#but other than Caitlyn and her fascism this is one of the

[tystrashcorner]

Vi deserves so much more than a pig who thinks of her as "one of the good ones."

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

massages forehead So Ambessa hid Mel away because she was a weapon in the literal sense, a mage. But Ambessa came to Piltover for Hextech? And Ambessa had nothing to say to Mel about her powers having visibly awakened? Even when Mel offered to go with Ambessa, giving her the ultimate opportunity to make Mel a weapon for real? And Ambessa made no attempt to find or retrieve Mel - not just her daughter and the remnants of the family Ambessa professes to love, but also her ultimate weapon - when she disappeared? And Ambessa trusted Singed and Viktor on their home turf - neither of them hiding how insane and self-serving they are with every reason to take over Ambessa's soldiers or just blatantly turn on her as soon as it benefits them - more than she trusted Mel? While Caitlyn (and by extension Piltover) was visibly and clearly falling away from Ambessa's teachings before Ambessa's eyes? (as if getting rid of certain people allows piltover to get rid of fascism but we won't get into All That)

Not only do I struggle to be hyped for Mel's powers beyond how amazing and beautiful she looks, but I can't help but feel like Mel is somehow less powerful in season 2 than she was in season 1, and not in an interesting way. As if Mel's ability to bend all of Piltover politics and economics to her will in season 1 now means nothing in season 2? You can argue that Jinx's attack led directly to Mel losing ground in Piltover - because I expected Mel to have to claw back that power without being able to rely on people who are too easily seduced by Ambessa and authoritarianism, and she would have to get creative to go toe to toe with her mother. I expected pushback to her mage identity that she would have to navigate. But instead this went either unwritten, or was ignored or discarded. Instead Mel is removed from the main plot, cutting her off from what made her the most interesting - only for all of Mel's very real talents, her very real powers and abilities, to be not only translated but REPLACED with magical powers she doesn't know how to control, and by the finale, those magic powers are the only powers that are considered real. Mel takes a backseat to Piltover's governing and decisions, a backseat to Jayce of all people who was not only new to politics mere months ago but made poor governing, strategic, and diplomatic decisions when he had that power. In season 1 Mel stayed off the "throne" but she did pull its strings one way or the other, and she makes no attempt at this in season 2

In my least generous suspicions, Mel was gentled and quieted to capitulate to an agenda for other characters who had to be correct and heroic - or wrong and villainous - no matter what the leadup narrative said, given her powers to help sell the game and set up future shows, and was effectively ejected from the Arcane story with faceless soldiers and a role she doesn't want because she was inconvenient there

[reboundttv]

Here's a Bunch of Words Expressing Frustration with Online People Part 2 I Guess? Arcane.

(Part 1 was about reactions to Wonder Woman #14, but that was on Twitter and it's gone now.)

It's been long enough. People who haven't seen it have successfully avoided spoilers. SO. Let's talk about the CaitVi sex scene.

Because there are a LOT of opinions about how it was handled, how it was written, etc. And I've seen a lot of...basically, Purity Culture, over how they never worked out their feelings, and Caitlyn never had to answer for trying to kill Jinx, or getting Vi to become an Enforcer or hitting her in Ep.3 or the dictatorship or the fascism or-

Here's the thing: Neither Caitlyn nor Vi know what's going to happen. They don't know tomorrow. They don't even know six hours from now.

We don't need a bunch of preceding episodes where somehow they have the time to get psychoanalyzed on-screen so that when they're finally intimate it's completely moral and unproblematic.

Arcane was never about being unproblematic. It was a show about broken people doing horrible things for selfish reasons, for better and for worse. Singed LITERALLY TELLS YOU AS MUCH (Season 2 Episode 5):

Caitlyn: "Why? Why do all this?" Singed: "Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love."

For context, he wants to conquer death so that he can save his daughter. And look at how it's worded. "acts others deem unspeakable." The awful things he's doing, he's rationalized them as necessary so that he can accomplish his goals. Whether it's him, or Viktor, Jayce, Caitlyn, Vi, Jinx... ALL of the characters in Arcane are like that. No one in this show was perfect. Far from it, actually.

And in that scene, Caitlyn and Vi are two broken, messed-up people. Their whole worlds have been upended. Vi believes that she's lost everything and everyone important to her, and that it is of her own doing. Caitlyn is questioning the only thing that's ever made sense in her life: her duty to Piltover and how that's run up against her own morals and how she has changed to accommodate them, rather than stayed true. Caitlyn also has guilt over being intimate with Maddie. (fuck maddie all my homies hate maddie)

And the only thing they have, in that moment, is each other. The only kind of, sort of constant in their lives. Is it perfect and unproblematic? No. Is it healthy? Arguably not. The scene is messy, and clumsy, and for fuck sake they're having sex in a prison cell.

But are those the things that actually matter? Is that the story that's trying to be told? NO. No, it is not. Broken people, just trying to make sense of what's going on around them. Trying to find others to hold on to, to anchor themselves. Find that closeness and intimacy, and even if it doesn't work out the way they want, they'll still have each other.

[askinkiskarma]

I have a lot of thoughts about arcane and rather than dealing with them on my own i thought i would try to write them out and see how other people feel and maybe have a conversation about it, because the beauty of art is sharing it and seeing it through your own eyes, as well as others’ - the beauty of art is its ability to ignite and spark a conversation… a change.

Arcane is very important to me, because of what it represents - humanity, in all its aspects and kaleidoscopic facets, in all its glory and in all its misery. What made it unique is how inherently relatable and universal the feelings and experiences the characters go through and how inherently human their problems are at their core, and whilst they were able to keep a lot of those sentiments in season 2, I feel by act iii they forsook a lot of what made arcane special.

Very rambly thoughts ahead, I do apologise, and please tell me yours, I would love to speak about it and process it.

To me arcane was always about class struggles, about oppression, about what happens to the oppressed when they are pushed to the brink, about how that affects a person’s journey and their fates, and putting faces to those struggles on both sides of the equation - vi, an orphaned child who was forced to grow up too quickly and parentified to the point she felt like she had no value outside of being a protector; jinx - a brilliant mind who fell victim to trauma because there was no one able to help her outgrow it or deal with it; silco - a man who has seen the oppression first hand and chose to fight it regardless of the sacrifice it took. I could keep going and going but Arcane was a phenomenal display of character and morality, and an almost perfect attempt at the shades of grey that make most of us who we are. No character was without flaw, and no character was unjustified in their actions in their own minds and due to their own particular set of circumstances.

I think most of the gripes I have with season 2 stem from two overarching themes: time and ambition. But before I go into this, let me praise it for a bit because despite all my grievances, I still think it is the best animated piece of art of all time and I still think it's better than 99% of anything I've ever been invested in. Although almost redundant to even talk about, I want to shine a light onto the animation. I have to give so much credit to every single person involved in bringing this series to life, because it is a spectacle from the first frame to the last, and the amount of talent, effort and passion it took to do this can never be put into words.

I will bring up things I loved about it as I'm talking what I didn't, because they are very much entrenched. My biggest complain about season 2 is that, the fact that it was only one season. I believe everything they've set out to achieve and every plot point they introduced could have been properly addressed and done justice in in one more season, and therefore, none of the problems I'm about to go into would have ever been an issue.

Imagine this: season 2 starts exactly as it did, with the first three episodes dealing with the aftermath of jinx's actions and the loss that drives Piltover into deplorable reactions, with Caitlyn and Ambessa at the helm, descending into fascism, Cait driven by blind rage and the prejudice she's been fed her entire life without an active effort into trying to overcome it, Ambessa driven by ambition and desperate attempts to one-up the Black Rose organisation. However, the season progresses differently - to me, this conflict and its consequences should have been what this season was about.

Simple yet deeply impactful, tackling the themes they set up in the last season, tackling the intricacies of what would lead the characters into their actions - for Cait, expanding on the way grief, fear and guilt makes you regress back to your most ignorant, primal, selfish self; for Vi, the way a lifetime of being told she's responsible for everything and everyone and her unbridled desire for love and family made her abandon her core principles and join the people she hates in order to kill the monster she thinks she's responsible for creating; for Ambessa, the way her deeply embedded and deeply repressed fear of the Black Rose coupled with the Noxian belief in strength and sacrifice and war made her give up one her core beliefs that warriors are forged through blood sweat and tears and not through magic and reach out to Singed, therefore becoming an almost caricature of herself etc etc etc.

That coupled with the overarching conflict between Piltover and Zaun, how Piltover's actions are the breaking point for Zaun, as well as the personal conflicts between Jinx and Vi, Mel and Ambessa, Vi and Cait, potentially Jayce and Cait once Jayce realises Cait has become someone she would have absolutely despised just a few weeks ago, would have made for a compelling and powerful season that kept to much of the themes of the first season and could have been the stepping stones for a larger conflict that could have been introduced but not expanded in this season - Viktor and the Hexcore, the bigger battle between humanity vs the arcane, the Black Rose and their involvement in everything.

Season 2 would introduce Isha as a positive role model for Jinx and a way that Jinx would be able to be rescued from the nothingness her life had become - Isha could have been a symbol for Zaun, and the reason Jinx would decide to become the face of the revolution for Zaun independence. Season 2 could have ended with the Jinx and Vander moment in the prison, or with her reaching out for Vi after her KO in the pits. Season 3 then could have dealt with everything else, and been a great way to introduce other characters and other conflicts (Mel and the Black Rose), which I assume will be part of the next series about runeterra.

I think this season and what it was trying to achieve was great, but its biggest downfall was that in its ambition, it fell short of what made it great. Because whilst the fighting and the animations and the moments we did get with the characters were great, there wasn't enough time to make them justified or fleshed out, and in that, we lost the essence of what people loved the most about Arcane - the eye to detail, the accuracy in character writing and portrayal.

I loved seeing Cait and Vi together and I loved seeing them get into conflict - I did not, however, love that Caitlyn went from being a dictator to redeeming herself in basically one episode with no consequences for her actions. Vi should have been mad, she should have been furious, she should have held her accountable and she didn't. I wanted them to have a much earned sex scene, but not in a prison, which overlooks the insane amount of trauma Vi has suffered in Stillwater and how insensitive doing it there comes across as.

I loved seeing Jinx and Vi reunited - but for a story that started and was always at its core a story about two sisters, there was not nearly enough done to explore their very complicated and tumultuous relationship and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. Not one scene in which they talked about their issues, where they opened up about the past, where they resolved anything before Jinx eventually died, and then, not even one scene of Vi mourning her or what her death represents to the overarching story or to Zaun.

I loved seeing Jinx get better, and her character was actually the highlight of the show for me this season, but a lot of it felt rushed and not properly explored - by the beginning of act 2 she seemed basically perfectly sane, and even after losing Isha, she seemed perfectly in charge of her emotions and was able to surrender herself and make perfectly rational decisions, which doesn't seem in line with all we know about jinx. Not to mention Isha was never mentioned once in the whole of act 3, and neither did Jinx becoming a symbol for Zaun amount to absolutely anything in the end.

I hated how much like the fandom, and the characters themselves, the writers seem to overlook Vi completely. She got the short end of the stick at literally every turn and I thought she would have gotten a semblance of justice in the end, but she didn’t. She forsake everything she knew and believed in because Jinx needed to be killed - Jinx was actually better and fixed herself without any of her involvement, so she betrayed herself for nothing. She finally opens up to Cait and cries in front of her, begging her not to change because she’s already lost everything - Cait betrays her like 5 minutes later and attacks her, abandoning her, then comes back like nothing happened and Vi doesn’t give a shit and forgives her immediately. Finally gets Vander and Jinx back? Loses them both again in the span of a few days. SHE EVEN FUCKING GOT A BAD ENDING IN THE HAPPY ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE EVERYONE ELSE WAS HAPPY LIKE WTF. I could keep going and going about Vi and all the ways she was done wrong but I’d be here forever so let’s move on but #justiceforvi

I liked the Jayce and Viktor conflict and I actually believe everything they've done with that they handled well, since it was basically the main plot of the season, and I loved the way ekko's storyline intertwined with theirs, but this could have been handled even better in a season dedicated to it, and I wish it hadn't come at the expense of Jinx, Vi, Cait and the conflict between Zaun and Piltover. Watching this show felt a little bit like watching season 1 of game of thrones and then halfway through season 2 we're actually in season 8 and the white walkers are here and nobody cares about the iron throne anymore and everything that happened we're supposed to forget about and focus on jon snow vs the night king and it's so confusing cause I kinda cared about Ned Stark and who killed Jon Arryn and i’m kinda still mad that Cersei killed Lady and I’m still curious about Bran and his visions and Varys and the importance of choosing a leader who cares about the small folks and and and ???

This is such a long post and I’m very sorry and I’m writing it on my phone so it might not even make sense but I needed to get some of it out because this has taken over my life.

I probably will have more thoughts as I’m processing this more but for now pls tell me i’m not alone and pls tell me your thoughts 🤍

[itoshikha]

on another note about arcane though, i do think the writers really failed to convey any sort of positive outcome for zaun in season 2.

for one, sevika doesn't speak at all in ACT 3, nor does she get to defend herself or her people in any meaningful way. they decided to throw her into being a council member, but one person from zaun and 6 other from piltover? what kind of voice is she actually going to have in that repression?

secondly, the jinx supporter girl people have grown to adore, gert, was suddenly killed while fighting alongside her oppressors who wrongfully beat and arrested her, in the uniform no less. really? who thought this was good writing.

lastly, i'd like to mention the 'im the dirt under your fingernails' comment from vi. it's so excruciating for me how they decided to end on a line that's only purpose is to clearly solidify the vast difference in their social status and put caitlyn on a pedestal. i can't pretend that showing their relationship in this light is healthy. that's the thing; their partnership came down to the fact that they aren't actually equals. that vi is always going to be lesser than cait and can't ever level with her. im sick.

the main thing this show focused on in season 1 was police brutality and the wrongful centrist, capitalistic mindset and they've completely failed to prove of piltover's wrongdoings in season 2. the war didn't lead to anything better for zaun. piltover's still superior, and the cycle of fascism is only going to continue. they made tortured people put on their oppressors' uniforms, caitlyn and vi poisoning zaun's air and murdering innocent people was never addressed, and piltover also corrupting the air and water in zaun through the hexcore never had any consequences.

as many poc creators have rightfully said, it's obvious that this show was made by white people for white people. as a white, anarcho-punk teenager standing among you all, i want you to know i understand completely, even if i'll never feel what you do.

banners /dividers by @/cafekitsune

[soulc-hilde]

Arcane, Season 2... I had to stop everything I was doing, because I am irritated.

Arcane: League of Legends as the entire show has been beautifully written - outside of S2's ACT III, I better see some fix-it fanfics like y'all's name is Felix. And despite all of the things to list about ACT III that has been rushed, a totally different thing has caught my eye and my irritation.

Caitlyn Kiramman's character arc from Season 1 - Season 2 shows us how she evades the legacy of her family only to be forced as the leader of her house's name after the murder of her mother and how she grieves while trying to understand her way through the politics of her new role.

From the jump, I did not like Caitlyn. She is beautifully written and the way her character spirals is written well. The reason I do not like Caitlyn is what she reenacts and that's because it is a part of my daily life as a black woman.

Now, I'm not ranting because of her actions. I'm genuinely pissed at the ignorance some folks have towards this and I wanna sit you on your ass as I tell you this.

Yes, folks can divert the fantasy from the reality. However, if you are an actual writer or have studied creative writing (not your typical English Literature classes) under someone who has published books then you know that an author finds inspiration in everything that includes the scars of history told and untold as well as the current disasters our society faces in the present.

Hell, we unconditionally have the power foretell whenever the government decides to pull some bullshit out on us [The overturning of Roe v. Wade and The Handmaid's Tale + Many More].

Caitlyn's actions are not to be excused just because her mother died in a terrorist attack. They are not to be excused because she's a lesbian. They are not to be excused period.

Everyone in the damn show are war criminals. The point of the show is to describe just how far everyone will go to even the scales and find balance within their own beliefs. It also covers that there is no distinct hero and its villain. Everyone just wants to live. That's all they want.

Which is insane to me because that's a typical dystopian theme in every book/film - which by the way, genres like dystopia are based off of reality. They are based off of the actions of the past and the present and what type of future they can conjure for us and our descendants.

It sickens me that a lot of you think that Caitlyn's blatant ignorance and fascism towards Zaunites is just a thing the writers had pulled out of their asses when it's a dark belief that people still carry to this day and teach their kids. Caitlyn and Vi should not have gotten together at the end because of Caitlyn's actions towards Zaunites and the hell she drug Vi through.

No one is excusing Jinx's actions or Ambessa's. As I said, everyone is a war criminal. The only difference is ... Caitlyn came out with her home in tact and with the girl as if she's some fucking hero.

And I can guarantee that the lot of you who hold this mentality are the exact white women who favor the beliefs of Taylor Swift [White Feminism] and will continuously endanger the lives of women of color, but when shit hits the ceiling all of a suddenly it's a 'we' problem.

Y'all are so attached to consuming brain rot or content that contains no form of substance other than to people please that when a bomb ass show with an even greater story comes out with a purpose y'all will say the most dastardly thing ever. No wonder why good shows and even better writing is so few and rarely seen nowadays because no actually listens to the story.

You all just want sex. A poor excuse of "representation" that's just of another white cisgendered couple with an opposites attract trope or a doomed / romeo & juliet trope. You are boring, you are flat, and folks like you suck the creativity - the art - out of people's writing.

[unrelentingforse]

i don't like caitlyn (ACT 1 S2 SPOILERS)

the first season of arcane showed us how caitlyn was forced to face the harsh realities of people she was taught from a young age to hate. she saw how they were treated and how they survived in zaun. she changed her views...for a WHILE.

because she never deconstructed the way she THINKS about zaunites. she was about 24 when this all went down and this is concerning. because all of her formative years she spent believing that her life is more valuable than others. cailtyn is RICH RICH. so no wonder why as soon as she was faced with a loss she went back to her old ways.

the only reason caitlyn protected vi during the audience is because of sexual attraction. THAT'S THE ONLY REASON.

for cait vi was "one of the good ones". she said it herself in the first episode - she STILL sees vi as "the good zaunite" not as a person who has a LOT of reasons to hate piltover and enforsers.

they are from completely different worlds - vi is from the lowest of the low and caitlyn is from the richest family in piltover. she is privileged to a point nobody else can really conseptualize. she can NOT actually grasp how much she contributes to the oppresion of zaun and that's a HUGE roadblock in their relationship.

vi was pretty much forced into enforsers. she betrayed who she is, her beliefs and morals only for caitlyn. vi saw so many atrocities done by the enforsers and she became her own opressor. that's nothing to sneeze at.

but cait STILL thinks that vi is lower than her. it only took vi stopping her from SHOOTING A CHILD to betray her supposed lover. not only that - SHE HIT HER FOR NO GODDAMN REASON. SHE HIT HER IN THE STOMACH. WHERE SHE WAS STABBED.

caitlyn kiramman better have a damn good redemption arc because i can't bring myself to like her right now.

edit: i think i need to clarify this. i am NOT in any way, shape or form condoning her gassing the lanes. this post was mostly about caitlyn's fascism in relation to her situationship with vi. i could go even deeper into this but this is a topic for another time.

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

In hinsight it's even funnier.

Ambessa spend months weaving intricate web of lies and corruption, just to make sure her puppet dictator festers in her hatred for one pair of blue hair and mental illness. Cait basically fell into her lap pre-packed, she was already on her "shoot the kid first, gas the rest" stage when Ambessa gave her absolute power on a silver platter. To get her hands on Jinx's neck Caitlyn was ready to make 1984 look like Conquest of Bread, all she did was an enabler with military power to back it up. But Ambessa wasn't going to stop here, she wanted to mold Cait in her image, just to be sure. Forget the Noxian Triangle, one of Caitlyn's ears was being filled with tenents of Ur-Fascism labeled "guidelines", all while Ambessa's hand-selected two-faced bitch was in the other ear, telling Caitlyn to not worry, she is in charge, she is in control, she has the power here, she can stop whenever she wants. And she's a good person, much better than this scary Noxian general, would such cutie patoie be so in love with her otherwise? Of course Caitlyn will stop when things get really bad because she's such a good person and she is in control, she can stop whenever she wants, just not after some Zagnief looking motherfucker treid to break someone's neck for having blue hair and pronouns, that wasn't so bad, she just needs to have some stern talk with mo...general, remind her who is in charge and that she will totally stop everything if things get really out of hand. Just not right now. Ambessa helped Caitlyn bent to shove her head up her own ass so deep she had Runeterra's greatest piece of shit dead to rights and didn't blow his head off because she was too focused on wanting to strangle a single neurodivergent that doesn't even like the guy herself. Caitlyn's downfall was doing so well Ambessa said "forget Piltover, I want to induce this bitch to the empire, she's gonna do numbers!". She was well on her way to mold Caitlyn into a true wolf, a perfect child that wouldn't question her ideals like the other two.

And then she gets one look at an angry oil stick that doesn't believe in proper bras, with her tight black pants, her leather jacket barely containing the guns, her ABS and it's like a fucking spell came undone. For all intents and purposes Ambessa could as well have hypnotize her like in a Saturday Morning Cartoon, pendulum on a swing style, that's how easy it all went poof, gone the moment Vi said a magic word. Months of careful manipulation and realistic indoctrination, poisoning woman's mind and bedroom, undone faster you can say "true love's kiss". Sorry, your political intrigue is over, because a butch hit her emo phase. RIP to Ambessa, Vi's just built different

-Admin

[arcane-ish]

Very quick thoughts on Arcane 2x01 - 2x03

Some highly shallow, quick reaction thoughts. I kind of don't like the bits where they experimented with the normal style. Whether it was the black and white in the opening with Caitlyn, the hextech or the blood magic. It just looked kind of cheap and corner-cutting even though I could totally picture Fortiche wanting to experiment with their own style.

The directing in the battle scenes also felt different to me.

In my memory it took me a while to go completely gaga over the show back in season 1. My verdict for season 2 is that I see some structural weaknesses, but I still like these characters and wanna see where it goes.

Anyway, on to the episodes.

So happy that Mel is alive. Throughout the episodes I kept thinking that Mel is our heroic little princess traipsing around and being moral. I was highly amused that Jayce and Mel deal with Jayce having fridged Viktor in Jayce's lab.

It made me irrationally happy that Ekko comes so early in the opening credits.

I feel like structurally there are two things that make it weaker than season 2.

I miss the old structure with the childhood flashbacks. Season 1 made great use of this to give us depth or new perspectives on characters and that allowed them to really hook you with those twists. I'm not that sad that they abandoned the "there's always a twist" approach, I feel like that might have been hard to keep up and shows that force themselves to constantly do twists feel like they suffer for it. (the only twist was Ambessa at the end of ep 3, but I felt that was fairly predictable) I also feel like there are a lot fewer horror vibes (which is something that s1 played with to get their twists off)

I think season 1 really benefitted that we saw a lot more of the characters being normal and then slowly doom approaches. That allowed us to see a casual side to many characters and I think the relationships really benefitted from, that we got to see characters just being friends or just being siblings or just being bosses and then have it ripped away. Season 1 already established most of these places and characters and they are not all in drama, one darn thing happening after another mode.

Moments that didn't really land for me

I feel like I don't get why concretely Vi is so upset over Jinx. Like I feel like I have a really good handle on why Ekko was angry at Jinx. Jinx killed one of his firelights and he is really upset that she's working with Silco who's selling Shimmer. And Vi has a lot of reasons to be upset and okay with Jinx getting killed, but I feel like her being haunted by a flashback really would have helped. Is this going back to "she's working with the guy who killed Vander and I thought he was manipulating her but now I believe she wasn't so I hold it against her", is it that Jinx abducted Caitlyn, is it the death of Caitlyn's mom, is it just that Jinx has a body count? Maybe it will be handed in the next act.

Viktor instantly becoming Hextech Jesus after he wakes up just felt rushed. Again greatly would have benefitted from some more flashbacks because him just seeing Skye doesn't really explain. Again I get the basic motivation of him disapproving of Hextech being used and going home, but it still felt off.

Moments I liked a lot

Heimer being funny during the heist

Vi getting drunk and commenting on Cait's sense of humor

Jinx and Sevika's convo in Silco's office

Mel being sneaky talking to the lady with the big ears.

Moments that worked really well

Jayce and Viktor's convo. I'm a card carrying "It's absolutely lowest on my shipping totem pole", but I thought they carried the emotion off well (admittedly that might have been my "I wonder if Silco and Vander ever argued like that"), though Jayce seemed to be suspiciously fast back on to worrying about other things (and I don't really buy that he's that fasts at smithing, btw)

Ambessa's seduction by fascism of Cait at the ending of Act 3 (I kept wondering if Cait is Ambessa's type as per Ambessa's voice lines in the game).

The CaitVi breakup. Though mostly how rough it was. Like during it I was like instantly thinking I should check the internet to see if CaitVI fans are okay, sheesh that was tough.

[sydney-empire]

When season one of Arcane ended, I felt I had been misled. I felt it wasn't truly Jinx's story, but rather it was Jayce's. Obviously, there are a number of different characters that we're meant to explore, but Jinx herself felt like a plot device in her own story; gone for most of it just to show up at the worst moment and cause another roadblock. She felt so gimmicky that I didn't care much for her.

Well I feel like this new season just confirmed what I already felt. I was invested with the whole martial law plot and Jinx becoming a new symbol of hope for the people of Zaun, and I truly thought we'd see her and Sevika work together and fight for their people (Jinx making Sevika a new arm as a surprise gift was really cute!). Well Jayce's storyline ended up overpowering everything. I was never fond of the whole "progression goes too far and turns into annihilation in the name of perfection" trope, and watching Jayce save the entire world with a pep talk and then sacrifice himself with Viktor just.... idk man, the speech and forehead touch were both very sweet, but why did the entire conflict between Piltover and Zaun have to be discarded for this? Was this really worth it? You often lose all personality in your story when the stakes are raised so needlessly high. A civil war between two factions is already tense and has so much potential for character direction and relationship-building. We had martial law, relocation camps, threats of fascism, the first act gave us so much to work with. Jinx could've had that realization that she CAN in fact do something meaningful. She could've stepped up to the role and waved that damn flag we saw in the intro. Maybe Vi could've done something other than pine for Caitlyn and cry.

I definitely had fun watching the show, but the adrenaline wore off pretty quickly and I realized just how little we actually got. All that carried over from the first season were its flaws.

[essentialthyme]

My hottest take is that Cait is an interesting character but she becomes infinitely more interesting when I think of her having a psychosexual hate/love obsession with Jinx. Like they'd tear each other apart but Season 2 really wants us to see the two of them as mirrors to each other. Like Caitlyn's moment of frustration in Jinx's lair when she shoots that cutout? You can see Cait's eyes do this haunting flash of black and white for a split second. It's like when Jinx's shimmer kicks in and her eyes leave these trails of light behind her. It's so good.

I'm not loving Vi this season so far, I understand her motives I just think the writing around her is rather weak, which is more of a result of having to keep Arcane somewhat aligned with League's lore. Like Vi is obviously going to be an Enforcer because she's an Enforcer in the game, one of the most famous Enforcers to ever exist and one half of Piltover's Finest. Like she is predestined to be a cop, but her journey to getting there is one I'm not too happy with simply because the path didn't offer a lot of growth or regression, her decision to join the Enforcers is one thing, but her gassing her neighbors is a whole problem in itself.

I would be surprised if a lot of them end up turning on her, simply because she was gone for upwards of ten years, comes back with THEE Enforcer princess Caitlyn Kiramman, is somewhat involved with taking down Silco's gang-- one of the major players in the advancement of Zaunites--then comes back again with a strike force of Enforcers and a toxic gas to choke out her neighbors. Like from their perspective Vi must seem like a total traitor.

Caitlyn is...my baby girl like I adore her so much but girl is taking that steep decline into fascism. Which is colored by both her grief, rage, frustration, and fear; similar to Jinx in act 2 of season 1, she feels betrayed and the people she thought she could count on are failing her. I'm sad she's going through it this season, even though I completely stand with whatever Jinx does to Piltover, but it's a little upsetting that people are either "she's totally evil" or "she's innocent" about her this season. Like I hate what she's doing but I love her character, I love messy characters, I love it when women are angry and violent and evil.

This is ranty, I forgot the main point of this ask was to spread my CaitJinx toxic lesbianisim agenda

There has always been a link between Caitlyn and Jinx, and I can't exactly articulate it well, or better than other people have already done, but yeah, I love that Caitlyn is affected by everything that has happened to her, that she reacts so viscerally to Jinx. I always liked the human element of Arcane's storytelling, and this is no different.

Now about Vi, I don't get the issue many people are seeing. Not only I felt it was shown that the strike team used the gas tactically against the their targets, we're also talking about the same Vi who stormed a factory in season one without knowing who was inside and tried to convince Jayce to keep going after he killed a kid. I'm going to see if I find the post again, but someone talked about how Ekko is the character people think Vi is, and I'm seeing it a lot in fandom rn. I saw someone say Vi was horrified by Caitlyn's questioning, and I just don't see it: Vi has punched first and asked questions later, if at all. I think she is worried. This season Vi is not the focus, just as Caitlyn wasn't in the first season, but we can see three things about her: she is wracked with guilt and grief (which is the driving force of her joining the enforces, "righting her wrongs"), she is worried about Caitlyn, and finally, at the end, she is hurt. The next episodes seem to focus on her, so I'm hopeful!

Ultimately, I think I'm really going to enjoy the season, if the first arc is anything to go by. Caitlyn falling down into this dictatorial path is tragic, but that's the thing about Arcane, there's so many preventable tragic shit happening because of how things play out, of how characters react to things, because of the emotions they feel and can't deal with. I felt the same way watching Caitlyn hit Vi as I did watching Vi hit Jinx. I anguished at Vi ending up in prison in the aftermath, and I despaired when Caitlyn stepped up into Ambessa's play. I think stories like these have the potential to be incredible, and I hope they can stick the landing. Idk lol I'm enjoying it.

But yeah, even though I am a simp for Vi and Cait's relationship, I can see the CaitJinx appeal: toxic yuri rise!

[envolvenuances]

one thing me and my sisters kept reverting back to is that... They didn't need to set up anything beyond what they hinted at season 1?

Ambessa wants to weaponize Hextec for the sake of her war in Nexus. It's better yet to test it, make a Guernica from this city. Jinx attacked the Congress. Piltover elite demands counteractions. That's enough to set up a civil war.

And to be fair all of that happens in the first three episodes. But as much as I enjoyed Caitlyn's downfall into fascism and originally called it more bold than I expected before they attempted to erase it in record speed and creation of excuses... I feel like I should have seen the problems coming now I think of it. Because it was all too militaristic in contrast to anything we had seen from their police before wasn't it?

I feel like the entire season they've attempted to rise the two sides to equal independent cities. When they had previously always made clear it was one city with extreme class division, the elite and the slums they isolated at the other side of the river. Most obvious example being the overuse of the word "Zaun" even by top-side characters for me when before even Silco kinda saved it for special occasions. The dialogues and the few character driven scenes kept insisting the conflict is driven by human nature or senseless emotional drawbacks like there's comparison between Caitlyn and Jinx. And acting like it started with the girls or at best Vander and Silco. And not like they tried marching on that bridge for a reason.

It's quite obvious they wanted a big battle scene to use their experimental animation tactics on. But it's like they couldn't stomach the political implications of the testing nuclear/chemical weapon allegories on favelados they had previously set up. Yet they stomach to animate a revolutionary poor black woman dying in a military police uniform. But anyways the result is those scattered plotlines trying to set up this big battle and it just... completely negated any suspension belief for us. Truces in wartime happen but not like they've presented. One of my sisters started laughing so loud on the scene of them raising the barricades in the bridge so Zaun characters can go die for Piltover even tho they never even made Ambessa threaten the lanes. You're so emotionally uninvested by that point we just started nitpicking the show and they did give us a lot. Like why do all Ambessa's soldiers just stand there watching while Mel and Caitlyn were double teaming her. This is the big battle you gave up your themes of class warfare and your two main characters sibiling bound for???

If Vi just committed to killing Jinx and Caitlyn just killed Isha, cementing the enmity between sisters (instead of that time-wasting Vander plot) and building up to a finale where the focus was a battle between Piltover and Zaun, and Jinx wanted to avenge Isha as Vi wanted to avenge Vander/her girlfriend's mom--

If Viktor becoming an apex hex-tech man made him "evil" not because the arcane "corrupted him" but because the council considered him a weapon Zaun would leverage against them and if Jayce, now a councilman and puppet to Mel, went on a mission to disable Viktor for Piltover instead of "humanity", thus cementing his deviation from the dream of helping people they had both shared in the beginning--

If Jayce and Vi had the realizations that they loved Viktor/Jinx more than their perfect/peaceful worlds and lives in the midst of a devastating battle where everybody lost--

If Jinx and Viktor had once again difficulty choosing between the person they loved most in the world who was threatening to kill them and the glorious revolution that had been thrust upon them and their crushing sense of responsibility--

If the writers had just committed to one idea instead of trying to do everything in a season that already shouldered a lot of weight, if they'd just finished what season 1 started . . .

[chrysaliseuro2018]

Lisbon by Day and Night

So day 1 really in Lisbon and George had organised a free walking tour. Alex had arrived very late the night before so we all said a hearty hello in the morning. Alex is a a Canadian Aussie living in London and you don't get much more cosmopolitan than that. It was so lovely to catch up again. Some breakfast in house and then a quick sorty to the start of the tour which was not far away. Our tour guide was Joao (hard J ie Jow though he said he responded to anything including Joe) who advised he was 24 and a student of linguistics. Fantastic English, curly hair with the beard. He looked like a gentle version of one of those old Portuguese seafarers. There were 19 in the tour group and Joao was pretty engaging. The first half of the tour was reasonably devoted to various hints eg the practicaIities of negotiating the public transport system and insights into good bars and cafes and indeed where to buy the best pastel de natas. We also saw the funicular and various other sights including the view across the city from the Santa Justa viewing platform which was pretty speccy. The "hero" of the tour was an American cousin aged around early 50s who proffered opinions , suggestions, comments, questions and general observations at every opportunity. This was much to Penny's amusement and I have to say added to the quirkiness of the tour (there's nothing better than an eccentric). Joao stoically responded blandly to a regular and obvious stream of comments eg. when Joao was discussing one of the early (and most cool) nightclubs in Lisbon that his parents had attended which actually turned people away if they didn't like the look of you (unheard of in the 70s in Lisbon) our mate said you mean just like studio 54 in New York. A bemused Joao indicated that a lot of places do that now but it didn't matter old chum pressed on with his point till he felt it was made ( ie Joao thanked him for his contribution probably secretly thinking could the earth open up and swallow this guy) much to our amusement. Anyway the tour progressed. Mixed reviews. Joao I felt was probably catering for a youngish audience though split his tour in two with the second half devoted to a bit more history of Lisbon and Portugal. We did hear about King John (Joao - apparently every 2nd bloke is called Joao here) the 1st of Portugal (the illegitimate son of the previous King) who in the 14th century had basically saved the country's independence from Spain in a battle. Apparently he got rid of a number of his half- relatives to ensure his early access to the throne including his half sister. This was met with some voluble anguish by our American friend who was hoping for a happier ending. Also we heard of poet Luiz Vaz de Camoes, Portugal’s national poet, who died in 1580 and wrote Os Luciadas - Portugal's national epic poem about that country's achievements in the 16th century. Their national day is in his honour. This cove also had some legendary stories about being shipwrecked and swimming with one arm to the shore while the other held the draft manuscript of the poem above the waves. This was embellished by Joao (and via legend) with the possibility that Camoes also had his sweetheart on the boat but chose to save his manuscript instead. Also that he was reciting a new poem in his head and thought it was so good that he let the manuscript go as he preferred the new version he was reciting as he swam. Whatever the truth it was a good yarn and he was obviously quite a character in real life. Perhaps the most intriguing story was around the fall of fascism and the dictatorship in Portugal which finally happened in 1974. It also signalled the end of their colonial status. Joao had obviously heard a lot from his parents about life at that time and clearly read a lot which he relayed. Portugal had chosen to go its own way. It was neutral during the second world war and subsequently aligned itself with neither super power having no time for communists and no time for democracy. The dictatorship was still waging war in places like Angola to retain its colonies but more importantly the various mineral revenues originating there that supported it. Being not a particularly rich country its army was ill equipped to fight these wars and so the airforce was relied on to bolster it. This all changed when the Russians provide the Angolans with missiles which quickly accounted for the Portuguese airforce - end of the war. We probably got the simplistic version but it was pretty riveting. Just as riveting was how the dictatorship lost power domestically in 1974, basically overthrown by a small number of army dissidents who were quickly supported by elements of the navy and particularly civilians who quickly took to the streets as things changed. We were taken to the square where much of the action happened and it was virtually a bloodless coup. So these stories lifted the tour and we saw some interesting sights along the way though Lisbon ain't Prague. We generally liked the tour though voted our guide in Barcelona ahead of Joao simply because he gave us better insights over 2000 years+ of the history of the city. Joao was a bit narrower in focus timewise though entertaining enough. Amusingly at the end who should be providing him with a critique of his performance but American chum. I reckon Joao would have liked to reverse the critique but he took it in good spirit. At the end of the tour we quickly found ourselves in the neighbourhood of Alfama where lunch of sardines or octopus salad (the latter for Liz and Penny - gritty apparently) + beers ensued. Amusingly the table was at an angle of 20 degrees so Penny's head on the lower side was much lower than George's on the other side of the table. Vertigo inducing though the beers helped. It was the usual jolly lunch with everyone in good form and plenty of debriefing about our American tour mate. Waiter was a bit grumpy (wrong job) but all this stuff adds to the colour. All good and then Liz and I headed off to explore Alfama further and everyone else to wherever they chose. We basically walked around Alfama and other areas on the way home taking it all in. We had booked dinner for 7.00 (only time available otherwise we would have stuck to our preferred Spanish eating time of 8.00pm+) at the place we could not get into the previous night - the Cantinho do Avillez so that was the next commitment for that day. We all rolled up at home in the late afternoon Liz and I snoozed, the team had a few beers but by 7.00 we were at the Cantinho. Food was superb and we knew why it was so highly rated. Funky joint, friendly staff even had a stout beer. We ate amongst other things - exploding olives (soft and an immediate explosion of flavour in your mouth), octopus, tuna, pigs trotters, various tapas offerings together with great red wine. No wonder it got booked out. Despite the insistence on an early start by the restaurant there was no pressure to leave and so we trundled out around 9.00ish (can't remember). More drinks were required and we were recommended a venue by the waitress but opted for a wine bar suggested by our friend Caitlyn Box who lives in London "Jose Maria da Fonseca". Tables were scarce to come by though we secured a big barrel for us all to lean on and place drinks on just outside in the lane way which did the trick. We hoed into the red wine kindly donated by Alex and a jolly fun time was had by all. When we were finally offered an inside table we declined as we were so happy with our external spot on a mild evening. After an hour or so ( can't remember) Liz and I headed off and left the " kids" to play. They went to the place suggested by the waitress at the restaurant which turned out to be a bit dodgy and in a dodgy part of town strip clubs etc) so they ended up at the the local bar suggested for us by Joao on the tour. Turned out it was really laid back a bit like a house party rather than a bar. He said it was alternative. That tour is starting to look more valuable. George was home first around 1.00 as I had to let her in since we only had two keys and the others trailed in later (Liz and I were out to it). Great food, great wine even a good beer, great fun, everyone in fine form - a brilliant night.

[chiseler]

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

Putting "acceptable" limits on depravity in the name of compromise and "reality" is how fascism eventually triumphs. Or so said Professor Yvonne De Carlo of 'Miss Yvonne's Academy for Wayward Hussies' also known as 'The Frankfurt School' --  a place of higher learning for delinquent, pregnant scholars. "Your new president is merely proof that the depraved nature of power is given license by tolerating all but its excesses" said Professor De Carlo as she powdered her ample cleavage in full view of the astonished, pinafore-clad undergrads gathered for her lecture on the 'Dialectic of Fascism and French Manicures Made Easy-Peasy'.

"You want to know what brought Trump to power? Hint: It wasn't a sudden, inexplicable, sewage-strewn wave of raw hatred poised to strike down public schools, libraries and national parks at the behest of a braying, stupid mob of "privileged" former factory workers. It wasn't merely insanity wrought by decades of institutional neglect or unchecked greed -- although that was a big part of it. It was *nice* people willing to accept certain 'realities' to ensure their place at the proverbial table remained a pristine space of individually apportioned, locally sourced food; a place where rhetorical restraint replaced actual political solutions to any given problem.

You chose 'safe' over actual justice -- meaning someone else's kid will take a police bullet to the chest so that we can all read heavily redacted versions of Mark Twain in the peace and comfort of a colorful ball pit of higher learning like our own Frankfurt School, which I should mention was only made possible by a generous corporate donation from a multi-national purveyor of processed pork by-products with vaguely German origins. At the end of it, you'll all be awarded a certificate declaring you free from venereal diseases, and the skills necessary to lower live poultry into a vat of ammonia in a subsidiary facility owned by our trustees. At your age, I was performing burlesque numbers on the mean streets of my Canadian homeland at the behest of my stage mother. But I'll tell you all about that later in the term when we cover 'Hoochie-Coochie Cave Dancing of the Early Ottoman Empire - as Explained by a scantily-clad Miss Yvonne Waving a Jewel-Encrusted Saber'. Consider that your 'trigger warning'. Now let's proceed:

It was enough that we embraced Caitlyn Jenner and applauded Meryl Streep giving the phone book version of the Gettysburg Address to her wealthy patrons -- I could give a better soliloquy while swallowing a sword and balancing a cobra on my head, but I digress . . . It was enough to sprout a 'dad boner' over Pussy Riot to declare ourselves -- "punk rock", even as we devised ways to make earth's human and animal life redundant during brainstorming meetings that took place in an indoor ergonomic playground that served wheat grass martinis on tap. My dear friend Frederick Marcuse who took me under his bosom . . . or was that the other way around . . . argued that the technocratic efficiency of advanced, industrial societies had rendered it 'one-dimensional', and as such, resistant to all critiques of it. Our "aversion to introspection" according to Adorno -- another generous benefactor to the Frankfurt School -- renders left-opposition to Trump little more than an elite-led, sour grape authoritarianism that is unable to contemplate its own role in a paradigmatic shift towards a more 'unprincipled' and unpredictable variety of global aggression. If you don't believe him, just ask a white feminist how writing 'rape culture' on her boobs in sharpie will 'shame the patriarchy', and this will give you some idea about why I start every afternoon coughing up a ball of mentholated phlegm into my cornflakes.

Let me tell you what brought us to this precise moment of imminent planetary collapse: It was "nice" people with library cards and rescue pets accepting the kind of compromises that result in bulldozing homes in the occupied territories of Palestine, imprisoning whistle blowers, putting indigenous land everywhere under threat, and even sodomizing a half dead Pan-African leader while he lay dying in a drainpipe.  

It's the 'realists' who sign off on nearly $40 billion in military 'aid' to Israel so that it can build more settlements in defiance of International law, and the similarly counterproductive reasoning that blames Russian hackers for the DNC's corrupt maneuvering to install its preferred Wall Street-friendly candidate in defiance of roughly half the voting population. The same folks who cry foul the loudest when an asshole takes his rightful place on the golden, Imperial throne after they have spent years polishing it for him, and expanding its powers to flush away civil liberties and environmental protections. Now all of a sudden that reclining, ermine-trimmed commode in the Oval Office is a "hot seat". Back in the day when I was bumping and grinding on the Paramount lot for chump change, Charlton would grab me by the pussy and . . . well, never mind that now. Let's just say that my jungle cat put up a fierce resistance that left a permanent scar on his manhood and not a single scratch on my lady mandibles.  Not sure where any of this is going, but anyhoo . . .

It's the 'nice' -- meaning the technocratically-minded gatekeepers of the 'left', who perform the linguistic feats necessary to justify, say, the involuntary sacrifice of dozens of dead Bedouin wedding celebrants in Yemen to maintain cordial relations with a despotic petrostate that helps prop up a neighboring Apartheid regime equally ill-disposed towards its benefactor. 'This is why we can't have nice things like brutalist revolving restaurants atop Manhattan office towers', they will remind you. Ingrates like you always second-guessing the stuff we do to prevent maniacs from seizing power here at home'. The nice among us, whom we used to call 'Good Germans', prefer that you don't bring 'false equivalency' into reasoned discussion about state-sponsored murder, and focus on the positive . . . like . . . um . . . 'At least under Trump, my sad face selfies will have all the political urgency of Guernica'.  

It's the "nice" that refused to hold Obama's feet to the fire, giving him carte blanche to capitulate wholly to the more clamorous and opportunistic voices of his inner circle without ever troubling his conscience. The guy was so cool he could grant clemency to Chelsea Manning AND bomb a failed state into further oblivion all in the same week. "Nice" folks would never venture into the treacherous waters of condemning or even criticizing your country's first black president for reasons entirely to do with the sort of career-minded, self-preservation that says "Bummer about Leonard Peltier, but Michelle Obama sure rawked that Zac Posen dress on the cover of Vogue!"

When someone *reaches across the aisle*, it's usually to grasp at the last straws of power allotted to them by whichever democratically elected fascist regime happens to control Congress. Or it's a hands-y director trying to cop a feel on a red-eye flight from LA. Yes, Otto Preminger, I'm talking to YOU!

To make a long-winded lecture only as long as it takes to dry one's nails after the second coat of Revlon's 'Dead Roses on a Dusky Tomb': Trump didn't win in spite of your 'reasoned' acceptance of the outgoing president's expanded powers, but because you were willing to rationalize its unsavory aspects long enough to ensure its unchecked and unbridled form reached its inevitable conclusion".

Professor De Carlo then flounced out of the lecture hall with the scent of Shalimar, and two or three shirtless Cabana boys trailing behind her discarded veils. "I'm off to powder my you know what. Class -- and I mean the particular one that conflates legal weed smoking with political resistance - dismissed"!

by Jennifer Matsui

[jillmckenzie1]

We Need to Talk About Kal-El

As a human being, I have the ability to hold two completely contradictory ideas in my noggin at the same time. The first idea is that I love superheroes. They’re part of a genre that’s remarkably malleable, and with a bit of creativity, you can tell virtually any kind of story with them. The second idea is that, if superheroes truly existed, they would be terrifying.

Let’s talk about Batman, for example. In movies, comics, and other media, he’s a relentless crusader. A protector of the innocent. He’s a hero—one of the good guys. One of his defining attributes is that he always knows what he’s doing. But what if he didn’t?

Imagine reports coming out of Denver neighborhoods* of a man dressed as a bat assaulting people. According to eyewitness accounts, the “Bat-Man” seems to be targeting alleged criminals and kicking the absolute crap out of them. What if they aren’t criminals, but simply a poor person or some luckless dude caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? What about their civil rights or due process? What if this vigilante decides that the real criminals are people of color, or Republicans, or those in the LGBT community?

You can see how that would be a problem. Consider how much damage a highly trained, yet “normal” person could do. Now, imagine someone with some serious superpowers and an alarming lack of morality. There’s a great movie to be made about that. Unfortunately, the new film Brightburn doesn’t fully deliver on that berserk concept.

We meet Tori Breyer (Elizabeth Banks) and her husband Kyle (David Denman), residents of the sleepy Kansas town of Brightburn. They desperately want a baby, and the bookshelves groaning with books about fertility tell us their plans aren’t going well. Things change when it arrives.

“It” is an alien spacecraft. Inside is a baby boy, or something that looks an awful lot like a baby boy. In a way, the prayers of Tori and Kyle have been answered. They take the tot in and name him Brandon. For 11 years, the Breyer family is happy. But things change even more for Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) in the days before he turns 12. He discovers he’s strong—far stronger than a boy of his age should be.

He also discovers that something is calling to him in an alien language, something hidden in the basement of the family barn. The message he’s receiving is disturbingly simple: take the world. He just might have the means to do that with a host of emerging powers, including flight, speed, invulnerability, and heat vision.

So how are Tori and Kyle responding to all of this? Like the majority of parents, their blinders are firmly in place when it comes to the actions of their child. When their chickens are mysteriously killed, when Brandon’s unrequited crush Caitlyn (Emmie Hunter) has her hand shattered, and when Brandon starts spouting off about superiority, their blinders may have to come off with a quickness before it’s too late.

Allow me to state the obvious up front: Brightburn is “What if Superboy was forced into a telepod with the kid from The Omen?” As ideas for a movie goes, that’s a pretty good one. Flights and tights are very much a thing right now, and the right kind of deconstruction of the superhero mythos could be perfectly timed and fascinating. For example, the character of Rorschach in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen begins as your standard urban vigilante. We discover that, instead of an upstanding costumed hero, he’s a violent maniac who would feel right at home at an alt-right rally. That characterization tells us that superheroes can become a vehicle for fascism—and disturbingly quickly.

Brightburn wants to do that. It wants to put us into the headspace of what looks an awful lot like a superpowered incel. Too often, however, director David Yarovesky leans into standard horror tropes instead of focusing on psychological examination. Brandon lurks in the shadows wearing a weird-ass mask, then disappears/reappears at just the right moment. People are killed in spectacularly gory ways. Still, I have to give Yarovesky credit, since he only had a $7 million budget to work with, and he made a film with decent pacing and a subtle feeling that the town of Brightburn is in an irrevocable economic decline.

James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy fame produced, and his clout is probably why the script written by his brother Brian Gunn and cousin Mark Gunn was utilized. Their screenplay drove me nuts, because while we have some fairly creative moments of horror and okay-ish character beats, it’s massively overshadowed by their characterization of Brandon. For a story about an evil Superboy to work, we need to get into his head and understand why he’s rejecting goodness. Here, Brandon is called by the spaceship, then he basically goes from zero to serial killer in 0.5 seconds. Why? Is his alien heritage activated somehow? Is he a product of toxic masculinity? Is he simply born “bad” like the eponymous title character in We Need to Talk About Kevin? We never find out, and that problem is fatal.

All is not lost, since we have a mostly okay cast with one incredible standout we’ll get back to. Everyone is pretty decent. I liked David Denman as Kyle, and enjoyed his dawning realization that there was something severely wrong with his son. Speaking of his son, Jackson A. Dunn does fairly good work with a very tough role. Playing a budding psychopath who’s repressing a host of vile emotions isn’t easy for anyone, much less a child actor. Dunn tries his best, and he occasionally succeeds in showing us the black chasm hiding behind his face.

The aforementioned standout in the cast is the outstanding Elizabeth Banks as Tori. It feels like Banks has been around forever and proved she can do essentially anything. Here, she’s playing a mom forced to come to terms with the fact that her beloved boy might be seriously off. Banks realistically plays warmth, humor, concern, unease, and finally nerve-shredding terror. Her performance feels organic, and she’s much better than the material.

Movies like Kick-Ass, Watchmen, and Super have examined how screwed-up long underwear types would likely be. Brightburn wants to do the same thing, but a frustrating script and uneven direction prevents that from happening. David Yarovesky’s direction got my attention, and I think he could make something incredible with a strong script. I can’t completely recommend Brightburn, but if you’re going to come for the supermurder, you should stay for a strong Elizabeth Banks performance.

*In all seriousness, Denver had its own real-life costumed vigilante. You can read more about the Wall Creeper here.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/we-need-to-talk-about-kal-el/

[pelikinesis]

looong meandering post about ‘gamers,’ political engagement, Pidgeotto, etc.

looks like i might start playing league again. friend of a friend shenanigans means i spent a LOT of time in a voice chat with a bunch of people i’d somewhat hesitantly describe as “college kids with Twitch accounts” and oh wow, collectively they couldn’t go more than ten seconds without referencing someone’s genitalia or using the word ‘gay’ as an insult. I mean, i’ve encountered people like that before and actually someone like that lives with a couple of my friends, minus the genitalia thing actually so that’s an improvement.

so these people were even more...uh, honestly i’m tempted to just call them ‘gamers’ but that seems a little unfair, in much the same way that referring to the USA as ‘America’ is unfair to people from Central America, South America, and America’s Hat, Canada. 

like i’m not on twitch often enough to definitively state that this is a twitch cultural thing, it could just be young-ish guys obsessed with genitalia, their own and/or others, and the whole ‘we like playing videogames and/or watching other people play videogames’ is just a a coincidental connecting point. 

what i’m not certain about is whether or not that’s their main mode of being. the sheer volume of obnoxiousness is either just part of their personalities (an exhausting prospect) or maybe, i wonder if it’s because there were one or two girls in the chat, one of whom at least has been described to me as being attractive. the desire to impress(???) girls is often an exacerbating factor in promoting obnoxious and otherwise inexplicable behavior. I had a friend who cliff-jumped and belly-flopped from pretty damn high up into a natural pool of water, came out the water seizing and developing chest contusions. I’m not saying it’s because there were a lot of girls in the crowd of hikers cheering him on, but i think it would be a bit ungrounded to say that had no impact on his decision making (or sternum). We took him to the ER to check for internal bleeding by the way and he was fine.

i don’t say a whole lot in chat but they think i’m funny (they were trying to assign people in the discord chat to Naruto characters. When it got to my turn, I, who have never watched Naruto, said I wanted to be Pidgeotto) and were impressed by some of my plays (in ARAM as Fiora, Riposte a Caitlyn ult while hitting her with a snowball, using the teleport to travel across half the map and get the kill--and yes, it occurred to me afterwards that I could have just used the snowball travel invulnerability to avoid the Caitlyn ult damage, but I’m rusty and I guess it was more stylish the way I did it) so my interactions with them so far have not been antagonistic. 

whenever i’m in a situation where i’m interacting with a group of people who are very different from me, i find myself absorbing the experience in an (untrained) ethnographic approach, in the sense that I’m more interested in listening and trying to figure out what drives group dynamics than anything else. Like for instance i’m trying to figure out whether the main girl of the group is genuinely cool with the plethora of dick jokes (more than one of the guys also made a joke about how she had both a penis and a vagina, or didn’t have any genitalia, which my amateur psychoanalytic tendency makes me wonder if that’s a necessary conceit they have to construct so they don’t have to think about her as a ‘girl’ because their concept of a ‘girl’ is too narrow to fit her into, or some other such thing as that wasn’t the only strange interaction they had with her)...or if she is actually uncomfortable about that sort of thing and is just tolerating all of it, or if she truly doesn’t care, as she doesn’t really respond to those uh, jokes?

I also am kind of enjoying being the contrast. This is true in other instances as well. At a small open mic in Fullerton where most of the poets there more or less had the same style, I enjoyed performing poems that were very different from that style even though I had some that would have fit. In that instance as well, I wanted to see if that might prompt people to break out of their comfort zones and try something else. And in this discord chat, my humor was comparatively subtle (this isn’t easy to explain unless you’ve played league, but I make a custom status message that just reads ‘Onlime’ which is one letter off from the standard ‘Online’ and I’ve found that noticing this minor deviation leading to a realization that I made it a point to create a custom status that looks like the standard status but just slightly wrong is something people react to with amusement and/or exasperation when they belatedly realize it’s an M not an N) and I didn’t brag when I made plays in-game and let other people point it out if they noticed, whereas most of the guys were constantly talking about blowjobs or saying “oh my god did you just see that play i did?” I’m somewhat interested to see if this affects what I perceive to be an obnoxious homogeneity of obnoxious behavior in that group. It’s something I’ve been curious about for awhile now, most recently with watching supergreatfriend (he’s drastically influenced and expanded my command of sarcasm and shifted it from being caustic and withering, to being upbeat in a cheerful refusal to acknowledge copious absurdity) and contrasting him with other Let’s Players and Youtube gamers. The standard of [internet] behavior seems to be obnoxious and outlandish performativity, like a hyperinflation of personality, and/or a more or less nihilistic strain of irony. For the former I’d say Pewdiepie is of course the extreme end in every awful way, but I would also say Markiplier is, from what I understand, a relatively benign actor who embodies the archetype, and then there’s Trick2G, who is interesting because though the majority of his content now is just him being obnoxious (in a way I do sometimes find entertaining though tbh) he also did start off early on providing informative content and still does some of that as well, which I think shifts him a bit to the side. In terms of the nihilistic strain of irony, I’m mostly thinking of people like Imaqtpie, or Dekar, though perhaps I just don’t ‘get’ what their whole shtick is. But the way I see it, they just says shit and it’s never clear whether they mean it or not. Like a perverse, banal version of the zen sense one gets from reading certain haiku. Did I really just make that comparison? Also, kind of like Andy Kaufman, without any of the craft. But I feel this is something a lot of young-ish people seem to relate to, where a void of meaning and certainty can only be filled by laughter which is in itself like 80% hollow, and I would be tempted to connect that sense to the information overload in an era of global tensions deriving from more or less existential threats to humankind, and of course tensions a little less extinctiony but no less horrific.

i hear people, friends, family, acquaintances, young and old alike, referencing the latest bullshit the Trump administration is trying to pull, and i hear notes of fear, or despair, but almost always bundled into resignation or misguided stoicism. I don’t hear any fight in their words. they’re concerned and aware enough to reference ICE, to reference sexism, to reference the KKK, to reference Charlottesville and Trump’s tweets, but they don’t have any fight in their words. i don’t see any fight in their faces.

i wonder what it’d be like to create a device that could measure the amount of learned helplessness in the world. i wonder what kind of data we could get with that, if it correlates with certain trends, like fascism, like plutocracies, like inequality, like bigotry. This has become quite a tangent.

Which does make me want to reflect on where I am now, because there was a time I had around that same level of resignation to the unfairness of the world. Where I am now, and how I’ve gotten here. It’s probably the case that some of it is a certain predisposition. Then there’s education. I personally think that if the social sciences were competently taught in secondary school, that would drastically alter our political landscape. also if history classes and such weren’t so full of bullshit. It’s not until people look under the hood and have all the different parts explained and how they all work together, that people can really get a grasp on how the fact that there’s room for improvement and get a few handholds and footholds on how to make the changes necessary for those improvements. i’m sure there are other things that have to be done as well.

I’ve been rambling in a stream of consciousness ever since the first few paragraphs. I wonder if this is how the human brain is supposed to work. sometimes I wonder if i’m normal, if i should want to be normal, if i’m actually the most normal human on earth or in all of human history which would mean that one of the most common characteristics of a normal human being is a feeling of insecurity about their own normality. and i’m tempted to think that latter part might actually be true, regardless of the questionable way I arrived at that conclusion.