#but not...like...the worst thing ever

[novelmonger]

Finally got around to watching Wish (mainly so I could form my own opinions about it), so I want to lock in my own opinions before I go look at all the criticisms of it I've been saving up since it came out :P

Overall, it was...fine? Not spectacularly good, not spectacularly bad. Kinda forgettable and pathetic for what was supposed to be Disney's "look at us we've been making animated movies for 100 years," but I've certainly seen worse from this studio.

As always, no matter what else I think of the movie, Disney always delivers on quality animation. Nothing groundbreaking, but I did like how it kind of looked 2D sometimes even though it was clearly all 3D though Klaus did it way better.

That being said, why did it look so much like Tangled? I don't just mean the palette-swap Disney seems to be using for every "princess"-like character these days, with the big eyes and the same basic facial structure. I mean that even the color scheme of purple and gold was the same. I loved Asha's hair, but the way it fell looked an awful lot like Rapunzel's sometimes (though obviously much shorter). Even some of her movements just looked like they recycled the animation from Tangled.

The songs were actually kinda catchy, though I didn't like the "You're a Star" song or whatever it's called. Best song by far was the duet with Asha and the villain. Also, I was expecting there to be more songs.

I'm sure everyone and their brother has already talked about this, but the villain felt lazily handled. His sudden descent into evil was too abrupt and too...all-encompassing? I could kind of see where they could have gone with him, someone with genuinely good intentions who takes it too far and decides the ends justify the means. But they made him too selfish and "mwahaha power!" so he just ended up boring.

The message that "if you dabble in forbidden magic even once, you're giving yourself to it for all eternity" was a surprisingly dark one for Disney, and not one I agree with at all. I would have much preferred to see even the tiniest smidge of a redemption for him. He can still get thrown in the dungeon at the end! But they had this whole scene about another character being forgiven for his actions in the movie, so why is the villain beyond redemption?

I get that this is a kids' movie, and I don't exactly expect a hard magic system from Disney, but how on earth does the star magic even work?! If everybody's a star, why does wishing on the stars in the sky work differently than just making a wish to yourself? Clearly the star has significant magic power, but if everybody has that power within them already, why does Asha need a magic wand to do things with it? How does everybody still have star power inside them if their wishes have been taken away or destroyed? I don't need everything about magic in any given story explained to me in scientific detail, but everything about the magic in this movie felt so arbitrary and convenient.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to point out that each one of Asha's friends corresponds to one of the seven Dwarves. I was patting myself on the back for figuring that out for myself, because I usually don't notice Easter eggs like that without someone pointing them out, but then they made it totally obvious at the end anyway -_-

I really wish the animals didn't start talking. Normally, I don't mind that in Disney movies; I kind of expect it, even. But every word that passed through Valentino's lips made me want to kick a baby goat. Not a pleasant experience.

You know, I just realized I think the only time I laughed in the whole movie was that moment when they open the door and see the chickens having a dance party. I usually have more fun with Disney movies, but there were too many times in this movie where it felt like they were trying too hard to be funny, and just ended up being kind of cringe. (Contrast that to Tangled, which still leaves me splitting my sides every time I watch it!)

What was Asha's mother's wish?! I kept waiting for them to show it, and started to think it was going to be something super important to the plot or something...but no. Just left a mystery forever.

The star was very cute.

I liked the pictures of all the animated movies in the credits. That was a nice glance back through the past hundred years. But did I blink and miss it, or did they leave off Meet the Robinsons and The Wild? I don't like either of those movies, but...weren't they Disney?!

[erachiiii]

In parkour civilization, even rain is parkour

based on this amazing comic except I made it stupid

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[oars]

[sqrkyclean]

being vulnerable for a second to use my pooltoy furry oc to convey what recovering from contamination ocd has been like while undergoing hrt.

[ninjasmudge]

(warning, may be loud 🔊)

x2 the torment!

[nelyo-s]

paul: mansplain, manipulate, manslaughter feyd: hot damn

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

I don’t think we talk enough about how Ford can see shrimp colors

[spookberry]

Isnt she supposed to be a Gymnast????

[aardvaark]

i love how sophie’s priorities are pretty much the inverse of anyone else’s priorities. she’s oddly calm in life-or-death scenarios and mostly just seems annoyed when people are trying to kill her, but things like rain or bugs or the smell of hardison’s van are what really bothers her. like one time she takes revenge on eliot by straight up brainwashing him because he didn’t get rid of a cockroach that was grossing her out… this is a woman who has been shot before.

[blighted-lights]

ravage is #1 personal space stealer and heater, 10/10 would recommend having him as an amica. usually he'd be sleeping curled around soundwave's head but the other cassettes are out harassing starscream on patrol, so soundwave's chest is free real estate

anyways send me asks with ur soundwave and ravage hcs and mayhaps i'll draw them soon

[cheaploafs]

if anythings getting reposted on their own its them …

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good morning, Sleepyhead.

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[inkskinned]

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[milatheartsy]

Some ep 7 lukas from both routes