idea of designing a piece of cover art that captured the essence of the story. A scene that stuck out to me involved Irina, the protagonist, photographing a young man while he wore a rabbit mask to conceal his identity, and taking advantage of him with flimsy excuses for consent (‘he didn't say no, he didn't push me off of him,’ etc.). A consistent theme throughout the novel is Irina refusing to let herself be victimized, insisting on remaining in control regardless of the dire situations she finds herself in, and not caring who she hurts in her journey to power and fame.

The imagery of her victim being a rabbit - a symbol of a weak prey animal, always hiding in burrows and running from predators, unable to defend itself with teeth or claws - just amplifies Irina as a hunter, someone with a predatory nature, and I wanted to utilize that in my design.

My first concept was the rabbit in a vulnerable pose, smaller and rounder and soft-looking, while Irina takes up the foreground and looms over him with sharp edges and triangular shapes. I knew right away that I wanted to use a red and blue palette, both for the colour theory associated with them, and as a play on the ‘blue is for boys, pink is for girls’ idea that's so commonly touted as The Way Things Should Be. The male victim being coloured in baby blue, cowering beneath a sharp, red, female abuser, tells a visual story that's apparent to the viewer and captures the dynamic of their relationship throughout the novel.

The second idea I had was a close up of the rabbit masks’ eye reflecting Irina as she photographs her subject. The fact she cannot see under the mask, can't see his face, and doesn't see his tears, is a large part of her justifying her assault in the story. She sees what she wants to and cares only about herself and the footage she's capturing. I think the victim's face being obscured while Irina is the focal point of the shot is very poignant and highlights her self-centered nature and the dismissal of everyone else around her, so this is the concept I chose to develop.

I wanted to experiment with a more metaphorical depiction of a predator, so I tested out two designs. One shows Irina as she actually appears, and one shows the photographer transformed into a snarling wolf, leering over her prey and wielding her camera - her sword and shield.

I also decided to give some more movement to the rabbit, letting him raise his hand to defend himself from the flash - or possibly to pose for the camera? With his face obscured, there’s no way for the viewer to fully interpret his body language and understand his emotions. All we see is Irina’s point of view and the story she chooses to tell.

Upon painting both versions, I have a preference for the first image, where the photographer is presented as human. The dull, dead look in her eyes is a stark contrast to the bright, reflective ones of the rabbit, and I personally think the shading looks smoother and more appealing to the eye. I’m also happy with the effect of the text and how it creates 3 distinct bands of red against a mostly blue background, drawing the viewer’s eye to the centre of the piece.

Here I’ve created a mockup to see how this design would look as an actual book cover. I usually create simple illustrations or comics just for fun, so working on a piece with the goal of communicating an idea, appealing to a potential audience, and making a product was a fun challenge. I put more thought into the composition and colour, went outside of my usual box (flat colouring, cartoony style), and made something I’m proud of. Overall I’m very pleased with how this turned out. It’s very similar to what I visualized and I especially think the colour choices really help to get across the theme of vulnerability and power dynamics.

If I was to do this project again, I’d spend more time practicing digital painting, study fur patterns for the rabbit head, and research other artists for inspiration before jumping into it, so the end result would be more polished. I’d also like to explore the unused concept of the rabbit and photographer both being in frame, possibly leaning into the cartoon caricature style to create a stylised piece.

#portfolio #boy parts #eliza clark

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dontbelasagnax · 1 year ago

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Hello

What is a character that you did not expect you would like but ended up being obsessed with?

Hi thank you for the question! You have no idea what can of worms you just opened haha! My answer is Obi-Wan but wait- let me explain!

I first watched the Star Wars movies with my family when I was 5 or 6 in the order that they were released. So originals then prequels. Over the years, we watched 2003 Clone Wars, the TCW movie, and then we would catch some episodes of TCW from time to time when we were somewhere that had cable TV and was playing the show on Cartoon Network.

My little child brain did not see any nuance whatsoever because I was a child and therefore all my favorite characters were characters I thought were cool or the epitome of #girlpower (I'm a lesbian. I was obsessing over them in a lesbian way. I did not know this. Go women.) To me, Obi-Wan was just a white man. He was nice but he was also bland and boring. I didn't really touch his action figure when I would play with the Star Wars ones my brothers and I shared.

Last year I decided to watch Star Wars in chronological order of events rather than release date. And I really wanted to sit down and actually watch TCW because I'd only seen odd episodes here and there as a kid. In my rewatch, I was struck by Obi-Wan's kind heart, undying belief in the Jedi Order and the light side of the Force, sass and wit mingling with posh Brit attitude, the way he just slays nonstop (even in flavors of drowned wet cat and pathetic meow meow), and his overwhelming vibes of bisexuality. I was quite taken by him. He went from being just some white guy to being My Special White Guy.

[If you are curious and would like to see my list of childhood faves, it's under the cut.]

Vader - He's intimidating and I had his lightsaber. (Came in a three pack of Vader, Luke, and Obi-Wan. My mom went ham for things that came in three's or multiples of three because I'm a triplet and it's convenient)

C-3P0 - He literally went to the school of cuntology. (Special honor goes to his husband R2. Inseparable comedy and fuck-shit-up duo.)

Leia - She's a badass and I'm a lesbian. Slave Leia outfit did something to my developing brain.

Padmé - She's competent and I'm a lesbian. Also I would regularly check out the Star Wars visual dictionaries from the library or just look at them while I was there (I would go every Wednesday) and stare her costumes for way too long. Genuinely, I was (and still am) obsessed with every single costume they gave her.

Ahsoka - Jedi who's a girl and also a kid like me???!? Instant fave.

Ventress - Oaughhhgg drop dead gorgeous woman with two beautiful red lightsabers and the way she fights????? Guards, take me away

Aurra Sing - Genuinely think this one was because I'm a lesbian. I recall checking out a novel where she was the mc along with a comic that featured her from the library and the only thing from them I remember is looking at the pictures of her and thinking she's so pretty.

Mace Windu - Special honors go to him because his lightsaber color is the best. When I dove into Star Wars fandom spaces for the first time last year, I could not fathom why I kept seeing people say stuff about "Windu hate". I was under the impression the only thing to critique was they didn't let Samuel L Jackson say motherfucker even once. I stand by this.

#again thank you for the ask!! <3333 #lasagna rambles #im a certified Obi-Wan lover now #also whenever i show my mom my art she calls him “Obi” which i think is the cutest thing #no one get me started on how i fell in love with Cody because im a bit unhinged #obi wan kenobi #ask box

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turtlesocksv2 · 5 months ago

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4 Minutes Ep 2 Liveblogging

ok i'm not even going to look at my dash, i am going straight into this. I have been home for all of 10 minutes but I cannot wait.

oh somebody just got their ass beat Cain and Abel style.

So her son committed suicide because of gambling debts. We know who's running an online gambling operation. I see the dots, I am starting to connect them. also LMFAO at Tyme he does NOT know how to deal with patients it looked like it was physically painful for him while she was talking and he was trying to figure out what the fuck to say/do. and in the end, he does the least. Take these pills and tomorrow there will be another, DIFFERENT doctor who is NOT ME that you can tell this to.

Even the nurses gossip about how intimidating and cold he is. Very interested in Tyme's doctor ex-girlfriend just from that throwaway. Girl, do not drop out of your specialty over a boy!!!

Heyyyy it's my other boy Mio! I hope he gets to be unhinged here as well. And lmao at Title being an Awful Boyfriend Jet is really getting typecast as The Worst Dude. Ohohoho, sneaky sneaky with the phone recording, good job Dome!!!

god this flashback/dreamsequence/thinking about his powers scene is so visually interesting. i love it.

Title, your girlfriend is missing and people are suspecting you are involved maybe don't have a dance party in your car??? waiting for your bestie to help cover it up??? he fucking is keeping her locked up until she won't break up with him anymore oh my god. Jet really DOES play The Worst Dude every time. Great, you could stand to be a little more concerned your friend is a kidnapper here, this is why the goddess of time is telling you to experience character growth and be a doper person.

AND NOW TITLE HAS DOME IN THE TRUNK OF HIS CAR POSSIBLY DYING. THIS MAN JUST CAN'T STOP.

good on Great for kicking Title's ass and taking Dome to the hospital.

Lmao at Tyme fixing his hair and tucking in his scrub top before seeing Great as a patient. the nurse calling him out about it without saying anything is Peak Comedy. this fucking loser.

Tyme, Great is in no condition to be dealing with a Hot Doctor who is Looming like that. he has a head injury! the way Tyme just gets all up in his space...I am losing my goddamn shit at the heartbeat sound effect going on while Tyme is inspecting the wound. God this conversation is excruciating in the best way Tyme is down so bad it's hilarious.

Oooooh, JJay is a cop. Oh that's going to be delicious when we get KornTonklaWin drama from it.

Oh, is Tonkla Title's brother? that's interesting. Win has much better bedside manner/victim comforting than Tyme does. Korn's brother killing Tonkla's brother...the drama.

Oh but now we're getting a confrontation between Great and Title...hallucination? was the dead body not Title? anyway, the ticking clock effect works very well here. love these little audio touches that add so much.

Tyme here to save the day! so Title is indeed alive unless Sammon's getting Real Weird With It which I would respect. Once again, it is physically painful for Tyme to express human emotions "I was just worried" ok stalker. he's such a fucking disaster.

Nepo Baby Kitty returns!!! so fluffy, so majestic, would cuddle and feed sponsored treats.

uh-oh system crash at the illegal gambling operation is probably not great!

oof, Korn, just don't answer at all. no wonder Tonkla's gonna leave your ass for the hot cop.

the cello players are really insane, actually. This mafia uncle has flair, I like it.

I've only known Fasai for 2 minutes and I love her already. Mafia Queen!

...Is Bas going to be Ass Out every episode? Because I'm not complaining, love that for him.

Poor Tonkla, waiting desperately for his Ain't Shit boyfriend/sugar daddy/whatever to call him. But wait, what's this? Hot Cop Win is at the door? Sammon always delivers the "ACAB...except for this one Hot Cop that is only half a bastard." be grateful that Tonkla isn't breaking into your car to steal evidence and do his own investigation, Win!

#4 minutes #i have no idea where this plot is going but i love it #that's a lie i have SOME ideas #Tonkla needs to dump Korn's ass #we need more Dome i need my boy to cause more problems #I've only had Fasai for 2 minutes but if anything happens to her...

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et-cant-phone-home-no-signal · 6 months ago

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The Last of Us HBO - Episode 2 thoughts

Warning: Pure yapping ahead! More thoughts and things I've noticed watching the show, it's not serious and I don't invite arguments (fellow yappers are more than welcome though)

(continuing with my episode by episode analysis of the tlou show, it's a long one folks! all chronologically written as i was watching the episode. spoilers under the cut)

Fantastic opening - love that we get to see the initial discovery in Jakarta and that they speak Indonesian only! It removes the show from a purely American pov and makes it international, which is something I personally missed a little from the game so it's a welcome addition

The little detail that the military men walk so fast, she has to jog a little to keep up

I like the fact that they didn't even try to cover the dead body at all - why would they?

Same girl I'd have that exact same reaction too 💀💀 visceral as shit

The following visual of the cordyceps reaching out of the corpse's mouth.... Eugh

Ibu Ratna's reaction after hearing 14 workers are missing - her shaking so badly she has to put her cup of tea down, her face reads of pure undiluted horror 🙌👌 - worth mentioning that the casting of Christine Hakim is absolutely top tier (she's basically the Dame Judi Dench of Indonesia fr) and she really brings a gravitas to the role

I find it fascinating and refreshing that the first thing the military man does is to ask about a vaccine or medicine to fix this situation, but the scientist/professor, instead says with absolutely certainty that there is nothing, and then proceeds to say with an eerily calm and assertive tone and face that they must bomb the city. Terrifying yet wonderful that they've finally used a different format to this conversation

Ibu Ratna stifling her sobs and asking to go be with her family, because she knows there is no other solution - Brava

That soft, gentle opening shot of Ellie curled up in the sun on a lush bed of green, a single butterfly crossing over *chef's kiss*

Her turning to see Joel and Tess, sat in the shadows on chairs, Joel with his gun drawn lmaooooo that's comedy right there

Ellie's sass at the interrogation 🤌

"There's not gonna be anything bad in here?" "Just you." "Oh, funny." 💀😂

The fact that Joel broke his hand beating that guy to death - the way Tess looks at Joel, all knowing and vaguely soft

Tess defending Ellie indirectly by wanting to continue with bringing her to the state house - Joel wanting to return to the QZ and saying it would be better for FEDRA do shoot her than them 💀

"You need to stop talking about this kid like she's got some kind of life in front of her." Damn Joel, Tess' face says it all

Joel: struggling to break of a piece of EXTREMELY dry and chewy jerky, Ellie: sammich

Ellie in the warm light, Joel in the cold dark, and Tess in the middle of the two?? Gorg

It's so funny how terribly Joel and Ellie get on at this point, like, they basically hate each other my god

"If she so much as twitches.." *Ellie immediately starts twitching* and then Tess's "Don't." She is so done with these two already lmao

The iconic scenery 🙌 the two massive skyscrapers with one leaning on the other? Oooohhh yeah

The fact that Tess stops and answers Ellie's questions :')

I can't stop looking at Ellie's bag it's just so accurate I love it

"Well, I mean, you got some balls on you, sister." SLAY girls support girls ✨

The specific way Ellie says "no" at the boyfriend question 💅

It's interesting that Tess' reaction to hearing the description of what we know to be a bloater, is "shit, I hope not", insinuating perhaps that she and Joel haven't dealt with those before, but then the way that she looks at Joel after Ellie asks about clickers tells me they know exactly what she's talking about with that one

Immediately after we hear a loud ass creepy scream in the distance, okay!

The set designers got this shit so extremely right goddamn, the hotel gotta be one of my favourite locations fr - I love that they still included this location even if it's at a completely different place in the original story, it works so well here and with Tess added on, the humour is great and the way the characters interact is fun and interesting (Joel's little hop into the water especially gets me, he's such a shit lmao)

Ellie is genuinely so fucking funny I love this kid

Joel offering his hand, immediately snatching it back once she's mostly up cause it's his broken one (but you can see it's more than that)

"Fuck, holy shit." "Come on, it wasn't that bad." "You try climbing ten fuckin floors with our knees. See how you feel." 😭😭

Joel's face at being left alone with Ellie lmao

"Nice knife." great conversation starter Joel, but also, reference to his pocket knife Sarah held in the previous episode? He doesn't have it, when did he have time to grab it after all, but yeah. Maybe I'm overthinking this lmao

"Where'd you learn to do that?" "The circus." *Joel rolls his eyes with such exasperation taht I can feel it through my screen*

"How long do infected live?" "Oh, I thought you went to school." "It's a really shitty one."

Joel avoiding answering the question about the FEDRA dude he killed due to Tess returning is peak writing

I really enjoy how the infected are portrayed in the show - they're not just individuals, they're part of a hive mind in a way, the mycelium connects them all one way or another, and they act like it (the way they all react to sunlight and extra so because they all react to each others pain as well, wow)

Added onto that, this extra lore about the way the cordyceps works is fantastic, it makes it even scarier that, according to Tess, you can accidentally wake up and attract infected from somewhere totally different - this means you're never actually safe 💀

Really love how Tess is so damn nice to Ellie all things considered. Still answering her questions, telling her she has to be careful, that just because she's immune doesn't mean there's no danger

"I have a spare hand." "Congratulations." 😭

I do love how quick Joel is to run over to Ellie whenever something happens (her swearing, falling over, gasping loudly)

The look that Joel and Tess share - they think they know and they're probably right

Dad mode™ activated

That building is anxiety central for me

Joel is so jumpy and twitchy it's a little funny tbh, I like it

Ellie's "oh shit whoops" face

Joel helping Ellie up :')

The sound effects 😭💀😭 they got the same team that did the game clicker sounds to do the show ones and I can TELL

The anxiety is palpable!! My stomach is in knots!! The entrance of the first clicker is terrifying!!

Joel's silent, almost sign language like, explanation for Ellie 😌

The clicker actors are fucking amazing jesus christ. And the special effects and makeup? So GOOD wow absolutely grotesque <3

Not me gasping with Ellie

If I were there I'd probably just hide under a table and hold my breathe 😭

I find the clickers to be quite bird-like, in game and in show

The silence as Joel reloads his gun, the sudden much closer clicking, the flashlight shining directly in its face 🤌

Joel now being the one to step on something crunchy 😩 THE WAY THE CLICKER LAUNCHES ITSELF AT HIM AND ELLIE ACROSS THE DISPLAY

Ellie crying out with pure fear and Joel holding the clicker back more so it's on him not her - HIM PUSHING HER BEHIND HIM!

BIG TESS SLAY

Impressed by how calm their reactions all are to seeing Ellie get bit (?) again (I thought it was more of a scratch at first but I assume it to be a bite due to their reactions to it)

"That was scary, this is wood." HA

The way Tess looks at Joel when he's busy wrapping her foot with diligence and care

I think this is the first sign that Tess had been bit, Joel seems to be looking at her like "what the hell is your problem" but listens and goes to watch Ellie anyway

The view line 😭🤌 love how we basically get this exactly from the game, including Joel looking at his watch :'(

The music 🙌

Second time you can really notice that Tess is differently - she handles Ellie harshly for basically the first time ever and totally ignores Joel

Joel moving Ellie away from the dead body

The squelching of the blood EUgH

Go makeup team go!

Oeiii screaming match :( mom and dad are fighting

The step back speaks volumes

"Oops, right?" just stab me it would hurt less, Anna's delivery of that line is heartbreaking

In fact little quick note of love to Anna Torv, she's such a fucking amazing actor and I love her portrayal of Tess so so much, she brought warmth, strength and balls of steel to the character fr!!

The fact that Tess basically confesses her feelings here, proclaims the knowledge that she feels something for Joel that he was never entirely able to reciprocate back, my god - her BEGGING him to take her because she knows nothing about the future but she believes that Ellie can change it in some capacity

Pedro's eye acting here is so potent, he says nothing but his eyes and face say it all

The mycelium!!!!!! Terrifying that in show canon, infected can basically call for backup!!! Brilliant addition and makes them so much more intimidating (also I HATED seeing the mycelium creep under that infected person's nails that really got a shudder out of me)

God bless the extras

Tess my beloved you make me cry so much you're amazing and you deserved better 😭 she's brave as fuck for this

Joel shaking, his lips quivering because fuck, she's going to die, and now he has to be fully responsible of this kid and he can't do this without her but he's gotta - the anxiety and fear in his eyes, his firm resolution after she says "save who you can save", the way he SNATCHES Ellie and walks away, Ellie fighting him tooth and nail but he knew she would, thats why he grabbed her like that.... I'm honestly just in so much awe and pain from this scene

The fear is Tess' face is so 😭😭

FUCK NO THAT ALMOST MADE ME THROW UP I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT JESUS FUCK. That was disgusting what the fuck 😭😭 don't know how to feel about watching the fucked up kiss of death like, eugh

The feeling when after failing to light the damn thing, she finally gets it, feels almost like a relief after all of that

Joel "big sad brown eyes" and Ellie "big traumatised brown eyes" will be the death of me

This is such a fucking sad ending to Tess' character but also, satisfying since she didn't die in vain

That final shot of Ellie alone with the burning state house in the background, sun beating down and a soft breeze in her hair, damn

If you make it to the end, thanks for reading! It's literally just my running thought process whilst watching!! Do you agree with some of my notes, was there anything you noticed that i didn't? Comments and reblogs welcome <3

Episode 1 thoughts:

Episode 3 thoughts:

#tlou #tlou hbo #the last of us #joel miller #joel the last of us #ellie williams #ellie the last of us #tess servopoulos #tess the last of us #pedro pascal #bella ramsey #anna torv #episode 2 #episode thoughts #ramblings

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