#cgi stuff

[delistylehardcore]

expression test for 'rachnidoodle, my crash bandicoot oc. she's a poodle + ogre-faced spider hybrid mutant

[doodlingwren]

Saint Seiya - Knights of the Zodiac ✨shitpost✨ based on this specific twitter thing

[pennamesmith]

Team Tech:

Team Magic:

Neutral Referee:

[lutheban]

i think the modern insistence on trying so desperately to ground our fiction in reality might have severely undercut our ability to enjoy stories actually

[intuitive-revelations]

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been thinking a lot about the exact chronology of ancient Gallifrey, and specifically I've put a lot of attention on the Caldera and the Citadel, plus related things like the Eye of Harmony, the Crevasse of Memories That Will Be, the Untempered Schism etc.

All these things seem to be located in the same place on Gallifrey, albeit some at different times, and often overlap in nature. After some thinking, I think I've worked how everything goes together, as well as the order of events. At some point I want to create a fully history, but for the sake of this we'll focus primarily on the subjects above, with some other major events sprinkled in for context.

A Very Brief History of the Capitol

[ID: Surviving parts of the old Capitol, in an illustration from Lungbarrow. Crystal-like towers and walkways stand over a waterfall. The TARDIS, in pyramid form, dematerialises.]

Pythian Era - The capital city is built near the Mountains of Solace and Solitude (likely, in antiquity, a stronghold against the Gin-Seng cats to the south). Beneath the Pythia's temple, in the centre of the city, is the Cavern of Prophecy. Within the cave is a deep, deep opening known as the Crevasse of Memories That Will Be, which holds, in the astral plane, something known as the Gate of the Future, a tear into the time vortex far greater than the similar natural rifts that occur elsewhere on Gallifrey. Time flows out from it, from the future, to the past Gallifrey. In times of meditation, the Pythia sits in a hanging cage above the Crevasse, breathing in the rising vapours, which aid her in her clairvoyance.

[ID: Gif edit made by me, featuring the last Pythia sat in a small cage slowly swinging in a chasm as a mist slowly rises around her.]

The Intuitive Revelation - The Neotechnologists, led by Rassilon, bring a revolution. The Pythia curses Gallifrey with sterility and cuts the ropes holding her cage, falling into the abyss. The Gate of the Future inverts, forming the Gate of the Past. Visibly, the Doppler-effect like colouring of the vortex changes - no longer red, flowing towards the viewer, but blue and flowing away (ironically directionally the reverse of the real Doppler effect). Time from the new future flowing into the chaotic past.

The new government take control of the Capitol. A new age of space exploration arises, with the Shobogans taking on the name, for now, of "Space Lords". One of these first individual explorers, semi-authorised predecessors to future Time Lord renegades, is a woman named Tecteun.

The First Attempt - The stellar engineers, including Rassilon and Omega, make their first attempt at capturing the energy of a collapsing star, recieving the energy on Gallifrey using an obelisk, like that later used to channel energy from the Eye of Harmony, in the middle of the city, using the nature of the Crevasse.

The experiment is a catastrophic failure. A hole is punctured into the Spiral Yssgaroth, unleashing Vampires through openings throughout the universe, fracturing out from the experiment.

[ID: From The Book of the War, an illustration of the "Eyes of the Yssgaroth", human-like eyeballs looking through holes punctured into spacetime.]

Part of the Old Capitol is destroyed in a great blast, destroying the Cavern of Prophecy and opening up the Crevasse, leaving a giant crater: the Caldera. It is likely that many are killed. Left behind in the middle of the crater, is the Gate of the Past, now manifest in the physical world: an open gap in reality. In this form, it becomes known as the Untempered Schism.

(I also suspect this is when Rassilon is forced to regenerate for the first time, to the shock of on-lookers, having secretly previously recieved Tecteun's genetic modifications - I plan to expand on this theory in a future post.)

The Vampire War / Rebuilding of the Capitol - The exact circumstances of the experiment are covered up. Rassilon, leaving to fight the Vampire hoard, swears Omega to secrecy regarding the project during the Arcalian High Council's investigation.

[ID: A gif, rotating around the Citadel is constructed over the Caldera, from part of the (likely partially-symbolic) time-lapse in The Timeless Children.]

Though some of the city survives, including parts of the Pythian temple, a new colossal city-complex begins construction in the place of the old one, suspended over the Caldera, the centrepiece of the new Capitol: the Citadel. It is built as a defensive structure, both for the war, and to protect the new, growing elite, surrounded by a great circular wall named "Rassilon's Rampart". The "core" of the structure, on which the towers rest, reaches down deep into Caldera and the deeper Crevasse.

Meanwhile the Untempered Schism is taken out of the city by those fearing further destruction, to a place in the nearby hills that will one day be known as the Weeping Field, where prospective Time Academy students are initiated.

[ID: The Untempered Schism in the Doctor's time, as seen in The Sound of Drums. It sits in a stone frame on red grass, with the Seal of Rassilon in front of it, and flames on either side. Within it, the blue "past" variant of the RTD1-era time vortex flows away from the viewer. The Citadel's lights are visible in the background.]

(Side note: it's possible the Untempered Schism's 'ring' is deliberately designed to evoke the Caldera. Note how it's lined with pieces sticking out. Look a bit like the battlements on Rassilon's Rampart, don't they? Surrounding the hole into the vortex just as they surround the crater.)

The Anchoring of the Thread - Several centuries later, once the Vampires are more or less defeated, Rassilon returns home. He coups Pandak I, forcing him to resign, and takes the Presidency.

By now the Citadel is more or less completed, though for the next few centuries it still lacks its characteristic dome, likely added during a later founding conflict.

[ID: Gallifrey, around the time the first TARDISes are grown, from The Lost Dimension. In the background past a small outsider village is the Citadel, new and gleaming, but undomed.]

The Triumvirate retry their experiment at Qqaba / Polyphilos, attempting to capture the collapsed star. When the experiment goes wrong once more, Omega's ship falls inside, as spacetime threatens to crack open again. With temporal energy flowing though him (a la the Bad Wolf), Rassilon reshapes the laws of physics, forming an event horizon, and black holes as we know them.

The black hole is dimensionally captured and suspended in the moment it collapses and the event horizon is formed, creating the Eye of Harmony, controlled using the Obelisk of Rassilon storied in the Panopticon Vaults. Meanwhile, the black hole itself is suspended within the temporal singularity of the Caldera, deep below the Citadel.

Harnessing the power of the Eye and the Caldera rift, Rassilon "anchors" chronology around Gallifrey, creating the Web of Time and placing it under the control of the Gallifreyans, now Time Lords.

Future Developments - Over the years, many changes come to Rassilon's Gallifrey.

Over the years, the more and more of the old city is replaced with new towers, forming the new Capitol around a now domed Citadel. Interweaved with these buildings over 28 square miles is much of the new Time Academy, such that the Academy is sometimes considered a whole city itself annexed to the Citadel.

While the remnants of the Pythian Temple are eventually torched by Rassilon, hunting down dissenters, many old buildings remain intact. These continue to be inhabited far into the future, in a community known as "Low Town" or the "Lower Len", as opposed to the "upper" city above. Shanties surround the surviving buildings, some climbing up Rassilon's Rampart.

Another such community is based around the "Old Harbour", whcih once sat on the coast of the now recessed Sea of Time. Nowadays, it likely sits on the shore of the small (possibly designed) lakes near the Capitol, where streams from the mountains presumably once drained directly into the sea.

[ID: From Hell Bent: a screencap as Rassilon turns from looking out the window from an Inner Council chamber high above the Capitol. In the background can be seen some lakes between the mountains, with some signs of what might be buildings on their shores.]

(Side note: I reckon this shot above might actually give us a glimpse of Old Harbour. I might just be imagining things, but there's some small features around and on the lakes I reckon could be docks or buildings? Interestingly, this also comes as Rassilon asks about the Cloister Bells ringing, and Old Habour is well known for the bells in its clocktower, which might explain why Rassilon was looking out at it from the window.)

In the space around the Eye in the Caldera, the Cloisters, the core of the APC net and later the Matrix, are constructed. The structure itself is, externally at least, relatively small, but it generates an entire 'micro-universe' on the Astral plane once accessed by the Pythia. Indeed, just as the Crevasse once allowed the meditating Pythia to see the future, so does the Matrix create its own prophecies.

[ID: From Hell Bent, the Doctor and Ohila converse in the entranceway to the Cloisters, a dark space with glowing optic fibres running across cobwebbed columns.]

In the Matrix is a "womb-like" null-space is where most TARDISes are grown, taking advantages of the Caldera's spatio-temporal properties. Budding within the Citadel Cloisters, a TARDIS's "Cloister Room" is one of the first parts to grow.

By the time of the Time War, though possibly earlier, the sealed Caldera also forms the resting site for many dying Battle TARDISes, the Under Croft, where they presumably decay and fertilise the growth of new time ships.

[wangquan-fugui]

Trailer vs BTS

[miesozernacma]

just rewatched the first venom.

loved the part where venom made out with eddie sloppy style

[pespillo]

can you watch my cats while i go to the store thanks

[worstloki]

mcu fans talking about how groundbreaking and heartfelt a scene is and then putting a screenshot of two people having the stiffest most uncomfortable looking interaction imaginable

[femboypussy420]

I know it never would have happened but I would have LOVED TUA s4 to have no apocalypse plot. no powers at all. no death or disaster or world ending. if they'd used these last 6 episodes to explore all the unanswered questions, give the characters meaningful interactions with each other and start to heal from their trauma, and just get a chance to be Normal People, I would have been so happy

[akai-anna]

Round 7

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[delistylehardcore]

so it's extra underwhelming when now, after answering those nice asks about impact and inspiration, all i came on here to post was this

[renshengs]

Hi!! I see you post occasionally about cdramas. I went to China this summer and I learned a little Mandarin (like enough to say, “I don’t speak good Mandarin.”) Would I be able to muddle through cdramas with captions? (Also any suggestions on which ones to watch and where to watch them?). Thanks so much <3

ooh i hope you had lots of fun there! with subtitles i think you could absolutely make it through most cdramas; it depends on how good the subs are, honestly, because alas translating mandarin chinese to english (or any latin-based language, for that matter) is i think one of the most difficult language translations possible because the chinese language is just so rife with chengyu (idioms).

as for recs, i do have a handful i watched recently enough that i feel more confident in trusting my own taste LOL. i almost exclusively watch historical dramas, so these are definitely going to be very skewed to my personal preferences.

also, this will be long because i love my cdramas. bear with me!

word of honor/山河令 (2021)

episodes: 36

genre: wuxia (chinese martial arts fantasy; think of crouching tiger hidden dragon), dangai (cdrama adapted from a chinese gay romance novel), adventure, political intrigue

arguably the most explicitly gay cdrama that's come out in the last decade despite censorship issues in chinese tv broadcasting

a lonely ex-assassin retires and begins a slow 1-year suicide by poison, but his death plan is interrupted by a flirtatious (& dangerous) man with a mysterious background + a newly orphaned kid he accidentally becomes responsible for. cue politics and drama!

if you don't mind dealing with low-budget CGI—though the show is so immersive it hardly makes a difference—the story features: fascinating & subversive themes about life & morality, a well-written cast of bloodthirsty women, an incredibly charming found family, and an absolutely fantastic, dramatic, devoted slow burn between the two male leads

if you prefer more mature romance—lots of flirting & sexual tension between two highly intelligent & capable men who are 1) attracted to each other from the get-go 2) constantly trying to outmaneuver each other & figure each other out... this is the one!

if it means anything, i am recommending this one first because it's my all-time favorite cdrama! especially if you are queer like me :)

you can watch it subtitled on netflix or fully free & subtitled in HD on the official youku youtube channel

the double/墨雨云间 (2024)

episodes: 40

genre: historical, romance, political intrigue

if you too are tired of stories about shallow, badly-written girlbosses with no dimension... this is the show for you!

protagonist is a happy woman who gets framed for adultery & buried alive by her husband—she survives and returns to enact revenge upon those who hurt her & her loved ones by assuming the identity of the young woman who died saving her. she makes many enemies and allies along the way + catches the attention of the emperor's notoriously cold & keen-eyed right hand man, duke su, who eventually becomes her very supportive love interest <3

high stakes & a plot that makes you hold your breath, GORGEOUS cinematography

a long list of complex and important female characters, most of them nasty and corrupt, all of them sympathetic and interesting. the show is good at making you assume at first that their characters won't be done justice, but just wait :)

from your resident het romance skeptic: excellent dynamic! protagonist and her duke are both confident, calculating schemers always trying to outsmart each other, but eventually join hands against common enemies. extremely slow burn with lots of tension and a refreshing lack of miscommunication

you can watch with subtitles on netflix, youku, and definitely some p/racy sites for east asian dramas

mysterious lotus casebook/莲花楼 (2023)

episodes: 40

genre: wuxia, adventure, mystery

a heroic & famous swordsman suffers a defeat at the hands of his nemesis and vanishes and is widely presumed dead. timeskip a decade, he's been living in disguise as a doctor to escape the burden of his identity when the past he's been hiding from starts to catch up to him when he scams a talented & stubborn young swordsman whose past is connected to his

if you like sly 30 yr old protagonists, identity shenanigans, & mystery-solving with gay polycule undertones, this is the one for you!

as for potential shipping: if you like age gap stuff and/or devoted puppyboys and/or "A has idolized B (adult) since they were a child; now A is grown-up and wants to protect B" trope. OR if you like 30 yr old nemeses who act divorced. the 3 main guys all have chemistry; pick and choose your ship at will!

to save text, last year i made a passionate powerpoint post explaining the whole show, spoiler-free, in more detail!

you can watch it with subtitles on iqiyi for free or on aforementioned [redacted] sites

love between fairy and devil/苍兰诀 (2022)

episodes: 36

genre: romance, xianxia (chinese high fantasy), adventure

high budget CGI? in MY cdrama? it's more likely than you think!

please ignore the horrendous english title. a translation of the original chinese would be "the parting/goodbye of canglan", canglan being the main characters. the story is tragic but ends happily!

on the surface appears like an old-fashioned good girl x bad boy love story, but is far more emotionally interesting & 100% deserving of its sheer popularity

brave & kindhearted low-ranking 1,500 yr old orchid fairy spirit accidentally soulbonds with a 30,000 yr old demon lord war prisoner who just happens to be the nemesis of her realm, except she reaps all the benefits and he just suffers (hilariously)

very star-crossed, VERY funny bodyswapping, & with far more heart and consistency than many people assume. the romance is difficult in ways that make sense! genuinely thought my picky ass would not be charmed by this show and found myself fully crying by episode 8

oh, and gloriously stunning costuming. everyone looks good, all the time, even when they're covered in blood <3

if you're interested, here is the powerpoint post that convinced me!

you can watch with subtitles on netflix, or iqiyi & viki for free!

a journey to love/一念关山 (2023)

episodes: 40

genre: historical, romance, adventure, political intrigue

also female-centric! an infamous and deeply complex assassin protagonist hellbent on revenge against the people who framed her finds herself making a deal to train a timid princess into becoming a political force of nature, ft. her supportive and equally capable male love interest, his group of incredibly lovable and memorable best bros, a gorgeous cutthroat young marquis with an oedipus complex & a complicated backstory (who absolutely steals the show whenever he shows up), & a headstrong tomboy princess with a sweet and loyal heart

a fast-paced plot that never drags + excellent soundtrack + incredible action scenes + a genuinely convincing crossdressing plot where the female character actually passes as a man

unreasonably funny considering the political drama. i truly cannot understate how Fun this was to watch, especially if you like deadly domineering women who are badly socialized and hilarious, and female characters establishing positive and meaningful bonds with each other.

if you've never watched a cdrama, i will warn that most of them Do Not Pull Their Punches when it comes to making viewers cry. this one has shakespearian tragedy levels of death, including of major characters

you can watch with subtitles on iqiyi, and i'm sure some [redacted] sites also

hoping this list can be of help to you, anon! i cannot state how happy it makes me to see anyone express an interest in watching cdramas. i grew up on them, their long dramatic storylines and star-crossed romances, and they shaped my taste in fiction in more ways than i can say. if at any point you get around to watching any of these, feel free to yell in my inbox about it, and most importantly have fun and enjoy! <3

[monstersteam]

Existential Dreadward™️ moment

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

okay so, having now seen furiosa: a mad max saga opening night and having Ruminated on my thoughts, I am going to give my two-pence on the movie even though nobody asked or wanted it - you're getting it anyway!

but before going into the full thing, I actually re-watched fury road today, bc I just wanted to contrast it now that we know furiosa's full story that lead her to her trek in fury road, and I just had mad max on the brain (and also I love that movie).

spoilers under the cut below!!

first, I already knew before seeing the prequel, that that scene in fury road where furiosa breaks down after learning about what happened to 'the green place,' was going to now hit 2x as hard once we learn what really happened the moment she was ripped away, and...yeah, it's super painful to watch. it was already a very emotional scene, but now having known how much pain and struggle it costed her, how many times furiosa desperately made her bet to get back home and fell short - you can really feel her grief

funnily enough though, I was shocked to find myself tearing up not during that scene, but when furiosa was reunited with the last of the many mothers. having just watched her ripped away so unfairly as a defenseless child, her whole world destroyed and clinging onto this dream of one day, getting to embrace her family - you can't help it!! I started tearing up when the other woman rushed to furiosa, embracing her with the gentle touch of their foreheads, 'this is our furiosa' 😭 like..she did it!! she made it home!!! - also, I learned in the credits - that woman was actually the same little girl, valkyrie, in furiosa who was her friend!!! that girl saw her friend get snatched and pulled away from their home, and then finally, both grown, they reuinite! I just thought that was sweet

what max says to her about hope in the scene after they find the mothers, 'if you can't fix what's broken..you'll go insane.' - my mind immediately jumped to dementus. we get this glimpse that he once had a wife and child(ren) he loved, that were either taken from him or killed, and he tells furiosa in their stand-off more or less how that destroyed him mentally, further plunging him into this hateful madman who acts so cruelly to others. he couldn't 'fix' it by getting them back ('I want them back!!' 'I can't!!'), the one thing he loved that kept him sane, and so he lost his humanity.

I saw a post of someone saying how ricktus's death (immortan joe's son) is 10x more satisfying after having seen what he (nearly) did to child furiosa...abso-fucking-lutely (though, I think with that in mind, furiosa should've gotten a part in it..)

also, max & and furiosa's dynamic after knowing about her & jack...the parallels! the parallels!! their gradual bond of trust, how fluidly they work together to kill/fight the enemies of the citadel akin to her and jack vs. dementus and gang, etc.

this saga, of course, is about hope and redemption, alluded to in both fury road and the prequel. in fury road, max says (I think in his opening monologue) how he was once strived to be a 'righteous warrior', who could do good and help others. later, when one of the wives finds the warboy nux, he's distraught bc he thinks his chances for greatness are gone, but then she tells him that maybe, he's destined for something greater - and that would be, of course, later sacrificing himself to save her and the rest by crashing the rig into the war party. in furiosa, jack says how his parents were valiant warriors, and how he hopes one day, he could be the same - also, later, fulfilling that by sacrificing himself so that furiosa might escape dementus and the destroyed gastown. it's just such an amazing string of parallels - all three men, looking to do something great, and then, through furiosa, they're given that chance and achieve something good even amongst the destruction!! but it's only bc of furiosa, this harbinger of hope, that they do so - she's the tie between them all, the embodiment of that goodness!!! it's! just! so! good!!!

honestly there's probably way more parallels out there I'm sure ppl will bring up, but those were the things that struck me. now, onto my actual thoughts on the prequel.

--I'll start by saying I was unbelievably excited to see this movie. I'm annoyed though, bc despite knowing about it and wanting to see it once it was released, I literally only learned it was coming out a week before the release date. straight up, the press for it was so poor, not once did I hear about it before the trailer randomly crossed my feed one day - and considering how popular fury road is, I find that bizarre (but, I'll bet you a good couple bucks, that the press/hype was deliberately poor bc of the movie company execs, due to this being a female lead film 😠) - but it did mean I didn't have to wait too long, and that I did watch the trailer about 13 times on my own accord until then..

--having read the reviews, I do agree, it is a bit slower then fury road - but, that's really only bc it's a character story instead. fury road takes places in the current time of the film and the actions that follow, whereas the prequel is specifically about furiosa, so it's honed less to the action and more about a certain character, in my opinion. but it's just as good for a character story! it does an excellent job of unfolding furiosa's journey, and really, if you're gunna compare everything in the franchise to fury road, it's never gunna live up. that said, there's still excellent action and real nail-biting moments.

--I will say though, that I found it almost...darker, then fury road? fury road is definitely intense and there's of course violence, but it never openly tips into anything past pg-13; the darkness that is there, is more or less touched upon by the narrative (like, we can get a sense of what must've happened to the wives (ie assault) and why they escaped once we see how immortan joe regards them as property, the suffering furiosa must've went through by the pure vitriol look she gives him when their cars are side-by-side and later, 'remember me?' before killing him (my favourite scene)). but it's never explicit - furiosa is. from the torture of her mother, to that scene right after the max cameo when he drops furiosa off at the citedel's underground where I literally had to cover my eyes and ask my friend to say when it was done..there's an overtone of darkness that gives to the tragedy of furiosa, this child molded from pain (not to mention, again, that scene of ricktus and her as a child which to me, was the most nerve-wracking moment). fury road gives you a glimpse, but furiosa doesn't hold back.

--chris hemsworth, meanwhile, made an excellent villain. not just as an actor, but dementus as a character was fantastic. he's got lots of great lines and brings in a lot of humor - he's both deranged and erratic, while also clever and simultaneously childish, and mostly, cruel. he's wonderfully dynamic. bringing in a backstory of losing his wife/child was a great added piece to his story (I love a good backstory), and the way he takes the loss of his kid and tried to mold it around furiosa, tries to fill that empty piece inside, was a great choice in terms of their dynamic. it made him more then just a mad-man who stole a child for yuks - he had a deeper desire to tote furiosa around, almost as a security blanket in the same way the teddy bear also acts as one. his final monologue was great - the ramblings of a hateful man, but it was, in the end, what got furiosa to see past vengeance, and become better - to choose hope, and not destruction.

--anya taylor-joy did a great job I thought - while I wish furiosa had more lines, she made up for it in just the facial expressions and how full they were, really giving us a glimpse of what furiosa was feeling. even still, it would've been nice to have known what was going on in her head, or even hear her talk about her past - the green place, and then dementus, are the pure driving force of her character, yet she doesn't ever mention or grapple with her grief around these things, simply stays silent (except for the final confrontation with dementus). I would've loved maybe, if she had confided in jack, or maybe even one of the wives, to give more depth to her feelings.

--I also wish furiosa could've bonded with someone else besides jack, or at least before him. it would've been nice for to have had at least one ally, or, I dunno, a friend? like that war boy who had dwarfism - she seemed almost sad, when realizing after the battle that he was dead. instead, she's alone, but a fellow misfit friend could've been nice.

--speaking of jack, loved him! thought he was great! it's unfortunate his part was so short, would've loved delve into his background (also, I'm as gay as they come, but he's like..an objectively Good Looking Man, so well done all around).

--I was really nervous, for how they were gunna do the romance. I was against it initially, bc the great thing about fury road, was that romance was not at all forced into the narrative - you can read that between max & furiosa if you want, but for one of the very, very few times when a woman and man team up, romance wasn't forcefully wedged in, and instead they could be respected allies. so I was skeptical - and then I totally fell for them. they were so sweet! the two actors had great chemistry - their bond was just so soft. the way, after they crash and are caught by dementus, furiosa, who can barely stand, gently leans herself into jack's shoulder, sweetly muttering to each other as he leans his forehead back against hers, like 😩😩 it was so lovely, and so tragic. you could really feel the respect and care they had for each other; it was so organic, bc jack genuinely wanted to help furiosa. he respected her and asked nothing of her - he was a purely good man, and through that, furiosa was able to open up to him and trust him. it's the great curse of the mad max universe though - no romance can escape it's claws, same with how nux and one of the wives were torn apart. in my heart of hearts though, there lives a little AU fic where dementus doesn't catch them, and they make their way back to the green place and live happily ever after with a kid perhaps, and maybe, furiosa and him go back to later rescue the wives (they say, like they're not thinking of already writing that very fic...).

--one more thing about furiosa I wanted to mention, if I can call back to earlier saying how she becomes a beacon of hope for the various men that enter her life (and the women too, when you think of the wives..) - that, despite all this horror handed to her, at the very end of the rope, she gives into her hero's heart. time over, we see, even as the destruction of the wasteland chips away at her, furiosa can never quite betray her heart. she runs back to her mother even after being pushed to leave, she goes back for jack despite having the perfect escape to finally make it back home, and in the end, takes all her hurt and anger wrapped up in dementus, and turns it and him into something that can bring good into the world. it's about choosing good, above all!! a hero's heart, even in the darkest of worlds!!!

--the trailer really emphases the green place, but we only see it for like...a couple minutes? I was looking forward to more lore about it, maybe seeing some of it's inhabitants like the mothers. but furiosa is taken immediately and then her mother starts her hunt after her, and that's it. kinda a bummer.

--there's a couple inconsistencies here and there - like, when furiosa is first brought to where the wives are kept, there's gotta be about 20 women in there, roughly. but then, as she becomes a young adult, we see at the very end her approach the 5 wives from fury road (I was expecting a call-back, so loved that) and it looks like there's only them there - what happened to the rest of the women??? did they all die in childbirth?? also, when furiosa runs away and hides herself as a warboy/mechanic, how did no one know she was gone?? it seems odd, since immortan joe specifically picked her out and probably has a mental line-up of all his 'treasures', you'd think he'd notice. or how, later on, the new 'imperior' with jack looks oddly similar to that young girl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--also, I wanna know how furiosa got away with being the only female imperior - you'd think immortan joe might snag her away instead to be a wife bc she's young and viable, or that she'd be either dismissed or preyed upon by his sons/the other men. maybe because she was partnered with jack it was easier, but that was kinda confusing.

--final thing, bc this post is already too long - my last gripe is mainly about furiosa's dynamic with immortan joe. in furiosa, her revenge is purely motivated towards dementus, but then, switching to fury road, she now holds contempt and anger towards the warlord. part of what I wanted to see in the film, was her past with immortan joe; we didn't know initially how furiosa got to the citadel, but my interpretation, was always that possibly (because she was branded with the logo on her neck) she was brought on as a wife, inevitably abused by him, and then something happened where she was no longer useful as a wife (maybe an accident that cost her her arm) but was still useful as a tool. but, immortan joe isn't really looked at in the prequel; he's here and there, but doesn't show any particular cruelty or act towards furiosa that I was expecting. that vitriol she shows in fury road, and of course, 'remember me?', makes you think there was something there to fuel furiosa's revenge. instead, nothing really occurs between them - of course, furiosa is brought on to breed him children and then is expected to do his every bidding in getting supplies, so, I think we're supposte to assume that she has seen how cruel he is up close, and so acts against him. still, I was expecting something deeper there.

all in all, I loved it and had a great time. fury road will always be one of my favourites, but this is a great addition. fury road is great on all fronts; a fascinating world, great characters, amazing action, a well-made and clearly cared for story, but the thing I love most - is that it's about hope. it's about choosing, every day, despite the horrors around you, to get up and hope for something better. to do something better, even at your own cost. it's about hope and what we mean to each other when we extend it. and I just love that so much

go see furiosa! support it! it's a great time!

[incandescentflower]

When the bad guy shows up and you're like yes, please stick around.

One of my favorite things about cdramas.