#genuinely one of the best scenes in the entire season thus far if not entire show

[gk-clips]

s4ep5

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Ok y’all it’s time for a grishaverse world-building rant (mainly linked to soc/ck) and there’s a good chance this is gonna turn into a long and rambling post but bare with me.

*CONSISTENT GRISHAVERSE SPOILERS AHEAD*

In the Netflix show, why did they replace Alby’s lion toy with a toy train? I wanna talk about the absence of the lion, but also of all things why did they choose a train?

The train really stuck out to me when watching season 2 and at first I wasn’t my sure why, and just struck it up to the fact that I was expecting a plush lion. I think it’s absolutely notable that they exchanged the lion for a different toy, because the TV show didn’t give us as much opportunity for the foreshadowing surrounding Alby Rollins’ existence as we had in the book, since Van Eck is the key to a lot of the passages that foreshadow Rollins having a child. The fact that Kaz was able to present the lion was what served as “proof” for his attack on Alby, and is one of the best scenes showcasing Kaz’s incredible intellect. Since Kaz had never seen Alby, in fact had no concrete evidence of his existence whatsoever, he based the entire presence of the toy lion on Pekka’s pride in his gang, the Dime Lions. But since the show doesn’t have the opportunity to explain the gang culture of Ketterdam in as much detail as the books, which is obviously understandable and it’s the kind of thing I would expect to be lost in the transition from source to adaptation, they can’t make the assumption that the audience will associate the lion with the Dime Lions, particularly since they haven’t explored the gang tattoos (as a side note the meanings behind the tattoos are just *chefs kiss* but anyway-) So unless they were making specific effort to try and include more references to the lions earlier on, it makes sense to change the toy. It also leaves open the option for later in the show (fingers crossed, I’m praying for good news right now) to bring the lion in for different schemes and to create more anticipation and build up for the absolutely iconic Inej move of replacing the lion with a crow in the last chapter of Crooked Kingdom. So I understand the choice to change the type of toy that Kaz takes from Alby, especially since we already know that it’s Alby being used as the threat in this scene and in the books we didn’t, but of all the options why would they choose a toy train? My best guess is that it’s a nod to the Conductor and the train across the fold in season one, but it kind of annoys me because, other than the train that was added for the show and the tank in ck that is explained as amongst the first of its kind, THERE ARE NO MECHANICAL VEHICLES IN THIS UNIVERSE YET. None!!

We have to remember that the development of a constructed world is based on its needs and it’s understanding of it’s resources, not on mimicking the development of our own world; so although some people are probably thinking ‘well they recently developed flying vehicles, it makes sense for trains to exist before that’ I would genuinely argue that in this world it makes no sense whatsoever. We know from explanations in soc and ck (in Retvenko’s chapter mostly, but also in Joost’s and a few other references) that there has been no need to develop engines for boats because the winds can be calmed or summoned by Squallers; they fill the sails or fend off storms to keep the ships moving, there is no need for development thus far because grisha possess the natural resources to maintain the power they need. But in Ravka the presence of the shadow fold meant it became necessary to develop other options, so progress came about and Nikolai developed the Hummingbird. But it’s very important to note that (to my understanding at least, if you happen to know I’m wrong please feel free to correct me) the Hummingbird is still entirely dependent on Squaller power to maintain its flight, because development is always based on the previous model. Similarly, the tanks being the first motorised vehicles we’re introduced to makes perfect sense in the world we’ve come to know and understand, especially since we’re learning from the perspective of mostly Kerch-born or Kerch-living characters. Jesper tells us that there are very few carriages on the streets of Ketterdam, that horses are a luxury because the space to keep them is a luxury, not because they open up further modes of transportation - this is also emphasised by the knowledge that one of the greatest signs of prosperity in Ketterdam is a house with its own dock. This is because canals are the main way of moving, and since the boats and their squallers are a time-proven method of travel there’s no current need to develop engine mechanisms for boats, and cars aren’t needed because no-one would use them to travel. I’d also like to add that I realise not everyone has access to Squaller power, but the rich of Ketterdam do and they live in an incredibly classist society. In the Barrel, most of the boats are moved by rowing and/or punting, as is made clear at the end of soc when the crew row to meet Van Eck and he is brought by Squallers, and the theme is continued throughout ck.

The most likely place for cars to crop up first, based on what we’ve seen of the different countries, is probably Ravka; the country is a hub of innovation and the fabrikators there are the most free to practice their craft. However, Ravka is also a country that has been at war since it was founded, there is no room for any type of development that does not further their chances of survival against Fjerda, Shu Han, or their own civil war. Other places we might have expected to see motorisation pop up faster could be the farming provinces of Kerch and Novyi Zem, since they could be utilised for tractors and ploughs. But most innovation in Kerch is centralised around Ketterdam, where the engines are currently unecessary, and although I don’t know enough about Novyi Zem to argue either way the auction in Crooked Kingdom may imply that their government’s budget is lower those of Kerch, Fjerda, and Shu Han. (But again, we don’t have bundles of information about the Zemeni government so I’m not super confident there). We do, however, know that Jesper was the only one other than Matthias who already knew what a tank was when they got to Fjerda, and so it’s fair to predict that there’s been at least some development in that area in Novyi Zem, or at least enough interest for news of them to reach the gunsmith Jesper worked with. But let’s assume that the invention did come from Fjerda itself, at least for the time being. This makes perfect sense!! It was mostly likely developed, unbeknownst to Matthias, by the parem-drugged fabrikators being held at the Ice Court. Now that they have access to this power, Fjerda achieves all of the same tickboxes to be the initial place of engine development as Ravka does. Of course, Fjerda is also at war or under threat of it, but I think it’s important to remember that the Fjerdan government doesn’t really see war with Ravka as a threat at all. They see it more as an opportunity to prove themselves, to properly cement their position in the world economy and as a global power, which we know Kerch - or at least the general population of the country, if not the government - does not currently see it as. So it makes sense that their developmental focus would not be on ease of travel for the majority of its people by developing cars or flight machines, but on engines that can be used for dominance: tanks.

I’m hoping I’ve kind of got my point across here even if in a slightly convoluted way, but I want to add Inej’s quote from the scene with the tank to really cement the idea that this was development on a scale they had never experienced before: “They were moving - and not a horse in sight!” Someone who has seen a train at any point in her life, or who has any understanding that trains exist and work, is not going to be absolutely blown away by the concept of moving without the aid of horses. So why pick a train??? I don’t know, I’m clearly thinking far too much into it but I just… I dunno, it bothered me, there were so many other things to choose. I didn’t really mind the train in season one because it was set up like a one-of-a-kind contraption, but the idea of there being toy replicas of steam trains implies a very different level of development in a world clearly implied to be pre- its industrial revolutions.

Anyway, thanks for reading my mad ramblings! I have SO MANY thoughts about world building and structure in the Grishaverse, and world building as a browser topic as well, so if you want to hear anything more please let me know!

[tmntkiseki]

So this is one thought that has rotated in my brain ever since I watched through the entire 2003 series for the first time, but as much as I love Donatello and consider him my favorite turtle, there is one not-so-tiny thing that bugs me and that's the fact that he does probably go through the least character development of the four turtles despite going through some genuinely terrible shit.

When I think of some of the stuff Donatello goes through during the series, the stuff that makes me think "Good lord, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO MY BOY," the three incidents that stick out the most are the Triceraton Mind Probe from the Space Invaders arc, the entirety of Same As It Never Was, and the Outbreak Saga/Good Genes Arc. The Triceraton Mind Probe scene is one that is physically painful to watch. Don is writhing and screaming the whole time as the probe rapidly picks through his memories trying to find information on Professor Honeycutt's whereabouts, and it's clear that at one point he becomes so scared that he begs for help from his father. Fortunately, his spiritual connection with Splinter allows him overpower the device and short circuit it, but if he hadn't had such a strong bond with him, who knows what would have happened.

Same As It Never Was... what needs to be said at this point? Donatello gets transported to a bad future where the Shredder rules the world, Splinter and Casey are dead, and the turtles have disbanded after their version of Don disappeared 30 years prior. Donatello watches all three of his brothers die protecting him, and at the end of the episode laments the fate of his poor brothers and just how nightmarish the world is before he's warped away. And that's just the tl;dr version.

Good Genes arc, though, oh my god. I feel a major reason why this arc is so good is because it plays on an idea presented on Same As It Never Was--that is, Donatello, with his level head and ability to come up with ingenious solutions to problems the turtles encounter, is what's keeping the team together. As a result of the Outbreak virus, Donatello undergoes a secondary mutation that turns him into a violent, aggressive monster and it's stated because of reactions with the Utrom mutagen already in his blood, his body is breaking down; if he's not cured, he will die. The knowledge that Donatello may perish if nothing is done is bad enough, but even just not having their brother there mentally is enough to mess up the entire team dynamic. In their desperation to save him, they go so far as to make a deal with Bishop, who Leonardo openly compares to the Devil himself, and their actions ultimately lead to the events of the Ninja Tribunal arc the following season. It was the single most dire situation the turtles were in since Exodus, and it wasn't even an entire galaxy at stake; just their beloved brother.

But despite all that, Donatello doesn't actually change much as a result of these events. That's because, more often than not, the stuff that happens to him is more used to fuel his brothers emotional reactions and development than his own. Good Genes is probably the best example of this because even though Donatello is the one physically suffering during the arc, it's Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo who get all the interesting emotional reactions to their present situation; Leonardo finds himself almost completely lost on what to do without Don, and Raphael and Michelangelo, who are absolutely devastated over Don's transformation, spend much of the arc eerily quiet when compared to their usual selves. The only thing we get in terms of Don is the fact that he doesn't remember what happened while he was "sick," and is thus frustrated by how much his brothers end up coddling him in the wake of the incident (which unfortunately isn't all that important since we're about to enter the Ninja Tribunal arc.)

It really is unfortunate that Donatello doesn't go through much development because I otherwise love everything about him. Besides his intelligence, techno savvy, and ability to quickly pick up skills that might be useful to the team (I'm also very biased towards his Bō not due to its strength as a weapon, but it's amount of utility both in and outside combat), I'm absolutely floored by just how nice and gentle he is. He's still got plenty of sass hidden in his shell and can be quite snippy when he's annoyed, but he shows a lot of emotional sensitivity and is very empathetic; this is especially shown in his sibling dynamics with Raphael and Michelangelo, whose relationships tend to be the most...tumultuous? Of the turtles. I don't have a better word for it.

As an aside, I genuinely feel like The King doesn't get enough credit where it's due because yeah, it's a touching tribute to the late Jack Kirby, but it's important as a Donatello-focused episode because it's not focused on his status as the genius inventor of the turtles; instead, we look at his nature as a kind, friendly individual who is very sentimental and doesn't take loss very well. He quickly strikes up a friendship with Kirby, who is one of the few humans not to reject Donatello just because he's a 5'2" mutant turtle, and they end up having a fun adventure in the alternate dimension where all of Kirby's drawings end up disappearing to. Unfortunately, Donatello is unable to pull Kirby back through the portal in time as it's closing; the alternate ending, which is closer to original Mirage issue the episode is based on, really hammered in just how deeply this affected Don, since he absolutely refuses to talk to Raphael and walks off to be by himself, gazing solemnly at the drawing Kirby was able to send through the portal. "Life at best is bittersweet. Take care of yourself."

God damn it, my poor son.

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 1 Overview

Well, there you have it. It took a lot longer than anticipated, but I’ve officially completed season 1.  Huzzah!

I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but I’ve never actually seen this series in its entirety, so it’s been interesting to watch from the beginning, especially since I’m less familiar with the early seasons. So, in the continued interest of nostalgic observation, I thought I’d take a second to rank the season as a whole, and share my overall thoughts on the show thus far.

For anyone who hasn’t been following along on this little journey, my episode ratings are based on a 5 star system, to the nearest .5 of a star.  In the interest of avoiding any additional rounding, I’m ranking the season based on the overall average of each episode, even though the final score won’t look as neat.  

So without any further ado, over the span of 25 episodes, my average rating for season 1 of TNG comes to…

1.96 stars (out of 5)

Admittedly, that’s not a phenomenal score, but I don’t think it’s altogether unfair, nor do I bestow it with any malice. The fact is, most of these episodes were subpar-at-best, and that’s more-or-less consistent what I went in expecting to find. Star Trek shows historically aren’t known for starting on the strongest note, and when you take into account the drama that allegedly took place behind the scenes, it’s not all that surprising to encounter some (at times excruciating) growing pains. Ultimately there’s still enough good here to justify my continued curiosity, and there’s something to be said for giving a show enough time to grow into itself; something that’s been unfortunately absent in the advent of streaming television.

A huge part of what does-and-doesn’t work comes down to the writing and characterizations, with only a handful of the cast getting any kind of meaningful development.  Unfortunately, the women get the short end of the stick (which led to some aforementioned BTS drama), so as I rank each character (using a pass/neutral/fail ranking), please keep in mind that the following criticisms are predominantly directed to the writers, and not the actors (who I genuinely believe were doing the best with what they had).

1. Jean-Luc Picard

It’s widely accepted that Patrick Stewart is a huge reason for the show’s success, but the writers do deserve some credit here. In one of my reviews I mentioned that his character progression feels like it’s largely made up as it goes, and often accidental.  That may be true, but also largely immaterial.  Most ongoing television shows DO make it up as they go, and that’s just a reality of the medium.  Personally, I enjoyed getting a new perspective on Picard, which shows that he was kind of a staunch asshole until this crew warmed his frigid little heart. Whether that’s the intent is immaterial, because it does make him more interesting, and lends itself nicely to some of his established lore, which is undeniably given the most focus across the board.

Grade: PASS

2. William T. Riker

Riker has such acute horny golden retriever energy in this season. He could easily have come off as Picard’s handsome right-hand douche, but he’s given just enough charm (I’m giving a good share of the credit to Jonathan Frakes for that) that I can’t bring myself to dislike him.   Having said that, he’s still fairly two-dimensional at this point in the show, and I can’t say I find him that interesting on his own.  Maybe the beard really does make a difference.

Grade: PASS (but not by a lot)

3. Geordie LaForge

Levar Burton’s talents are almost entirely unused, although I give him full credit for doing everything he can, LaForge amounts to little more than a bouncing board for Data.

Grade: NEUTRAL

4. Tasha Yar

Talk about a missed opportunity. Aside from her death in ‘Skin of evil’ (which barely focussed on her) Tasha was really only featured in one episode, which is widely regarded as one of Star Trek’s all-time-worst. What a waste.

Grade: FAIL

5. Worf

Everyone’s favourite Klingon is pretty underused for a majority of the season, but “heart of Glory” does a good enough job at fleshing out his character, and quite effectively starts his journey towards being one of the all time “trek greats”.

Grade: PASS

6. Dr. Beverley Crusher

Dr. Crusher was never really on my radar, back when I was a kid, and  I always kind of found her boring. Sadly, that mostly holds true here, but knowing what happened with Gates McFadden behind the scenes (she was fired for season 2, because apparently she agreed with my assessment), I do have a much higher appreciation for her performance.  Crusher has some attitude, and I like it.  I only wish the writers had used that to their advantage, instead of trying to reduce her to a romantic interest for Picard.

Grade: NEUTRAL (but would have been a ‘fail’ if not for McFadden)

7. Deanna Troi

Troi is clearly an example of a writing team who put in very little work to develop this character. I get that it was the 80’s and psychiatric/psychological treatments were only just starting to be recognized as a legitimate branch of health care, but the writers weren’t even trying here.  Troi is regularly depicted as emotional, fragile, and often relegated to “traditional gender roles.”  She’s not interesting because the writers don’t seem equally disinterested in exploring her, beyond her value as a pretty woman that Riker can sometimes covet.

Grade: FAIL

8. Data

Barring Picard, Data is the most developed character to come out of season 1, and I would say he’s easily the most interesting.  This is a prime example of how a show should ideally develop it’s cast.  Character-centric episodes are obviously important for establishing major beats, but it’s the small moments of continued growth that bring characters like Data to life.

Grade: PASS

9. Wesley Crusher

Ugh, I just can’t stand this character, and I feel bad because it seems like Wil Wheaton may very well be an alright dude, but holy shit is Wesley annoying. All the same, I feel the need to reiterate that I hold the writers 100% responsible for how his character was managed.

Grade: FAIL

I don’t have a lot else to say that I haven’t already talked about in the individual reviews, but there are two other elements that warrant a quick shout out.

Jerry Goldsmith’s opening theme is a classic. Of course it was originally used in ‘The Motion Picture’ nearly 10 years prior, but the arrangement for TNG is iconic, and I love everything about it.  No matter how bad an episode ends up being, the opening credits never fail to hype me up.

The Model work: This would be the last Star Trek series to use (I think almost exclusively?) models for the Enterprise, and the other various ships, and they look incredible. I’m not throwing shade on the other show’s use of CGI, those artists also did solid work, especially considering how new the technology was, but I’ll always be a slut for practical effects.

And that’s about all I have to say! For the sake of posterity, I’ve listed each episode below, along with my ranking. All the episodes with a blue-coloured rating are ones that I'd already seen at some point beforehand (mostly during my teen years). I’m curious to see how many I'd failed to watch growing up, so I'll continue keep track of that as I move forward.

Encounter at Farpoint - 2 The Naked Now - 2 Code of Honor - 0 The Last Outpost - 1.5 Where No One Has Gone Before - 3 Lonely Among Us - 2 Justice - 1 The Battle - 2.5 Hide and Q - 2 Haven - 1 The Big Goodbye - 3 Datalore - 3.5 Angel One - 1 11001001 - 2.5 Too Short a Season - 3 When the Bough Breaks - 0.5 Home Soil - 2.5 Coming of Age - 2 Heart of Glory - 3 The Arsenal of Freedom - 3 Symbiosis - 1 Skin of Evil - 1.5 We'll Always Have Paris - 1 Conspiracy - 3 The Neutral Zone - 1.5

[sweetchcolate]

Oh boy, where do I start? I'll go with the negatives first I guess? Get those feelings out of the way at least.

One of the things that bother me about this finale is the way it tried to resolve both overarching arcs (the holy beginnings festival sculpture crafting and the Rafael plot), but didn't give the latter enough respect or gravity: the second Anne and Shall return to the workshop, they act as if they haven't just spent 3 weeks as prisoners to someone who could kill them at any moment (and who almost suceeded on the very last day). Their entire experience gets swept under the rug to leave more screentime for Anne to gush about the sugar sculptures and get ready for the festival.

Which... in a way, it is in character for Anne to care about sugar crafting more than anything (to the detriment of her own health or safety: see the duke of Philax arc). But at the same time, I genuinely think the anime could have cut back on a scene or two (like Anne and Elliot asking the church official to move the sculptures in early) to have Anne and Shall reflect on everything that happened and decompress.

[This scene kinda happens later on, when Anne is finalising the biggest sugar sculpture in the church, but it's more oriented towards the future (what Shall wants to do now that he knows he's a fairy king candidate, Anne wanting Shall to be happy and Shall wanting her to be happy) rather than what happened for the last 3 episodes]

Because of that, as much as I enjoyed the moments where everyone at the workshop gets to finally witness the fruits of their hard work and have fun at the festival, there was something... lackluster about the very last scene between Anne, Shall, and Mythril. It felt like a repeat of cour 2 episode 4's ending (or even cour 1 episode 4, the first royal fair), where Shall mentions his desire to follow Anne wherever she goes, despite everything that happened since then. You could have skipped the entire Rafael arc mess and you wouldn't know it from the way Shall and Anne acted.

Where's the growth? What's new in their dynamic that adds to this scene (compared to after the first royal fair or compared to when Anne returns Shall his wing in the second cour)?

tldr; to me, Rafael's kidnapping was treated more like an inconvenience or a 3 episode hiatus from the Paige workshop, and its consequences weren't really adressed nor felt (other than Rafael's 'humans and fairies can't live together' shtick affecting Anne and Shall).

The other gripe I have with episode 12 is that conversation Shall and Anne have near the end, when Anne is putting the finishing touches on the sculptures.

Their whole conversation is clearly marked by Rafael's poisonous words that fairies and humans cannot be together: Shall mentions that he wants to devote himself to Anne's happiness forever (even if that might mean she'll get married to a human and thus distance herself from him), and while Anne is happy at the sentiment, she also doesn't want to be a burden and prevent Shall from chasing after his own happiness. They both have each other's best interest in mind, both want the other happy, but do not realise that they've already reached this happiness by being with each other.

If I were reading the same scene in the LN, I wouldn't mind the angst because I know there will be more volumes to address that plotpoint. But the anime doesn't have this luxury, even more so since this is a finale (with no other seasons in the work so far), so why picture the last moments of their relationship in such a heartbreaking way? Why not have them each think 'I know it's better if the other stayed with their respective species, but for now, I'll cherish the time we have together' or something to that extent, thus showing both their doubts, but also their desire to enjoy the present moment and ending things on a bitter, but sweet, note?

tldr: overall, while this was a really good episode, it didn't live up to the expectations of concluding two major arcs in a satisfying way. One of the arcs's consequences were not given enough weight, and Shall's and Anne's relationship ended on this weird note where it's clear they're set for future angst, yet the anime finale doesn't have the room to resolve this.

[gayelectro]

I tentatively recommend the Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds sub after you’ve finished Dungeon Masters. A friend roped me into watching it and while it has its issues, poor pacing and poor animation quality at times, the overall experience is one I highly recommend! When it hits, it HITS!

So we're doing a lot of "play by ear" on our Yugioh watch! Basically, we're going with the flow of where our hearts take us. This has been a very random and fun ride thus far. So far it's been:

Jumping in to the series with the English dub starting at the beginning of season 3/the filler Noah arc/Digital Nightmare arc. Genuinely a random and insane place to start the series after not having seen it in decades.

Finishing out season 3 and thus the conclusion of the Battle City arc. I was truly and completely lost the whole time, asked a metric fuck ton of questions. Once again, really random. Once we get to the end, I stopped her and was like "babe I have no context for these characters, we need to go back to the beginning". I love her but she simply cannot watch something chronologically unless I force her LOL

Finally we go back and watch season one and two. I sort of remember most of season one from when I watched the show as a child. Because my wife is an absolute YGO DM expert, she gives me full commentary throughout about things that differ between the manga, season Zero, the original Japanese anime, and the 4kids English dub. Sometimes she'll find a scene that's pretty egregiously changed and we'll watch the dub and sub back to back. I genuinely think this is the coolest and best way to watch YGO ever, she has so much passion and knowledge.

Then we rewatch season 3, but with Japanese dub/English sub. Now that I actually know these characters, this makes a lot more sense. I'm adopting the Ishtars. My Lord, they need therapy.

We skip season 4 in it's entirety. I cannot adequately express enough how much my wife hates the Orichalcos filler arc. There are "amazing character moments, but that come at the cost of awful characterization, a nonsensical shit plot, and easily the worst paced duels in the entire show". She says that maybe one day we can visit this season with the assistance of recreational drugs. So that might be fun in the distant future, but I doubt we will ever actually watch it.

We jump into season 5, English dub again, starting with the Grand Championship arc. The animation is pretty abysmal here, same with the characterization, but we have a ton of fun anyways. Both Kaiba and Yugi really get to shine, despite everything. It helps knowing that this is another filler arc and basically meant to save money for the finale of the show, which she tells me is when the show is at it's peak in regards to just about everything in terms of quality.

We are JUST ABOUT to start the Capsule Monsters mini-filler arc. After that is Millennium World/the finale. Very excited for these.

After we finish the show, our plan is to wrap back around and watch the movies and then season Zero. Or maybe we were gonna do S0 and then the movies, I forget!

We have discussed a little bit what Yugioh shows we want to touch on once we've gone through everything Yugioh Duel Monsters related.

We both tried to watch GX when it originally aired, but it mutually did not grip either of us. She says that the fandom at large says it gets better as it goes on, but truth be told, neither of us are interested in trying. The premise of "duel school" already bores us, to be honest, and we both remember the characters being extremely dull. We most likely are not going to watch GX ever, or at the very least for a looooooong ass time.

Yugioh 5DS, funnily enough, is absolutely the series we are most curious about. This is the one that we are most likely to watch next and it would definitely be the Japanese dub/English sub. I can't guarantee that we will watch it, but if the mood strikes us to continue watching more Yugioh but that has no Yugi Moto in it, it's gonna be this show. But we'll both be going in blind, as neither of us knows shit other than "card games on motorcycles".

And holy shit, we don't even think we've heard of any of these.

[yurisorcerer]

7 - More than one person told me that this was "a bad episode." I…understand why someone would think that, certainly. I'm not sure I agree, if only because even Shuumatsu Train's worst ideas are so confounding that calling them outright bad feels inadequate. A misstep, though, that might be true.

Episode 7 is essentially a bizarro inversion of a traditional fanservice episode. These are, themselves, not necessarily super common anymore and for many kinds of anime they've been relegated to the no-mans-land of bonus OVAs and such. Shuumatsu Train's engagement with the concept is very much Shuumatsu Train-y in that it's flatly inexplicable. For the most part, there's not a lot of cheesecake or anything here---which is good, it would be wildly out of tone with this series, and the one shot that is like that is pretty jarring and bad---instead, the girls find out that the zombie horde from episode 6 are weak to ecchi. As in, they are weak to even hearing about it. This leads to a pair of climactic (har har) scenes where Akira dryly intones a scene from an erotic novel aloud, which makes the zombies explode. Later, our main four sing a bawdy song on top of the train, which has the same effect.

In essence, I think this is a parody of the entire concept, undermined by the actual panty shot late in the episode. Even if we disregard that, it's still a very odd direction for even this show to take. There's also the matter of three of the four main characters spending most of the episode wearing colored greasepaint. Reimi's is black, and while it's not my call to make whether or not that's racist exactly, it definitely feels weird and uncomfortable in a way that the rest of the show really hasn't.

Thankfully, the episode's denounement is actually one of the better ones, preventing this from being a total wash. In it, the girls speculate whether or not Mito (the zombie queen) was bullied when she was younger. Akira says that it doesn't matter, but Shizuru is quick to point out that it actually does, since we are all shaped by our past; who we are today is who we were yesterday, and then some. It's also worth noting that, strangely enough, this is one of the best-looking episodes! The animation is fluid and stylish throughout, the backgrounds are great, and there are some neat effects used to portray the zombie horde as a singular shambling mound of uncanniness. (I want to say the effect in question is some version of Live2D but I'm not actually sure.)

8 - Episode 8 on the other hand, opens with first a brief comedic bit, and then a very much not comedic bit, as the girls pass through an area that seems to amplify their fears and regrets. After the credits, we puzzlingly cut to a different scene entirely, where the girls are planning to enter a town based on that in-universe anime NeriAli, first brought up back in episode 1.

The bulk of this episode is probably best understood as self-parody. NeriAli as described in the show's text is already incomprehensibly strange, and combined with Shuumatsu Train's own proclivities, it produces an episode that reaches a level of surrealty normally reserved for short-form comedy anime (your Teekyus and such). It is genuinely hard to parse what all happens here, but the very basic gist is that one of the stations has been turned into a parody of NeriAli, a version of the show where its bad guys won, but this frankly makes the entire affair sound much more coherent than it actually is. This is probably the strangest episode of Shuumatsu Train thus far, and that's really saying something.

As with episode seven, the denounement segment at the end prevents it from feeling like wasted time (moreso here, since episode seven has other strengths whereas episode eight just mostly feels like genuine nonsense). We learn that Yoka, or at least someone named Yoka, is ruling Ikebukuro as its "witch queen."

There are four episodes remaining of Shuumatsu Train---it was one of the earlier premieres of the season, recall---and my hope and assumption is that this episode was a purging of all the show's most out-there ideas before we bring things home for its final stretch. Worst case scenario, this ends up being another promising original anime that flames out in its back half. I suppose we'll see what things look like in a week's time.

[m00n-pr1sm]

despite me having a 60 slide presentation that is 9k words titled “morgana pendragon did nothing wrong”, I do in fact! think she has done bad things. the main gripe I have with everything is how genuinely shitty her development is, like this point has been hammered in a million times atp and I’m probably not adding anything new to the convo but let me rant, one day I’ll write a polished explanation or whatever but I’m just annoyed + me explaining why she’s not a good person :3 + my thoughts

I think morgana is a wonderfully established character, she’s someone who was willing to stand up for what she believed in and actively call out uther’s actions; as well as being willing to cross morally questionable lines to achieve what she genuinely thought was for the best. she was complex and honestly so interesting in the earlier seasons, we saw her struggles and genuinely empathized with her desire of acceptance and the fear of persecution. Also girlie had nightmares constantly like I can only imagine how tiring that shit is. but then s3 happened and her development took a complete nose dive! like I understand why she did what she did in s2e12, I think it’s a fine episode but I do wish they established the morgana + morgause relations better than they did in canon, like if you’re going to make a character do a complete 180, at least show the time period between that? because morgana was so clearly shaken but what she had done in s2e12, she had shut down basically and was struggling to cope with what she had done through the entire episode. Like I’m sure you could fill in the gaps but it’s just poor writing, show, don’t just imply that morgause became this figure in morgana’s life that she held up with such reverence and how she basically absorbed her values to just become this hollow antagonist that just has silly little schemes every episode in s3. like we already established how she had a desire for acceptance we should’ve show morgause grow into that. Also the fact that she brings up the poisoning like one time??? and never had any heart to heart with Merlin? Like I get that she was too unwilling to compromise on her values (and she’s ne polr-) but it’s far too quick of a shift in her character. She went from feeling immense guilt of her actions to smugly wanting Camelot to fall, like at least show some ambivalence or some kind of self doubt if you’re going to make her turn to evil off screen??? I’ll probably always be upset that they removed that scene in s3e13 where morgana was like “I felt like a monster (bc of my magic) and morgause was the only one there for me”, like that simple line, while implied w/o that scene, just has a lot of depth to her and explains it explicitly (also I feel like that would be the last thing to break uther so yeah I wish they didn’t delete that one). circling back, but I actually really love s3e05 (it’s one of my faves) because it just expands so much on how much she genuinely wants to be loved and how volatile morgana has become to rejection; like she is genuinely so desperate. I think from then on, morgana sorta imprints the idea of being “uther’s daughter”, thus trying to fit herself into that role (but that is very much a headcanon). From s3+ her mission is just “I want to kill Arthur (and emyrs) so I can be queen because I deserve it” but it’s totally about her bringing magic back! I think she comes to see Arthur as nothing more than an extension of uther (something that she does call him out her in earlier seasons) but I also believe that there is envy there! because he recognizes him as her son ofc but denies morgana of that, so she seeks to destroy what she cannot have (sx4???). of course her whole pursuit of emyrs which is just born of self-preservation. I actually appreciate s4 morgana bc of the fact that she’s is more vulnerable than in s3, like she’s just a lonely fool in the woods w/o any real friends bc she’s lost them all. and she contemplates sometimes. silly. also I like that we got a slight taste of distressed morgana who always sought out reassurance in s4e13, like girlie needs someone to tell her that’s everything will be okay and that is why morgwen is the best ship ever + why she is so emotionally volatile bc she is w/o that

Although I do wish they focused on her skill of social engagement, like she had so many ally ships and a clear ability to read and manipulate emotions, but whatever ig. It’s sad to see how much her world has really changed and her world view being so messed up and so black and white (like she also was pretty polarized in the earlier seasons but like those values she held made more moral sense + she felt guilt) also I think it’s important to bring up how her talking to emyrs in s4e06 being like “Arthur will never accept you, magic will only come back once I rule” as a play to distract him. also it’s genuinely so fucked up that she was locked in the bottom of a well for 2 years w/o light or movement like??? That is genuinely such a messed up thing I don’t think the show or fandom talks about enough. It’s literally a complete loss of her agency and freedom which I do believe is something that morgana values a lot, to always do some kind of action, she’s never been a stagnant character and to just. be stuck powerless and immobile for 2 years with the one creature that you’ve bonded with and loved and saw as you’re only campaign, like aithsa saved morgana; just suffer in such a painful and cruel way? LIKE WHY DO WE NOT TALK ABT IT MORE??

I guess I’ll talk abt s5 right now lol or just read my slideshow rant abt one of my gripes lol but yeah the writing takes another nosedive in s5, morgana just becomes really more one dimensional, although I’m glad that they at least addressed her and Gwen’s relationship, albeit in a very messed up way. But yeah her desperation for Gwen finally got the best of her and I truly believe that was the main purpose and not just her being used as a tool for assassinating Arthur. One think they should’ve done more was Morgana’s descent into madness and delusion, like she’s actually unhinged by the final few episodes and ofc that was caused by mordred’s death but I do wish that was just a theme in her character. I suppose it could parallel how uther shut down into numbness but morgana just became increasingly more volatile (it is 2am I am def grasping for straws). One day I write a proper uther and morgana parallels rant. Anyways her death scene is nice ig, she never did get the satisfaction of seeing Arthur die. anyways her entire character from s3+ is the sunk cost fallacy, she’s in too deep and she could never pull out. I haven’t watched bojack but I would’ve loved if they made her like Diane in how she feels like she needs to write her book to make her trauma productive in some way (“if I don’t then that means that all the damage I got isn’t good damage it’s just damage and all those years I was miserable I could’ve been happy this whole time. blah blah “what was it all for?”, from memory so if there’s a mistake that is why). She needs to take out all her years of hurt and rejection and someway by embodying that and doing it to everyone in her life ((for that reason)unconsciously) but I mean it’s not like they really imply that in canon, I’m probably reading too much into it. But yeah she’s selfish and hypocritical. At least she continued in being way too overbearing in her personal judgments (MY ESI WIFE (REAL))

[literallyshiv]

personally i would love for shiv to be pregnant from a narrative perspective & i definitely think it's plausible given the pattern the season finales have followed thus far: tom having moments where its revealed that he is in fact aware of where he stands with shiv—that he's not just the supporting partner he makes himself appear to be—and stepping out of that passivity to take on a confrontational role

(asking shiv again if she's been cheating on him despite her numerous assurances that she's not, and kicking nate out of the wedding after finding out about the affair even though he agreed moments before to having an open relationship // being honest with shiv about not being happy about their relationship, nearly outright saying he wants them to seperate by saying he's miserable being with her and is experiencing turmoil over whether he genuinely loves her)

followed by the next season picking up with unforseen circumstances that send them into a shuffle of other priorities that force them to put their personal feelings about their marriage on the backburner rather than following through with any implications from the previous finale or even working anything out for the better, with both of them stepping back into the dynamic they played with each other before the scene of confrontation— shiv taking the lead while tom plays passive husband and seemingly tries to give shiv the impression that he agrees that she knows what's best for them.

(when shiv is told she's getting the CEO position and tom supports her despite their previous "plan" that he'd go for CEO while she continues working in politics. while after their wedding it may have seemed like he was going to be somewhat more upfront in the role he plays in their relationship, shiv entering waystar at a position above tom as well as being the one who secured his new position at atn gives her undeniable leverage over him that he decides isn't worth upsetting the balance of by rocking the boat.

then, after the s2 finale, people seemed so certain that that would be the start of their seperation, only for s3 to pick up with them being flown off to different counties with the only parting words being that they'd talk about it later. things escalate rapidly again and soon we see them back together once again, the raw in the moment emotions from the last finale have settled back down into just an afterthought in the back of their minds as they deal with events that take higher precedence; the question of what they are to each other seeming trivial in the face of the potential for their entire world being turned upside down with the company.)

SO: what we've seen so far is tom getting progressively more frustrated with his relationship with shiv, and consequently being pushed closer to his breaking point for staying in the relationship, only for external events to come in and force them to stay together so they don't have to add navigating a divorce to their already full plates. each season it has raised the intensity of those external events, because as tom grows more dissatisfied it takes more to convince him to stay. and the season 3 finale is the largest rift we've seen struck between them yet, with tom explicitly betraying shiv rather than confronting her to her face. but the narrative structure we've seen so far doesn't allow for them to seperate entirely, instead it implies that what's coming next is an even more extreme reason to keep tom and shiv tied together than what we've seen yet.

all that combined with the frequency of discussions about next generations, the sheer amount of mentions of pregnancy and conception throughout season 3, the goddamn emporor nero and his pregnant wife of it all, makes a tomshiv pregnancy seem like a strong potential plotline and i for one want to see the psychological torture it puts tom through to have the first time he puts into action his plan to put himself on equal footing with shiv, immediately reveal itself to have been more detrimental to him personally than he ever could have anticipated

[woodchoc-magnum]

2021 fic year in review 🌟

tagged by @eddie-diass 💖

Total Number Of Completed Works: 27

Total Word Count: 880,787 😅 I uh... really like writing fanfic

Fandoms I’ve Written In: 9-1-1

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected?: Honestly I had big plans to write more but then real life got in the way and spoiled everything, which was... rude.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year? I can't pick just one because I'm a biased bitch: alone again tonight with you, the smoke in your eyes and boys of summer

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year? I'm not really sure? boys of summer was a totally drama-free, fluffy, smutty fic, which is not my usual thing, but I loved writing it! And I wrote a fic from Maddie's POV which was something new as well (my love has come along).

Do You Have Any Fanfic Or Profic Goals For The New Year? Probably just going to keep writing whatever I want, lol - specifically though I'm working on a post-5a, anti-Taylor fic (well it's kinda anti-Taylor, she's not sympathetic in it at all), I'm also working on the next Songs fic - after that, not sure. I probably want to write another suspense fic at some point.

Most Popular Story Of The Year? Definitely try to love me if you can. It's my most popular story by far - I don't know if anything will ever top it? As at the 21st of December 2021 it's at 54,357 hits and 3,565 comments, and I still get people reading through and commenting on each chapter!

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion:  My Maddie fic (my love has come along) but I knew it would flop when I posted it. I just really felt like writing Maddie's POV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most Fun Story To Write: you light my morning sky with burning love and the entire Cooper-arc in the Songs Universe was super fun, I was genuinely having a blast when I was writing his scenes.

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: wherever we're together, that's my home - I've had a fucking tough couple of months.

Biggest Disappointment: I don't know if I should be brutally honest or not? So like... the amount of people I see saying how much they love the Songs Universe, messaging me, talking about it on TikTok/Twitter - like that's great, but... the comments and kudos don't really reflect that? I pretty much entirely go off how people respond to a fic on AO3 as opposed to what happens elsewhere, so yeah... I'm not saying I'm going to end the Songs Universe or anything because I have fucking plans, guys, and I'm not fishing for comments, but it can just be a little confusing for me, I guess? So yeah, if you love it, the best thing you can do for me is to leave me a lovely comment on AO3. Nothing motivates me more than comments.

Biggest Surprise: How the Cooper-arc in the Songs Universe was received - honestly, I never planned it. I wrote him into one of the fics because I wanted Buck to get a little banged up, and I put in a throwaway line about Eddie catching him checking Buck out, and then all the comments were, what the FUCK is up with this Cooper guy? and thus a villain was born 😅

My Favorite Part Of Fandom This Year: It's been a fucking WILD RIDE, you guys. We've had some fun. We've gone nuts together and screamed and wished for Eddie to get shot and then stuck in an elevator, and then we were stuck on Buddie roommates era and then we wanted them to get taken hostage, and they DID, and like... yeah, Seasons 4 and 5 have been fucking wild and fun. Looking forward to more chaos in 2022, y'all!

Tagging @cinematicnomad @zeethebooknerd @chiquititadiaz @tylerhunklin @thisissirius @from-nova @capseycartwright @sevensoulmates and anyone else I've missed 💕

[crusherthedoctor]

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Fall of the House of Hargreeves

So I mentioned a while back in my Superhero Gothic meta that there were a number of parallels between the season one finale of The Umbrella Academy and the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Fall of the House of Usher and that I could probably write a whole meta on that if anyone was interested. Shout out and love to the anon who requested that I do that! 

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these long form metas, but I am very excited to get back to writing about two of my favorite things: gothic literature and chaotic superheroes. 

Part I: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher (which I’ll call House of Usher for convenience for the rest of this meta) is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe first published in 1939. It is considered a classic gothic short story, and deals with themes of family, madness, inheritance, and isolation. 

Since it’s in the public domain, I’ll go ahead and link a pdf to the story here. If you aren’t interested in reading, though, or just want a refresher, the story follows an unnamed narrator going to visit his ill friend, a man named Roderick Usher in his isolated (and very spooky) family estate. Upon arrival, he discovers that Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, is also ill, and has a tendency to fall into dreamlike trances.

Over the course of the visit, Roderick confesses to the narrator that not only does he believe the house is alive, but that it is connected to the fate of the family which, at this point, only includes Roderick and Madeline. He later comes and tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and enlists his help in order to bury her in the family tomb beneath the house. They do so, but for the next couple of days Roderick is suspiciously...on edge. 

Then, one dark and stormy night, Roderick shows up in the narrator’s room incredibly worked up, and throws open the window, and starts low-key (read: high-key) having a breakdown. The narrator is unsure as to why until he hears ripping and tearing sounds coming from somewhere in the house. These ripping and tearing sounds are revealed to be Madeline whom Roderick and the narrator buried alive whose appearance scares Roderick to death, right before she collapses, also dead from the strain of tearing through the foundations of the house.

The narrator decides this would probably be a good time to leave and is very much right about that because as soon as he leaves, the house (which was already in pretty bad shape) splits in two and collapses into the lake surrounding it. The end.

Part II: Umbrella Academy as Gothic

So, there are probably a couple similarities between House of Usher and The Umbrella Academy season one that stand out right off the bat, but I’d like to start by taking a step back to talk about thematic parallels between the two works. If you’d like to read a very long winded explanation of why I consider The Umbrella Academy to be a modern gothic tale, I have a really long meta about it. 

If not, here’s a quick overview:

Gothic does not have a clearly defined set of requirements as a genre, but its purpose is to explore the contradictions and the failing edifices of convention in a way that is dramatic and often fantastic. 

Gothic fiction plays with reality, but usually in a way that is representative of the characters and story. 

It often situates itself during times of great change, as there is something haunting about the irreversible passage of time, particularly for those that struggle to acknowledge it and hide behind conventions that have grown increasingly irrelevant. 

Poe is considered one of the classic authors of gothic fiction (though the genre significantly predates him), and is decidedly one of the best well-known examples of it. 

The Umbrella Academy is a family drama about former child superheroes dealing with their trauma while trying to prevent an apocalypse that their every move seems to set further in motion. It explores the messy and complicated relationships between siblings who have been abused and pit against each other for years. And yeah, it’s fun with great music and talking gorillas and dance sequences, but the premise is kind of hard for me to read as anything other than gothic.

Part III: Parallels

Like House of Usher, the first season of Umbrella Academy takes place in a massive, largely empty mansion where siblings gather with disastrous consequences. Both works explore a family that is past their prime and disconnected from the present. They also both explore the psychological toll of isolation, the consequences of tyrannical family rules, and why it is a really bad idea to lock your unstable sister in a basement and just leave her there. 

Let’s start with some thematics parallels. Everyone in House of Usher is extremely isolated, and the absence of anything resembling the modern world amongst the house full of relics is part of the horror. All of the siblings in Umbrella Academy are defined by their isolation as well, physically (Luther, Five, and Ben), socially (Vanya, Diego, Klaus, and Allison), and emotionally (legit all of them). It is this isolation that drives the conflict of the story, feeding into every characters’ choices. 

In both House of Usher and Umbrella Academy, the main characters are trapped in this isolated state as a direct result of their familial legacy. In House of Usher, the titular house is a character itself, a manifestations of the obligations Madeline and Roderick hold as members of an aristocratic family that is so far divorced from wealth and status that it keeps them from ever fully moving on and rejoining the real world. In Umbrella Academy, the characters are similarly trapped by their familial legacy, this time in the form of the specter of their abusive father, and the roles he created for them. Like the Usher siblings, the Hargreeves have no way of maintaining the roles their family left out for them – they were never given the tools to function in the real world and it cripples them – but are trapped in them regardless. 

Part IV: The Woman* in White 

*As of the time I am writing this, nothing has been said regarding Vanya’s gender identity being written to match Elliot Page’s. I am using she/her pronouns for Vanya, as that is what has been used for the character thus far. 

Aside from thematic parallels, however, the most direct connection between the short story and series, and in fact the reason I was inspired to write this meta in the first place is the way both of the stories end: with a sister trapped beneath the house clawing her way out to face her brother(s and sister) and creating a disruption of the family legacy so great that the entire estate crumbles.

Madeline Usher is described at this point as wearing a white dress, strained with the injuries she sustained from physically breaking herself out of the basement tomb her brother buried her alive in. Vanya, of course, becomes at this moment the White Violin, and though she has not yet had the epic violin-music-so-powerful-it-changes-the-color-of-her-clothes scene, the principal still stands.

As characters, there are also a couple of noteworthy parallels between Vanya and Madeline. The narrator at one point describes “the illness of the lady Madeline had lone been beyond the help of her doctors. She seemed to care about nothing” (Poe, 27). The reader never knows what illness precisely is the cause of Madeline’s apparent madness, but we see the effects. It dulls her emotional responses to situations and leaves her withdrawn and powerless. Similarly, we learn over the course of the first season of The Umbrella Academy that the medication Reginald Hargreeves prescribed Vanya for her anxiety is actually a power suppressor for her abilities that has much the same effect – because they are strengthened by extreme emotion, the drugs numb Vanya’s emotional responses and deprive her of the ability to access her powers.

Additionally, the final scene of the story story shows Madeline escaping her tomb during a great storm and going to face her brother who put her there, the storm itself being a metaphor for her anguish that tears the house apart. Vanya’s connection to the destruction of the house is a bit more literal, but it is similarly a manifestation of her anguish and trauma. She sees flashbacks of her siblings being distant and rude to her in their childhoods and the anger she feels rips the foundation apart. 

It is not entirely clear in the short story why Roderick buries Madeline alive – there are a lot of theories: he genuinely believed she was dead, he wanted her out of the picture, he himself was succumbing to the madness of the house, etc – but the guilt he feels for doing so manifests as him hearing her scraping her way out for several days preceding her escape. The justification for Vanya’s imprisonment is more clear in text, but the series of flashbacks make it clear that it is not just the imprisonment that has driven her over the edge. It it guilt for her sister, anger at her abusive upbringing that is much more easily directed at her siblings than her father, the newfound emotions experienced by being off her medication for the first time since childhood, Leonard’s manipulations, etc. 

In both cases, amidst a spiral of emotions and experiences folding in on themselves, Vanya and Madeline experience a single, cold moment of clarity that drives them to escape, and it is that moment of clarity that breaks the shadow of the family legacy. They observe the situation as it stands and realize that it is completely unacceptable, and it is the realization that leads everything to crumble. Because gothic literature is focused on the complexities of maintaining that which is out of date, the realization that things must change can break the spell.

Part V: Conclusions 

As per usual, I have no great theories on why this is or what it means. One of the reasons I love gothic literature is that it is rife with meaning that can be more easily felt than deciphered. I welcome any and all interpretations, theories, (politely worded) disagreements, and comments. 

Thanks for taking the time to read; I have a lot of fun doing these. Enjoy spooky season, y’all. 💛

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I Thought About the First Season of--

Salutations random people on the internet who most likely won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

When I first saw the sneak peek of--

...I...didn't...think it would be anything all that special. I love animation, and I love superheroes, so it would go without saying that I would love an animated series about superheroes. But the animation looked a little too stiff for my liking, and aside from featuring J.K. Simmons, there wasn't anything grabbing me when it comes to this show.

Then I heard some s**t goes down at the end of episode one. So, letting my curiosity get the better of me, I binged the entire series in a day to see what the fuss was about. And, um...Yeah. Holy s**t.

This is a series that will very much make you uncomfortable in all the right ways. However, it is a gigantic gorefest at times, so if you get queasy after a single drop of blood, DON'T WATCH THIS SHOW! Trust me, you will not be prepared for what this series has to offer.

At the same time, I highly recommend you watch this series before reading this review. I'm going to spoil major plot points and characters so I can appropriately discuss what I think about the season, so trust me when I say you should click away if you haven't watched it yet. It's one of those series that are better to go in as blind as possible. You can call it a cheap way to appeal to shock value, but I call it one of the best reasons why--

...Is a contender for best-animated series of the decade--That bit with the title card isn't going away anytime soon, is it?

WHAT I LIKE

The Guardians of the Globe vs. The Mauler Twins: This is the best possible way for the series to begin. The first fight scene is bright, colorful, and kinda fun. Thus setting the ultimate expectation subversion in making audiences think that will be the series staple. However, just because it has the energy of a harmless superhero fight, there is a sense of intensity as the Guardians give their all in saving others. Like that moment with Darkwing (Not the duck) as he rescues that woman without hesitation, despite knowing he might die because of it. Or Green Ghost, who just barely rescues all those civilians from that falling debris. It shows that you don't need intense scenes of violence to make a fight scene thrilling to watch.

Diversity Wins: I don't know how diverse the comics are compared to the show, but I'm impressed with how inclusive this series is. So many members of the main cast are people of color, with the main lead being half-Korean. And it's not just different races that the series shines a light on, as we also get the rare, but very much welcomed, animated male gay character. Who's thankfully isn't cliched in ten ways to Sunday...for the most part. It really does seem like writers are starting to grow up and that it's better to be as inclusive as possible instead of pretending certain people don't exist for the sake of "convenience." It might not solve oppression in general, but it certainly makes certain people feel better, even if it is briefly.

Mark Grayson: Mark is a pretty solid super-protagonist if you ask me. Sure, at first, he comes across as whiney...and even more so in later episodes, but he's really an endearing character at times. Mark nails the role of the relatable everyman that's also inspirational with his determination since he never gives up until beaten to the inch of his life. Seriously, while he might not entirely be--

...I guess that bit with the title card really isn't going away.

Anyways, while he might not entirely be invulnerable in the literal sense, he is very much so in the figurative sense. Mark, in so many ways, refuses to call quits once he finally gets the hang of being a superhero, which is what makes him so inspirational. Plus, it's funny seeing how much of a rookie he can be to the gig at times. Mark is far from a perfect lead but is still charming to a fault, and it's nice seeing him grow more heroic each episode. I hope to see him develop more in future seasons, as he has the potential to be ranked higher up as one of my favorite superheroes (it's hard to compete with Spider-Man and Batman, but he'll make me consider it).

Debbie Grayson: This is almost what I expect a mother and wife of superheroes would be. 

Your son is constantly crash landing in your yard? Tell him to knock it off because he's past his curfew. 

Your husband disappeared into another dimension to fight off invaders? Shrug it off and expect that he'll be late for dinner.

It's a ton of fun to watch, and I adore how supportive she is of Mark, despite how much danger he could be in as a superhero. But, what really endears me with Debbie is her complicated feelings with Omni-Man. There's not a doubt in my mind that she loved him with her whole heart, but she also isn't an idiot. She is quick to pick up how unheroic her husband can be at times, often scolding him for it when necessary. And when she finally starts investigating if he really did kill the Guardians, I love that she instantly comes up with every single plausible excuse she can, despite knowing the truth. Because she believes that she knows who Omni-Man is and refuses any possibility that he might be a supervillain. So when she finds out that there really is no other explanation and hearing him call her a pet (big ouch when that happened), you wanna know what she does? She cries. Not because the man she loved is gone forever, but because the idea of him is. And it's that level of emotional devastation that comes from those complicated emotions that make me think Debbie Grayson is the most complex and endearing character on the show. And I. Will. Stand by that.

Seeing the Guardians of the Globe on their down time: Wow, what a cute collection of scenes that are charming as much as they are heartwarming! A set of scenes that show how human these characters are with their close relationships with friends and family! I sure hope it's not followed up with a brutal emotional gut-punch of a scene that will be even more devastating after thinking back on these! Especially with that bit with Martian Man and the little girl, cause OOO-WEE, would THAT tear me up inside!

Omni Man destroying the Guardians of the Globe:...I'd follow through on my joke here, but holy s**t.

That's really the best way I can describe all of this. It is a brutal, I repeat, BRUTAL scene that will stick with you hours after watching it. Not only that, but it's one of the few instances when I was damn near speechless because I couldn't think of anything else to say other than, "Holy s**t." The only time another superhero property did that was Avengers: Infinity War, except with that, the only difference is that the characters come back. Here, except for The Immortal, the Guardians stay dead! There's no magic amulet or alternate versions from another dimension. No, they die and never come back. Thus setting up how serious the show can be. Because if these superheroes can stay dead, then so can others.

Plus, what makes it more impactful is how throughout the entire fight, there was a glimpse of hope that the Guardians can beat Omni-Man. I heard he got nerfed for the sake of drama, and I approve of that decision. Because if he was really--

...If he was really unbeatable, then the fight doesn't have weight to it. There wouldn't be a point in rooting for these characters to win when we already know they're going to lose. But, by showing there's a chance that they could win, it becomes all the more intense watching the fight and even more tragic seeing them lose. It is a masterpiece of a battle that proves once and for all: Batman is right. You need contingency plans.

Omni Man: J. Jonah Jameson has become the one thing he hates the most: A masked MENACE...Ok, I know Omni-Man doesn't wear a mask, so the joke doesn't work as well as it could. But it was served to me on a silver platter, damn it! I had to take it!

In all seriousness, though, Omni-Man might give Homelander a run for his money on best evil Superman. Because while Homelander might be terrifying in his own right with his style of evil, Omni-Man takes it a step up a notch with the mystery behind WHY he killed the Guardians of the Globe. We know right away that there's something off with him, but up until that point, we see multiple instances of Omni-Man doing the right thing rather than the wrong. Sure, he might come off as cold when interacting with people, but so does Batman and other great superheroes in comics. That doesn't mean he's evil. So when he does do something so incredibly heinous, we're left with this mystery as to why. Because there has to be a reason for it all, right? Like, maybe mind control or his family was threatened. Something and anything that means he was forced into killing the noblest of people. So when it turns out that his actions were intentional, it is already pretty devastating. But when we find out why he does these things, it paints how truly evil Omni-Man is, given how little respect he has for human life.

Plus, as terrifying as Homelander is, Omni-Man is ten times more of an engaging villain. With Homelander, what you see is what you get: A narcissist with a god complex. For Omni-Man, it's more or less the same thing, but it's something fed to him because of the conditioning from his planet. There is a tiny, molecule-sized part of him that genuinely cares about others. It doesn't change what he does, nor does it mean he deserves forgiveness (far from it), but it hints that maybe he's not evil because of his own ego. It's because of how he's trained to be. And judging by his pained expressions from Mark's words and the single tear he sheds when leaving everything behind, there's a chance that he might be willing to fight back that mentality.

Or he will stay evil, and that he'll return to do worse things in the future. I don't know. I haven't read the comics. But I feel like I don't need to read anything to tell you all that Omni-Man is up there as one of the most intriguing comic book villains of all time, and I can't wait to see what happens with him next.

This show is f**king Violent: I mean, I refer you back to that scene where Omni-Man destroys the Guardians of the Globe. But, unlike other shows that use violence to force that mature rating, I feel as though In--

...Title card. You were cute the first time, but now your novelty has quickly worn thin.

Anyways, I feel as though this show...uses gore more appropriately. More often than not, death and carnage get treated as a literal joke in adult cartoons because people are sick bastards, I guess. But with...the current series I'm talking about, it all has an impact. No one dies or gets mangled for the sake of shock value or for a laugh. Instead, every instance of this type of violence is to either make a point, set the tone, or prove just how dangerous a specific character is. It makes...the series more mature than most adult cartoons you'll find because it actually brings a worthy discussion for its violence rather than milking it to give the illusion of maturity. And I gotta respect the writers for doing that.

Cecil: This man is basically Nick Fury if he was overpowered but in a good way. There is just something about a man who knows superheroes are needed in the world but also trusts a "hero" like Omni-Man as far as he can throw him. Not only does Cecil have contingency plans for his contingency plans, but the guy also knows to send the right heroes out for the exact missions that require them. Plus, a man is an instant badass when he's stone-faced about a demon saying he'll go somewhere worse than hell and is calm when being face-to-face with an angry Omni-Man.

I don't make the rules. I just abide by them.

The title card gets bloodier with each episode: This is just a really cool gimmick. It proves how intense this show can really be and how the stakes get higher and higher with each installment. Also, I like to think the amount of blood that splashes over the title card reflects how brutal the episode will be, especially with episode eight, 'cause holy hell.

The plot structure: The way the story works is very similar to how a comic book series handles its overarching narrative. Even though the writers begin a new arc that continues for a handful of issues, the overall main plot still develops in the background of the current adventure the hero goes through. That's basically how--

>Intense inhale<

>Calm exhale<

That's basically how THIS SHOW operates. Each episode can be seen as its own story that's given a ton of room to develop with its forty-five-minute runtime (which blew my f**king mind when I started binging it). Despite that, there's still a great sense of continuity. Everything involving Omni-Man and the mystery behind his murder of the Guardians gets fleshed out throughout the season, even when it takes the background of Mark's escapades. It really does feel like sitting down and taking the time to read an entire volume of comics, which I like to believe is the intention. After all, what's the point of making a series about superheroes if you don't make it feel like a comic book at least once?

Dark Blood: I desire a series based on this character alone. I know it's probably just Hellboy, but I want it. 

The idea of a demon solving murder crimes to work off his debt in Hell is too much of a remarkable concept to strictly be a c-plot in one series. Give Dark Blood a spin-off, damn it!

The Realistic Portrayal of a Superhero world: Unlike certain superhero properties--*cough* DC *cough*--it's--

>Huff<

>Puff<

>HUFF<

>PUFF<

>HUFF<

It's. This. F**KING. SHOW! That really does an excellent job at portraying how much it would suck to live in a world of superheroes. Sure, you got the cool battles and awe-inspiring heroes with incredible powers, but do you know what else you get? Hundreds upon thousands of people dying from the very threats those heroes fight against. Not to mention all the realistic physics that come from people like Mark trying to save others. Just look at how mangled that old woman looked when he attempted to help her. It, uh...It sure did not look great. Don't get me wrong, I love superheroes and the worlds they live in. But when watching a show like...this one, it really makes me appreciate how I don't live in those worlds with them.

It’s Still Funny: This is something I appreciate the most. When most superhero shows go for the realistic approach, they go with the doom and gloom route, making everything so melodramatic about how serious the world is. But here's the thing: Superheroes are f**king stupid.

Don't tell me they're not because they are. Superheroes have cornball hero names, bright costumes, and logos on their foreheads, chests, belts, and what-have-you. Taking a superhero too seriously is the worst mistake you could make, which is why I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Say what you want about Marvel having "too many jokes," but at least they know it's for the best to laugh at themselves and embrace the weirdness. It's something similar with...you know what. Because while the series tells a serious and realistic story about superheroes, it's still a story about superheroes. So it tells some jokes and some pretty funny ones at that. Because while it's essential to include some drama in a story such as the one in...you know what, it's just as important to never forget to have some fun.

“Earth is not yours to conquer.”: Such a great line that gains an even greater meaning once we fully know who Omni-Man is. The main creditor for how effective it is goes to J.K. Simmons for making the line sound explicit yet implicit at the same time.

Allen the Alien: ...It is an absolute crime that this character only has about six minutes of screentime. Allen is such a bro, partially because of Seth Rogan's performance, that I would honestly be upset if he doesn't show up more often in later seasons. Seriously, bring him back for more.

The Mauler Twins: Thankfully, these characters get as much attention as they deserve. The banter between the Mauler Twins is always entertaining, often being the comedic highlights at times. On top of being funny, they also work as efficient villains who can come across as threatening at times.

But what I love most of all about these two is the explanation behind the cloning process. The reasoning of why neither character remembers which one is the cone is a brilliant idea that I'm surprised no one else did in the past (to my knowledge). It also provides some excellent fruit for thought in wondering if it really is better to live your life not knowing if you're a clone or not. The whole thing is great to watch, and it makes me really glad for their inclusion...too bad they had to be forced into a story that makes a character look like a reckless superhero and an inconsiderate jackass to his friend. Seriously, what was up with that?

“That Actually Hurt”: This just might be my favorite episode of the first season. Machine Head is both equally hilarious and devious, Titan might just be my favorite character due to how intriguing his allegiances and motivations are, that final fight was the perfect amount of brutal, and we get the biggest hint of the man Omni-Man really is. Having him simply watching Mark instead of flying in to help him actually shocked me the first time seeing it. It's not until we learn what a Viltrumite really is that it becomes clear as to why. He doesn't care about saving his son but instead seeing Mark reach the same potential Omni-Man did during that smash fest the planet went through to reach perfection. And something tells me he felt more disappointment than sadness after seeing his son get nearly killed by Tony the Tiger (I know he has an actual name...but this is funnier to me). It's such a solid moment with great implications that just so happens to exist in an even greater episode.

Eve deciding to just help people for the heck of it: I actually love this idea more for the potential it has rather than what actually happens so far. Because the main reason why heroes don't fly around and solve every little minute problem people have is that they need to learn how to act without help. If you suddenly make food appear out of thin air or stopping forest fires, you're doing good, but there's also potential harm that comes from it. I think back to that episode of The Powerpuff Girls, where the townspeople are so idiotic and complacent with having their heroes solve every problem that they really can't think or act for themselves. A similar thing can happen with Eve if she's not careful. Even worse, if she keeps trying to end famine for farmers, because she might get into a Supergirl situation with people building a cult around her. And, you know, that's not going to be fun.

But again, that's just the potential that this presents. We--Or the people who haven't read the comics--don't know if Eve will actually face this issue. Regardless, we still get some solid moments that proves just how much Eve is a true hero in this series as she has no other motive to help people other than she just wants to. And I actually think that's pretty cool.

The Immortal’s rematch: I gotta hand it to the guy. Not a second after being brought back to life, and The Immortal's already flying off to get revenge on the bastard who killed his closest friends in the world. Or, globe, I guess.

I respect that, to be honest.

(As a bonus, The Immortal causing Omni-Man's eyes to become bloodshot adds to how evil he'll be in the last episode)

Mark trying to snap his dad out of mind-control: Oh, I felt that.

I'm pretty sure we all felt that.

Ow...Big ow.

The Train Scene: ...This is the most horrific thing I have seen in entertainment. Seriously, while Omni-Man annihilating the Guardians left me speechless, this is another level. Because him using Mark's body to kill a train full of people ramming into them, leaving Mark all the more helpless to stop it, makes a scene that is so...so hard for me to describe how effectively f**ked up it is. It's one of those moments where just by seeing it, you know why it's awful in all the right ways. And I will never forget the look of shock and horror on my face when it reflected onto my laptop's screen after the scene briefly cut to black soon after the carnage. Because if that doesn't explain how unmerciful this moment is, I don't know what will.

Saving Mark after the fight: I really love this because as it flashes between still images of people carrying Mark away after his brutal fight with Omni-Man, it really feels like you're reading a comic from panel to panel. It’s pretty neat. I won’t lie.

WHAT I DISLIKE

The Animation isn’t that great: Now, in terms of action, the animation is fantastic. You feel the impact of each attack, there are some creative uses of powers, and the gore is better implemented because it's all animated. As for everything else...yeah, it kinda sucks. Movements are a little stiff at times, the CGI backgrounds could use a bit more polish, and don't get me started on the CGI crowds of people. I understand the shortcuts that need to be taken to make everything else more effective, but man, this series needed a little more time in the oven before being shown to everyone. It's never too bad, but it can be pretty distracting at times.

Amber: F**k Amber. Just f**k her. Everything people tell you that is wrong with her is one-hundred percent on point. She is easily one of the worst love interests, and to me, it has everything to do with the fact that she knows Mark is--

...That she knows Mark is--

...

...

...ThatsheknowsMarkisInvinci--

--BECAUSE IT INVALIDATES ANY POINT SHE HAS, GOSH DANGIT! I don't give a single S**T if she's upset that he's late all the time! If Amber was always unaware of it, then I would understand. But having her know means that she thinks her issues are more important than Mark, oh, I don't know, SAVING THE PLANET! I mean, the girl helps feed the homeless! You would think she would understand.

But fine. Maybe Amber's just upset that Mark's lying to her. Sure. That's understandable...BUT WHAT THE F**K IS UP WITH HER BLOWING UP IN HIS FACE FOR NOT HELPING ANYBODY AT THE COLLEGE WHEN SHE KNOWS HE'S HELPING EVERYBODY!? Even if it's her giving Mark one last chance to tell her the truth (which is a mile of a stretch, and you know it), did she really expect him to reveal his secret with tons of people watching? That is a crazy expectation that no one should live up to!

Amber is quite possibly the worst thing about this show. She was fine at first, and her chemistry with Mark was on point, but MAN, did she get worse later on.

And if I see one mother f**ker calling me a racist because I don't like this character who just so happens to be black...I'm going to be upset, not gonna lie. Because that is a cheap shot to dismiss any criticism, especially since her race has NOTHING to do with why people hate her...Or, at least, most people.

Edit (5/27/2021): Disregard the above. The long and short is that I don’t like Amber. She just doesn’t sit right with me for the reasons that her anger towards Mark just never felt entertaining to me in comparision to everything else. But saying her thoughts and arguements are invalid is not cool, and I’m sorry to both any readers who are black or especially female who would be upset by this.

Rex-splode: I understand the point behind Rex. He's a character who we're supposed to hate, so it becomes so much more satisfying seeing others s**t on him. But those characters are hard to get right if you’re not careful. Make them too irritating, then any suffering they go through will seem too little. Make them not annoying enough, and their punishments can be too harsh. Rex fits into the "too irritating" category. It's satisfying to see Monster Girl wreck his s**t after he started commenting how ineffective she might be, but with what he pulled with Dupli-Kate, I feel as though he might deserve worse. Although I will admit Rex gets slightly better in later episodes, showing at least a smidgen of character development. But I don't think it's enough to make his a**holeness worth it. Still, I hope he at least becomes above decent in the next few seasons, which is way more than what I can say for Amber.

(Seriously, writers, if she just disappears without an ounce of an explanation in the season premiere, I won't question it. You have my word.)

Edit: I no longer agree with what I crossed out, but I won’t delete it either. I want people to know the mistake I made so I can prove that I changed in the future.

Robot cloning himself to be with Monster Girl: ...Nope! 

Nope!

Changed my mind.

I am NOT touching that.

I will touch a lot of things, but I will not touch--That came out wrong.

Please forget you read anything.

Thank you, and goodnight.

Let’s move on

Transitioning to the title card: Here it is! The nitpickiest of all nitpicks! But, seeing how it happens in every episode, meaning that the writers have no choice but to commit to it, means it's one of those things that viewers are forced to get used to. And boy, is the transition to the title card hard to get used to! Oh, you thought it was annoying how it kept happening in this review? Well...fair enough. But trust me when I say it's much more aggravating in the show.

The funny thing is, I had no problem the first time it happened. It was a cute way to introduce the character as well as the title of the series. But having that be the basis for transitioning to the title card every time was a gimmick that got old real quick. Especially since every time that a character says the word--

--it always feels forced. What's even more annoying is that sometimes it interrupts characters as they're saying invin--

LIKE! F**KING! THAT! Because interrupting someone before they say something is one thing, but doing so as they're saying it shows a sense of bad timing. Not even that, because this is something that I feel like could have been the easiest to change in the series by having someone go, "Hey, maybe we should edit out this single second."

It's laziness that doesn't happen often, but it still grinds my gears a bit. Plus, is there really no other smoother transition the writers could come up with? Did they really believe this is the best way to do it?

Think, writers! THINK!

It's fine to have a gimmick, but this is one that really shouldn't have any follow-through on.

-------------

That's about all the issues I have with the show. It's far from perfect, but still, an A- is pretty impressive work. The stuff that this series does right not only outnumbers the mistakes but also heavily outweighs them. Besides, no show in the history of creativity has ever been perfect in its first season. There are always dents that need to get buffed out and improve upon for the subsequent seasons to come. Only then can a series truly be Invincible from all criticism.

...

...Oh, sure. 

SURE!

NOW it lets me say it!

GOSH, DANGIT, I HATE THAT TITLE CARD!

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep11

Studio Passione: “We paid good money to animate Rika’s festival dance, and by god you’re gonna ENJOY IT!”

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I know I talked about my theories for how this episode would be paced out last week, but I’m genuinely amazed that they managed to stretch the rest of this loop out into the entire episode, lol. It’s almost impressive how they managed to pad out half an episode or less worth of content into a full episode.

It kinda doesn’t even give me that much to talk about, yet again, which is kinda awkward, but either way this basically proves that I was totally right about my interpretation of the whole Keiichi scene, so I feel kinda pleased about that.

Long story short, the scene we saw in Gou was just an illusion depicting the story that Satoko told Ooishi about what happened, after she set the crime scene up to make it fit her version of events. I guess there’s still a non-zero chance that there’s some extra layer of mystery going on there, but at this point I really doubt it. I think that’s basically all that was going on.

I think this is going to be one of the more polarizing parts of Sotsu for people, depending on how they feel about the way that this is tying itself in to Umineko. This is the sort of storytelling device that’s basically never been used before in Higurashi, but is integral to how Umineko is set up, so it’s one of those times where it becomes undeniable that this is meant to bridge the two series, and is drawing inspiration and ideas from both of them, instead of this just staying within the boundaries of Higurashi alone.

With how this arc feels like a point of no return in the transition between the two stories, I really like how the first thing Satoko does when she accepts that she’s a witch is to start bringing Umineko-style narrative trickery into Higurashi for the first time. I think it’s a neat way to show how she’s starting to ascend beyond the game-board itself and is operating with a different set of rules. Obviously people aren’t gonna like that if they don’t like the idea of this being tied to Umineko, but I think that ship has long since sailed at this point, lol.

And honestly, even without relying on knowledge from Umineko, I think they did a fine job of having that scene in Gou seem weird and suspicious right from the get-go. For one thing, we were also told in Gou that Keiichi had no memory of what happened, and everyone else in that scene was dead, so it’s not that hard to start guessing that we were shown a false version of events.

I think I said this last week, but the confirmation that this is literally just Umineko Logic 101 really makes me wonder if Ryukishi is doing it this way in part to ‘prepare’ people for what to expect from Umineko. There’s still the possibility that we’ll get a full on remake after this, but even if it’s as simple as this basically ending on the note of ‘go back and read the Umineko VN’, he might still be trying to give people an idea of what to expect from it so they don’t get turned off by ep2.

This is getting more into theory territory, but if we keep going down this rabbit hole of transitioning into Umineko logic and narrative structure, I wonder if the entirety of Gou/Sotsu is going to end up being contextualized as a set of forgeries, in the same way as it worked in Umineko. Something along the lines of Satoko ‘seeing Rika’s loops’ being a metaphor for her being given manuscripts to read by Featherine based on Rika’s account of events, and then the Gou/Sotsu loops being forgeries made in collaboration between Featherine and Satoko, and presented to Rika as a new mystery to read and solve. At the very least, this could arguably justify stuff like how everything seems to go in the way Satoko wants, regardless of how reckless she gets.

I’m not 100% confident in that, but it’d definitely continue the trend of this being a blend of Higurashi and Umineko’s writing styles. I think it’d also provide a more comprehensive non-magical interpretation for what’s going on than just ‘Satoko fell asleep in the shrine and just dreamed all of this’, or whatever.

I also don’t really think that’d contradict the whole idea of Satoko being Lambda, though. Looking at it through this whole lens, it’d be sorta like how Ange goes through her own whole character arc in the process of reading Featherine’s forgeries, and basically ends up becoming a witch by the end of it. So the whole narrative arc of Satoko venting out her anger at Rika by trapping her in a new set of loops and slowly becoming a witch would still be intact, and still for all intents and purposes lead to her becoming Lambda.

There’s also various ways this could be tied into the whole deal with Lambda being Takano’s benefactor in Higurashi. Considering how Lambda never actually plays a part in Higurashi itself and is never mentioned by Takano, it could be as simple as ‘Satoko reads Featherine’s manuscript version of Higurashi and ends up relating a lot to Takano and wants her to succeed’, which gets morphed into her granting Takano her blessing of certainty. Either way I think that the whole timeline of events is weird and nebulous and isn’t really intended to make logical sense.

Anyway, probably the most surprising part of the episode was the reveal at the very end that the next arc won’t be called something like Nekoakashi, but instead it’ll be Kagurashi. I’m not really sure how much to read into that, though. It could just be as simple as them speeding through the Nekodamashi stuff, and most of Kagurashi will be the aftermath of that, so they gave it a unique name. Or it could be a completely new arc that does something totally different. Lots of people have suggested the idea of it being an arc all about Eua and Hanyuu and their backstory, which would be one way of doing something entirely different to a Nekodamashi answer arc, but who knows. I don’t think the final scene of this episode necessarily proves that the next arc will be about those two, though.

But on the topic of those two, at this point I think it’s probably safe to say that Hanyuu is effectively meant to be Eua’s piece in this game, and that they probably have a similar relationship to Bern and Erika, going by how much Eua seems to look down on Hanyuu. Although it’s not exactly clear if this Hanyuu is the same person as the Hanyuu from the VN, or if she’s like a clone of her that Eua created after Hanyuu disappeared or whatever after Matsuribayashi. 

Either way, I’m not entirely sure how they’d even approach an arc focused on those two. It’s not like Umineko really explained Featherine’s backstory, unless Sotsu is going to straight up introduce Ikuko/Tohya, which I guess could tie into my above theory about this being a forgery. On the other hand, I guess they could maybe do something like the Hanyuu backstory arc from the Higurashi console ports, but that wouldn’t really feel relevant to Sotsu’s story at this point.

Really the big question is just if the entire story will wrap up in four more episodes, or if there’ll be some sort of third season or whatever to wrap things up. Considering that this entire episode was just about wrapping up this loop, and we haven’t even gotten into anything from Nekodamashi, it at least feels like we’re running out of ways they could pull off an ending with just the next arc. But it’s not impossible. The simplest way to handle it would be to spend one episode at most on skimming through the next set of loops so we can get back to the cliffhanger from Gou, and then continuing from there, but if my theory about the overarching structure of the story is correct, then there might not even be that much to show after the cliffhanger, and the continuation of it might just happen in the meta world [or the ‘real world’], not the world of that loop itself. It’s also possible that, if this does lead into some kind of Umineko remake, the ending won’t even be particularly conclusive, and will just be continued in that series instead.

Even with how the pacing has gone thus far, I’m not really sure how confident I am in the idea that we might get another entire season out of this. Maybe we might get another nine episodes to fill Sotsu out to 24 episodes total, but I don’t know if we really need another full cour or two after the next arc. At the very least it’d feel kinda agonizing to have to wait even longer for ANOTHER full season to see how things actually end, lol.

There’s still the whole question mark of how the OP and the key visual for Sotsu depict Rika and Satoko as teenagers, and the other club members in different outfits to the ones from Satokowashi, but who even knows how that all might play into the story at this point. I still think we might get a Saikoroshi-style arc where Satoko loses her game and is banished to a world where Rika doesn’t exist and her relationship with the club members is totally different, but I’m not even sure what the whole point of that kinda development might be, or how long it’d take to get through.

At this point I think the best thing to do would be to just go all in with the Umineko stuff and have this end with the birth of Bern and Lambda and their whole love-hate relationship of mutual torture, even if it means leaving things kind of inconclusive, and without Satoko getting much punishment for her crimes. I think it’d be much worse if they just drag this out for even longer only to end it on the note of this whole conflict being neatly resolved and everything looping back to square one like nothing ever happened.

I guess we’ll just have to see how the next few episodes go, lol.

[grigori77]

2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10.  WOLFWALKERS – eleven years ago, Irish director Tomm Moore exploded onto the animated cinema scene with The Secret of Kells, a spellbinding feature debut which captivated audiences the world over and even garnered an Oscar nomination.  Admittedly I didn’t actually even know about it until I discovered his work through his astonishing follow-up, Song of the Sea (another Academy Award nominee), in 2015, so when I finally caught it I was already a fan of Moore’s work.  It’s been a similarly long wait for his third feature, but he’s genuinely pulled off a hat-trick, delivering a third flawless film in a row which OF COURSE means that his latest feature is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my top animated feature of 2020.  I could even be tempted to say it’s his best work to date … this is an ASTONISHING film, a work of such breath-taking, spell-binding beauty that I spent its entire hour and three-quarters glued to the screen, simple mesmerised by the wonder and majesty of this latest iteration of the characteristically stylised “Cartoon Saloon” look.  It’s also liberally steeped in Moore’s trademark Celtic vibe and atmosphere, once again delving deep into his homeland’s rich and evocative cultural history and mythology while also bringing us something far more original and personal – this time the titular supernatural beings are magical near-human beings whose own subconscious can assume the form of very real wolves.  Set in a particularly dark time in Irish history – namely 1650, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector – the story follows Robyn (Honor Kneafsey, probably best known for the Christmas Prince films), the impetuous and spirited young daughter of English hunter Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), brought in by the Protectorate to rid the city of Kilkenny of the wolves plaguing the area.  One day fate intervenes and Robyn meets Mebh Og MacTire (The Girl at the End of the Garden‘s Eve Whittaker), a wild girl living in the woods, whose accidental bite gives her strange dreams in which she becomes a wolf – turns out Mebh is a wolfwalker, and now so is Robyn … every aspect of this film is an utter triumph for Moore and co, who have crafted a work of living, breathing cinematic art that’s easily the equal to (if not even better than) the best that Disney, Dreamworks or any of the other animation studios could create.  Then there’s the excellent voice cast – Bean brings fatherly warmth and compassion to the role that belies his character’s intimidating size, while Kneafsey and Whittaker make for a sweet and sassy pair as they bond in spite of powerful cultural differences, and the masterful Simon McBurney (Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) brings cool, understated menace to the role of Cromwell himself.  This is a film with plenty of emotional heft to go with its marvels, and once again displays the welcome dark side which added particular spice to Moore’s previous films, but ultimately this is still a gentle and heartfelt work of wonder that makes for equally suitable viewing for children as for those who are still kids at heart – ultimately, then, this is another triumph for one of the most singularly original filmmakers working in animation today, and if Wolfwalkers doesn’t make it third time lucky come Oscars-time then there’s no justice in the world …

9.  WONDER WOMAN 1984 – probably the biggest change for 2020 compared to pretty much all of the past decade is how different the fortunes of superhero cinema turned out to be.  A year earlier the Marvel Cinematic Universe had dominated all, but the DC Extended Universe still got a good hit in with big surprise hit Shazam!  Fast-forward to now and things are VERY different – DC suddenly came out in the lead, but only because Marvel’s intended heavy-hitters (two MCU movies, the first Venom sequel and potential hot-shit new franchise starter Morbius: the Living Vampire) found themselves continuously pushed back thanks to (back then) unforeseen circumstances which continue to shit all over our theatre-going slate for the immediate future.  In the end DC’s only SERIOUS competition turned out to be NETFLIX … never mind, at least we got ONE big established superhero blockbuster into the cinemas before the end of the year that the whole family could enjoy, and who better to headline it than DC’s “newest” big screen megastar, Diana Prince? Back in 2017 Monster’s Ball director Patty Jenkins’ monumental DCEU standalone spectacularly realigned the trajectory of a cinematic franchise that was visibly flagging, redesigning the template for the series’ future which has since led to some (mostly) consistently impressive subsequent offerings.  Needless to say it was a damn tough act to follow, but Jenkins and co-writers Geoff Johns (Arrow and The Flash) and David Callaham (The Expendables, Zombieland: Double Tap, future MCU entry Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings) have risen to the challenge in fine style, delivering something which pretty much equals that spectacular franchise debut … as has Gal Gadot, who’s now OFFICIALLY made the role her own thanks to yet another showstopping and definitive performance as the unstoppable Amazonian goddess living amongst us.  She’s older and wiser than in the first film, but still hasn’t lost that forthright honesty and wonderfully pure heart we’ve come to love ever since her introduction in Zack Snyder’s troublesome but ultimately underrated Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (yes, that’s right, I said it!), and Gadot’s clear, overwhelming commitment to the role continues to pay off magnificently as she once again proves that Diana is THE VERY BEST superhero in the DCEU cinematic pantheon.  Although it takes place several decades after its predecessor, WW84 is, obviously, still very much a period piece, Jenkins and co this time perfectly capturing the sheer opulent and over-the-top tastelessness of the 1980s in all its big-haired, bad-suited, oversized shoulder-padded glory while telling a story that encapsulates the greedy excessiveness of the Reagan era, perfectly embodied in the film’s nominal villain, Max Lord (The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal), a wishy-washy wannabe oil tycoon conman who chances upon a supercharged wish-rock and unleashes a devastating supernatural “monkey’s paw” upon the world. To say any more would give away a whole raft of spectacular twists and turns that deserve to be enjoyed good and cold, although they did spoil one major surprise in the trailer when they teased the return of Diana’s first love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) … needless to say this is another big blockbuster bursting with big characters, big action and BIG IDEAS, just what we’ve come to expect after Wonder Woman’s first triumphant big screen adventure.  Interestingly, the film starts out feeling like it’s going to be a bubbly, light, frothy affair – after a particularly stunning all-action opening flashback to Diana’s childhood on Themyscira, the film proper kicks off with a bright and breezy atmosphere that feels a bit like the kind of Saturday morning cartoon action the consistently impressive set-pieces take such unfettered joy in parodying, but as the stakes are raised the tone grows darker and more emotionally potent, the storm clouds gathering for a spectacularly epic climax that, for once, doesn’t feel too overblown or weighed down by its visual effects, while the intelligent script has unfathomable hidden depths to it, making us think far more than these kinds of blockbusters usually do.  It’s really great to see Chris Pine return since he was one of the best things about the first movie, and his lovably childlike wide-eyed wonder at this brave new world perfectly echoes Diana’s own last time round; Kristen Wiig, meanwhile, is pretty phenomenal throughout as Dr Barbara Minerva, the initially geeky and timid nerd who discovers an impressive inner strength but ultimately turns into a superpowered apex predator as she becomes one of Wonder Woman’s most infamous foes, the Cheetah; Pascal, of course, is clearly having the time of his life hamming it up to the hilt as Lord, playing gloriously against his effortlessly cool, charismatic action hero image to deliver a compellingly troubling examination of the monstrous corrupting influence of absolute power.  Once again, though, the film truly belongs to Gadot – she looks amazing, acts her socks off magnificently, and totally rules the movie.  After this, a second sequel is a no-brainer, because Wonder Woman remains the one DC superhero who’s truly capable of bearing the weight of this particular cinematic franchise on her powerful shoulders – needless to say, it’s already been greenlit, and with both Jenkins and Gadot onboard, I’m happy to sign up for more too …

8.  LOVE & MONSTERS – with the cinemas continuing their frustrating habit of opening for a little while and then closing while the pandemic ebbed and flowed in the months after the summer season, it was starting to look like there might not have been ANY big budget blockbusters to enjoy before year’s end as heavyweights like Black Widow, No Time To Die and Dune pulled back to potentially more certain release slots into 2021 (with only WW84 remaining stubbornly in place for Christmas).  Then Paramount decided to throw us a bone, opting to release this post-apocalyptic horror comedy on-demand in October instead, thus giving me the perfect little present to tie me over during the darkening days of autumn. The end result was a stone-cold gem that came out of nowhere to completely blow critics away, a spectacular sleeper hit that ultimately proved one of the year’s biggest and most brilliant surprises.  Director Michael Matthews may only have had South African indie thriller Five Fingers for Marseilles under his belt prior to this, but he proves he’s definitely a solid talent to watch in the future, crafting a fun and effective thrill-ride that, like all the best horror comedies, is consistently as funny as it is scary, sharing much of the same DNA as this particular mash-up genre’s classics like Tremors and Zombieland and standing up impressively well to such comparisons.  The story, penned by rising star Brian Duffield (who has TWO other entries on this list, Underwater and Spontaneous) and Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Dora & the Lost City of Gold), is also pretty ingenious and surprisingly original – a meteorite strike has unleashed weird mutagenic pathogens that warp various creepy crawly critters into gigantic monstrosities that have slaughter most of the world’s human population, leaving only a beleaguered, dwindling few to eke out a precarious living in underground colonies. Living in one such makeshift community is Joel Dawson (The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien), a smart and likeable geek who really isn’t very adventurous, is extremely awkward and uncoordinated, and has a problem with freezing if threatened … which makes it all the more inexplicable when he decides, entirely against the advice of everyone he knows, to venture onto the surface so he can make the incredibly dangerous week-long trek to the neighbouring colony where his girlfriend Aimee (Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick) has ended up.  Joel is, without a doubt, the best role that O’Brien has EVER had, a total dork who’s completely unsuited to this kind of adventure and, in the real world, sure to be eaten alive in the first five minutes, but he’s also such a fantastically believable, fallible everyman that every one of us desperate, pathetic omega-males and females can instantly put ourselves in his place, making it elementarily easy to root for him.  He’s also hilariously funny, his winningly self-deprecating sass and pitch perfect talent for physical comedy making it all the more rewarding watching each gloriously anarchic life-and-death encounter mould him into the year’s most unlikely action hero.  Henwick, meanwhile, once again impresses in a well-written role where she’s able to make a big impression despite her decidedly short screen time, as do the legendary Michael Rooker and brilliant newcomer Ariana Greenblatt as Clyde and Minnow, the adorably jaded, seen-it-all-before pair of “professional survivors” Joel meets en-route, who teach him to survive on the surface.  The action is fast, frenetic and potently visceral, the impressively realistic digital creature effects bringing a motley crew of bloodthirsty beasties to suitably blood-curdling life for the film’s consistently terrifying set-pieces, while the world-building is intricately thought-out and skilfully executed.  Altogether, this was an absolute joy from start to finish, and a film I enthusiastically endorsed to everyone I knew was looking for something fun to enjoy during the frustrating lockdown nights-in.  One of the cinematic year’s best kept secrets then, and a compelling sign of things to come for its up-and-coming director.

7.  PARASITE – I’ve been a fan of master Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ever since I stumbled across his deeply weird but also thoroughly brilliant breakthrough feature The Host, and it’s a love that’s deepened since thanks to truly magnificent sci-fi actioner Snowpiercer, so I was looking forward to his latest feature as much as any movie geek, but even I wasn’t prepared for just what a runaway juggernaut of a hit this one turned out to be, from the insane box office to all that award-season glory (especially that undeniable clean-sweep at the Oscars). I’ll just come out and say it, this film deserves it all.  It’s EASILY Bong’s best film to date (which is really saying something), a masterful social satire and jet black comedy that raises some genuinely intriguing questions before delivering deeply troubling answers.  Straddling the ever-widening gulf between a disaffected idle rich upper class and impoverished, struggling lower class in modern-day Seoul, it tells the story of the Kim family – father Ki-taek (Bong’s good luck charm, Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Train to Busan’s Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (The Silenced’s Park So-dam) – a poor family living in a run-down basement apartment who live hand-to-mouth in minimum wage jobs and can barely rub two pennies together, until they’re presented with an intriguing opportunity.  Through happy chance, Ki-woon is hired as an English tutor for Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of a wealthy family, which offers him the chance to recommend Ki-jung as an art tutor to the Parks’ troubled young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Soon the rest of the Kims are getting in on the act, the kids contriving opportunities for their father to replace Mr Park’s chauffeur and their mother to oust the family’s long-serving housekeeper, Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), and before long their situation has improved dramatically.  But as they two families become more deeply entwined, cracks begin to show in their supposed blissful harmony as the natural prejudices of their respective classes start to take hold, and as events spiral out of control a terrible confrontation looms on the horizon.  This is social commentary at its most scathing, Bong drawing on personal experiences from his youth to inform the razor-sharp script (co-written by his production assistant Han Jin-won), while he weaves a palpable atmosphere of knife-edged tension throughout to add spice to the perfectly observed dark humour of the situation, all the while throwing intriguing twists and turns at us before suddenly dropping such a massive jaw-dropper of a gear-change that the film completely turns on its head to stunning effect.  The cast are all thoroughly astounding, Song once again dominating the film with a turn at once sloppy and dishevelled but also poignant and heartfelt, while there are particularly noteworthy turns from Lee Sun-kyun as the Parks’ self-absorbed patriarch Dong-ik and Choi Yeo-jeong (The Concubine) as his flighty, easily-led wife Choi Yeon-gyo, as well as a fantastically weird appearance in the latter half from Park Myung-hoon.  This is heady stuff, dangerously seductive even as it becomes increasingly uncomfortable viewing, so that even as the screws tighten and everything goes to hell it’s simply impossible to look away.  Bong Joon-ho really has surpassed himself this time, delivering an existential mind-scrambler that lingers long after the credits have rolled and might even have you questioning your place in society once you’ve thought about it some. It deserves every single award and every ounce of praise it’s been lavished with, and looks set to go down as one of the true cinematic greats of this new decade.  Trust me, if this was a purely critical best-of list it’d be RIGHT AT THE TOP …

6.  THE OLD GUARD – Netflix’ undisputable TOP OFFERING of the summer came damn close to bagging the whole season, and I can’t help thinking that even if some of the stiffer competition had still been present it may well have still finished this high. Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees) directs comics legend Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his own popular series with uncanny skill and laser-focused visual flair considering there’s nothing on her previous CV to suggest she’d be THIS good at mounting a stomping great ultraviolent action thriller, ushering in a thoroughly engrossing tale of four ancient, invulnerable immortal warriors – Andy AKA Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), Booker AKA Sebastian de Livre (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe AKA Yusuf Al-Kaysani (Wolf’s Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky AKA Niccolo di Ginova (Trust’s Luca Marinelli) – who’ve been around forever, hiring out their services as mercenaries for righteous causes while jealously guarding their identities for fear of horrific experimentation and exploitation should their true natures ever be discovered.  Their anonymity is threatened, however, when they’re uncovered by former CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s working for the decidedly dodgy pharmaceutical conglomerate run by sociopathic billionaire Steven Merrick (Harry Melling, formerly Dudley in the Harry Potter movies), who want to capture these immortals so they can patent whatever it is that makes them keep on ticking … just as a fifth immortal, US Marine Nile Freeman (If Beale Street Could Talk’s KiKi Layne), awakens after being “killed” on deployment in Afghanistan.  The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ejiofor, smart and driven but ultimately principled and deeply conflicted about what he’s doing, even if he does have the best of intentions, and Melling, the kind of loathsome, reptilian scumbag you just love to hate, but the film REALLY DOES belong to the Old Guard themselves – Schoenaerts is a master brooder, spot-on casting as the group’s relative newcomer, only immortal since the Napoleonic Wars but clearly one seriously old soul who’s already VERY tired of the lifestyle, while Joe and Nicky (who met on opposing sides of the Crusades) are simply ADORABLE, an unapologetically matter-of-fact gay couple who are sweet, sassy and incredibly kind, the absolute emotional heart of the film; it’s the ladies, however, that are most memorable here.  Layne is exceptional, investing Nile with a steely intensity that puts her in good stead as her new existence threatens to overwhelm her and MORE THAN qualified to bust heads alongside her elders … but it’s ancient Greek warrior Andy who steals the film, Theron building on the astounding work she did in Atomic Blonde to prove, once and for all, that there’s no woman on Earth who looks better kicking arse than her (as Booker puts it, “that woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”); in her hands, Andy truly is a goddess of death, tough as tungsten alloy and unflappable even in the face of hell itself, but underneath it all she hides a heart as big as any of her friends’.  They’re an impossibly lovable bunch and you feel you could follow them on another TEN adventures like this one, which is just as well, because Prince-Blythewood and Rucka certainly put them through their paces here – the drama is high (but frequently laced with a gentle, knowing sense of humour, particularly whenever Joe and Nicky are onscreen), as are the stakes, and the frequent action sequences are top-notch, executed with rare skill and bone-crunching zest, but also ALWAYS in service to the story.  Altogether this is an astounding film, a genuine victory for its makers and, it seems, for Netflix themselves – it’s become one of the platform’s biggest hits to date, earning well-deserved critical acclaim and great respect and genuine geek love from the fanbase at large.  After this, a sequel is not only inevitable, it’s ESSENTIAL …

5.  MANK – it’s always nice when David Fincher, one of my TOP FIVE ALL TIME FAVOURITE DIRECTORS, drops a new movie, because it can be GUARANTEED to place good and high in my rundown for that year.  The man is a frickin’ GENIUS, a true master of the craft, genuinely one of the auteur’s auteurs.  I’ve NEVER seen him deliver a bad film – even a misfiring Fincher (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Alien 3) is still capable of creating GREAT CINEMA.  How? Why?  It’s because he genuinely LOVES the art form, it’s been his obsession all his life, and he’s spent every day of it becoming the best possible filmmaker he can be.  Who better to tell the story of the creation of one of the ULTIMATE cinematic masterpieces, then?  Benjamin Ross’ acclaimed biopic RKO 281 covered similar ground, presenting a compelling look into the making Citizen Kane, the timeless masterpiece of Hollywood’s ULTIMATE auteur, Orson Welles, but Fincher’s film is more interested in the original inspiration for the story, how it was written and, most importantly, the man who wrote it – Herman J. Mankiewicz, known to his friends as Mank. One of my favourite actors of all time, Gary Oldman, delivers yet another of his career best performances in the lead role, once a man of vision and incredible storytelling skill whose talents have largely been squandered through professional difficulties and personal vices, a burned out one-time great fallen on hard times whom Welles picks up out of the trash, dusts off and offers a chance to create something truly great again.  The only catch?  The subject of their film (albeit dressed up in the guise of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane) is to be real-life publisher, politico and tycoon William Randolph Hurst (Charles Dance), once Mank’s friend and patron before they had a very public and messy falling out which partly led to his current circumstances.  As he toils away in seclusion on what is destined to become his true masterwork, flashbacks reveal to us the fascinating, moving and ultimately tragic tale of his rise and fall from grace in the movie business, set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.  Shooting a script that his own journalist and screenwriter father, Jack, crafted and then failed to bring to the screen himself before his death in 2003, Fincher has been working for almost a quarter century to make this film, and all that passion and drive is writ large on the screen – this is a glorious film ABOUT film, the art of it, the creation of it, and all the dirty little secrets of what the industry itself has always really been like, especially in that most glamorous and illusory of times.  The fact that Fincher shot in black and white and intentionally made it look like it was made in the early 1940s (the “golden age of the Silver Screen”, if you will) may seem like a gimmick, but instead it’s a very shrewd choice that expertly captures the gloss and moodiness of the age, almost looking like a contemporary companion piece to Kane itself, and it’s the perfect way to frame all the sharp-witted observation, subtly subversive character development and murky behind-the-scenes machinations that tell the story.  Oldman is in every way the star here, holding the screen with all the consummate skill and flair we’ve come to expect from him, but there’s no denying the uniformly excellent supporting cast are equal to the task here – Dance is at his regal, charismatic best as Hearst, while Amanda Seyfried is icily classy on the surface but mischievous and lovably grounded underneath as Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, who formed the basis for Kane’s most controversial character, Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moneyball) brings nuance and complexity to the role of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey (Banshee, Ozark) is understated but compelling as Mank’s younger screenwriter brother Joseph, and Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton exude class and long-suffering stubbornness as the two main women in Mank’s life (his secretary and platonic muse, Rita Alexander, and his wife, Sara), while The Musketeers’ Tom Burke’s periodic but potent appearances as Orson Welles help to drive the story in the “present”.  Another Netflix release which I was (thankfully) able to catch on the big screen during one of the brief lulls between British lockdowns, this was a decidedly meta cinematic experience that perfectly encapsulated not only what is truly required for the creation of a screen epic, but also the latest pinnacle in the career of one of the greatest filmmakers working in the business today, powerful, stirring, intriguing and surprising in equal measure. Certainly it’s one of the most important films ABOUT so far film this century, but is it as good as Citizen Kane?  Boy, that’s a tough one …

4.  ENOLA HOLMES – ultimately, my top film for the autumn/winter movie season was also the film which finally topped my Netflix Original features list, as well as beating all other streaming offerings for the entire year (which is saying something, as you should know by now).  Had things been different, this would have been one of Warner Bros’ BIGGEST releases for the year in the cinema, of that I have no doubt, a surprise sleeper hit which would have taken the world by storm – as it is it’s STILL become a sensation, albeit in a much more mid-pandemic, lockdown home-viewing kind of way.  Before you start crying oh God no, not another Sherlock Holmes adaptation, this is a very different beast from either the Guy Ritchie take or the modernized BBC show, instead side-lining the great literary sleuth in favour of a delicious new AU version, based on The Case of the Missing Marquess, the first novel in the Enola Holmes Mysteries literary series from American YA author Nancy Springer.  Positing that Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and his elder brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin) had an equally ingenious and precocious baby sister, the film introduces us to Enola (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), who’s been raised at home by their strong-willed mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) to be just as intelligent, well-read and intellectually skilled as her far more advantageously masculine elder siblings.  Then, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola awakens to find her mother has vanished, putting her in a pretty pickle since this leaves her a ward of Mycroft, a self-absorbed social peacock who finds her to be wilfully free-spirited and completely ill equipped to face the world, concluding that the only solution is sending her to boarding school where she’ll learn to become a proper lady.  Needless to say she’s horrified by the prospect, deciding to run away and search for her mother instead … this is about as perfect a family adventure film as you could wish for, following a vital, capable and compelling teen detective-in-the-making as she embarks on her very first investigation, as well as winding up tangled in a second to boot involving a young runaway noble, Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether (Medici’s Louis Partridge), and the film is a breezy, swift-paced and rewardingly entertaining romp that feels like a welcome breath of fresh air for a literary property which, beloved as it may be, has been adapted to death over the years.  Enola Holmes a brilliant young hero who’s perfectly crafted to carry the franchise forward in fresh new directions, and Brown brings her to life with effervescent charm, boisterous energy and mischievous irreverence that are entirely irresistible; Cavill and Claflin, meanwhile, are perfectly cast as the two very different brothers – this Sherlock is much less louche and world-weary than most previous versions, still razor sharp and intellectually restless but with a comfortable ease and a youthful spring in his step that perfectly suits the actor, while Mycroft is as superior and arrogant as ever, a preening arse we derive huge enjoyment watching Enola consistently get the best of; Bonham Carter doesn’t get a lot of screen-time but as we’d expect she does a lot with what she has to make the practical, eccentric and unapologetically modern Eudoria thoroughly memorable, while Partridge is carefree and likeable as the naïve but irresistible Tewkesbury, and there are strong supporting turns from Frances de la Tour as his stately grandmother, the Dowager, Susie Wokoma (Crazyhead, Truth Seekers) as Emily, a feisty suffragette who runs a jujitsu studio, Burn Gorman as dastardly thug-for-hire Linthorn, and Four Lions’ Adeel Akhtar as a particularly scuzzy Inspector Lestrade.  Seasoned TV director Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve) makes his feature debut with an impressive splash, unfolding the action at a brisk pace while keeping the narrative firmly focused on an intricate mystery plot that throws in plenty of ingenious twists and turns before a suitably atmospheric climax and pleasing denouement which nonetheless artfully sets up more to come in the future, while screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, The Scouting Book for Boys, Wonder) delivers strong character work and liberally peppers the dialogue with a veritable cavalcade of witty zingers.  Boisterous, compelling, amusing, affecting and exciting in equal measure, this is a spirited and appealing slice of cinematic escapism that flatters its viewers and never talks down to them, a perfect little period adventure for a cosy Sunday afternoon.  Obviously there’s plenty of potential for more, and with further books to adapt there’s more than enough material for a pile of sequels – Neflix would be barmy indeed to turn their nose up at this opportunity …

3.  1917 – it’s a rare thing for a film to leave me truly shell-shocked by its sheer awesomeness, for me to walk out of a cinema in a genuine daze, unable to talk or even really think about much of anything for a few hours because I’m simply marvelling at what I’ve just witnessed.  Needless to say, when I do find a film like that (Fight Club, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road) it usually earns a place very close to my heart indeed.  The latest tour-de-force from Sam Mendes is one of those films – an epic World War I thriller that plays out ENTIRELY in one shot, which doesn’t simply feel like a glorified gimmick or stunt but instead is a genuine MASTERPIECE of film, a mesmerising journey of emotion and imagination in a shockingly real environment that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from.  Sure, Mendes has impressed us before – his first film, American Beauty, is a GREAT movie, one of the most impressive feature debuts of the 2000s, while Skyfall is, in my opinion, quite simply THE BEST BOND FILM EVER MADE – but this is in a whole other league.  It’s an astounding achievement, made all the more impressive when you realise that there’s very little trickery at play here, no clever digital magic (just some augmentation here and there), it’s all real locations and sets, filmed in long, elaborately choreographed takes blended together with clever edits to make it as seamless as possible – it’s not the first film to try to do this (remember Birdman? Bushwick?), but I’ve never seen it done better, or with greater skill. But it’s not just a clever cinematic exercise, there’s a genuine story here, told with guts and urgency, and populated by real flesh and blood characters – the heart of the film is True History of the Kelly Gang’s George MacKay and Dean Chapman (probably best known as Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones) as Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake, the two young tommies sent out across enemy territory on a desperate mission to stop a British regiment from rushing headlong into a German trap (Tom himself has a personal stake in this because his brother is an officer in the attack).  They’re a likeable pair, very human and relatable throughout, brave and true but never so overtly heroic that they stretch credibility, so when tragedy strikes along the way it’s particularly devastating; both deliver exceptional performances that effortlessly carry us through the film, and they’re given sterling support from a selection of top-drawer British talent, from Sherlock stars Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch to Mark Strong and Colin Firth, each delivering magnificently in small but potent cameos.  That said, the cinematography and art department are the BIGGEST stars here, masterful veteran DOP Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner 2049 and pretty much the Coen Brothers’ entire back catalogue among MANY others) making every frame sing with beauty, horror, tension or tragedy as the need arises, and the environments are SO REAL it feels less like production design than that someone simply sent the cast and crew back in time to film in the real Northern France circa 1917 – from a nightmarish trek across No Man’s Land to a desperate chase through a ruined French village lit only by dancing flare-light in the darkness before dawn, every scene is utterly immersive and simply STUNNING.  I don’t think it’s possible for Mendes to make a film better than this, but I sure hope he gives it a go all the same.  Either way, this was the most incredible, exhausting, truly AWESOME experience I had at the cinema all year – it’s a film that DESERVES to be seen on the big screen, and I feel truly sorry for those who missed the chance …

2.  BIRDS OF PREY & THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN – the only reason 1917 isn’t at number two is because Warner Bros.’ cinematic DC Extended Universe project FINALLY got round to bringing my favourite DC Comics title to the big screen.  It was been the biggest pleasure of my cinematic year getting to see my top DC superheroines brought to life on the big screen, and it was done in high style, in my opinion THE BEST of the DCEU films to date (yup, I loved it EVEN MORE than the Wonder Woman movies).  It was also great seeing Harley Quinn return after her show-stealing turn in David Ayer’s clunky but ultimately still hugely enjoyable Suicide Squad, better still that they got her SPOT ON this time – this is the Harley I’ve always loved in the comics, unpredictable, irreverent and entirely without regard for what anyone else thinks of her, as well as one talented psychiatrist.  Margot Robbie once more excels in the role she was basically BORN to play, clearly relishing the chance to finally do Harley TRUE justice, and she’s a total riot from start to finish, infectiously lovable no matter what crazy, sometimes downright REPRIHENSIBLE antics she gets up to.  Needless to say she’s the nominal star here, her latest ill-advised adventure driving the story – finally done with the Joker and itching to make her emancipation official, Harley publicly announces their breakup by blowing up Ace Chemicals (their love spot, basically), inadvertently painting a target on her back in the process since she’s no longer under the assumed protection of Gotham’s feared Clown Prince of Crime – but that doesn’t mean she eclipses the other main players the movie’s REALLY supposed to be about.  Each member of the Birds of Prey is beautifully written and brought to vivid, arse-kicking life by what had to be 2020’s most exciting cast – Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, is the perfect character for Mary Elizabeth Winstead to finally pay off on that action hero potential she showed in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, but this is a MUCH more enjoyable role outside of the fight choreography because while Helena may be a world-class dark avenger, socially she’s a total dork, which just makes her thoroughly adorable; Rosie Perez is similarly perfect casting as Renee Montoya, the uncompromising pint-sized Gotham PD detective who kicks against the corrupt system no matter what kind of trouble it gets her into, and just gets angrier all the time, paradoxically making us like her even more; and then there’s the film’s major controversy, at least as far as the fans are concerned, namely one Cassandra Cain.  Sure, this take is VERY different from the comics’ version (a nearly mute master assassin who went on to become the second woman to wear the mask of Batgirl before assuming her own crime-fighting mantle as Black Bat and now Orphan), but personally I like to think this is simply Cass at THE VERY START of her origin story, leaving plenty of time for her to discover her warrior origins when the DCEU finally gets around to introducing her mum, Lady Shiva (personally I want Michelle Yeoh to play her, but that’s just me) – anyways, here she’s a skilled child pickpocket whose latest theft inadvertently sets off the larger central plot, and newcomer Ella Jay Basco brings a fantastic pre-teen irreverence and spiky charm to the role, beautifully playing against Robbie’s mercurial energy.  My favourite here BY FAR, however, is Dinah Lance, aka the Black Canary (not only my favourite Bird of Prey but my very favourite DC superheroine PERIOD), the choice of up-and-comer Jurnee Smollet-Bell (Friday Night Lights, Underground) proving to be the film’s most inspired casting – a club singer with the metahuman ability to emit piercing supersonic screams, she’s also a ferocious martial artist (in the comics she’s one of the very best fighters IN THE WORLD), as well as a wonderfully pure soul you just can’t help loving, and it made me SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY that they got my Canary EXACTLY RIGHT.  Altogether they’re a fantastic bunch of badass ladies, basically my perfect superhero team, and the way they’re all brought together (along with Harley, of course) is beautifully thought out and perfectly executed … they’ve also got one hell of a threat to overcome, namely Gotham crime boss Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, one of the Joker’s chief rivals – Ewan McGregor brings his A-game in a frustratingly rare villainous turn (my number one bad guy for the movie year), a monstrously narcissistic, woman-hating control freak with a penchant for peeling off the faces of those who displease him, sharing some exquisitely creepy chemistry with Chris Messina (The Mindy Project) as Sionis’ nihilistic lieutenant Victor Zsasz.  This is about as good as superhero cinema gets, a perfect example of the sheer brilliance you get when you switch up the formula to create something new, an ultra-violent, unapologetically R-rated middle finger to the classic tropes, a fantastic black comedy thrill ride that’s got to be the most full-on feminist blockbuster ever made – it’s helmed by a woman (Dead Pigs director Cathy Yan), written by a woman (Bumblebee’s Christina Hodson), produced by more women and ABOUT a bunch of badass women magnificently triumphing over toxic masculinity in all its forms.  It’s also simply BRILLIANT – the cast are all clearly having a blast, the action sequences are first rate (the spectacular GCPD evidence room fight in which Harley gets to REALLY cut loose is the undisputable highlight), it has a gleefully anarchic sense of humour and is simply BURSTING with phenomenal homages, references and in-jokes for the fans (Bruce the hyena! Stuffed beaver! Roller derby!).  It’s also got a killer soundtrack, populated almost exclusively by numbers from female artists.  Altogether, then, this is the VERY BEST the DCEU has to offer to date, and VERY NEARLY my absolute FAVOURITE film of 2020.  Give it all the love you can, it sure as hell deserves it.

1.  TENET – granted, the streaming platforms (particularly Netflix and Amazon) certainly saved our cinematic summer, but I’m still IMMEASURABLY glad that my ultimate top-spot winner FOR THE WHOLE YEAR was one I got to experience on THE BIG SCREEN. You gotta hand it to Christopher Nolan, he sure hung in there, stubbornly determined that his latest cinematic masterpiece WOULD be released in cinemas in the summer (albeit ultimately landing JUST inside the line in the final week of August and ultimately taking the bite at the box office because of the still shaky atmosphere), and it was worth all the fuss because, for me, this was THE PERFECT MOVIE for me to get return to cinemas with.  I mean, okay, in the end it WASN’T the FIRST new movie I saw after the first reopening, that honour went to Unhinged, but THIS was my first real Saturday night-out big screen EXPERIENCE since March.  Needless to say, Nolan didn’t disappoint this time any more than he has on any of his consistently spectacular previous releases, delivering another twisted, mind-boggling headfuck of a full-blooded experiential sensory overload that comes perilously close to toppling his long-standing auteur-peak, Inception (itself second only by fractions to The Dark Knight as far as I’m concerned). To say much at all about the plot would give away major spoilers – personally I’d recommend just going in as cold as possible, indeed you really should just stop reading this right now and just GO SEE IT.  Still with us?  Okay … the VERY abridged version is that it’s about a secret war being waged between the present and the future by people capable of “inverting” time in substances, objects, people, whatever, into which the Protagonist (BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington), an unnamed CIA agent, has been dispatched in order to prevent a potential coming apocalypse. Washington is once again on top form, crafting a robust and compelling morally complex heroic lead who’s just as comfortable negotiating the minefields of black market intrigue as he is breaking into places or dispatching heavies, Kenneth Branagh delivers one of his most interesting and memorable performances in years as brutal Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, a genuinely nasty piece of work who was ALMOST the year’s very best screen villain, Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Widows) brings strength, poise and wounded integrity to the role of Sator’s estranged wife, Kat, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets to use his own accent for once as tough-as-nails British Intelligence officer Ives, while there are brief but consistently notable supporting turns and cameos from Martin Donovan, Yesterday’s Himesh Patel, Dirk Gently’s Fiona Dourif and, of course, Nolan’s good luck charm, Michael Caine.  The cast’s biggest surprise, however, is Robert Pattinson, truly a revelation in what has to be, HANDS DOWN, his best role to date, Neil, the Protagonist’s mysterious handler – he’s by turns cheeky, slick, duplicitous and thoroughly badass, delivering an enjoyably multi-layered, chameleonic performance which proves what I’ve long maintained, that the former Twilight star is actually a fucking amazing actor, and on the basis of this, even if that amazing new teaser trailer wasn’t making the rounds, I think the debate about whether or not he’s the right choice for the new Batman is now academic.  As we’ve come to expect from Nolan, this is a TRUE tour-de-force experience, a visual triumph and an endlessly engrossing head-scratcher, Nolan’s screenplay bringing in seriously big ideas and throwing us some major narrative knots and loopholes, constantly wrong-footing the viewer while also setting up truly revelatory payoffs from seemingly low-key, unimportant beginnings – this is a film you need to be awake and attentive for or you could miss something pretty vital. The action sequences are, as ever, second to none, some of the year’s very best set-pieces coming thick and fast and executed with some of the most accomplished skill in the business, while Nolan-regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar and Dunkirk, as well as the heady likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, SPECTRE and Ad Astra) once again shows he’s one of the best camera-wizards in the business today by delivering some absolutely mesmerising visuals.  Notably, Nolan’s other regular collaborator, composer Hans Zimmer, is absent here (although he had good reason, since he was working on his dream project at the time, the fast-approaching screen adaptation of Dune), but Ludwig Göransson (best known for his collaborations with Ryan Coogler Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, as well as career-best work on The Mandalorian) is a fine replacement, crafting an intriguingly internalised, post-modern musical landscape that thrums and pulses in time with the story and emotions of the characters rather than the action itself. Interestingly it’s on the subject of sound that some of the film’s rare detractions have been levelled, and I can see some of the points – the soundtrack mix is an all-encompassing thing, and there are times when the dialogue can be overwhelmed, but in Nolan’s defence this film is a heady, immersive experience, something you really need to concentrate on, so these potential flaws are easily forgiven.  As a work of filmmaking art, this is another flawless wonder from one of the true masters of the craft working in cinema today, but it’s art with palpable substance, a rewarding whole that proved truly unbeatable in 2020 …

[strideofpride]

DAIR APPRECIATION WEEK 2021 DAY ONE: Why do you love Dan and Blair?

I broke down what I love about Dan and Blair into five parts under a read more below. The tldr is: their compatibility, their parallel arcs, their slow burn, the larger message it would've given GG if they were endgame, and finally their mature, adult relationship (aka "pure and simple love").

Warning: I basically wrote a fucking essay lmao. Cited my sources and everything.

I. Compatibility

Dan and Blair have great chemistry sure, but they have something that I don't think any other pairing on the show really had: common interests. They were pseudo-intellectuals who could talk about books, literature, art, etc. with each other ("Dan and I have a real connection. We did things like visit the Dia and debate Charbol versus Rohmer..."). And I know in TV world all anyone cares about is chemistry, but in the real world the key to a long lasting relationship is common interests.

And yet they are also still an opposite attracts pairing, just in the best way, where they are opposite in personality and background, but still share lots of common interests. Blair was the rich mean girl from the Upper East Side and Dan the "poor" loser from Brooklyn, but they still can relate to one another, they can still find stuff to talk about together, they still come to enjoy each other's presence and friendship.

And back to their chemistry: it isn't steamy chemistry 100% all the time (although they can certainly go there). Their's is a sweet chemistry, a chemistry where it's clear that they respect each other, that they know each other on a deep level, that they understand each other more than anyone else. It's a chemistry that you believe could lead to a satisfying marriage one day.

And I know I've said this before, but to me Dan and Blair are just soulmates.

II. Parallel Arcs

I am such a sucker for when two characters' life journeys parallel one another and Dair had that in spades. In season 1 especially, they were both dealing with the abandonment of a parent (Dan's mom/Blair's dad), they both lost their virginities and entered into sexual relationships with much more experienced partners (Serena & Chuck), and they both had their sights set on one school (Yale & Dartmouth - although come season 2 this became Yale for Dan, giving them even more in common).

I've also already talked on here about how you can parallel all of their other romantic/sexual relationships to one another, as well as how they both were abandoned by their best friends sophomore year. And, they both have a bad habit of going back to the same person over and over again (again, Serena & Chuck).

To me, Dan and Blair are almost narrative foils. Dan's relationship with his father starts out pretty solid but deteriorates over time - Blair's relationship with her mother is the exact opposite. Dan pines, while Blair loves to live in denial. Blair sees her life as a movie, Dan sees his life as a novel.

And that makes it all the more satisfying to see them come together, to learn to appreciate their differences, to accept their similarities, to see them grow together (albeit briefly) over seasons 4 and 5.

III. Slow Burn

A lot of people on here use this word incorrectly. If the characters kiss during season 1 (unless it’s under false pretenses) it’s not a slow burn! But Dan and Blair are a true slow burn (whether or not that was intentional).

From that hallway scene in 1x04, it's clear that Dan and Blair have a deeper connection and understanding of each other than they are letting on. We get brief glimpses into that in 1x15, 2x08, 3x18, and 3x22. All of that very slow build up makes it all the more satisfying when they become friends in season 4.

I truly think the W arc is the best written arc of the entire show. You very slowly see them accept their common interests, grow to begrudgingly respect one another, even begin to accept that there might be an attraction there. It never feels rushed, when they kiss in 4x17, it's earned (I use this word a lot - buckle in).

And then, yeah, the Louis arc was fucky (I stand by that they should've kept the love triangle Dan vs. Chuck, or Dan vs. Louis, all three was too much). But Dan standing by Blair through everything she went through that season was beautiful, to see her depend on Dan in her darkest moments, to see her realize that he's the one who will always be there for her...it just really, really worked.

And so that moment when Blair finally calls him "Dan" to his face, when it becomes clear they are finally going to be together...it's one of the single most satisfying moments in the entire show. Because, again, it was earned.

IV. Larger Message

As this video essay posits, the showrunners were left with a choice after the 2008 economic recession: "Either adjust to the times or lean further into an escapist fantasy where extreme wealth is the status quo...and lean they did. For the sake of providing their audience with an escape, the dark underbelly of extreme affluence became the show's core theme. The more it began to sell cynical opulence as standard escapism, the more the writers and fans turned on the less wealthy characters."

Furthermore, by revealing Dan as Gossip Girl, "It transitions him from pretentious soft boy to borderline sociopath, actively ruining the lives of his friends, family, and crush just to get a foothold in Upper East Side society. And then the show did something it had seldom deemed to do for a less wealthy character: it rewarded him...And thus, the show presented us with the most insidious message of all: wealth, privilege, and power corrupt...and that's okay."

By having Chuck & Blair and Dan & Serena as endgame, GG became one of the most cynical shows on the planet, where (to quote Constance Grady) "all relationships are transactional".

But yet: "The sole bright spot in the midst of this cold universe in which relationships are bought and sold like real estate came in the form of Blair’s brief season four romance with Dan...it marked the last hurrah of the first version of Gossip Girl: In a world in which money is so powerful that it makes romantic relationships indistinguishable from prostitution, Dan and Blair were working to create an authentic, meaningful bond outside of the influence of wealth and privilege."

If Dan and Blair had been endgame (and Dan hadn't been GG - although we all know that one is bullshit anyway), it would've been a rebuke to that ideology, it would've shown that there is more to a good marriage than a shared tax bracket, that a genuine connection is more important than wealth and privilege. That abuse does not equal love.

But alas, that was not the story they wanted to tell I guess.

V. Mature, Adult Relationship (aka "Pure & Simple Love")

I am personally not much of a fan of grand romantic gestures. I often find them shallow, childish, and showy. To me, it is far more romantic for Dan to have secretly written a book about Blair, for Blair to submit Dan's article to Vanity Fair, for Dan to say "it wouldn't to me" when Blair asks if it would matter if she was pregnant with another man's child (especially since this moment is (take a shot here), you guessed it, earned - we know he's being honest because we already saw him do this with Milo).

Now, I am personally not as much of a fan of the Met Steps moment as everyone else (Blair's desire to be royalty is probably the thing I like least about her), but that was probably Dan's grandest romantic gesture and yet...it's still so simple. It's really just a plastic tiara and a cab ride. Which is what makes it so beautiful. Because it's not about the money or the extravagance or showing off to anyone else...it's about Dan showing Blair he truly knows her. And to me, that's the healthiest way to do a romantic gesture.

I also love their bad sex arc in 5x18 because a) it's real - most real world couples don't have earth shattering sex the first time together, it takes time to learn what your partner likes and needs and b) because they actually (after getting drunk at Dorota's & Nate's) communicate about it and work out their problem like adults.

Because that's the thing about Dan and Blair - it's a real adult relationship. It's not a never-ending game of cat and mouse, it's not a fallback, it's not a bad habit...everything else just melts away when they're together. They grew and changed together...they learned to put aside their prejudices and see each other beyond their facades. They became better people together. They always had someone they knew they could turn to.

And that's what true love is supposed to be.