#but the thing is that doylistically i like listening to things that are well made. i dont like listening to awkward cringy things

[gammija]

Chad chad on YouTube has videos with sound effects like in the casement

aha, THANK you for being the only lead so far, anon!

ok i checked out some of chad chads vids, and i get what you mean, the sound effects used in the case definitely wouldn't stand out in a chad chad vid

but, well, two things, really. Firstly is that she's on youtube while 'vidclick' is more likely a parody of tiktok, based on the way her account is formatted (at first i actually interpreted the 1.4M likes as being individual likes for her account, instead of for all her video's put together, because i dont use tiktok normally). and on tiktok, the styles ive seen so far were to either use a Sound with sound effects included, or a more 'low-effort' style of editing consisting of talking to the camera with only some jumpcuts. That this case's vid uses sound effects in a tiktok-style talking-to-camera vid isnt really a big deal, if the rest of the case had done a better job of sounding like a real video, but it adds to that disconnect.

the second and bigger thing is that. chad chad uses those sound effects in a different way. she uses basically a new sound every second while she keeps talking, does dramatic voices and short sketches, cuts and edits them together in a high paced snappy style. In that style, those sound effects work to emphasise the content. Madam E's way of using sound effects is to drop a pauze - sound effect - continue. She also lets them play out completely, instead of cutting as soon as the joke lands, and she uses only one or two each vid. It's jarring, awkward and calls too much attention to the effect, and doesn't match the low energy and slow pace of her vids (the usual fast pace of this style is another thing that the overuse of slang alone fails to appreciate - she rushes through her lines but there are no audible jumpcuts that i noticed, and even when there should be a beat of silence for audience reactions, she fills up the silence)

it's as with everything else in this case imo; It's not good enough to pass for the real deal, but it's not so clearly bad in a way that it looks intended, making the whole thing come off as vague and directionless with only the parody of 'youth speak' to hold it up

[tathrin]

So I've been thinking about Glorfindel's horse recently, okay? (I'm listening to these delightful audio books, and just got to Rivendell.) And I am as ever caught by the inconsistency of Asfaloth's tack with Legolas's later "lol what's a saddle? get rid of that shit man, I'm an elf!" schtick in Rohan. And the question that all of that (plus Gandalf and Shadowfax of course) engenders is why the fuck wasn't Glorfindel "riding elvish style" then?

While the Doylist explanation of "Tolkien hadn't come up with that idea yet + Frodo needed to be able to both hold-onto and steer Asfaloth and he isn't an elf so he had to have a saddle" makes sense, it's obviously not satisfying from an in-universe standpoint, is it?

(And somebody made some extremely good points laying-out a very convincing logistical explanation recently, and I like it quite like a lot, and might well use that in fics myself sometime because it's splendid and seems extremely legit, and opens up some fun things to play around with re: elvish history and culture; but while it's an extremely satisfying answer in terms of Accurate World Building Detail, it's never felt entirely viscerally satisfying to me in terms of Tolkienian Style, if you follow me.)

So I posit: what if the reason why Asfaloth had Conveniently Mortal-Appropriate Tack during that section of story was for the convenience of mortals?

Specifically, the Dúnedain.

What if when the Elves of Rivendell are doing something that involves (or might potentially involve) both horses and their human allies, they put enough tack on their horses to allow one of the Rangers to be able to use that horse in a pinch? That would make sense, right? Just a simple little practical precaution!

Imagine being in a situation where you want to stick one of your human companions on your horse for some reason, or you want one of them to look after your horse for a little while you go off and do a thing, etc etc, but you can't because there aren't any reins. And now you're fucked. What a silly self-inflicted problem that could be avoided with just a little bit of planning ahead!

So, because Glorfindel knew that the Rangers would also be searching around looking for Frodo and/or evidence of the Nine, he put just enough extra tack on Asfaloth that if he, for instance, found an injured mortal in the wild, he could put them on his horse and send them back to Rivendell without him...just as a random example of a hypothetical situation that might happen.

(Anyway, that's the headcanon I'm going to be running with from here out, I think. Also I've gone and retroactively added a little scene revolving around this explanation to my Celebrimbor Fellowship AU fic, for anyone who's been interested in that story.)

*Thoughts and arguments welcome!

[garbagequeer]

Can you help me im so confused how archie (and everyone listening to him) had those memories for his poem i thought everyone but betty and jughead forgot 😭

bobbyjean asked: Wait a second were those the good memories. the serial killer gene and jason’s corpse. and archie playing football in leopold and loeb juvenile detention center……

well imo you can work with different theories so like

they dont remember these things as things they lived themselves but they remember them as things tabitha showed them the first time they saw the riverdale memories (so like if they'd watched themselves go through these things in tv but not as if they happened irl for them)

goodbye riverdale is back to jughead's narration and jughead is unreliable he's just making shit up (this also goes with the theory that what jughead showed betty was not real but was a fabrication he made up for her as her dying wish was to relive those days with everyone as they were + the fake reality had plot holes because to be fair jughead was like 86 when he died he cant keep track of who remembers the serial killer genes and who doesn't he's busy)

narrator jughead seems to be in control of this episode more than he was before (we see him corporeally and there's 2 jugheads in the end) so the characters' lives have been rewritten to fit the narrative jughead wanted to tell so they remember because he does too and the story belongs to him and not to them (to me jughead is always afraid of abandonment and change so he keeps his stories ones where his friends don't leave or grow + he has been shown to find it hard to come up with anything other than stories about his friends in riverdale in s5 and as bunker/god jughead). for me this also fits with the idea of the characters and angel tabitha trying to break free and narrator/god jughead(s) not allowing it -> town won

they loved these memories they love cults and killing and corpses and gay juvie. the bad memories were like archie not getting his high school diploma or something

from a doylist pov (boring) this meant nothing about the story and was just an homage to their most iconic moments in the show for the audience and the crew. you could twist this a bit to be meta and make something up about the characters behaving as characters and talking willingly to an audience because they exist only in our eyes if you wanted

which are all fun ideas to consider and theyre not mutually exclusive (like it could be jughead taking over the narrative but it could be in a world he makes up just for betty so all the other characters are in the real sweet hereafter but betty went to purgatory pop's because she does remember it all and this prevented her from being able to leave it behind. also archie for sure would remember some of gay juvie he loved the gay parts of gay juvie he told me. and fangs probably had god times at the cult i mean he dated human kevin maybe a love for cults is what they had in common)

to me it stood out as a moment where i was like oh jughead is lying to us for sure. awesome. one last jughead lying to us and trapping us in the cycle forever for the road yippee

[lacependragon]

I am prefacing this with I love Stardew Valley and Demetrius and I am not trying to start a fight. This is a frustration I feel with the game as well as many things I've seen. Just. Sharing it.

You know man I've been playing Stardew since. Forever. And so I've seen dialogue changes quite a bit. Vanilla dialogue can be... repetitive, and so when it changes I very much Notice.

And like. Demetrius' writing, whether intentionally or not, as gotten both much more racist and ableist in the last few years. And maybe it's not on purpose! Maybe it's totally subconscious on CA's part! I don't wanna assign malice. It's easier to think it's ignorance and accidental.

And it's easy to assume it's partially fandom response, considering how much people hate him. And CA is very fandom oriented.

But Demetrius' writing is bad. It is uniquely bad. It is bad in a way that none of the others are (yes I am repeating myself). And that is oh so very obvious in any run where you get hearts up with that family.

Oh the singular Black man in town totally ignores his white step-son, treats his white wife terribly, and dotes on his mixed race daughter as if she's the only person who matters? Insults everything his wife makes? Makes vague threats at the farmer?

"Oh but it's not because he's Black!" How do you know? Are you inside CA's head? Do you know what he thinks? Do you know every unconscious bias of a man you've never met? No. You don't. I bet you don't even know all of yours. Fuck knows no one does.

Don't defend him when you don't even know him. Listen. Listen. LISTEN.

Stardew Valley is a wonderful, awesome game. But it's made by a flawed man (everyone is flawed) and it reflects his biases pretty clearly if you ask me (as many works of art do).

And if that offends you, maybe you should ask yourself why. Maybe you should ask yourself why it's so important this game and man are perfect instead of acknowledging that this amazing game has flaws that can make the game uncomfortable or frustrating for many players. Flaws that diminish characters who could otherwise be very interesting.

I also said Ableist. I'd go on a whole rant about that, too, but because Demetrius' neurodivergence is implied, not explicit, it's hard to know what is and isn't meant to be taken. But again, making the clearly "different" character so awful to others is not ideal. Especially when they're the only one.

And before you ask: Yes. This has a lot to do with Demetrius being the only Black man in town. And fitting into a lot of awful stereotypes along the way. I'd be much much MUCH more lenient if there were other Black men in Stardew. But there aren't. Demetrius is all we get.

And he just keeps getting worse every update.

I love him so much. He's a neurodivergent father. He's the only non-white parent in town. He's the only step-parent in town. He and Robin and Seb and Maru have the only blended and mixed family.

There's so much nuance to him and to his relationships and to his family and his backstory. There could be so much going on with him and science, or him and Maru, or him and anything.

But nah he hates fun, talks about how dancing sucks (even though he dances every week) and seemingly hates both his wife and step-son in many dialogues.

Why? Why? It makes no sense to me in-universe.

Watsonian versus Doylist analysis. When there's no in-universe explanation that follows the world. Look to the people creating the universe.

[albertonykus]

Looking into a few other Fujiko F. Fujio works before I return to Doraemon: Esper Mami (1977–1983). This one is unconventional in that the main character, Mami, is a girl (a distinction shared with Chimpui) and is in middle school (instead of elementary school). Following the usual mold of Fujiko F. Fujio protagonists, she is well-meaning, but not particularly skilled at most tasks (though with the exception of her hazardous cooking, her incompetence is not as exaggerated as it tends to be with Fujio’s grade-school-aged leads).

Mami discovers one day that she has psychic powers inherited from her French witch ancestors: mainly telekinesis, teleportation, and limited telepathy. She can also sense people in distress within a certain distance, so most of the series revolves around her responding to these distress signals and helping others in need. (One of the strangest things in this manga, honestly, is the fact that even though the signals are nearly impossible for her to ignore, we almost never see her called away in the middle of school from what I recall. I guess incidents rarely happen during school hours.)

Other than her unusually intelligent dog, Mami’s main associate is her close friend Takahata, who has an eidetic memory and often uses his knowledge to help her master her abilities and solve cases. The relationship between the two is charming and believable, and in a story like this it’s refreshing to see a friendship between a boy and a girl that isn’t founded primarily on romantic attraction on one side or another. (There’s still a little of that, but it’s not a major component of the narrative.)

Mami’s supernatural powers aside, the story premises in this series tend to be pretty down-to-earth, mostly centering around scenarios that could happen in real life. They also get somewhat emotionally heavier than typical Fujiko F. Fujio works, with a few chapters ending on an unexpectedly somber note.

That being said, the atmosphere ultimately stays lighthearted and optimistic for the most part. As usual for Fujiko F. Fujio, humor features heavily in Esper Mami. There are some creative applications of Mami’s powers: a particularly funny one is that when she is too frightened to visit the bathroom at night after listening to ghost stories, she teleports her own urine into her friend’s bladder and makes her want to go instead!

This one panel made me laugh quite hard. When Mami is bored at home and all her friends are off doing other things, she starts narrating herself roleplaying as a lion (casting her dog as another animal that she’s fighting).

(I definitely spent too much time playing similar games when I was little.)

As a fun Easter egg, the main cast of Doraemon have a conspicuous cameo in one Esper Mami story (though surprisingly, I don’t think there’s ever been a proper crossover between the two).

Speaking of Doraemon, in the Esper Mami anime adaptation, Mami has the same voice actor as Dorami (from the 1979 Doraemon anime series). They do indeed sound essentially the same, which I find very amusing.

Esper Mami is funny, the character dynamics are engaging, and the story strikes the balance of “slight fantasy in an otherwise realistic setting while still maintaining an optimistic tone” that appeals to me. If that were all there was to it, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the series to just about anyone... but then we come to the elephant in the room...

A very bizarre and unpleasant recurring element of the story is that Mami poses as a nude model for her artist father in exchange for pocket money. To be clear, this is never presented as suggestive in the context of the plot, but it also doesn’t exactly add anything essential to the narrative, and from a Doylist perspective it’s frankly difficult to fathom any non-creepy reason why it needs to be present in the first place. 😬

Truth be told, I think these scenes do a disservice to the work if anything. Esper Mami contains so much more that is worth discussing, but it is almost impossible to talk about the series without addressing this uncomfortable component. With it taking over the conversation among some potential audiences and putting off others, appreciating the other elements of the series for what they are can be a challenge.

[purlturtle]

❤️🧡🤍🩷💜A WLW ASK MEME❤️🧡🤍🩷💜 List the top 10 ladies you’ve been obsessed with Ever Of All Time! Then send this on to 5 sapphic mutuals 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

Oh wow thank you!

And, I just saw your own answer to this, and I gotta say I relate so hard to the "fictional ladies only" part. When I latch on to someone, it's typically a fictional character, because we know both so much about them (what the story tells us) and so little (the spaces in which we can make up our own ideas and headcanons). And the second half especially is never for me to become obsessed with someone, and it just doesn't sit right with me to do that with real people.

Also, I don't have ten to list, no matter how I slice it. "Obsessed" is a big word; for me, that's the point where I actively (not just reactively in response to someone else's thoughts) think about that character, their backstory (both canon and imagined), their reactions to situations and scenarios, sometimes the question of shipping, all that.

Yeah, of those, I got four.

Deanna Troi was my first love, and will always be my Imzadi, in a way. I identified so much with her. I too felt emotions so strongly, and it was great and wonderful to see that depicted as an *asset*, as something cherished not just by her but by the people around her, as something central to her life and her profession. Also, to see her defend that life and her choices against her mother, who wanted different things for her, and seeing her state very clearly that no, she was choosing *this* path and it was good for her? Came at an entirely crucial time (I was ten when I started watching TNG. It was airing then, so it accompanied me till I was seventeen) to help me take a similar stance with my life.

I also adored the relationship she had with Riker. I adored that even though they broke up, and *badly*, he supported her. Not her him - those storylines are myriad, and often to the woman's detriment, unfortunately - but HE SUPPORTED HER. Without afterthought, just because he still cared for her. I fucking loved that. No jealousy, no pushing, just care offered freely. It spoke to me and shaped me just as much as identifying with her did.

In checking out what else Kate Mulgrew had done, because I didn't want to stop looking at her face and gestures, nor listening to her voice, I found Warehouse 13, and both Myka Bering and Helena Wells full-on whammied me.

I met Kathryn Janeway, *really* met her, in my early thirties. I hadn't watched Voyager when it aired - don't even really know why; just that I didn't - and got my teeth into it DEEPLY after a bad breakup. I instantly fell in love with her. I didn't want to *be* her (that, I already had with Deanna 😂😂), I wanted to be with her. Honest to Xena imagined myself onto Voyager, half like a teenager, half in the fiercest case of "I can fix her" that you can imagine. This obsession carried me into writing, and that carried me, slowly but surely, into fandom as a community space, not just a solitary "I love this show" feeling.

This was the first *ship* I became obsessed with, and that hasn't stopped. I don't ship anyone else as hard as I ship them, and for the first time, I experienced an obsession that wasn't immediately personal (no "I want to be her" no "I want to be with her" just "LOOK AT THEM AAAAARGHH"). I wanted them together. I wanted them to heal each other, for Myka to make Helena better and for Helena to make Myka "worse" (as in, less rule-bound, able to let go and enjoy herself more). I wanted them to be happy ever after, but I also ADORED the pain of them being denied that along the way, because it made them both more complex, more real characters. Helena had so much baggage, had gone through so much (Myka too; I'll get to her) - it would have felt too fairytale for Myka to just waltz in there and suddenly everything was peachy. And I LOVED that the writers sent Helena away to deal with her shit on her own. I know the Doylist explanation is that Jaime didn't have time to appear more often on the show, but the way that the writers chose to deal with that rings so fucking true for her character and her arc. Yes, my heart broke when Myka said that HG was who knew where (God, Jo's face when she stares teary-eyed and forlorn into empty space should come with a fucking warning). And yes, my heart broke in Instinct all over again. But it makes sense. It makes so much sense to me, and I love and respect the writers for giving Helena that. The space to search for healing on her own terms, *on her own*. Fucking feral over it.

And Myka. Closed off from pain incurred through loving and caring. Still protective as fuck so that others might not incur such pain. Like, her loss didn't make her callous! She doesn't take it out on others; she brings it all inside. (And I will love Pete forever for seeing that, and both respecting it and yet still being there, poking in ways that are so very him and yes, probably infuriating at times but also, maybe, the exact thing Myka needed. That man has an instinctive emotional intelligence that is astounding, if you're ready to overlook him licking mustard off Farnsworths.)

I love them. I am obsessed with them. I want to put them in every story I see. I want to make them find each other in the show's canon, in every AU I can think of, in every way I can think of. Their story - both them as individuals and the dynamic between them as a couple - is so fucking intriguing; it's the ultimate catnip and I am full-on addicted. And it is through them that I finally found a home in fandom as a community space, with all my other wonderfully deranged Bering and Wells shippers, all equally feral about them. And I love it; I love y'all, I love this us that we have.

To see her fall in love without even realizing it was - ungh. AND WITH A WOMAN. FUCK ME. JUST. ARGH.

Nothing I've ever felt for any other character comes close to these four. They hold a special place in my life and in my heart, and that is why I'm putting only these four here and not more. Anyone else I were to put next to them would be a desaturated blurry blob, overexposed and overshadowed by these four queens.

Thank you for asking! I loved having the opportunity to gush about these ladies who have my heart.

[antigonewinchester]

Homestuck Made This World, Episode 10, Part 1 [approx 1:21:50-1:23:06]

CAMERON Heat’s leaving fandom. MICHAEL Yep. So this just means that honestly, there’s not a lot of discussion being had. The biggest and most sustained discussion that happens in the Something Awful thread during this reading is whether or not Jake has brain-damage or might be autistic. CAMERON That’s interesting. MICHAEL Yeah. CAMERON I didn’t—I didn’t think about either of those things. Okay. MICHAEL Well, and the thing that people point to regarding brain damage is that there’s a recurring joke that Jake gets hit in the head. CAMERON Uh huh. MICHAEL Things are just constantly hitting him in the head, so people are like, “Hey, Jake seems pretty oblivious to things, do you—” And I think this is very hinky, the logic here I don’t think is great. It’s like, “Maybe one of the reasons Jake is so oblivious to other people and doesn’t seem to know what’s going on is because, that.” And so— CAMERON I mean we all know that the reason Wiley Coyote keeps running into that big fake tunnel is because he’s hit on the head so often. MICHAEL Right! Exactly. CAMERON And he forgets that it’s a big fake tunnel. [MICHAEL sighs.] It has nothing to do with narrative conceit or genre. MICHAEL Right. [MICHAEL laughs.] CAMERON It has everything to do with the materially real and independently existing Wiley Coyote. [MICHAEL: Mhmm.] And his long history of cranial accidents.

I re-listened to Homestuck Made This World and found this brief excerpt very interesting re the fandom divide between Watsonian vs. Doylist / fictional-world vs. real world explanations for narratives.

[richardsphere]

Leverage Log: The Broken Wing Job

So this season's possible fourth episode whose title may be indicitive of an aircraft theme. (DB Cooper, First Contact, Very Big Bird being the others).

Look when they started shooting in a city that, aparently has an airplane museum. Using more plane-related sets makes sense logistically and financially. Playing with the opportunities provided there. Nonetheless, I hope very much it isnt aircraft themed. Maybe the broken wing just refers to like, an actual injury instead?

Maybe the client finds an injured bird, or its a metaphor being "grounded" by an injury? Like maybe this is one of those "1 teammate is stuck at home" episodes, like the one where Hardison overslept because of WOW. (that one had an aircraft too now that I think about it.) My metaphorical money is on "client was grounded, and the plan is to ground the Mark". But I guess we'll see. --- Cold open features the Crew. Thats odd. (i know technically the DB Cooper one also featured Parker. But she was wearing a mask so it could be a dramatic reveal. This one just goes right out and shows Nate frame 1)

Parker's got a bad leg. Wing identified and the crowd goes wild!!! Unfortunately "someone's stuck at home cause injury" is one of my least favourite types of excuse for a bottle episode. (which is usually the doylist reason such a plot is written.) I mean they can be funny, but they tend to overstay their welcome. Either that or everyone's schedules were just very busy for a month or two so they got them all together in a hallway in a hotel for 1 scene and paid Riesgraaf overtime. But these types of episodes are usually Budget or Scheduling motivated is what im saying. --- Quick google says an ACL is one of the ligaments in the knee. Parker better listen to Hardison or the next thing she'll be stealing is Archie's Cane. --- Episode introduces us to the Brewery Staff with a little get-well-soon bear. So it might actually just be an excuse plot to introduce us to a secondary/tertiary cast of characters for the season. (8 episodes into a 15 episode season is perhaps a bit late to do that.) --- Ok so we have a bunch of subplots couple where the girl thinks the boy is cheating. (my bet: Secretly planning to propose or something, hence being away more often for badly explained reasons.) Romeo and Juliet, (end up together, hopefully without double-suicides) "chicken Parm Jerk" who always orders the same thing, takes a single bite and sends it back. (Thats a verry specific behavioural patern. Feels very "Anton Ego" "if i do not love it, I do not swallow". Probably a secretly sympathetic backstory. "Loved it growing up, but it never tastes like Mothers Recipe" sort of deal) V&K, probably the episodes dedicated marks, (very pushy and specific about having the window seat. My bet is they're watchers/lookers for a gang. Either that or casing the security at whatever building is across the street) So they offer 4 coffees, and V (i think its V) takes 2 coffees outside. That means they have cohorts outside. Parker's anger that Hardison didnt wiretap the shit out of their lair-front is hilarious. --- Avoiding eye contact with Amy specifically. (I dont think i saw them lift their hand to block sightlines when they were getting served by another server earlier in the episode when they got the 4 coffees.) Amy's dad wants her to "inherit the family business", a business that is apparantly broad enough that "what is the family business" gets answered with "what isn't the family business". Amy's dad is a large corporate mogul and she's a valuable potential hostage. They're not casing the building across the road, they're casing Amy. Writers thought they could trick me with a feint but im onto them! --- V is smarter then K, (or at least more experienced) Professor Parmesan is fiddling with a thing on his finger (probably a ring, but i cant see it probably). Loved the recipe as made by a deceased wife, not a dead mom. --- Camera zoom in on the map. (IRL security camera's dont work that way. They tend to be shitty. But knowing Hardison and the importance of keeping this multi-billion dollar stock-manipulation enterprise afloat, he'd have sprung for actually good camera's and extra large storage servers. So im gonna say this is one case where the "enhanced zoom" is justified) --- Ok you're telling me that Hardison, in an attempt to set up a place where no cops or FBI would ever show up even by accident placed their front-operation across from a pawnshop full of potentially valuable antiques, a bank and a fucking jeweler. Are the writers fucking kidding with this? Like putting it across from one of these 3 would be a stretch given Hardisons goals in aquiring the Brewpub, putting it on a crossroads with all of these is character assasination on the writers part.

Hardison would not have bought a brewpub located at this crossroad. --- Amy getting really sus of Parker (who she knew was in a French prison) knowing so much about the psychology of a robbery.

"Okay i've got to ask, Is any of this illegal" --- Sid might actually be cheating. (sucks). But i guess Parker's gonna send that picture to his girlfriend. Romeo and Juliet both play the violin,

Parmesan is a doctor. 2 coffees with a tracker, trying to find "O" (the numbers are unknown, but my bet is on time, based on them all being multiples of 5, not one of the second digits being above a 6. I assume the leading 000 is to disguise the nature of the numbers) --- Oh, America aparently has special licensed plates for disabled people. Good to know. Also Parker has leveled up her Social Awareness enough that she now realises that telling Amy how she recognised it was definitly a getaway vehicle would be bad.

"you know what to do and I know how to walk... no offense." Great line 7/10. (cant really go higher then that on a line with no overall importance. Still its a good line) --- Amy's reaction to inadvertantly telling her Employers Girlfriend they've been lazy. (Good for her this entire thing is a front. You'd literally keep your job without customers) ---

Ah the good ol "Watson you're a genius!" trope, (its a classic. I love it.)

Oh no, is she setting Romeo and Juliet up with people who arent cheat and the ex. (which means something? I suspect cops like in the Bottle Job)

--- Oh V using the glass as a mirror, cunning. --- And the kidnapping gone wrong is underway. Dates were cops, Doctor Parmesan is a badass.

V spots the camera's. ---

Parkers beats the guy single-handed (or more like single-legged). Dr. Parmesan is gonna find a new food, one that can bring him joy instead of grief.

Zombie Movienight.

[ladydragonkiller]

so, back when i when i was listening to malevolent episode 24 for the first time, there was a line that made me do a double take. Let’s see if you can spot it in the following screenshot:

(ID: malevolent transcript, reading as follows: Arthur: So, Jesus… Okay, yeah, w-we’ll sit by the fire. 

John: You’re sure? 

Footsteps

Arthur: If this thing is living down here, it’s not killing them. I don’t get a murderous vibe from them — It-It’s mad, but yeah. L-L-Let’s.)

have you spotted it? 

that’s right! the word “vibe”!

now, this seemed incongruous, but maybe my timeline of slang was off. maybe it’s been a common word in this context for longer than i thought. maybe-

(ID: 1940, short for vibraphone; attested from 1967 as an abbreviated form of vibration in the 1960s slang sense of "instinctive feeling." Related: Vibes.)

hmmm. there’s always a chance this etymology dictionary is wrong, but that doesn’t quite track. malevolent takes place in the 1930’s, yeah? 

(ID: malevolent transcript, reading as follows: So we don’t occupy the same time? Is it not 1934 in these worlds as well?)

1934, to be specific. so why in the world is arthur using a word from the ‘60s a few decades early?

now, there’s a watsonian and doylist explanation for this, as for many things. the doylist explanation is just that it slipped in without harlan noticing. fair enough, there’s a lot of talking and some things are bound to slip under the radar.

the watsonian explanation is a bit more fun. probably incorrect, but fun.

see, what i started thinking about then was a conversation arthur and john had in the desert.

(ID: I suppose… I don’t know. For now let’s just eat an elephant.

What? [Footsteps stop] How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

[Chuckles] How… I-I don’t… man, I...

What?

I just - it baffles me to think about what that means.

Mysterious piano starts

It’s a joke, a way of…

N-No, I mean to say, is that something that you knew as the King, or is that something that I knew and forgot? The question, it-it boggles my mind.

I don’t know

You said, like the religion, there are some things that you’ve picked up from me, and - and something I have to wonder is what aspects of me are you just reflecting, that I’ve forgotten... and which are the King?

The mind is a tricky thing, friend.

Piano fades)

in this exchange as i see it, john has absorbed knowledge about the world without directly being told it by arthur. arthur was clearly astonished by the phrase, it’s not something he’s thought about recently whatsoever. my argument is that to some level, this could have been happening both ways.

just after the earlier snippet from episode 1 is this:

(ID: No, as I said thinking of time as linear would only confuse. These worlds are all acting simultaneously and yet they all exist in varied time. Some billions and billions of years into the future to when the world has been covered twice by dead civilizations. Some over 50 years from now with pathways that have led to world-wide epidemics. Some even have an ancient past where magic was prevalent…)

john has some level of knowledge about these worlds. some of these worlds are in the future. it is highly possible that john would have at least a passing familiarity with the slang and other lingual idiosyncrasies that come with time.

now, this means a couple things. first, if john is able to absorb knowledge from arthur without either of them noticing, and arthur could do the same, arthur may very well use the word “vibe” in its modern meaning without noticing it. 

second, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that other modern slang could be used. please use your imagination to picture john saying the most cursed phrases possible. you’re welcome.

[clonecumber]

Three of those character ask things from way back that I realize now I only had posted on Dreamwidth. Whoops.

Etain, Corr, and Kal. As always, mind the tags.

Anonymous: Etain

Ohhhh, that's a toughie. All right, I don't know you anon, but you're asking about a controversial character so...proceed with caution?

First impression : I don't think I had very many strong feelings about Etain, but I remember being in line with Kal's take on the situation regarding her pregnancy. Reading it now, there are aspects to it that I feel are way more complicated than how the narrative (and KT's multi-book gaslighting campaign) present them, so I've eased up on that, but that whole plot is still...Eugh. She wasn't really a preferred character, but I grudgingly tolerated her, I suppose.

Impression now : *drags hands down face* Look, I have done like...so much drafting in my head for months about specific Etain things and this is hard, okay. I nearly don't even want to talk about it without at least three separate whole entire papers to point to in order to flesh this shit out, but I'm going to try. Etain's very complicated, primarily because, from a Doylist perspective, knowing anything about how the Jedi work, so many things about how she's written just. Don't fucking make sense. They really don't make sense. Trying to Watsonian the mess is more than a humble ask game can hold. I'll do my best, but yeesh.

(PS. I've already made a separate post talking about how I feel Etain's badly underutilized as a character as well, so I won't be talking about that much either, but I still hold true: Etain had amazing narrative-relevant talents and I wish that had gone somewhere.)

But, Etain. She's actually pretty similar to Skirata in personality, I think. Not identical, but they have a lot of overlap, specifically in their flaws and way of behaving toward others, though the way they express these behaviors tends to differ. The core seems the same, though. Etain obviously has shittier self-esteem, but I feel like they both have a fear of abandonment/need to be special that drives a lot of their behaviors, but Etain's more aware of it and Skirata really isn't. I also think they're both very driven by heart-over-head, both compassionate but so starry-eyed with the idea of doing good for people that they steamroll the same people they're trying to help, which leads into them both having major problems with boundaries and basic communication skills, and both very prone to "othering" anyone not in their in-crowd, to differing degrees of severity. If I was going to Watsonian Skirata's lashing out at Etain throughout the books, I'd say the reason might be besides Etain being a less conventionally attractive woman, is rather because Etain and Skirata are too similar, and while she's alive Skirata is probably subconsciously reacting to that - always jumping to the worst possible conclusion because he sees himself in her, and Skirata has a very complex relationship with his own flaws. Case: Skirata attacks her for things his own POV will sometimes point out are things he does too, sometimes to the point of seeming confused at himself for why he's reacting so strongly, though this never actually goes anywhere since it neither changes Skirata's behavior toward Etain nor makes him examine himself in any more detail. I do think it says a lot that it's there. It's also an interesting compare and contrast exercise, primarily for the following reason:

Because where Etain's different is that 1) none of the other characters ever let Etain get away with shit, so most of the things she pulls get her called out promptly and severely and 2) Etain actually wants to get better about how she treats people. She struggles sometimes and doesn't always get it right, but she's nearly always willing to listen to criticism and will try to do better come hell or high water, even if she doesn't really know what that looks like and ends up forging determinedly ahead in entirely the wrong direction. The spirit is there. I really, really wish therapy existed in Star Wars, because Etain would really benefit from it.

I also find her conversations with Darman where we get to see her from Darman's POV interesting to read, especially later in the series. Around Darman she's always more confident and secure, and it shows, I think. The neuroticism we see from other outside-in looks at Etain (basically only Ordo and Kal, really) dials down significantly, and without the anxiety you get a young woman who's a little stiff and abrupt, even a little stern, but also surprisingly funny and kind. Someone who maybe doesn't smile often, but man, when they do. I feel like we also got a bit of this during her interactions with Mereel, since I remember her POV chapters with him being much less...self-disparaging. So I mean, at least she had two people in this clan she could relax around.

I like her character quite a bit now, actually, lol.

Favorite moment : Etain saving Niner and Fi from shrapnel in Hard Contact. She took initiative on her own and was so pleased with herself afterward; it was kinda cute.

Idea for a story : Instead of Etain dying to save the trooper, it was Skirata, for any reason. Doesn't really matter. I feel like losing Kal in that hero's journey "Death of the Mentor" sort of way would have had a much more interesting impact on the story afterward and maybe saved it from a bit of its...uncertain floundering in follow-up story lines. But also Ordo and Etain, on-scene, having to deal with that, and then the associated, longer-term fallout. It probably wouldn't be about Etain, but the narrative could ride around on her shoulder while everything was happening, so it would be Etain-centric. The dynamics alone would be interesting.

Unpopular opinion : This is nowhere near comprehensive, but: I don't really think Etain tricked Darman into unprotected sex with the intent to get pregnant. I feel like there is reasonable evidence to suggest Darman and Etain were already having unprotected sex even before Etain came to her decision that she wanted kids with Darman someday, no false pretenses required. And I mean, sure, even if they were, I definitely feel like her thinking about the possibility of pregnancy in the future should have at least prompted her to start a conversation before continuing to have unprotected sex with him, but that's still a far cry from the idea she actively sabotaged agreed-upon birth control measures, which I remember was the predominant belief on the forums back when I first read these books as a kid. (Not even getting into the "but did they even have quality sex education" thing because that's straight up headcanon vs headcanon and that's a nightmare road that I will not touch.)

Favorite relationship : (Sorry, Darman, but) MEREEL. Etain and Mereel's friendship came out of left field, but I actually really, really liked it.

Favorite headcanon : That Etain's intersex. Possibly also trans or questioning.

walonvaus: Corr

Hi! Thank you for your comment, I really appreciate it! Sorry for the wait; I try to do these in the order I receive them and I had one on Tumblr just before yours.

Corr's tricky for me, and separating what I can draw from him in canon from the way kaasknot's fic fleshed him out in my head is hard, lol. I don't think I entirely succeeded. Not least because I'm falling asleep on my keyboard, whoops.

First impression : I do not remember. He sure existed?

Impression now : For a guy KT liked to use as a MadLibs booklet every time she needed a random character to do anything and then shoved off-screen at every opportunity, he sure managed to make himself interesting. His canon personality is a bit all over the place, but just his story in general? There's so much there. I'm still fascinated by the fact that apparently after finishing his training, Corr was still running with the Nulls for awhile. Presumably he was spinning his wheels until they had a placement for him, like what happened when Skirata recalled him from a mission he was in the middle of with Jaing, but instead of planting him back in the barracks the Nulls just...kept him. Which says something, I feel. Corr's just one of those guys who has an entire novel's worth of shit happening, but it's taking place entirely off screen. His life is a series of noodle incidents and he never talks about himself. Ever. And so noodle incidents they will remain.

Favorite moment : During O66 when Kal's trying to deflect Niner by dropping the bomb about the second army and Corr goes straight on point like a hunting hound so that when Niner starts to go, "That's nice, now back to the topic at ha-" Corr does everything short of slamming a hand over Niner's mouth. I think he actually says something like, "Niner, shut up," or something, with the implied, "What second army?"

Which is very rude of Corr, who up until this point has been characterized as being very careful around Omega in a Must Keep Hands And Feet Inside The Vehicle At All Times approach to this new squad thing. On top of being raised as a line trooper with far stricter standards of behavior. Telling his sergeant to shut up has implications coming from Corr that it doesn't coming from, say, Darman or Atin.

And, sure, it's the exact reaction that Kal wanted, which sucks, but at the same time I think it says a lot about Corr's own priorities as a Line Trooper himself, and a bit that it sort of speaks to me of his time running second to the Nulls' own missions. There's still a part of him that thinks like them, and just like they were Shook upon this discovery, so is Corr. That on top of it being a sudden, intense blow to him as one of the demographics most affected by the war, troopers just like him hit the hardest by dent of numbers and being last in line for everything, feeling the lack of support the hardest, who would hear of these reinforcements who exist but aren't being used or might exist and might be used and just...have a hell of a lot of feelings about it all at once. I just like the characters piece here, that he just doesn't have a reason to care about Jilka over the second army, for all the reasons listed above. Niner doesn't fall for it as an all-or-nothing trade, information on Jilka's situation or information on the second army, but if Corr does, he knows which one he picks. And that's a cool show of his priorities. Also probably something I'm overthinking.

Idea for a story : Corr still being treated like part of Omega once he and Atin make it to Mandalore and reunite with Fi. Just. IDK. A bonding activity. Something. Fi being able to talk to Corr about things Fi might still have a hard time trying to explain to Atin, maybe. Like, you know, maybe Corr's been there before or something.

Unpopular opinion : (I don’t think this series really has popular opinions, but we’ll work with what we have:) Corr still doesn't really understand the One True Marriage/Must Be In Want Of A Wife ideal that most of the rest of the characters in the series were raised with, so him having a "girl in every port" is less him deliberately "playing the field" and more his squad trying to sync his behavior through their own cultural lenses.

Really, Corr's just a friendly guy who sometimes has sex with people he likes, with zero expectations on either side or even the real understanding that there should be (which I wonder about anyway, since Star Wars doesn't have a sex before marriage taboo to my understanding, which would be funny if it was just Skirata but I digress). Those "girls" are his friends. That's literally it. He does not get why his squad mates keep chortling amongst each other and ribbing him about this. Or, he does. Intellectually. But he doesn't get it.

Favorite relationship : I really want to say Mereel even though I've been realizing slowly over the course of the last couple weeks that for all there is so much interesting about their potential dynamic, they basically never interact on-screen in the books? H o w.

All the Nulls he's canonically worked with, so Mereel, Kom'rk, and Jaing.

Favorite headcanon : Corr approaches Jilka flirting because he learned it as a defusing tool from Mereel and no one else was working with her to keep her from eventually snapping and, like, stabbing Besany or something. That's his sole motivation originally, and he's halfway winging it. How the relationship plays out after that - especially when it rapidly grows outside Corr's control on account of him not really understanding why using flirting tactics on someone you live with isn't really the best idea, and maybe or maybe not him actually forming a friendship/actual romantic interest in Jilka - varies to me, but my primary interest is in the culture clash potential.

kaasknot: Kal Skirata

Hi!

Juuust a forewarning, since I don't know if you've seen much of my typical rambling, but I have Strong Feelings about Kal Skirata's character, so. Be warned? Also trying to talk about this without dipping into a bit of TMI is impossible. If you don't want to deal with that, skip the first two impressions, please!

First impression : I first read these books up to True Colors (O66 and 501st came out later) all together when I was a young teenager nearly a decade before I'd finally start being able to admit to myself that I had been abused, and I adored Kal Skirata. He was just like my mom, except better.

Impression now : No argument that KT's main strength is her ability to create vivid characters. Kal as a character is incredibly important to me because he's one of the most perfect characterizations of an (unintentionally but still very) emotionally abusive parent I've ever read. And from a meta standpoint, using Kal - a safe fictional character - as a proxy to sort through my own understanding of my own treatment by my own mother was a useful exercise, since the parallels are so stark. The fact Kal doesn't ever do it on purpose is what matters to me too, because it's too easy for people to decide toxic people are that way by some grand calculating plan, deliberately maneuvering everyone around them like expert chess masters for maximum suffering, when really it's usually just because they're damaged, frightened people lashing out and grasping on instinctively, who aren't capable of recognizing the harm they're doing. Like the emotional equivalent of a drowning person latching on to anyone nearby and not realizing when they shove them down under the water. It's the human desire to be liked and appreciated absent the ability to self-reflect and cope in a healthy, productive manner, and an unwillingness to self-correct when their own lacking behaviors are pointed out to them. Kal wants to be a good person. He wants to do right by his kids and be super-dad and all of that. He really, really wants it, and that makes it easy to excuse him, because his intentions are so good. (Except he's also got a bit of a white savior thing going on, but we're not talking about that right now.)

The fact that being seen as that person (so that he can see himself as that person) matters more to him than actually doing the hard work of correcting his behaviors so he can be that person is where he fails. He wants without putting in any actual, productive effort. If it doesn't make him feel better about himself, it scares him, and he does his best to ignore it away and make everyone validate him so he can pretend he never did anything wrong to start with. This man gaslights like he breathes. He uses dramatic shows to "erase" damage he's done without actually taking into account if the person he's trying to "make amends" to actually feels better after he's done (see: Darman). He can spin the narrative of self-improvement, but he wavers at actually walking it. It's human. It's very, very human. It's part of why a lot of my favorite "what ifs" involve Kal learning how he's fucked up, being forced to confront it, and growing better as a person and forming healthier relationships with his family. At this point I've accepted my mom will never do it, but I like to think Kal would.

But most importantly, that whatever else might have happened in Skirata's life to harm him, whatever his intentions were, that doesn't matter. People aren't allowed to hurt you just because they don't mean to, or because they've been hurt themselves.

TMI OVER

Favorite moment : Okay, so after he shakes hands and leaves Altis's ship and realizes he's still contagious with the vaccine-fever and he just looks at his hand in disgust and then mutters something like, "I should have charged you." I laughed.

I really, really like when Kal actually is the put-out old crook dragged kicking and screaming into something approximating morality by his love for six little boys, and I wish he'd been written that way more often, because he talks about himself that way sometimes but too obviously views himself as more-moral-than-thou at literally all times, not helped by KT warping reality around him to always make sure he's the most right and moral character in the series, and I just feel like it's a series of missed opportunities. The put-out old crook Kal we could have had is an icon.

Idea for a story : Sort of brainstorming this for a little while now, but: Time travel. Falin gets dumped on Ordo shortly after being found by Munin but before Munin manages to erase his name, or Ordo travels back and stumbles across little Falin and promptly kidnaps him because Munin is a Hard No. It'd be about breaking the cycle of abuse, Falin/Kal getting a better start after the hell he had to deal with and deserving much better than fucking Munin, and Ordo/the Nulls having the opportunity to recognize Kal's bad treatment through having to parent Falin/realizing where Kal came from and grappling with their own unwillingness to pass those things on, and coming to terms with why they don't want to pass those things on. For obvious reasons, them coming to terms with their own poor treatment and not really being equipped to deal with Falin's trauma, means there would have to be a broader cast to provide support, possibly even take over as Falin's primary caregiver for awhile (good luck getting past a freaked out and protective Ordo, but I have faith in his clan) but that's more detail than I've got so far. Point is the Nulls (especially Ordo) coming face-to-face with Falin.

I'm actually sort of attached to Laseema in particular recognizing aspects of Falin's treatment under Munin and actually being a good point of connection for him. She understands better than anyone else in that house exactly what sort of thing Falin's gone through, I think. At least the losing everything parts, and being taken, and being expected to perform to a new expectation by these strangers you have no power to combat, not even to keep your own name. Human trafficking victim to human trafficking victim. I have an image of Falin nursing a wild bird back to health, and, being Kal still, wanting to keep it forever even once it's healed, and Laseema walking him out into the yard, and talking to him beyond the range of anyone else's hearing, and eventually convincing him to let it go.

Unpopular opinion : *shrugs* Kal's a polarizing character. I love analyzing him and I'm very critical of him and want him to face some hard consequences, which is going to be very unpopular with 50% of fandom and perfectly fine with the other 50%.

Favorite relationship : Vau. They're both shitty old people and their relationship is hilarious. Literally the only character Kal doesn't have any sort of hold on, and they fight like cats and dogs but with the impression that they'll be shoulder-to-shoulder at the pub later or something. Angry, toxic old couple who fight all the time but will back each other up when it comes to fucking with the HOA inspector.

Favorite headcanon : Okay, I erased the BS I invented on the spot that lived here last time. Honestly, I spend so much time focusing on canon!Kal that I don't really have any headcanons I can point to in a snap. He gets his share of attention already. Unless some of my interpretations of his canon actions dip into headcanon territory, this is all I've got.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

the wolf should’ve been afraid of me.

Titans 3.04

just under the wire! ... i hope.

like with the previous review, i’m typing this up as i see the episode. here we go!

spoilers ahead.

1. ... well. that was an interesting cold open.

1.25. i don’t know whether to admire this show’s restraint when it comes to gotham and its excesses, particularly arkham asylum. it’d be easy to go hammer and tongs, like suicide squad (2016) did, or any number of bat media did, at a tropey, colourful~~insanity~~ that can be quite damaging, casting mental illness in strangeness and criminality. it definitely shows gotham as... separate from the rest of the country, its own ecosystem of heroes and villains, a sort of rogue state. 

but that ecosystem is still human, with its heroes needing to clip parts of themselves away just to survive, growing old and needing to be recycled, its villains languishing in the same kinds of systems that fail everybody else who needs to be helped. it’s a quieter, tenser sort of wrongness: not strange enough that you can dissociate, but not close enough that you can completely empathise. gotham is its own creature.

1.5. i know that the reasoning behind this is more doylist than anything, but i’m so glad that joker was killed off with little fanfare right at the start of the season. he is the one man in the batverse that’s transcended its confines as this sort of ethereal boogeyman/eternal edgelord and to justify his presence in the series would mean giving him this tired, overblown importance and too much of a stab at colourful, tropey “madness” in this otherwise-subdued series. i wish all batmedia would follow suit and get rid of this fucker.

1.75. so jason is bucking scarecrow’s control! or reminding him of who exactly holds all the cards right now. circling back to what i talked about in the last review, it’s remarkable just how little time it’s been since jason’s “death” and he’s already got ‘minions’ and elaborately set up plans to track, break and kill the titans. just how long has he been planning this? when did he first look at WE weapons prototypes and think that’s something i can use to blow somebody up? and the most unsettling question: did he plan his own death at the hands of the joker just so that he could break batman?

at this point it’s obvious that the scarecrow at least started jason down this path, but it’s frightening just how far he’s travelled already.

1.8. aaagh, less than one minute in! i’ll shut up. 

2. conner washing his hands at the sink reminds me that he was directly in the line of explosion when hank got blown up and he’s probably got atomised hank-bits all over his skin that he’s desperately trying to wash off.

... you’re welcome.

2.25. conner, don’t you speak to gar fucking logan like that, sir, no!

2.3. if anything it’s the lex part of him that gave him the knowhow to recognise the weapon and build a de-activator for it. 

anyway, for that ‘half-breed’ and ‘talking tiger’ comment?

(i wish, tho, that we actually see conner more interested in the superman part of his legacy, like maybe listening to stories from gar, or even better, dick, so we get a better idea of the pressure he’s feeling to live up to that part of him and not the part that’s lex.)

((i talked about conner’s stages of moral development in his introductory episode last season, but i wonder if the next stage of his self-actualisation would be to further integrate the parts of himself and realise that they are only parts and he, conner, is an entirely different person unto himself that can make decisions on how to use what he has and what he knows. his superman abilities can be used to destroy. his lex knowledge can be used to save.))

3. oh dawn :((

3.25. is this the last we see of dawn and hank? i mean, we know donna is coming back; would it be a stretch to think they’ll try to have a go at resurrecting hank as well?

3.5. “deathstroke didn’t make us into killers.” good, because deathstroke didn’t make jason a killer either. there’s a missing step there you need to be looking for, dick. 

3.75. dick did try to break the cycle, step away from gotham, run from the possibility that he could turn into batman. it didn’t help; he couldn’t fully withdraw from his vigilante persona the same time he loathed it, and batman literally haunted him both asleep and awake. but maybe gotham doesn’t have to turn anybody into anything. maybe gotham has nothing to do with it at all. it’s about taking responsibility, realising some sacrifices are pure bullshit, and building an actual family instead of merely a team.

anyway: hugs!

(oh, also? mr “i hate flying”? i mean, there’s perfectly valid reasons to hate flying that’s not related to childhood trauma, but then again, this guy was literally a ‘flying grayson’ once. also also, remember that he also gets sea-sick. must’ve a lot of fun stories to tell.)

4. ooh that gar/kory confrontation was brief but cool!

listen, i have never seen a psychiatrist with that extravagant an office and SIR I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW--

4.5. kory’s so unused to reaching out for help and it’s breaking my heart that HPG likely is some kind of impostor that’s maybe causing her symptoms in the first place. 

kory and dick have mostly been apart this season but it’s remarkable how their journeys have paralleled each other; kory processes her grief, isolation and existential dread into a determination to take care of this new family she has, no matter what it takes; dick does much the same, forging ahead with plans and solutions until he has no fuel left in him and spirals into a massive breakdown.

4.25. listen titans this really is a TERRIBLE continuity error. we aren’t goldfish; we can clearly remember that two minutes ago it was gar’s upper arm that was burned, not his forearm. COME ON.

“sensory deprivation tank” *SNORT*

anyway, gar is the BEST

4.5. i wonder where these visions of experimentation took place. was it on tamaran, or on earth, after she came to hunt down rachel/trigon and before she lost all her memories? is HPG a part of the scientist group that experimented on her? ... god, i hope not. i mean, i think he is, but it would be cool to have some positive therapist representation in media. 

5. you’d think the van transporting a dangerous supervillain that only batman could catch would be more secure but... i’m also not entirely surprised. 

5.15. i love dick gives ZERO shits about hiding himself or even ensuring scarecrow is adequately contained. just turns away after kidnapping him in BROAD DAYLIGHT and says ‘let’s go’. I LOVE THIS DUMBASS

6. lmao gar is having a really really shitty day SOMEONE GIVE THIS MAN A BREAK or just a goddamn story arc of his own

6.5. i’m really confused about the timeline here. so... sometime ago, kory came down to earth to hunt down trigon, yeah? at some further point down the line she and her sister were kidnapped and experimented on. THEN she somehow escapes but... loses her memory? a few months pass and then we see blackfire alive and well and free; she kills faddei, can impersonate other people, and is clearly seeking out kory. but now she’s still in the experiment facility...? what’s going on?

i’m not entirely surprised about the facility being mostly deserted. either the biggest investors in this project gave up on it and it was left to the most fanatic to carry on, or they were deliberately trying to lure kory and get her to free blackfire--expand the environs of the experiment, so to speak.

7. hopefully barbara is going to get something to do other than listen to various men give her Attitude

8. how do you terrorise a terrorist? well:

i love when dick is a scary-competent motherfucker.

8.25. ooooh, the attack on crane at arkham a ploy to get crane to blackgate? nice one dick, i didn’t even think of that. but why though? to protect crane from the titans? to intercept the van to blackgate and “rescue” him? seems likely--red hood was there, except dick got to crane quicker.

9. still reeeallly unclear about the komand’r situation. was komand’r captured after s2? is this all A TRAP?? if so, why are you stepping into the only thing that can contain you, kory????

9.25. so... definite parallels between dick/jason and kory/kom here. i’m just. i’m still. really confused. i’ll shut up now.

10. this may be my favourite dick look yet:

woodsman!dick in a beanie.

10.5. i unironically love how titans has made this bizarrely-devoted-to-his-moniker, toxin-spewing supervillain into a tamer version of hannibal, psychoanalysing his victims into submission. it’s of a piece with how inward looking titans is, the way all of its villains are obsessed with how our protagonists’ minds work, to the point where they would actually spend time inside of them. 

there are no big plots to end the world. no apocalypses or endgames here. these villains collect the titans’ insecurities like infinity stones. the way the titans defeat them is by achieving character growth--literally winning by the power of love. literally “the real superpower is the friends we made along the way”!

10.7. anyway, i’m betting dick is used to this bullshit from crane and is humouring him in the service of getting more information. the story about the wolf? an implicit threat, not to mention dick getting to control what crane knows about him and what methods he would use to manipulate him.

am i giving dick too much credit here? i don’t think so. he’s really impressed me so far this season.

10.75. like. there’s a real unreliable narrator vibe coming off with every person that talks about bruce (much like how the various members of the titans talked about jason’s motivations) and to buy into crane’s talk about bruce being a psychopath is to fall for the same manipulation that jason fell for. dick is the only person who hasn’t really psychoanalysed bruce this season, and i think some part of his detective brain is piecing things together into a bigger picture.

11. i’m glad kory rescued kom but did she have to kill the scientist?

(i mean, yeah, probably - the less people know that kom escaped the less likely they’re going to have the fucking govt on their doorstep, but still.)

11.5. dick’s gonna come back to wayne manor, stare straight at komand’r and go, well which room would you like? because the team might as well adopt ANOTHER person, yeah?

12. oh MAN that red hood/nightwing fight was AMAZING! and he did the thing! the boomerang escrima thing! i’m so delighted!

12.5. the anger and disbelief in dick’s voice when he says you told crane EVERYTHING?! tells me that he knew exactly what he was telling crane himself.

12.75. “everything you are is because of him” - oh that reminds me of halluci!bruce from last season. i hope we see halluci!bruce again--he is so vicious but so entertaining... so much more effective at tearing dick down than crane or jason combined. goes to show that dick’s biggest enemy is own fucking head.

12.8. oh no! dick’s shot! crane is in the wind with red hood! blackfire is now with the titans! i love it!

honestly this season’s pacing is such a big step up from the last couple. gold star, show.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Your random Trust thought of the day, since writing Primo and Paul interacting once again has me thinking about Paul’s relationship with language:

Much as I enjoy lovingly mocking Paul as a clueless American wandering around Italy speaking English all the time...he doesn’t actually seem to have much difficulty understanding what any of the Italian characters are saying. He seems to have a slightly preternatural ability to understand Primo in particular, even though (I think?) Primo only ever speaks to him in Calabrese, with a very occasional English phrase thrown in. But even beyond that, he seems to at least get the gist of what people are saying to him when he’s motivated to pay attention. And look, he’s been living in Italy for a significant portion of his life by the beginning of the show; even if he speaks English with his family and with his multinational group of friends, I think he understands Italian perfectly fine. And after five months in Calabria he understands at least some Calabrese. Like, he understands what Leonardo and Salvatore are talking about from a good distance away in an echoey tunnel; that’s not an easy listening comprehension situation.

He’s just not very confident at speaking Italian. It’s clearly not the first language he reaches for when trying to express himself. But high listening comprehension + low speaking ability/confidence seems like a very logical pattern of language acquisition for someone who’s spent a long time in an immersion environment but doesn’t have much patience for formal education, and also had the ability to attend school in their native language and spends a lot of time around wealthy expats who are likely to speak English. And of course native-English-speaker privilege is a thing, which means that he can get away with not being completely fluent in the language of the country he’s living in with very few negative consequences to himself.

And yes yes I know that on a Doylist level having Paul almost always be around someone who speaks English is partially for the audience, since this is a TV show made with a primarily Anglophone audience in mind. But I also think “listen and understand in Italian, reply in English” is a pretty logical way for him to interact with the language environment he’s in, and that’s mostly what we see him do with the characters who don’t speak English well.

There’s a couple fun Primo/Paul implications to this, I think. One is the idea that Paul would try to actively maintain his Italian comprehension when he’s not in Italy. Probably in his very haphazard Paul-ish manner, by doing things like “there’s a Rossellini retrospective at Film Forum and I’m going to go and sit there all day and just listen,” but hey, he’s trying. And the idea of flighty, dreamy Paul putting actual work into trying to understand Primo better (both literally and figuratively) is just...delicious.

I also really like the idea that he’d wind up with random Calabrese words and phrases in his vocabulary, probably without even realizing it; like he’ll just repeat something because he heard Primo say it and he understood from context clues what it meant, only to get a weird double-take from one of his Roman friends. Which maybe is awkward and confusing the first few times, but privately he likes the idea of having these little bits of Primo to hold onto.

[laufire]

Imo, potential Saileen was better than canon Saileen. I shipped them when they were cute flirty friends in Seasons 11 and 12 and was upset that they killed her (and not just for ship reasons.) But when they brought her back in Season 15 and made it canon it just... didn't feel like them. All the spark was gone out of the ship. Plus it kinda felt like they shoved Rowena out of the way for it to happen just when I'd started to really get into that ship! (And a certain corner of fandom also killed my love for Saileen, but that's a story for another DM.)

I didn't ship them in s11-12; I didn't feel there was enough material for me to make up my mind one way or the other, but I was expectant regarding s15. Her death was bullshit, that's for sure.

With s15... that scene where he resurrected her pinged my radar, I felt something. But that was pretty much it. I shipped Samwena too and would've definitely preferred that, but I'm a multishipper so that wouldn't have stopped me from adding another ship to my armada lol.

Listen, I've half-joked before about how I never expected to be much of a shipper because I only ship Sam with people Dean wouldn't want him to be with LMAO. It's not just out of a "fuck you, Dean" impulse, I swear. Seriously, there's a direct correlation between how much Dean disapproves of one of Sam's relationships, and how beneficial said relationship is for Sam's narrative (hence Samruby being my OTP for him!).

Sam's narrative is at its best when he has relationships that give him a reason to fight Dean, Watsonian and Doylist-wise. The fact that Dean endorses Sam/Eileen is effectively a ship-killer as far as I'm concerned.

But I would've liked it to be, and I was a bit hopeful it'd be... a nice, uplifting dynamic for Sam; something last minute, not too explored, but something heartwarming that might leave you thinking about the future ~possibilities, you know? Last-season romances are a mixed bag, but I've seen some that managed to stick the landing quite well, and IMO this one wasn't didn't make the cut.

Given what I knew about the finale it was difficult it reached those expectations LOL, but it COULD have happened. Hell, everyone is free to imagine whoever they want as The Blurry Wife, as I've said before, Eileen included. But I don't want to imagine her in that role.

Like I said, with her resurrection and their tentative thing I could enjoy it a bit. But then comes 15x09, with the reveal that Chuck's machinations were what brought them together in the first place.

And that could've been the point where things got turned around and the dynamic could've become something really interesting!! I mean, c'mon, it could've brought at the forefront a lot of the themes of the season itself, Chuck controlling the Winchesters lives, the collateral damage that causes (in this case, Eileen getting used as a pawn and questioning her level of agency within their relationship)...

It could have been used to explore those issues, and to delve into Eileen's relationship (which I hope I get to write one day!), but instead, she leaves and never comes back. We're told the two of them are trying to see if they work, and they have one off-screen date. Then she dies alongside the rest of the world, comes back, and. Nothing.

Nothing.

So. We had option a.) something uplifting that gives you a bit of hope for the future; not an intense world-destroying love, but something softer and kinder; or b.) a chilling exploration of the themes of the season (and larger ones, if you think of how it could mirror John and Mary getting roofied by cupids on Michael's orders!). And the show failed to deliver on both fronts.

So yeah, I found their relationship disappointing. This might be my most controversial SPN opinion. Mutuals are going to desert me over this xDD

(lol I know what you mean. Yeah, it seems to be Sam's convenient ship to pair him off vis a vis Destiel. Something neither of the characters, nor the people that genuinely like the ship, deserve. Plus like, what's safe about a God-forced romance?? That deserves to be explored in fic, not made into the eternal "safe" ship smh)

[sclfmastery]

I’ve just watched the doctor falls and am I going mad or did they never even mention the drums once?? Like I never expected them to carry that theme on with other Masters because it was something quite unique to RTD, but then when simm!master returned they just never even acknowledged it? Yet the last time we saw that incarnation he was on the verge of tears to the doctor saying he didn’t know what he’d be without them? Anyway I just feel like it sums up that they went to the trouble of bringing him back despite not wanting to acknowledge any aspects of the character at all (apart from a couple of small references to LotTL like calling the doctor grandad)

Not once is it mentioned, no.  I genuinely think Moffat omitted it not because he believed that, by the close of End of Time Part 2, the arrival of Gallifrey through the Timelock resolved the Drums (although that is MY personal headcanon), but because they were a motif of suffering and too sympathetic.  He wanted to force Simm into a reductive “bad impenitent Master” box, and Gomez into an equally reductive “listens to the Doctor and is willing to compromise herself and is therefore the good Master” box.  Therefore Simm had to make forced, out of place lines like “you don’t have empathy now, do you?” and “is the future going to be all girl?” (don’t even get me started on how RTD and Moffat made a TIME LORD from a post-gender planet full of elite telepaths who use machines to reproduce into a common twentieth-century human sexist, it is my number one pet peeve lmao ).  

Therefore Simm had to be evil just for the sake of being evil. Therefore any source of trauma or stress had to be eradicated from the fandom’s collective memory, including the HIGHLY complicated iconography of the Drums, which resonates with A LOT of fans  (for instance, the neurodiverse and chronically ill). 

That was the only way to make Missy the unequivocal “hero” Master completing a (really troubling and problematic) "Rehabilitation” that existed entirely to establish the Doctor’s idea of morality as The One True Way.  The Doctor Falls ruined the Master and, I would argue, Missy, in order to make the Doctor look like the tragic superhero, the stuff of legends, the untouchable, the Impossible To Understand.  To wit, Moffat’s own masturbatory Superego persona, a wacky “smart” white man who sighs and suffers to put up with all the cute dumb lesser beings that he has to babysit, but is himself ineffably brilliant and mysterious and sexy.   (p.s. I love Twelve, especially when written by someone who is not Moffat. he was so warped ooc in series 10). 

Mind, Moffat makes sure that (most of) the Doctor’s other actions are infallible, which further muddies the waters for any Simm fans.  I certainly agree with the Doctor’s actions re the Mondasian ship, and rescuing the families and children on that platform, and I certainly roundly condemn the Master weaponizing robots made from living people to his advantage.  But that doesn’t excuse erasing all memory of the character development around coping with and overcoming the Drums in order to (often Moffat’s raison d’etre) make the Doctor this superhuman hero figure, instead of the regular, eccentric bloke he’d always been. 

And I think it’s interesting that as soon as the reins are handed over to Chibnall, he brings back the Drums: in Spyfall Part 2, with the famous Morse code scene. 

But the worst thing that’s happened since The Doctor Falls? Anyone who’s a fan of Simm is presumed some kind of sexist as well: when we are just as likely to condemn the Doylist reasons for Simm’s behavior, which so many other fans mistake as Watsonian reasons.  Moffat has weaponized his stans against people who love Simm’s Master.  He has made his performative allyship seem somehow more “righteous.” 

As convolutedly meta as ever, so very characteristic of him, Moffat has turned his stans into little Twelfth Doctors who are Misunderstood But Always Right, whose job it is to straighten out the Missys in the fandom, and condemn and give up on the Simms.  It makes a tidy, satisfying little narrative for media consumption and wokeness, you see. 

[shinygoku]

Thunderbirds (2004)

A review by me, CutCat! This is 8-ish pages long!

Spoiler for the end of the film warning: Alan is in International Rescue. What a twist!

Totally Turbulent

Soooo, Tbirds ‘04 is one of those Infamous Adaptations, at least among those who enjoyed Thunderbirds (’65) and of more recent times, Thunderbirds are Go (’15). It’s one of those Bad Live Action Adaptations to a near sacred property, making it dubious contemporaries with Dragon Ball [Evolution], Avatar [The Last Airbender] and suchlike.

But wait, is it really That Bad?? Why is it as divisive as it is? What caused the film to be the way it is, and quite unpopular at that?

First I’m gonna make a long story very short by saying that a Live Action Thunderbirds movie was on and off production for many years, and that the script we ended up with is apparently better than another one that was pitched... but there are reports of cooler scripts further back that never made it, for various reasons. It’s almost a story of it’s own right but I’m only going by 2nd hand information at best, so I’d rather just link them at the end for Additional Reading if y’all felt so inclined.

With that out of the way, we have the Takes from the Andersons to look at. Sylvia had a very favourable reception to it:

"I felt that I'd been on a wonderful Thunderbirds adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Whereas Gerry had a considerably blunter response at the opposite end of the scale:

"the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

As for me, a mere fan of predominantly the TAG series with limited but fond memories of the 90’s TOS reruns, I’d been inclined to ignore it and write it off as a DBE or TLA lost cause. But the combined effect of me deciding to check out unpopular media for myself, namely Dragon Ball GT and the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, and thoroughly enjoying both; and the other effect of TAG finishing but my fixation reawakening with the need to consume More, I dived deeper into the fan base than I had dared to before, in which I found more reasons to watch it and make up my own mind fairly.

Find out what I thought, and a review of the movie itself, below the Cut! ✂

Stormy Story

Ok, enough teasing, I see good things in the movie but not enough for it to be a secret masterpiece, not by a long shot.

1/3 Stars from Me. That’s Poor. (Compare with 2/3 being Good, and 3/3 being Excellent)

My main beef is unfortunately kinda the crux of the whole story, so while there were aspects I really liked, it had permanently set the bar low, and other issues were not helping matters. I’ll go into the problems after I sum up the plot.

[sitcom harp music]

14 Year Old Alan Tracy is stuck in a stuffy school with only his nerd friend to confide in. Something’s eating him up, and it’s jealousy over how his family are International Rescue, the secret rescue workers whole pilot the Thunderbirds, impossibly cool craft with capabilities vastly exceeding standard technology. Even when he’s allowed out of school and back to the Island, his envy and barely repressed resentment over not being a member himself causes him to go off and sulk and to try taking Thunderbird 1, the hypersonic jet plane, for a joyride.

His father and the leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy chews Alan out for almost compromising the need for the organisation to remain secret, lest their advanced technology falling into the wrong hands. Alas, said wrong hands are already working against IR: The Hood, a diabolical, cold blooded criminal with psychic powers and a grudge against Jeff. After successfully tracking the location of Tracy Island, he launches a missile towards Thunderbird 5, the Space Station where IR monitor potential disasters to prevent as much damage as possible, manned by John Tracy.

With TB5 crippled and John injured, Jeff and his other three older sons all scramble to the disaster zone via Thunderbird 3, the Rocket Ship. But with Tracy Island largely unmanned, The Hood moves in and aims to use the Thunderbirds to rob bank vaults while simultaneously smearing International Rescue’s good name. As the only Tracy brother left on Earth, it’s up to Alan and his 2 friends, Fermat and Tin-Tin, to foil the Hood and save his family, proving himself worthy in the process. He is also assisted by IR’s London Agent, Lady Penelope, and her driver/butler/lockpicker, Parker.

...

Ok, so that’s a summary you may read on the back of a DVD box, maybe it’s a bit long but whatever. Do you see what’s wrong with the story? The massive rift in the formula that should be within a template set by the hugely popular TV Series?

Critical Crux

For me, the main issue with the movie is that the Tracy family are thrown under a bus, or perhaps it’s more like being locked in a closet, in order for Alan to rise up and be The Hero. A show that was about each of them having different roles and personalities to the others, and the movie sees the best way to adapt the premise is to reduce 3 of them to cardboard cutouts who aren’t allowed to do or say anything meaningful, with the exception to this getting the dubious honour of getting a missile and exploding space station to the face.

I can’t clearly express how much this pisses me off! It’s downright insulting and baffling as well. They had pre established characters right there for the taking but go NO! Let’s make OCs to fill this newly created void instead and make the main Message of the film Friendship Teamwork.

Why does every child-skewed media hafta have the Friendship message? It’s a good one, sure, but nothing said in this film about it was fresh or original. Y’know what I see far, far less? Not just in Kid Flavoured Media, but all sorts? The importance of Brotherly Bonds between actual brothers!! I don’t subscribe to the massively misunderstood message version of ‘Blood is thicker than water’, but a story with the siblings actually pushed and stressed and coming out stronger at the end would have ruled!!

[For what it’s worth, the actual saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, i.e. the bonds you choose to forge are more important than happening to be born to certain people. This correct message is still compatible with literal siblings though!]

The other, somewhat lesser Large Issue with the movie is simply that we don’t see much in the way of Rescues with the titular Thunderbirds. We only get the tail end of the Oil Rig in Act 1, and then the ‘Birds are used predominantly to get to London and save 1 Monorail Car with TB4.

Watsonian Woes & Doylist Dilemma

When looking at Media, there’s 2 main angles to consider; Doylist and Watsonian. Doylist is the “real life / meta” angle, the structure of the story or interests of the author being in the plot, that kinda thing. Watsonian is the reason given within the story.

All stories have Watsonian and Doylist reasonings, the trick is to blend them in and not use a weedy Watsonian reason for something stupid happening.

Why bring this up? Because it’s still part of the Huge Problem I have with the film; the Doylist reason for all of IR being incapacitated so easily is so Alan can shine without fighting for focus in a large group. I don’t like it, but let’s go along with it for now.

Believe it or not, but I can accept that a Movie format isn’t going to be the same as an ongoing series. There’s way less time and you gotta hit certain beats. Ideally you also condense the essence of the show into the film while being more than just a long episode. They didn’t hit this note in my opinion...

But other than ‘It has to happen for he story to work’, there’s no damn reason for all the Non-Alan Tracys to be cooped up in the crippled TB5! They put all their eggs into one basket when a considerably more sensible choice woulda been to have a small crew, and the others remain on base. Because even without factoring in a worst case scenario where another missile hits them while in space, killing them all, which totally could have happened for all they know, there’s also the part about them being International Rescue! They gotta be ready to respond to other disasters should those develop. TB1, 2 and 4 were still available for use!

If I was Jeff making the boneheaded decision, I would have taken a second to think about it and have 1 of the Bros come up in 3 with me. Seeing to John shouldn’t be something 4 people are needed for, it would just get more crowded and the oxygen would be used way faster! Considering they all come close to asphyxiating, 2 less people would mean things weren’t so damn close to the wire! (Granted, the movie also has them falling into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up as a hazard, but the whole crew being there doesn’t affect that.)

Jeff! You’re the patriarch and supposedly most experienced dude in the whole movie! Why didja run into that trap with both eyes open? Stressful situation, sure, but in the Rescue Business you need to be able to listen to the cold, clinical angle. You’re risking more of your sons’ lives making such a rash judgement!!

Character Conundrums

This is the part of the review where I begin to really emphasise the differences between TOS and this movie. I’ll hold off TAG for now in the interest of fairness.

The movie is a mixed bag when it comes to the individuals within it. Some have been refreshing updates to stuffy 60′s tropes, but several draw the short straw, feeling even stiffer than their marionette precursors.

Alan - Hoo, boy. The plot follows Alan.... for the third time if you’re factoring in the Supermarionation movies, which was quite the baffling choice as Puppet!Alan is quite the obnoxious jerk. But whatever, new movie, new canon, new Alan. While the Alan of the 60′s was a bizarrely whiny brat of a character considering he was supposed to at least be in his early 20′s this Alan at least makes more sense to be annoying. But yes, he starts off as a sullen jerk with unclearly defined jealousy towards his own brothers and seemingly a lack of grasping the stakes behind International Rescue, viewing being one of the crew as a Cool Job rather than a gruelling, life-risking ordeal. Over the course of the movie (mostly Act 3) he becomes less of a berk and a better team player, even going as far as to save the Hood personally.

Jeff - One of the stronger characters in the movie, even with this poor choice I’ve gone on about already, haha. You get the real impression the job means the world to him, but still secondary to his sons. An update and improvement to the sometimes stodgy and holier-than-thou character from the 60′s, plus his proactive role makes him way less of a backseat driver.

Lady Penelope - Best character and a splendid update to the 60′s Socialite. This Penny is always a delight to see, although her ability to change clothes offscreen sometimes pushes plausibility, haha. She and Jeff also have very natural and endearing chemistry, so for this iteration at least, I’m up for shipping them, something I can’t say for TOS.

Parker - Remarkably true to the beloved puppet version and another highlight. His interplay with Penelope is some of the best dialogue in the whole movie, and was written by Richard Curtis in an uncredited role, or so I’ve read.

The Hood - A shockingly sadistic and cold blooded so-and-so. His Psychic powers have been given a huge boost, and the depths of his spite generates all the tense scenes the movie has to offer. His performance may be the best in the whole film, simultaneously over the top while also completely deadly.

Tin-Tin - Y’know, Tin-Tin is a funny character, in how she’s very different in all versions. I enjoy her in TOS, but her potential as an engineering assistant, mathematician and member of IR are quickly discarded to make her a secretary, which is further demoted to bringing coffee. Ahh, The Sixties! One of her other defining features was the sometimes bickering sexual tension with Alan. Movie!Tin-Tin is still the implied love interest [and the same age] with him, but she’s also an Action Girl extraordinaire, with abilities bordering on metahuman. She can trek through the jungle without slowing down, she can dive underwater for prolonged sequences, and has a variation of her Evil Uncle’s Psychic capabilities, but used for good. Notably, the Kayo of TAG takes significantly more from this Tin-Tin to the original, sadly sans Telekinesis.

Fermat - The only OC I’m gonna dignify with a section here lol. He’s basically mini-Brains, complete with the way he t-ta-tal- -distinctive speech patterns. But yeah, as the hypersmart and nerdy pal, I feel that his role is pretty superfluous, though his performance in the movie got me to soften up, he’s a good kid. Just one who, like, is part of the deal breaking issue I have with the whole film. In a way I think he’d have made a better lead than Alan lmao

Brains - Not much to say here, he’s also a dude in distress for a majority of his screentime. Seems to be older than his TOS self and a bit less subservient to Jeff, but also a father ....or Fermat is his clone. They never make that clear. He’s hit on by the Hood’s Female Scientist and it’s played for comedy, more on that later.

John - In TOS, his role was infamously minimal, as Gerry Anderson took such a strong disliking to the John puppet and the TB5 model that he exiled both into space with a few token shots per episode. So in comparison, this movie is far kinder to John! He has a nice, genuine chat with Jeff, without any mission to initiate said videocall. The movie is also quite mean to John in how he gets bombed by the Hood, his space station in tatters, his arm hurt and then near suffocation with Jeff and most of his brothers. Ahh, the conundrum of being John.

Scott, Virgil and Gordon - No, they don’t even get their own paragraphs in my review. Their lack of presence and importance in the movie is my giant gripe (have you noticed yet?) and it got to the extent that I feel they could have been combined into one character to save casting money. They get maybe 5 lines each, if that. I literally can’t tell Scott and Virgil apart (I know they have name tags on their uniforms, but in most scenes I couldn’t even read that) other than knowing 1 of them is taller. Which that one is, is a mystery.

The only one with a slightly distinctive appearance and air is Gordon, which is another can of worms because he seems to be the designated Doubtful Jerk Brother and that drives me mad!! In TOS he wasn’t as main a character as Scott, Virgil or Alan, but he was still a defined person with his own abilities. And his personality was as a slightly mouthy but the most lighthearted character! Why didn’t they carry that over?!

And yeah, Scott and Virgil are pretty much the Main Two of the brothers in TOS, so their roles being reduced to 1 token act during the oil rig rescue each [Gordon didn’t even get that!] is all the more mind boggling.

Hood’s Minions - Can’t be assed to write their names out, I refer to them as Heavy Dude and Science Woman. Heavy Dude is the Heavy, and his character consists of Dumb and somewhat Sadistic Muscle. Science Woman is first objectified (we see her ass first. Yes, really.) but then it’s ‘revealed’ that as she has Austin Powers level teeth, she’s uuuuuglyyyyy and her otherwise genuine attraction towards Brains is played for laughs with this angle. And that’s still female on male sexual harassment, which doesn’t fly with me. Eeeesh. Bad writing! She does Science Things for Hood.

The Rest - Kyrano and his wife are in this. Wife is Original but basically Grandma’s role, though she doesn’t even get a single word to say. Rip. Also the Hood has a few more generic mooks from somewhere, but seemingly only for part of the movie. Kyrano didn’t do much in the show except get bullied by the Hood and little has changed.

Tone Trouble

I feel like the movie has a bit of an issue with balancing a consistent Tone. Again, let’s look back at TOS. It was a Family Show, designed to not just appeal to little kids, but to also keep their parent and other adult amused. Maybe some of it was also the result of the times, but striking to me is that they allowed the characters to get pretty hurt, complete with red paint being applied to look like realistic blood. Some of the criminals, including the Hood himself, would be very vicious, how he treats Brains in Desperate Intruder comes to mind. There was even firefights resulting in death, like the memorable climax of Operation Crash-Dive, where Gordon has to shoot a saboteur in the back, into the open sea below the compromised plane. He then proceeds to hold the cut wires together with his bare hands. Don’t try this at home, kids!

So while I can understand some of that being removed from the Movie (and TAG), there’s still the irritating going down to a perceived kid’s level for the majority of the film, which is probably also a large reason for the massive structural change. But then, there’s shockingly dark implications here and there, and the haunting sight of the crew trapped on TB5 floating lifelessly in the dark, asphyxiating. But then, again, we have goofy choreographed fight scenes with juvenile stock cartoon sounds. And then, we have Hood force choking Alan?! It has been mostly consistent until Act 3, then the tone goes up and down more than the flying machines.

Revamped Rockets

I’m mostly talking about the main craft here, though I know the Pod vehicles got modified too, I’m not sufficiently a TOS Pod Buff to go over them.

TB1 - Looks real nice! Maintains and even enhances the sleekness, and the idea of a glass cockpit is much better than having 1 tiny window and a dinky TV screen to see by. Oddly dark inside the cockpit considering how much glass there is, though. Probably my fav of the Movie Fleet.

TB2 - Oof. Looks bad, man. Like, really ugly. What have they done to the glorious design that was the Original Big Green? The unofficial mascot from her importance and unorthodox style? They turned her into a stubby, too glossy, chunky bar of green soap. The thick ass legs are a good idea but it sure ain’t enough. Also, she carries 3 smaller pods insteada 1 big one.

TB3 - Like TB1, pretty much the same design but streamlined a little. Docks with 5 sidewise instead of like pen going into its lid.

TB4 - I’m mixed. I like the idea of giving her a glass canopy and extendable arms, but the movie’s version is so boxy she looks more like a small yellow Greenhouse with the rear half of the old Four, haha. The arms also look a little stiff, can they bend? Now, if there was a sleek, glass hulled, variable armed, demolition charges-loaded Four, that would be my favourite possible version ;3 Four is my fav craft in TOS and TAG, for what it’s worth.

TB5 - I say it’s quite a visual improvement over TOS and the odds and ends jumbled look that had, though I do appreciate a bit of Chunkiness. This one really needs to have better defence too, TOS 5 may’ve been able to tank that missile lmao

FAB1 - I know that she would have been a Rolls Royce in the film, but BMW said no, so that’s not a point against the movie. And failing the classic image, it’s cute that it’s a Ford Thunderbird, though I’d have preferred one with those 50′s/60′s stylish fins personally lol. Her ability to fly is new here unless you count the Dream Sequence in Are Go (’66) and the water mode was also seen in that before this, and she gets the job done, though we don’t get to see as many gadgets and gizmos in the course of the film.

Unlikely Uniforms

I really don’t understand these. Why are they off white with minimal accent colours? What was wrong with the blueness of their suits and the broad stripe of a secondary colour? I sure ain’t saying the 60’s costumes were practical or even that fashionable, but they were very distinctive and striking!

Not only that, but for some strange unexplained reason, their uniforms all correspond not to their own speciality, but to which craft they’re currently piloting. Even if they’re all in the same Bird...! So like, four out of five are wearing identical looking red accented suits while locked in TB5. I already find the elder brothers to be the Similar Squad, and their microscopic name tags don’t help!

Why don’t they wear their own coloured uniforms all the time? Then ya don’t need the name tag at all! And the silly implication from the way there’s apparently a whole set of Craft Specific uniforms is that there’s piles of clothes that ain’t getting used in all of them, like the tiny TB4 probably having 6 whole sets on board at the end of the film.

Between that, no blue and the outfits looking like Generic Sports Wear, the only nice thing to say is the THUNDERBIRDS down the sleeve is a cool touch. Which should really say International Rescue or IR...

Mingled Misc.

Yeah, The conflation of Thunderbirds and International Rescue is a tad irritating but it’s actually something I can overlook. It’s not a dealbreaker and it makes sense the Dumbass Public would misunderstand and call them the wrong thing.

Jeff refuses Alan early access into IR and cites “No shortcuts”. Then at the end he echoes this when he is making Alan an official member, saying he did it with no shortcuts. The whole faffing scenario was a giant shortcut!!! Fuck training and being a suitable age, am I right?!

Amazingly I didn’t cover this already, but when Alan shortcuts his way onto the team he’s made pilot of ... TB4. That’s why he’s in yellow accents in the pic. Gordon is seemingly the main pilot of TB3 instead, but the movie doesn’t deign to make that clear. While I appreciate that the 14 year old with no Astronaut training isn’t put in charge of 3 instantly, I resent the careless removal of characterisation. Obviously movie Gordon never served with WASP or won the gold medal in swimming or had a massive hydrofoil crash to nearly kill him but ggggghgggaaahhhhhhhhh

Also what’s with the implication that Four is the Babby’s First Machine? She’s a highly specialised craft that would require different training to flying or Space shit! How dare you?! The most charitable link is that Alan stood around in 4 as Tin-Tin did most of the work herself, but I guess it coulda as some level of experience.

Ford Sponsorship - Gets a bit much! It’s one thing for all the cars to be Ford, but them seemingly owning the News is like an unpleasant look into a world where corporations run everything.... hahahaahaaaaaa........

Marvellous Music

Something the movie really excells at is the tunes! The remix of the Thunderbirds March is good in it’s own right and very welcome, and the new music is all solid. Special mention to Busted’s outro song for slapping so hard even people who hate the movie leave warm youtube comments about the song. I have a habit of listening to it set to TAG footage myself, haha

Sincere Summation

Look, I’ve come off negative in this, but I honestly have a lot of respect for a lot of the parts of this picture. Hood, Penelope, Parker and Jeff are fantastic, the physical models and sets have a lot of care and loving detail poured in, the music is all bangers and other little nods and homages to the show shine brightly. The director got a lot of good work in and I hold him no ill will.

I think the problem is in the Writing and probably Studio Mandates, I’m not 100% sure, but things often get snaggy when the studio you’re working under gets bought out by a bigger company partway through. Again, I’ll refer to the info I’ve seen instead of trying to relay it in my own words.

And they made a real bad call snubbing Gerry as a Creative Consultant. Some of his venom towards the film may be from that, as well as his alleged preference to Team America: World Police as a theatrical homage. And I’ve seen that before and wouldn’t really say that’s true to the spirit of Thunderbirds, but yeah...

I’d be interested in any future Thunderbirds Movies, if that’s ever on the cards again. I’d probably be even more up for continuation of the TAG series, or newer new Captain Scarlet with International Rescue involved. Either way, I want new footage of the Birds taking off again, be it puppet, people, CGI, or something new~

Extra Reading

https://securityhazard.net/2017/05/19/thunderbirds-2004/ Full movie review, warm reception. Contains photos of set pieces and costumes.

http://groovyfokker.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbirds-arent-go-unfilmed-versions.html Insight into some of the past issues developing a Movie, but gets some basic information wrong (Since when is Gordon the youngest and TB3 orange??)

Thanks if ya’ve been reading the whole thing! <3

[tonyglowheart]

@imaginaryelle replied to your post:*me sipping tea* (x)

I would really enjoy seeing more of your thoughts on this, if you ever want to share them.

:’) a lot of my thoughts are salty rants and I’m TGCF on main right now so uhhh not at the moment but if you wanna hmu on like a chat thing of some sort I probably will eventually rant about my dislike of The MXTX Antis and the Problematic Culture people and the purity culture wank :’)

actually you know what, since I’m a parody of myself and I’m like always mood of "and another thing,” I’m just going to. go for it ig

so my biggest thing, is with the MXTX antis/MDZS wank/MXTX wank. is like....god it FRUSTRATES me so fckn much lmfao in so many ways and on so many levels.  like listen. I’m not saying there isn’t stuff to critique in MDZS. But there’s people who are first off: critiquing the writing quality, when I’m like “there’s like a 90% chance you’re reading the EN translation, and probably from ExR, and honestly I know it’s not fandom etiquette to critique fan content bc we’re all doing this for free out of passion, BUT I do, in fact, have some major issues with ExR’s translation quality, and also I lowkey feel like they have a strong traditional yaoi bias and sometimes it leaks through in how they handle certain things.” Big mood of this twitter thread about how when you’re reading in TL you can’t be criticizing the writing bc you’re already reading it filtered and like. you gotta consider things like the TL’s own personal biases or takes, etc. Which I feel like some people don’t in their critique, or at least they don’t take the time to acknowledge it and instead start spinning off into more and more impassioned reactions to perceived slights or faults.

The other thing is like. I admit when I first read MDZS - which I did while simultaneously watching bc I was kind of using CQL as a vehicle to get into MDZS, I had the HARDEST time trying to read ExR’s translation when I was going into it cold many many many moods ago rip - I was also squicked out by the explicit scenes shown. It did remind me a lot of traditional yaoi tropes, and I wasn’t into it. HOWEVER I was also a psych major, and I want to point out that the T/N’s do read to me as having a strong yaoi bias, and also before ExR redid their site they had large “SERVING YAOI AND BL” banners on EVERY page lol. And I think that also primes people to see things a certain way. (I just. am :/ about ExR also bc like... their whole vibe as a “yaoi scanlator” and also I. can’t be sure the TL wasn’t 17 when they were tl’ing it lmfao,,  and they did the whole rant - which fine they apologized for, but I think sort of reflects on a general attitude still w/ the team - about how some other TL had bad quality or something, but their existing TL has a lot of clunky English phrasing and actually a lot of editing issues, too, I was creating myself a back-up copy from their site and like google docs was already catching a bunch of typos and tense issues and such :’) and that’s beyond clunky EN translation phrasing. I just am like. they have a patreon lol, so I can’t say ExR is doing it wholly not-for-profit/dollars, and also like... it’s not like they’re licensed? I get that within scanlation circles, there’s an etiquette of “first come first serve,” but with translation, I think fans are only served with more translations? but I also care about the original work lol, I mean I get the vanity of “I want MINE to be the AUTHORITATIVE tl” bc I feel that mood too, but also I’m like. fam you didn’t bid for a license lmao.)

But yeah like. My petty gripes with ExR aside lmfao, I think when you look at WangXian, the whole “it’s yaoi tropes” gets really strawman. Like from a Watsonian perspective, I mean like... both WWX and LWJ really ARE useless virgins, lol, WWX’s first kiss was stolen by LWJ and his whole idea of sex comes from porn; LWJ is GusuLan and like. yeah. Who is teaching them about lube? certainly not porn. (but this also gets into the whole. like people saying explicit material is “problematic” because it doesn’t show “realistic” sex and I’m like. fam it’s smut, not a sex manual.) And like... they’re both kinky and WWX has a pregnancy kink, and like... good for them I guess?

From a more Doylist perspective..... I think for me, I’m like. well why not? gay media doesn’t have to be uwu to be “Valid,” and like, the people who start attacking mxtx personally because of the way she chose to write WangXian, or saying she’s homophobic because of WangXian or she doesn’t have the range... I already Know they didn’t read TGCF or SV lol. (and yeah SV is more “problematic” but I also think it’s VERY genre aware and both satirizes and also plays with and subverts some of the typical genre “problematic” things. not everything, but like. again the whole idea that non-mainstream media needs to be held to a higher standard to not be cancelled? I don’t hold by that). [But more on the Doylist thing: it’s dumb to me that people react like it’s a moral failing of non-straight works if they don’t fit EXACTLY their personal idea of what a thing should be. And this comes up EVERY time there’s some new thing. hell it’s not even just lgbt-related stuff; Hamilton, Crazy Rich Asians, etc all had nitpicking. Which again, isn’t invalid! but also like. :/ because we DON’T have enough representation right now to pick, and my take is always: the solution is to get to the point where we can pick and choose and can afford to have bad media just like the straights/whites do :’)]

The thing about WWX and LWJ is neither of them, as they’re written in canon, fit within “traditional yaoi” seme/uke stereotypes. The kiss I see people rail against as “dubcon” and also their sex scenes but I’m like. yeah I think it’s fine to say it’s not your cup of tea but to say that that makes them traditional yaoi rapey tropes I’m like. Fam that’s not it lol. LWJ is shown as being SO incredibly responsive and attentive to WWX’s wishes and desires. I mean that’s examples of his passion exploding out, but we consistently see LWJ being respectful of WWX’s wishes and autonomy even when it like. fucks him/them over :’) like when WWX was so hell-bent on hurtling down the mo’dao route :’)

plus also WWX literally fantasizes about them retiring as farmers and he’s the one out working the fields and LWJ is staying at home weaving lol, like c’mon, ya wanna talk gender roles, let’s talk about this.

the other thing is the whole mxtx anti stuff about “she’s homophobic” and “she’s a filthy fujo” and I think there’s issues that people aren’t considering, which I don’t know as much about but I feel like it informs my consideration of mxtx - such as like... not everyone’s internet is as wide open as, like, the West. I don’t know so much about Chinese censorship other than it exists, but I’m like. I think this would affect people’s access to resources which would inform them about how things work/where people are with LGBT thought? It reminds me of when young tumblr kids trash talk older queer people for using terms they see as “problematic” now, and I’m like “you really gotta pause a moment of (1) have some empathy (2) consider the person’s individual personal and cultural context.” MDZS wasn’t made for a Western audience in mind lol, it’s not going to reflect Western values! And China has a different history with its LGBT progression and it’s m/m media, which I don’t know enough about to comment specifically, but I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to judge it based on Western standards. A lot of people probably don’t realize they are! in that it doesn’t even occur to them, which is why they feel so free with their judgment! But also I’m like. lowkey THAT’s a problem for me bc of like. cultural imperialism lmfao. and also reflective of EN-language imperialism, when people are judging EN tl’s they’re seeing on face value without realizing or considering that they’re...reading... a translation... and that translations are NOT in fact direct one-for-one and that there’s a LOT of considerations that go into both translating and reading a translation of a work.

I think the points antis pull up against MXTX is like... stuff she’s said before in interviews - and I don’t know from when, but I imagine years ago at this point - where she was asked about shipping the other characters in MDZS, and she said something I think about how to her, she wants to write in a way that “preserves realism” or maybe she believes in (I only read a TL of it, so I hold the exact phrasing with a grain of salt), and for her, not everyone is gay so she doesn’t write all of her named characters gay. and I’m like. whatever that’s her prerogative as the author. And I think there’s also something that I don’t know if it’s an official “rules”/”guidelines” she wrote bc again I’ve only seen secondhand/thirdhand sources, but it’s something mxtx-antis also quote, where she said to not break up the main couples and also don’t “reverse” them. but again when we’re getting into the shou/gong dynamics, that’s where I don’t feel comfortable commenting because I don’t know enough about the sociopolitical implications of these terms and how they interact within that fandom/community subset. But I do think people need to be taking the stuff they read - ESPECIALLY if they’re only reading it in EN - with a grain of salt. or like a big ol pinch of it. 

edit: I know more about this now lmao and I know exactly which question people use piecemeal of vilify her. Here’s a recent-ish translation someone did. Read it through - the WHOLE thing, and think about the wider context.

But also in general I just don’t think anyone is valid when we start getting into ad hominems lol. Especially when I feel like they’re not really taking a moment to consider what wider contexts and influences might be at play and instead are playing Tumblr telephone with outrage and virtue signalling

sidebar: I also fucking HATE CQL purists lmfao. I don’t feel like I’ve seen or encountered anyone saying CQL fans are less valid than novel fans except in the sense of CQL fans getting defensive about their dislike of the novel - which, whatever, people have opinions - or decision not to read the novel and saying anyone saying they HAVE to read the novel is gatekeeping - which I hold to less but mostly bc I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of fan language, some of us say you HAVE to read it not in a neckbeard way but in a I’m so desperately passionate and I want more people to know about this way, kind of like how the “I hate you” in fan language GENERALLY means “I love it so much and I can’t stand it”? - but I HAVE seen people say the novel “ruined” wangxian, or CQL people who seem to be like... purity-wanking, like idk if you were around but god after Infinity War and the number. of fckn ironstranges. posting in the tags. about “love how healthy our ship is” and I’m like. this is still anti culture/purity wank but the other side of the coin 8). I encounter sometimes this lowkey attitude of CQL (or other adaptations) “redeeming” MDZS from the author, and I’m like. y’all are wack lmfao. There’s people wiht MDZS or even TGCF main, and they hate mxtx? and they say shit like “mdzs was only good on accident”? and I’m like. can you just leave lmfao. if you hate her then why are you here. (bc they’ve mental gymnastics this into a virtue ethics thing about “o the work is good and therefore morally fine but the parts I don’t like are because mxtx is morally bad and unworthy and tainted it, and CQL with its Purity has Redeemed it” but I’m like. this is because of censorship lmao. The team did a FANTASTIC job working the character dynamics and story, but like it also is directly because of censorship.)  

like I... have more thoughts than this lmfao bc ofc I do, but anyway, here’s... some of them lol