#he’s genuinely one of my top 5 favorite characters in the entire franchise | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thotslayerdio · 1 year ago

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i'm doing some of these. i ramble, though, so under a cut.

2: NGL, probably through the memes. it was about four years ago, in 2019? don't count me on that, though, i have the memory of a dust bunny. anyways my F/O is from JJBA and i love the franchise. it's my special interest ><

5: since he's a vampire, he can't cook for shit -- but i can. i can make the best grilled cheese... and normal foods, too. i promise. 👍

the second number 4: probably. he's a vampire, so i think he'd have, like, corpse body temperature, and would always be seeking warmth (like a lizard). i'd be super awkward about it for a while LMAO but i'd find comfort in it eventually.

due to the cut, some of the numbers are weird, so +4 to the ones below this if they're not making sense with the prompt.

8: i suppose so. it's only for lore reasons, and they're not really my enemy. it's like, "the enemy of my friend is my enemy, too".

9: probably the corpse body temperature thing. not sure what the fandom feels about it -- i don't interact w/it much, outside of reblogging fanart/etc.

13: literally... so many... but they're pretty nasty, and i'd rather not contribute to the horrible public image he can have XDD

17: my S/I is a stand user (by birth) and had to leave america due to troubles with the law (<- murdered someone). i can't give away the whole plot, though! i suck at writing in words and i mean to make more art/comics about it eventually.

18: JJBA is known for the variations, particularly different color palettes. i love the red version a lot, and the black one is pretty neat. he's also got like a dozen voice actors, which is to be expected when yr F/O is from a franchise as huge/old/popular as JJBA. i'm particularly fond of the HFTF and OVA voice acting. the audio drama version is good, too. the anime one ranks last for me, but i still like it. (there might be more variations? IDK, it's hard to tell, since there's so much content...)

19: maybe not my favorite, but i like the swiss cheese tank top in part 6. overall, he's very fashionable. has too many outfits and i like all of them.

24: actually, yeah! i'm not sure how serious i am about this? (<- has difficulty understanding and describing emotions) but TL;DR we are married. no ceremony or anything because i don't have friends lol. i'm SUPPOSED to be getting my ring today, but i don't think that's gonna happen. post office is a dumbass, yk. i got it imported from japan, it's official merch and everything GGRGRGRGR

27: no, i hate kids 💀 he's not a pet person, really, and neither am i TBH. he's got a handful of illegitimate children, but they're irrelevant to the plot (due to the time and location it's set in).

31: vampire 😈😈😈

32: his relatability. sounds weird, since he's a villain and general asshole, but we have similar experiences. i don't think i'd be able to be attracted to him if i didn't relate to him as strongly as i do.

33: angst, hurt/comfort. evil-looking who's secretly nice x nice-looking who's secretly evil.

34: i have to pick one?! he's literally the most meme-d character of the franchise, maybe the most meme-d character in all of anime... i don't want to pick the most often quoted one (it's lame and overused), so i pick "I REJECT MY HUMANITY! JOJO!!!" (<- i've not said his name this entire post. can you guess who it is?) (probably. if not from the info, then from my PFP.)

35/36: me

42: yes. yes. biting is affectionate.

45: me, or my S/I? me IRL, i was immediately like "this is my favorite character", and kept that attitude forever. my S/I barely tolerated him at first. i think he'd think (S/I) would be useful in obtaining goals/etc, but accidentally-on-purpose started genuinely liking them/me.

46: march 28. that's when IRL i said, "yeah. this is my F/O now." i haven't worked that into the plot in-universe yet.

47: i'd feed him to a spider. (he'd probably do the same LMAOO)

56: vanilla ice is envy.png. i don't think anyone else would know. maybe enya, but i don't think she'd care much.

58: RAH 1/6 figure. as a doll collector anime enthusiast, this is a must-have item. not just for me, a doll collector huge fan of the character, but for literally any fan of the series. there's also a resin statue that i really like, but it's second priority. (i own most of the other merch i want XDD)

59: soggy kitten.

62: depends. if he'd come to my world, a lot of things would have to change. notably, my living situation. i'd rather go to his world for the ease of it. (but things would still have to change, ie make me canon-compliant. AKA a stand user.)

64/65: my S/I is pretty much just me IRL, but taller. the difficult part was the stand... (<- like a superpower thing, for non-JJBA people.) not sure how to describe it. it's like a suit (like iron man?). i named it after a queen song (so it'd be canon-compliant).

66: i have a (mostly) canon-compliant version and a non-canon version. canon-compliant is priority, but sometimes you just wanna be coworkers with dio (<- meme reference but that's literally what it is)

67: run away

72: probably obvious, but yellow. (yellow hair, yellow outfit, yellow stand...) and cats. he could be a catboy if he tried.

74: whatever that old summer VHS style is like. yk, with grainy photographs and hazy sunsets? if that makes sense.

75: me. i've decided if a zombie apocalypse happens, i'll voluntarially die. i don't want to be a zombie. IDK what he would do. probably use the zombies to his advantage (lead them to people he doesn't like etc)

76: rule the world 😈😈😈😈 not me, though. i have no goals beyond get rich and die young.

77: he's canonically bi.

78: a caracal. they're yellow and angry. graceful in a different way.

79: cold, both emotionally and physically (<- corpse body temperature).

80: there's nothing to gush about, it'd just be venting and trauma-dumping LMAO.

anyways, if OP happened to read all of this, thank you for reading, and thank you for making this >< i never know where to start when it comes to interaction/posting in general, and this helped a lot.

80+ selfship questions to answer, whether in a post* or a reblog! feel free to pick the ones you want to answer or just answer for all – this is not an ask game :3

a few of these are romantic, but ofc, there are ones you can answer for your platonics!

* if you do it as a post i’d loveeeee if you tagged me so i could see your answers!

what’s something you do to feel closer to them? fanfics, listen to songs, etc.

how did you get introduced to your f/o and/or their media? do you like their source?

what’s one or two things you especially like about your f/o? can be a headcanon!

what’s one or two things your f/os love about you? ( self positivity time babey )

how do you express your love to them? how do they express their love to you?

a gift you’d like to give them if you could, and something they’d give to you!

what do you celebrate together? like halloween, christmas time, easter, etc.

do you sleep together? is it peaceful or filled with snoring? do you both stay up? tell us more! ( how you sleep, when you sleep, do you wake up at the same time? )

what’s one thing you can’t do well that the other can, vice versa ( e.g cooking, playing video games, so on and so forth )

do you have similar tastes in fashion? aesthetic? food? tell us about their taste!

how do they tend to comfort you? how do you tend to comfort them?

if you have a rival or nemesis f/o, why? are there any lore reasons or is it just because?

what are some uncommon headcanons you have for them?

what is your favorite fan theory/headcanon about them?

if you live together, how’s domestic life like for you both?

do you have any scent hcs for them? ( sweet, something like coffee, etc )

is there anything commonly misunderstood about your f/o?

one thing you don’t have in common, and one thing you do

how do you resolve conflicts? how do you both typically react when faced with conflict or whilst dealing with an argument?

have you met their friends/family? how did that go? do they even keep in contact with their friends/family?

tell us as much (or as little) as you'd like about any of your self ship lore/bg! the timeline!

if they have variations (timelines, skills, voiced languages, etc) which one is your favorite?

your favorite outfit/costume of theirs! if they don’t have any official skins or anything, show us something you think they’d look good in!

who confessed first and how did it go?

did anyone know about your f/o’s feelings before they confessed? how did they find out?

if you have multiple f/os, do they fit into any “type?” ( e.g coincidentally they’re all smartasses, blonde, villains, etc. lol )

do you have any favorite scenarios you like to imagine your f/os in? ( domestic fluff, angsty, etc. )

have you ever thought about ( platonic or not ) marriage? would you consider it a good idea? why or why not?

^ if you're planning to get married, then tell us all about your wedding! the honeymoon! the planning!

if you live together, how does your home look like? who decided on the decor?

do you, or plan to, have f/o kids? ( pets and plants count! ) bonus: if you have pets, do they show any favoritism?

what was it like when they first said ‘i love you’? how did you reply? where was it?

if you could make one thing 100% canon about them, what would it be?

how do you kill time with them when bored?

your favorite thing about your f/o, appearance wise

your favorite thing about your f/o, non-appearance wise

what’s your dynamic like? any tropes you fit?

the most iconic/memed on/quoted line or event associated with your f/o

who’s more likely to be the sappy, cheesy romantic in the relationship?

who gets flustered the easiest?

if you were in an emergency or stressful situation, which one of you’s the best at staying level headed keeping the other calm? who is the one absolutely freaking out?

what nicknames do you call each other?

with phones or modern au : what would your contact names be?

with phones or modern au : how do they use their phone? do they have a billion screenshots in their gallery? whats their wallpaper?

favorite memory involving them ( whether in your lore as a scenario, a scene from their media, or another physical experience like when you received merch etc )

are they physically affectionate? if so, how do they express it? vice versa!

any funny or awkward moments you've experienced with them?

who’s more likely to get into, or start fights? whether with each other or with others.

what were your first impressions of each other?

do you have an anniversary date? how was it decided & how do you (plan to) celebrate it?

.... would you still love them if they turned into a worm

how did their personality or lifestyle change after befriending/getting with you?

something you know about them, that many others don’t?

how do they reassure or affirm their love for you?

what’s your funniest or most embarrassing memory together?

what’s their sense of humor like? how easy is it to make them laugh?

what inside jokes do you share?

if necessary, how do you wake them up? how do they wake you up?

any daily routines or habits you two follow?

what do others in source say about your relationship? do you keep it a secret?

if you have more than one f/o from the same media, which one were you drawn to first? any lore connection like did they introduce you to the others? did one make you fall for the other?

dream piece of merchandise or f/o-related experience you’d like to have

how are they like when vulnerable?

describe your f/o in 6 words or less

describe your f/o using only emojis

would you rather go to their world, or have them come to yours?

do you care about ship lore? feel free to tell us about it if you’d like!

if you have a s/i, how’d you go about creating their design? what went into their lore? how do the others in the source feel about your s/i?

does your s/i hold similarities to you, is completely like you or completely different from you? do you even have a s/i?

thoughts on AUs/canon divergent things? do you prefer to stick as closely to canon as possible or no?

quick! your f/o’s just spawned in front of you, now what do you do?!

do they have any superstitions they believe in?

would you or your f/o ever get matching things? ( keychains, tattoos, shirts, etc ) do they find it cringy or cute?

who’s more the scaredy cat out of you two?

what kind of things is your f/o into? games, music, decor, whatever!

the most random thing you associate with your f/o (foods, shapes, even textures! anything that’s not an obvious)

anything your f/o absolutely hates, but you absolutely love?

any aesthetic or -core you associate with your f/o, whether it be due to their design or personality?

who's more likely to die first in a zombie apocalypse lol

do your f/os have any long term wishes or goals? what about your s/i?

your favorite f/o fun fact or bit of lore

which animal represents your f/o the best?

does your f/o run hot or cold?

free space to gush about whatever you want ♡

#selfship #s/d #long post

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years ago

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Endless Love

With another season of Love, Death + Robots in the books, i wanted to revisit the entire series one more time. I spent the last two days, running through the entirety of the franchise, all eighteen from the first season and all eight from the second, twice, because i absolutely love this series. From the bottom to the top, these are my absolute favorite entries into the franchise so far.

10. Ice

Ice was a real surprise for me. It’s the only entry in season two that is classically animated so it already got bonus points from me but, as an entire short, it was amazing! The second we got outside of that apartment and into the wider world, i wanted to live there. So much content could be embellished from that all-too-short time spent in that world. More than that, i loved he relation ship between Sedgewick and Fletcher. I’m not saying an entire show about those two is necessary but i wouldn’t scoff at them being supporting characters in a more anthology or ensemble show about that world.

9. All Through the House

This one is just cute. It’s a genuine short and i i don’t think there is a ton of legs in exploring that world but i had a fantastic time with what we got. The animation was gorgeous and the premise was outstanding. Of course, I'm curious about the “Naughty” but we don’t necessarily need confirmation about that. I think the little glimpse into this world was more than enough.

8. Three Robots

Three Robots is in the same boat as All Through the House. i loved the time spent in this world but i don’t think we need to to revisit it in any capacity. What we got was the perfect amount of time there. It was beautifully animated, ingenuously written, and executed perfectly. This was a surprise for me to be honest because, in my order, it came right after Sonnie’s Edge and The Witness, so shifting thematic gears like that was a little jarring. Jarring and welcome.

7. Helping Hand

Helping Hand is everything i wanted Gravity to be. This one won me over with the sheer panic of it’s narrative. The storytelling was incredibly intimate but that tension was f*cking palpable! It was able to really instill the utter despair and unbridled dread Alexandria felt as she began to spiral off into the infinite nothingness. I was absolutely enthralled with the humanity and sacrifice she made in an effort to straight up survive. Like, how many of us could do what Alex did in that situation? How many of us would have the unmitigated balls to make that call? Absolutely brilliant storytelling.

6. Pop Squad

Pop Squad makes this list on the sheer potential of that world. Aside from the fact that the entire narrative revolves around straight up murdering children, something that rarely ever flies in the greater entertainment world, and i f*cking love it! Outside of the fact that this entry is easily one of the most beautiful submitted for season two, i absolutely fell in love with the scope of that world. There is a ton of stories that can be told there, so many characters we can follow. Hell, i wouldn’t mind a limited series just following Briggs up to his fateful demise. I’d watch the hell out of that!

5. The Witness

The Witness makes this list based strictly on the strength of it’s aesthetic. For me, the art design in this short was the strongest of the first season and i say that knowing it’s only the fifth entry on this list. As a narrative, it’s a closed looped so it lacks a ton of substance but the way it’s executed is too f*cking dazzling to ignore. This thing smacks of that Spiderverse animation style but does it in a way that sends you into a surreal trip of colors, glitches, and nudity. I was completely in awe of what i witnessed in that story.

4. Snow in the Desert

Snow’s adventure was my absolute number one of season two. It’s f*cking incredible. The animation, the character work, the plots, the world building; All of it is an absolute marvel of execution. It presented a complete universe in a matter of minutes and i found myself not wanting to leave. Indeed, of the eight new entries, Snow’s world is one that i absolute need more of. I need to see his life before Hirald, before his balls got a bounty. I want to explore his very human life with his wife and why she did what she did. I want to see what that world looked like two hundred years before we got our fleeting glimpse, and what Earth looks like in present day. Snow in the Desert was so goddamn great, i was upset it was so short. That’s only happened to me with one other entry on this list and that’s at the very top.

3. Beyond the Aquila Rift

Now, i just gushed, full tilt, about how much i loved Snow in the Desert so why is Aquila ahead of it on this list? Why are there three more ahead of it on this list? Because the remaining three left me with a complete feeling in their narrative while leaving the door open for deeper exploration into their worlds. Plus, i mean, Aquila’s presentation was f*cking chef’s kiss. Watching that short felt like watching The Fifth Element. Between the space setting and the killer music, it definitely gave me Luc Besson vibes and we all know how much i enjoy Besson’s movie making. Aquila is rife for anthology storytelling, just the world Greta could fabricate in her mercy killing duties as a giant spider, squirreling away wayward travels in her nest, is prime for infinite narratives. Think Tales from the Crypt but sexy and full of Alien Spider Mistress.

2. Sonnie’s Edge

Sonnies Edge was my first glimpse of what would become the utter brilliance of Love, Death + Robots. I Was absolutely enthralled by the character designs and the overall world because, if you don’t know this about me, cyberpunk dystopias are kind of my thing and the world of Sonnie’s Edge fits my neon drenched wet dreams perfectly. Watching this felt like watching those old, excessively violent, gratuitously sexy, Eighties anime entries i grew up on. I missed all of the blood and f*cking and gore and violence. Sonnie brought that all back for me, leaving me satisfied but with a nagging hunger for more.

1. Good Hunting

Of all the shorts submitted between these two season, Good Hunting is my absolute favorite. I unabashedly love every second of this entry. The animation is fluid and top tier, giving justice to the gorgeous art direction and character design. The combination of computer and classic animation mixed perfectly, never outshining one over the other. I’m not the biggest fan of Steampunk but this is the rare entry that really grabbed my attention with how intricate, how absolutely stunning, all of the the iron work is in that world. As i gush about every aspect chosen to present this magnificent world to us, the crux of my adoration lies with the relationship between Liang and Yan. That sh*t was a real pleasure to see and, even after the tragedy, their love for each other really resonated through to the end. I want more of this world than any other we’ve seen so far and i hate that all we got was this one short.

Look, this is just the top ten of my list and, in all honesty, this thing stays in flux. With the exception of the front three, any of these shorts can make my list on any day of the week. I really like Automates Customer Service, Zima Blue, The Tall Grass, Suits, and Shape-Shifters. I’m sucker for classic animation so Blindspot has a shot, even if it’s the weakest of the first season, and The Secret War is just a feast for the eyes. There is a lot of good to great in this show and i can’t wait for the third season. Love, Death + Robots is a bastion for pure creativity, something that mainstream Hollywood lacks. That, i think, is why i adore this series so much. I miss when cats took risks and created unique masterpieces. You see that with smaller studios like Neon and A24 but that spirit has long since vacated the major studios. Thank the stars for Netflix because without them, we’d never have wonderful little nuggets of pure inspiration like this show.

#Love Death and Robots #Love Death + Robots

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repo-net · 3 years ago

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What's one thing you would change about Nagisa, if any?

It's an extremely simple change that I genuinely don't understand how this opportunity wasn't taken advantage of. Nagisa's already my favorite character in the entire franchise by a mile, but this would've solidified him as just an undisputable and impossible to reach deity among the other Danganronpa characters.

Put him in Chapter 5 and have him play the same role as Kotoko. That's literally it.

Listen, I would've been fine if Nagisa died in Chapter 4 in his boss fight. It would've been a tragic but fitting end to his story and life - the boy who constantly saw the words of others as expectations and wanted to exceed them was crushed in one fiery disaster as he couldn't keep up with his own inhumane standards for himself.

But the thing is; Nagisa didn't die in his boss fight, it's shown in one of credit photos at the end of UDG where he's fighting off the Monokuma Kids with the other Warriors of Hope. So there was no need to just not use him in the final chapter when he was clearly still there?

Out of all the Warriors of Hope, objectively speaking, Nagisa is by far the most fitting one of them to take down Monaca. Not that Kotoko wasn't a bad pick, mind you. But everything Kotoko's dynamic and character has that makes her fitting for the final standoff against Monaca, is something Nagisa has and even more.

- Kotoko has a deep connection to Monaca, and has a lot of love and appreciation for her, although her love for Monaca is out of fear and desire to not be hurt. Nagisa's love for Monaca is all of that except he genuinely loves her, is personally attached to her and wants nothing more than Monaca's happiness and approval first and foremost.

- Kotoko gains some sort of redemption for a lot of the things she did prior to this moment due to realizing how twisted Monaca really is, but when you think about it, if Nagisa - the boy who's literally been crushing on this girl and knows what the right thing to do is but refuses to do it out of his fear of upsetting Monaca finally stands up for himself and takes her down, that would be a perfect close off to his arc and he'd have redeemed himself.

- Not to mention that Kotoko wouldn't even be in Chapter 5 had Jack not stepped in. Kotoko kind of fucking owes Nagisa a lot too for even telling her to stay back and not follow him as he helped Komaru and Toko escape; knowing that it would upset Monaca and he doesn't want Kotoko to be hated by Monaca. He's so selfless, man.

- It's also clear that Nagisa has always been questioning the Demon Hunting game from the start. He doesn't necessarily want to kill adults, and even regrets killing his parents and believes he still owes them affection and respect. He's more focused on creating a children's paradise for their safety, but Kotoko's been wanting demons dead and cute girls punished for a long, long time. Nagisa has always had more of a path to redemption than any other Warrior.

- To sum it all up, Nagisa's connection and crush to Monaca would've made him leaving her behind in those rocks much more satisfying since this is the same boy we just saw get sexually assaulted and mindbroken to attack Komaru and Toko when he tried to help them escape earlier. Now he's helped the duo end Monaca's game and plan - along with finally losing the strings that Monaca had around him as she played with him like a doll. Monaca never wanted what he wanted; a children's paradise where children can live peacefully, that's why he's been condoning and allowing the other Warriors to do their thing and kill adults. But when he finally leaves her behind in those rocks, he's finally free from her. Free from the game that's been making him feel guilty for so, so long.

Do not get me wrong, I think Kotoko being present in Chapter 5 is perfectly fine. She did her role well and played it nicely. But the cherry on top that really would've made Chapter 5 perfect was having Nagisa in it.

Hell, you don't even have to replace Kotoko in the final chapter, she can duo with Nagisa to put Monaca away and it'd work just as fine, if not better. Here's some reasoning.

- As I said earlier, Kotoko wouldn't even be present in Chapter 5 had Jack not saved her from her execution. Along with that, Komaru and Toko clearly wanted to help out Nagisa too as he did try to help them leave the town, but Haiji stopped them from doing so. And again, Kotoko owes Nagisa for stepping in to stop her from being questioned by Komaru and Toko, and stopping her from following Nagisa to help lead the two outside. He wanted to take full responsibility for anything that was about to happen to him, and Kotoko should make it up to him by helping him put Monaca down.

- Kotoko knows exactly what it's like to be taken advantage of and sexually assaulted (and more) like what happened with Nagisa; even witnessed it too and watched Monaca just break Nagisa's whole worldview. So she can definitely empathize with Nagisa on the fact that Monaca would take advantage of his feelings like that. I think the two could even have a nice little moment where Nagisa is still having a hard time convincing himself that Monaca really was as bad as she was, and Kotoko snaps him out of it and reminds her that she's the one at fault and Nagisa was just trying to create the children's paradise, and she also apologizes for letting herself get carried away hurting innocent girls and all that when Nagisa was focused on the real goal that they had. And that unifies the both of them to realize that Monaca is the real enemy here.

- I don't think I need to mention this, but these two are literally the only two other WoH that existed in this game. Seriously, if you're going to make them the only ones that matter, make them count, lmfao.

And that's my take on what could be changed about Nagisa's character. Putting him with Kotoko in Chapter 5 would've been a perfect story book ending to his character arc and it benefits everyone involved in it by throwing him in there. We also get more interactions with Nagisa, which is always a plus to me, lol.

Thanks for the question anon! Sorry if this got too long, I just really like talking about Nagisa after all.

#danganronpa #danganronpa ultra despair girls #nagisa shingetsu #shingetsu nagisa #warriors of hope #kotoko utsugi #utsugi kotoko #monaca towa #towa monaca

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dana-chan-the-control-brain · 4 years ago

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oh shit. top 5 zim eps :o

Awww man.

I guess I'll just go with my gut and not second guess myself here.

1. Zim eats Waffles.

I wouldn't call this the "definitive" invader zim episode, or even a episode to recommend to someone who's never seen the show.

But it's my all time favorite and I absolutely love that nothing happens in it.

Dib's increasing frustration is halarious and it's probably the boredom he has every day when he spies on Zim.

I love slice of life style/ feels like one shot episodes like this.

There's also a lot of silent humor in this one and long pauses of nothing happening, which IZ doesn't do often.

Also a lot of wholesome slice of life moments with Zim and GIR which is what I live for.

2. Nightmare Begins.

There isn't much to say about the first IZ episode that has never been said before.

But it is such a good first episode. Not just in IZ but in animation and television in general, and I feel this episode needs to be STUDIED.

From the first shot, you know your in for something special and it does something that I don't see done in too many cartoons these days.

It introduces the characters and setting in a very meaningful and atmospheric way. First impressions and appearances are everything, and from the very first line, it doesn't even feel like an introduction.

It just feels like you already know who these people are.

The Tallest's introduction has them bickering with each other.

Zim's introduction has his leaders fear him and have him asset attention and anxiety as the title character.

Membrane acts to busy to spend time with his son, Gaz is annoyed by her brother, Dib is introduced as a dumb kid who watched the matrix once and thinks he's cool, by riding the gutter of the roof and splashing into the sink immediately.

Like it works so well as character introductions, setting introductions and premise introductions.

In some cartoons sometimes I feel the introductions can be... Over the top, or like they try way to hard on a first impression like:

"HELLO, HI! I AM THIS CHARACTER! LOOK HOW QUIRKY I AM! DONT YOU WANTA STAY WITH ME FOR 25 EPISODES?! WAAATTCH ME"

Even Gravity Falls, my beloved, is guilty of this in the first episode.

With Invader Zim, they just have the characters interact with each other and there's not too many pandering moments. Even GIR's introduction is massively understated.

Nightmare Begins needs to be studied for what they accomplish in tone, setting, character introduction, and premise all in less than 30 mins. (I can't even imagine this thing with commercial breaks back in the day)

Just... Nightmare Begins.

It's good. Amazing. And starts IZ so strong then it has any right to.

3. Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars

You forget this episode is only 30 mins.

It honestly feels like a short movie and the chaos in the last act is such (chefs kiss)

It was nice to actually see the Vortians after hearing about them for so long, and other aliens that actually tried to do something about Irken Galatic conquest (although screaming and massive anxiety)

I just love the third act and the ending where every single setup in the first act is blowing up in Zim's face all at once, and they threw in the Robo Parents for good measure too, cause why not? Lol.

4. The Wettening

The episode that actually made me stay and watch more of the show.

Before the wettening, all the episodes felt kinda "samey" to me.

Alien misinterprets a common Earth or skool thing, anxiety spirals out of control, horror and/or chaos insues.

It's why I stopped watching the show at Dark Harvest the first time I watched it.

I just felt there was just so much you could do with Zim as a character.

Boy I'm glad I was wrong.

While NanoZim also had a Dib and Zim fight, this is where I felt it was the most intense and I understood what the show wanted to be.

Skoolyard bully kid fights, on a massive scale.

In a lot of ways the wettening is kind of the pre curser to Battle of the Planets.

But unlike BofP, The Wettening keeps the focus on Dib and Zim's fight and interactions the whole way through.

Even leading the audience to get a bit of sympathy towards Zim, cause Dib is just being a bully.

And my jaw pretty much hit the floor with how the episode resolves.

It's just one of my favorite episodes and it made me stick around and continue to watch the show. And I'm so glad I did.

5. Tak the Hideous New Girl

Now... This isn't because of Tak herself.

While Tak is an okay and interesting character in her own right,

And the Irken reveal genuinely shocked me at the time (cause I was watching the show blind, so I had no idea she was irken. Even despite the obvious spaceship cus that's just how the show is sometimes... Like there's underground classrooms I'm not going to question a private weenie jet.)

What I really like about this episode is in the third act or climax...

Where Gaz, GIR, Dib, Zim (and even Computer) all work together to take down Tak. And there has absolutely been nothing in this entire franchise like it sense.

Dib turns off Tak's machine and supplies Zim with MiMi's memory disc that he got from Gaz.

Gaz in turn, reprograms MiMi with GIR's and Computer's help...

Which in turn causes Zim to win the spaceship battle and defeat Tak..

Just in time Dib puts the earth back to normal.

Tak the Hideous New Girl gave me a glimpse of what can happen when there is a larger threat they need to stand up against...

AND THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT IN THE FRANCHISE SINCE.

A lot of the stuff with Zim trying to romance Tak is halarious and good and Tak's backstory is legitimately pitiful....

But I ultimately come to this episode again and again for that third act high that I know they will never do in the comics or ever again.

#invader zim #danachans asks #this was tough but i think i got my faves in there

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rwbyconversations · 4 years ago

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RWBY Volume 7 Review

Two weeks out from Volume 8 and I finally cared enough to write this. Go team I guess.

Part of it came down to my feelings on Volume 7. It’s a complicated season that’s made me realize a lot of my overall feelings on RWBY as a series, particularly a lot of the less flattering feelings. Volume 7 is just... frustrating in general, as for all the good that it does have, and it does have a lot of great elements to it, it’s let down by a frustrating script and writing choices that feel distinctly amateurish, especially as the series moves on and gets better and better looking each year. There’s elements and kernals here of great character writing, season-wide arcs that land in a really good way and get me emotionally invested in the characters. But on the other... Ren only has two hundred words the entire season and you can tell!

Volume 7 is a season of dizzying highs, some of the best moments of the entire franchise... and some of the series lows. It’s a season where there’s no production reason for its shortcomings... it just comes down to an awkward script that focuses on the wrong elements far too often. Let’s talk about that. In a very long and drawn out manner.

Thanks to @jamesbranwen, @h-e-m-o-goblin and @retro-riffraff for help with GIFs and consultation on this review.

1) The Good Stuff!

A) Atlas is very pretty!

I cannot stress enough how on a set level, Volume 7 is leaps and bounds above the other seasons in sheer environmental detail and setting dressing. Mantle has a great atmosphere with its New York influences, the smog covered backgrounds and oppressive streets and alleys. Ironwood’s office which is deliberately designed to evoke astronomy themes to represent James’ love for the stars. The cold oppressive atmosphere of the Schnee Manor and how Jacques has begun warping it to glorify him with only lip service paid to Nicholas in public. Penguins!

There’s a lot of great set design work that went into this season and the crew deserve props for it. Genuinely.

B) Ironwood’s arc is the best character arc in the entire franchise

Yeah just wearing my heart on my sleeve there, I fucking love Ironwood and his character arc here in Volume 7 is the best written arc of the show. I simp for the tin man who just wants to do the right thing. This one season of content is better than a lot of the series-wide material being honest. I went back to James’s big volumes in the last month to rewatch the show and it’s interesting to see the early seeds in retrospect for where his arc goes. His need to protect everyone he can and the brutish measures he considers necessary for such an act, his conflicting loyalties towards Ozpin that manifest in both frustration at Oz’s seeming apathy to the growing conflict, but also desperate desire for validation from Ozpin that what’s he doing is the right call. After the Mistral seasons set up James as going off the deep end following Volume 3, having him open the season with an earnest smile, an immediate apology for the team’s arrest and trusting them with his plans for Amity and Salem is a jarring but pleasant surprise. He’s not been slacking off, he’s been trying to keep the world together in the way he thinks is best. He lets his guard down around the heroes and we see the good man underneath, which makes the moments where he raises his walls hurt all the more. While Em and Merc are still probably my favorite characters period, James is absolutely my favorite character in Volume 7 and Top 5 favorite characters series-wide. I’m very eager to see where he goes from here. He also rocks the beard and fixed his T-Rex arms so James came out of the washing machine that is Volume 7′s costume design. He truly is the Best Boi, and I cannot give Jason Rose enough credit for his performance this year. He hit every note of Ironwood’s character perfectly and I wish the fandom would give him more credit for giving James as much life as he does.

Oh, and as the obligatory comment on mlm rep that I am known for getting obsessively weird anon hate over: IronQrow hug nearly had me crying on a convention floor from how goddamn soft it was. Remember conventions? Ah good times.

This just... hits me... ya know? Seeing him lower his guard so much to come in for a hug just shows how isolated he’s let himself become to let himself have this moment of contact... Godamnit James. Also this is the second time after Martial Arcs that two guys hug and I really liked their ship for the following hiatus.

C) Soft Qrow hours are nice

Qrow’s a good guy, he went through a lot of bad stuff in Volume 6 but now he’s on the other side and purged his voice of the demon within. I think Volume 7 was a very good year for Qrow overall. It was great to see him interacting with more characters his age and lowering his own guard. His moments of letting the facade drop around James and Clover especially are great expansion for his character. Jason Liebritch hit the ground running as Qrow and gave him a far more dynamic range than I think Vic could. While I wish Qrow going off alcohol had been given more of a focus as it’s kind of done off-handedly that he’s gone cold turkey and otherwise doesn’t get brought up barring his revulsion at the wine in the Schnee Manor, he overall had a great year. And trust me I’ll get to the fights later, I have a lot more I can say about the bird boi there.

D) I liked the Ace Ops!

I was ambivilent towards the Ace Ops on first watching. They’re kinda underdeveloped in the context of the season at large and most people immediately pegged them as a miniboss squad/fodder for Salem to kill. But in rewatch they do still get to shine, if not as brightly. They’re very enjoyable. Clover especially is just really fun in retrospect, I love cocky fighters in general, and he was infectiously enjoyable (I’ve already covered the FG stuff in the past, not doing it again). Marrow came a close second because... well it’s Marrow, he is The Best Boi. Harriet got points for being a punchgirl which is always cool, I liked how her Semblance was shown and being cocky while being able to back it up is always a win. Elm and Vine are tied for dead last, I like the body diversity Elm introduces with her muscles and Vine... existed... but overall I think with the time they had, they did get to establish themselves well. I wish I could say that about their relationship with Team RWBYORNJ but this is the Nice Section so we’ll leave it there for now.

This is one of the best shots of the entire season. I adore it. God I like the Teryx design.

E) God the villains rocked this year!

I am a villain whore. I own that. I will embrace that monkier. But when they’re as cool as this, I feel validated in this Chilli’s tonight. Watts and Tyrian really make the season shine and don’t have a dud scene all season. They have great chemistry together, shining bright in even the weakest or most mediocre episodes. Watts went from “Oh yeah you exist” tier to “Oh yeah you rule” tier. His vendetta against Ironwood feels so real and pre-established, even though this season is the first time it’s ever come up. Watts just ozzes style in everything he does. The animators bring him to life and make every step, every flick of his twist and even just how he moves his eyes all bleed contempt. He’s such a rat and I love him! Chris Sabat finally gets to stretch his wings after a few years playing Watts as just Evil Scientist Guy, and he makes the most of it.

And Tyrian remains an absolute treat. He didn’t get much in V6 but here he takes center stage with Watts and also gets so much impact because of it. All the little twitches, and tilting of his heads, and dramatic gestures, he’s still just so goddamn cool to watch and we even get a little backstory of him. I know he’s irredeemable. But I just want to watch Tyrian kill people and scream. Like hot damn his line “THE GRIMM SHOULD HAVE DESTROYED OUR ENEMIES, NOT MADE THEM FRIENDS!” is so fucking raw. He’s having fun destablizing a nation with his boyfriend!

“You want more chaos than a Grimm invasion?” “If anyone on Remannt can do it, wouldn’t it be you?” There is no heterosexual explanation for how these two look at each other and yes this is me outing myself as a Nuts and Volts fan.

Watts and Tyrian really do become the absolute highlights of the season alongside James. They have a great dynamic and even during their more slower moments there’s so much care and thought put into their every mannerism. Animators, seriously, great job, I love what you did. And their fights... we’ll get there. But they’re so goddamn good.

Look they even run the same! They’re soulmates!

Honorary mention to Salem by the way. She’s only in two scenes but her presence is felt throughout Ironwood’s arc and his growing fear of her and she damn well delivers when she shows up. That shot of her arriving in person is a killer shot to end on as well.

Oh and I guess Cinder and Neo exist don’t they? Eh, we’ll come back to them.

F) Oscar got a character arc!

Finally! He did it! He got an arc that began, continued and ended all onscreen! It only took four tries!

But yeah Oscar had a really good set of scenes in Volume 7. I like him being the first to confront Ruby on the Ironwood lie, bringing up the hypocrisy after their condemning of Ozpin just last season. I like him having a more forward role (outside of not getting to be part of the celebration in episode 4 what the hell guys), and that he’s the big link between RWBY and Ironwood was a great call. Having Ozpin shelved for one more season so Oscar can take center-stage was an inspired choice. I love his dynamic with Ironwood, and how James closing himself off emotionally gets reflected in how he begins slipping in how he refers to Oscar, starting off as treating him and Oz as separate, ending with him gunning Oscar down as he doesn’t care anymore to differentiate the two.

My big issues with Oscar’s arc are that I’m first of all annoyed at the lack of followup on the Oscar stuff from V6, I’m still waiting for Qrow to apologize for punching Oscar guys! I also really wish Neo’s first attack wasn’t offscreen. CRWBY’s cliffhanger fetish meant I got to break out the Offscreen Pine jokes again. And of course, the Neo hallway punch was a bit bullshit.

G) (Most of) The fights are amazing

There’s no punchline. These fights are great, two of them are in my Top 10 Series Wide fights list and at least the duds aren’t Volume 5 bad.

If you’d told me before Volume 7 that Watts would get an extended firefight with James, I’d have felt that a bit cheap as Watts to me doesn’t feel like a fighter, more a planner who hides behind armies of mechanical soldiers. But damn if they didn’t sell me on Watts “You’ve yeed your last haw” Watts whipping out a Glock just to spite James.

This is another one of my favorite shots in the entire series.

Ironwood vs Watts is potentially my favorite fight in the entire series, and if it’s not, it’s easy Top 3 alongside Yang vs Mercury and Pyrrha vs CRDL/Mercury. It makes great use of Amity in the abandoned gravity biome meant for SSSN vs JNPR, with Ironwood and Watts deftly moving around in a manner that very easily could have been difficult to track with the constantly shifting gravity, but the crew do their best to keep it coherent as to who’s where. The credits showed their dedication also stretched into visual continuity, as James and Arthur’s route throughout the Arena was carefully considered so they’d loop around organically.

This is what I mean when I say the crew went above and beyond to keep things clean.

Ironwood vs Watts could have easily failed to impress, given its lack of choreography on the level the series usually does, but the team’s efforts went instead into showing a situation that lets Watts get a dragged out battle: James wins whenever he closes the distance here, so Arthur’s constantly on the run and being forced to tamper with the arena. Great camerawork, a GOD TIER song from Caleb Hyles that I’m still listening to today, and two characters with a fantastic history coming to blows makes for easily the best fight of the season and a series-wide highlight. Watching it develop from storyboards, to mocap, to animations and the full version is a delight to see. This is what CRWBY can do when everything comes togehter. The orchestra’s all tuned. It’s a goddamn symphony.

THIS is my favorite shot of the season.

Tyrian also gets to shine with his two battles this year. His alley fight with Qrow, Robyn and Clover is short but sweet, the corvid and the scorpion especially trading brutal blows in the cramped space. Qrow goes full Devil May Cry with his style-switching here, Harbinger being swapped between sword, tonfa and gun forms freely alongside Qrow applying The Power of Punching. His 1v1v1 with Clover and Qrow though is the true highlight of the season in terms of choreography. It’s lighting-fast, and has some impeccable shot work. Qrow gets to use his scythe with deliberate nods to the Red Trailer, Clover gets to shut up everyone who doubted his weapon, and Tyrian is just along for the ride and he makes the most of it. It’s frentic, it’s heart-pounding, it’s everything a fight should be.

Honorary mentions as well go to Ace Ops vs the Geist, which is just really fun and has a great backing music choice, the opening battle with Sabre having Ruby’s obligatory ten seconds of fighting that come at the start of every new era of the series, and the Ace Ops vs RWBY fight which has some good choreo in places.

H) Winter and Penny have good chemistry

I don’t have a ton to add here, I just like their dynamic and how they advance each other’s arcs. It’s nice writing. I also like Winter apologizing to Penny when she’s angry at Jacques and takes it out on Penny by accident with the “You wouldn’t understand” line.

Penny as a Maiden is a nice idea, I think her new design is cute. Penny says trans rights.

Those are a lot of my favorite things about Volume 7. It’s a killer season when it’s firing on all cylinders but unfortunately... it often misfires in frustrating ways, many of which are unfortunately due to core emblematic problems with the series that won’t go away.

2) The Bad Stuff

A) The costumes

It’s been a over year. It’s low hanging fruit. I don’t care. Most of them are still not good and they’re ludicrously over-designed.

Blake’s in a fetish suit and I wonder how she even goes to the bathroom. Weiss just looks like an abino Sabre alt, Yang is what a Halloween costume site would describe as “Sexy UPS Driver,” (why does she have a thigh window) Ruby... looks fine, it’s one of her better costumes. Jaune’s hair is silly, Ren’s model has lost some muscle definition and he looks like an e-boy, Nora’s costume really doesn’t fit the Atlas visual design and looks like a rejected Kingdom Hearts costume. Cinder’s is too black and I actually can’t track her in darker scenes because of it (which is kinda bad during... a fight scene... where I need to know where she is...), Neo looks like a Ren Fair cosplayer doing a bit for her OnlyFans, Winter’s is anatomically weird with super skinny arms and legs, and Blake’s hair is a fucking hate crime.

Qrow’s is one I liked at first but in retrospect it does feel like a downgrade. To quote @h-e-m-o-goblin from a Discord chat:

in a show like rwby, where color is such a vital defining aspect of every character, a cohesive colorscheme goes a long way. qrow's original outfit works great in this regard. neutral tones. greys, whites, and blacks, with red accents that pop against the otherwise sparse color. it's good! it's distinctive! it doesn't feel cluttered and it doesn't look like a clown vomited on him! the subdued colors really lend themselves to the grey, cynical energy qrow seems to carry with him. a literal lack of color in his life. the outfit itself feels like something he would wear; a combination of "clearly trying to look cool" and "a little disheveled and laid back." the design breathes, it isn't cluttered. let's contrast this with his vol 7 outfit. a lot of outfits in vol 7 suffer from this problem, but first and foremost it doesn't look like something he would wear. where his old outfit had a casual feel to it, his new look feels like someone dressed him up for a family christmas dinner. it's too... tidy. now of course you could argue this is him "cleaning up his life," but i dont feel like you have to sacrifice his own personal style in order to convey that. if that's really what they were going for, they easily could have just, oh i dont know, given him a cape that isn't tattered???

remember how i said qrow's original outfit really made his colors pop? how less is more when it comes to having a character with a specific color theme? vol 7 butchered that. we suddenly have articles of clothes that are tinted with greenish blue tones, browns, and with gold trim? on TOP of the old colors he already had in his design. it's muddy. it's ugly. the burgundy vest is fine, if they wanted to work more color into his outfit they should have done it that way throughout, shades of grey and different tones of RED. his COLOR. it just feels like they tacked so much on there without a second thought and i really think he deserves better. its just. such a mess.

The ones I did like were Watts’ new coat (I like the puffy hood), Penny’s is fine, the Ace Ops look great, Ironwood’s new outfit is stellar (those last six are great examples of how to do a lot with just primary colors of white and red), Neon’s Jolyne cosplay is cute and Flynt is slick. Otherwise, Volume 7 feels like it’s taken a lot of the wrong lessons from the costume design of the earlier seasons. Less is often more but now it feels like they have a pathological aversion to empty space on the costumes, leading them to feel like... costume vomit for lack of a better word. I didn’t love the Mistral outfits, but their modifications at least were carried by how many of them called back to the Fall of Beacon and emphasized the themes of loss in Volume 4. The new Atlas outfits... don’t have that shared theme. It feels like a hodgepodge of different design influences without trying to find a way to unify them. It’s like putting Baki the Grappler beside My Little Pony, they just fail to mesh.

Also for fuck’s sake already CRWBY just give the girls muscles already.

2) JNR suck and Ren’s arc is glorified character assassination

I don’t love JNR. They’re fine, but the show has arguably not needed them for a while and while I’ve liked them all at different points, it’s never been adoration outside of Ren in Volume 4. I was cool with the idea of them staying in Argus to help cover Mistral after its Huntsmen were wiped out, and Volume 7 has... made me wish they did that.

Jaune is just comic relief, and it kinda blows for later reasons but the big one is that he’s just not very funny. His big role in Volume 7 is basically to crosswalk some kids so we can have a joke scene during the Mantle Battle where Jaune uses his tactical genius to teach people to walk in single file. I feel like at this point Miles is just actively trying to kill Jaune’s fandom out of spite for how badly Jaundice was received. He’s never allowed to be cool or try and redeem himself. His hatedom aren’t going to stop hating Jaune because he gets more comedy guys. They’re going to stop when you write Jaune well. It’s a bummer he got some genuinely great upgrades for his sword and shield and never gets to use them outside of the opening.

Nora exists. She got a surprising amount of focus this season in that she got focus of any kind. I liked her confronting Ironwood over his choking of Mantle because we know she was once the kind of person Ironwood would have been stifling. I like her being the one to realize the loophole in Jinn’s “You can’t” line. I don’t like much else about Nora this year, or at least the Nora the writing team are pushing. She’s not funny like Jaune but Nora just absorbs so much screentime in the first half with her constant shrieking. Sam Ireland has good range but making Nora into Discount Harley Quinn is pushing her out of it. She sounds shrill, making Nora sound like she has no heart outside of the election rally. A shrill voice is one thing. A shrill voice that never lands a single joke? Yeah that character is tainted by association.

And Ren... oh God Ren what happened to you.

The Volume 7 commentary confirmed a suspicion of mine that Ren’s arc was heavily cut down from what was planned. Even watching V7 I could tell his arc was bare-bones at best, and it’s downright character assassination in places. Why is he suddenly so cold to Nora? Why is he now so obsessed with training? Why does he side with Ironwood for all of... one line which is this last between episodes 7 and 11. Ren only has two hundred words of dialoge in Volume 7 and they feel so weird in places. Ren goes from seemingly disliking Nora, to kissing her, to never referencing the kiss, to partaking in the Worst Scene Of The Season, all with no consistency. It’s not even threadbare. Ren’s arc just has no connecting tissue for so much of it! It’s insane how badly Ren was hurt by this, and I shudder to wonder how bad his Volume 8 arc will be because you know that was one of the first plotlines they cut down on when they inevitably overreached again.

I don’t know how they made Renora kissing feel unearned? But by God they found a way with how much of a trainwreck Ren’s writing is in regards to tainting this.

If Ironwood is an example of RWBY doing character writing well, Ren is the mirror image of how badly they can do. JNR really suffered from Volume 7 (also fun fact, Ren has about 200 words of dialogue? Ironwood has 4400). Maybe not to the level of irredeemable dislike? But very close to being on the same tier as Cinder of “Just go away already.” I’m not looking forward to their content in Volume 8.

3) RWBY themselves are poorly handled in Volume 7

It’s unfortunate that the actual title characters of the series are also some of this season’s weaker links. RWBY feel... superfluous to this season in a way they’ve never felt before. It’s baffling how much of the season doesn’t change if you just don’t include them, and apparently Volume 7′s first draft? Was even worse.

The commentary says that many of the RWBY moments were added later in production. Stuff like Ruby and Renora at the rally, Blake and Yang’s talk with Robyn and Ruby and Qrow’s chat were all either added in near the end of the writing or were “low priority” enough that they could have been cut which is... veyr alarming that’s stuff even the main protags have to worry about!

Ruby feels half-baked. I was looking forward to her in V7 after how V6 gave her a more dynamic personality and the focus she got in Brunswick, and having Penny’s return had me interested in seeing Ruby grapple with her emotions about it. She watched Penny die, how would it influence her to see Penny back and OK? Good question, we never get to see it. Ruby’s just OK with Penny’s return, the one time they touch on it Penny immediately glosses over it. Ruby just goes back to her old happy go lucky persona where any and all negative emotions are immediately forced down instead of confronting them and growing from them. I’m getting a little tired of Ruby bottling her grief and being teased about finally getting her snapping like a Twix Bar. We finally got her crying and it lasted all of ten seconds. And it doesn’t help that Ruby’s still getting shafted for fights. Her scythe choreography has no excuse being as flacid as it is now after Qrow vs Clover showed they can do scythe fighting! Why is Ruby being upstaged by (let’s be real) a supporting character! Why is she being limited to ten seconds of good combat then nothing for the rest of the season outside of flimsily swinging it or shooting. It’s disappointing, especially after how good V6 Ruby was.

I swear, Gravity’s not just my favorite episode of the season just because Ruby finally cries in it.

Weiss was kinda just done dirty though. At least Ruby has a good outfit. Weiss confronting her father has been a long standing plot thread for the series, it’s been Weiss’s Big Thing since the White Trailer. And when Jacques finally appears, he’s very... bland. He’s just evil corporate dude who exists less as an obstacle for Weiss and more just a roadblock for the plot through the election. Weiss finally gets a chance to take her father down and work to redeem her family name... but instead of earning said victory and it being treated with the same gravitas and emotional weight as Blake defeating Adam... Weiss has her victory handed to her. And it’s played for comedy by her abusrdly attractive mother.

Listen, I like I Willow Schnee. I think she’s a fascinating character and I like the idea of a person who is aware of the harm they’ve done by accident but is too broken to fix the issues she accidentally left. I love her calling Weiss out on her treatment of Whitley. But she is absolutely a Deus Ex Machina that exists to get Jacques out of the plot as fast as possible. You mean to tell me Hackerman Watts never once made sure Jacques had hidden cameras? Or that none of the staff found Willow’s cameras and reported them under the assumption they were White Fang spies? It’s so... convenient. It’s handing Weiss her victory on an unearned platter. Which sucks. I was really looking forward to Weiss beating Jacques. Instead she just gets given the plot device while JNR engage in the Worst Scene of The Season in that Whitley food stunt.

Me whenever I’m asked to rewatch Cordially Invited

Blake and Yang have much the same problems, in they never separate. I know they’re going to be together. I know CRWBY are making it canon (get it over with already). I still would like Yang and Blake to have individual character scenes. I’d like Blake and Marrow to talk about being a Faunus Huntsman in Atlas (another thing that got cut thanks to Robyn Hill). I want Yang and Ironwood to discuss their PTSD and have Yang thank Ironwood for his trust in her that he commissioned the arm despite Yang attacking Mercury. I want Blake to be well animated in fight scenes so she’s doing more than just jobbing so Yang looks better. I want Yang to stop hogging all the good Team RWBY choeography. I want them to interact with other characters and continue to grow instead of feeling like two halves of one character. And no, making a meta joke of how Blake and Yang don’t talk to other people doesn’t make it OK. It just means you’re self aware about your own faults.

(Also give Yang better merch or quit the favoritism. If you’re gonna milk her, put effort into it beyond crapply overpriced flannel. RT’s merch store is actively making me hate Yang.)

Team RWBY’s biggest contribution to the season is the Ironwood Lie which is... a can of worms. They certainly had a point in withholding some of the bigger truths from James but I feel by Pomp and Cirumstance he’d proven himself truthwrothy enough to warrant being told the truth about Salem. But then when he’s finally told the truth, it’s offscreen’d and the consequence isn’t “Why didn’t you tell me earlier” but “Fucking Ozpin man.” Gravity has it bite them in the ass, but it’s more an accessory to Yang and Blake telling Robyn about the Amity tower. I wish more had been done with the team disagreeing on whether the lie was a good choice or not, maybe have Yang be hardline against it due to her own “No more lies and half truths” policy instead of... having Yang tell more lies and half truths (Commentary confirms she never told Ruby and Weiss about the Robyn stuff BTW). But that’s a wider problem where RWBY aren’t allowed to disagree beyond surface level “I don’t know if this is the right call” dialogue. There’s never a threat of one of them cracking and just spilling the beans to James, everyone just blindly trusts Ruby and Qrow tells the audience “No this is different from when Ozpin lied. Trust us.”

This is the most RWBY get for content in the season finale: Ruby just nuking Cinder with no difficulty after having trouble with the eyes three episodes ago. Kinda lame tbh.

Team RWBY are just disappointing in Volume 7. They’re not given good animation, their story roles are largely insignificant, the impact of their roles on the story is threadbare and... well most of their costumes suck don’t @ me even CRWBY have admitted Blake and Weiss’s haircuts looked bad. It’s a whole barrage of a letdown for the main girls. And it’s really sad that the best scenes of the season... are usually the ones where RWBY are nowhere in sight.

Why the hell didn’t Yang get to keep the sunglasses come on guys. One job.

4) Robyn, the election plot, and the Happy Huntresses

Oh God, Robyn Hill is... not great. I could and likely will write a full meta on her character and how they bungled it but I’ll just be blunt here: I don’t like her design, the colors don’t mesh well, he head’s too small, Christina Vee is sleeping through the role and her weapon’s lame. Introducing her in a scene where she threatens to attack our heroes, and her agents are actively sneaking up on them to do it, is not a great first impression for a hometown hero. And that the commentary thinks she’s meant to be the hero in that scene is... staggering.

RWBY’s greatest threat yet is a wine mom Karen and her Home Owners Association army.

The election plot is less a misfire and more the engine just exploding. There’s so little good content between when it’s introduced and concluded, with it usually being individual scenes that are more good in spite of their connection to the plot (such as Tyrian’s massacre). It drags in pacing, going on for nearly half the season between episodes 5 and 10, and it purely exists as a roadblock to keep RWBY spinning their wheels while Watts and Tyrian keep going with the main plot. I don’t know why CRWBY went for this plot. They could have easily had something else fill the gap that also allowed for a lot of the character beats (such as Marrow and Blake’s talk and Ren’s entire arc) to shine, or at least condensed it to the important elements instead of letting it become bloated. It ends in such an unsatisfying way where Willow just shows up and goes “We have four episode left, here’s the plot device to beat Jacques, get back ot the main plot.” If they wanted to do the election plot, the best route would have been to give Volume 7 more episodes or stretch out its events to two seasons, but neither is realistically possible while RWBY lives off the teat of AT&T.

Jacques and Robyn are just boring. Evil corporate man and a lame adaptation of Robyn Hood who only has fans because of thirst who also like downplaying Robyn making a racist remark at Marrow (to say nothing of that weird subsection of Robyn fans who make her a Fox Faunus who cut her tail off to join Atlas Academy which is... certainly a creative choice especially when Marrow and Neon are punching holes in that angsty BS backstory). They can’t carry this plot and the artifical attempts to make it seem more exciting with the two cliffhaners ending on Mantle under riot or Grimm attack are laughably cut short by the next episode in each case opening the morning after. On binge watch it becomes weirdly funny more than anything and that’s not a good reaction. The dual cliffhangers being cheaply resolved is a short but succint example of V7′s pacing issues, and they almost always loop around to the election plot being too bloated, slow and just boring.

Also the Happy Huntresses are just... lame. I like their Semblances but that’s it. Fiona’s OK because she gets some screentime but May’s just “the surly one” and Joanna doesn’t even get her Semblance or much dialogue (oh wow she really is just a female Sage Ayana isn’t she). Robyn should not have been leading the HH and running for Council. That’s really stupid. And kind of wrong. Having May or Fiona be running instead while Robyn leads the team in relief efforts would have been better and could have split the focus more effeciently instead of leaving May and especially Joanna feelng like roster padding. There’s also some delicious irony in the show trying to frame the HH as the resistance fighting for the people and representing individuality, only for them all to have the same boring outfit and weapons (I think even the exact same model just with different sizes) while the Ace Ops are meant to be the military drones who are “Just following orders,” only for them to be more racially diverse, more diverse body-type-wise, and have more unique weapons. It’s another one of those odd creative dissconnects between what the writers wanted and what the artists/animation teams chose to do.

The election plot is overall toxin for Volume 7, and Robyn in my opinion, has one of the worst introductory scenes of any character in the franchise (and CRWBY have tacitly admitted that V7 had a character they were surprised at how controversial they were, which has to be Robyn). In a year where they were already juggling so much content and characters, adding in this bloated subplot was something I don’t think anyone wanted, especially now that we know we lost so much content on the sacrificial altar for this. It’s a black mark on the season and I don’t really care for the return of the Happy Huntresses or Robyn in Volume 8. None of them are interesting enough to care for outside of meta reasons like “cute.”

Also fuck you Fiona, can’t believe you got a shirt before Ironwood.

5) Cinder and Neo sure exist

To be fair, this is one of Cinder’s best years, easily her best since Volume 3 but that’s more because Cinder in the Mistral era was crap. (And if I wanna be cruel, because Cinder wasn’t in two thirds of the season)Her fans were finally vindicated after years of telling anyone who dunked on Cinder that “nooooo she has a super covert backstory that’s gonna be amazing when it’s revealed! You’ll see!” And well they finally got it. All of one line during a fight about how Cinder “refuses to starve.”

It’s still something so I guess we have to take it. Seriously... how do we still not have Cinder’s backstory.

There’s just not a ton to say about Cinder and Neo in V7 barring I that don’t think they needed to be here. They feel very superfluous and just here to have a big boss fight in Cinder’s case alongside continuing her streak of ending the odd numbered seasons fighting a female side character... which for me became an exercise in tyring to find during Cinder during the damn fight.

And this is why when most people saw Cinder’s V6 outfit they went “It’s gonna be hard to see her in darker environments,” then were vindicated when it became legit difficult to see Cinder in this scene. God if they at least just made the inside of the cape red it’d be easier.

Neo is Neo, which means she makes funny faces and mocks Cinder (I like that), but she doesn’t get a super good fight which uh... we’ll get to. I’m interested to see her finally exploding at Cinder and going for a backstab, but really Neo in V7 was kinda hit hard by the double whammy of the Oscar Hallway Punch and how humiliating ORNJ vs Neo was for ORNJ. Cinder’s definitely had far worse years and after how aimless she was in Mistral this feels like a sep in the right direction, but at this point CRWBY just need to shut up and tell us her deal. It’s been seven years guys. Come on. At least make her interesting if she’s gonna say around. They’ve had worse years, but unfortunately Cinder and Neo’s role in the finale leads into...

6) Some of the fights weren’t good

I wanna be clear, I like most of Volume 7′s fights. It’s just a bummer the worst ones are back and back and make up a chunk of the finale. ORNJ vs Neo is just crap. It’s the worst fight since the Battle of Haven. There’s nothing else I can say, it’s poorly animated, paced, choreographed and written. JNR especially are made to look like complete jokes after they spent all season training, to the point where it looks like V2 Yang could solo V7 JNR after this. Oscar I expect this from because he’s not allowed to have fun stuff onscreen after accidentally stealing the Haven budget for his fight with Hazel, but JNR were just done dirty. There were ways to make the fight work in a way where Neo still won but JNR looked good. They went for the worst possible outcome that just leaves Neo looking like she got fan-wanked and JNR looking like they’re just not allowed to be cool due to Miles’ spite at the Jaune-Self Insert stuff (and that’s not even getting into JNR being forced to run from lame rent a cops who can’t even handle a single Grimm). Cinder vs Winter and Penny isn’t much better, with her dark outfit making it very hard to track the fight because she blends into the background too well. It’s not a great showing for Winter or Penny given their earlier feats but, hey, some random female character had to fight Cinder in this odd numbered volume, carrying on Glynda, Pyrrha and Raven’s tradition. It’s at least better than ORNJ vs Neo, but that’s really not saying anything. At least Cinder’s VA work isn’t too bad this time but this fight commits the cardinal sin of a finale fight: It’s just not super interesting because we know Cinder can’t kill both Winter and Penny and she’s not becoming a Maiden, while Winter’s been too blatantly set up so it has to be Penny.

RWBY vs the Ace Ops also gets a dishonorable mention due to the choreography on display here... and the lack of it for Weiss, Blake and Ruby. Ruby never once swings Crescent Rose the entire fight and is just reduced to getting the tar kicked out of her by Harriet. Weiss barely gets to use her sword and largely just sticks to her summoning and glyphs which makes for a very visually uninteresting fighting style at the best of times. Blake just swings around and gets caught by the bad guys so Yang is motivated to fight stronger. She never dual wields (again) and her best moves are just setting up Yang to do all the hard work while Yang gets to personally KO two of the Ace Ops. There’s a lot that can be said about whether or nor RWBY earn the win, but while the animation team try to sell the Ace Ops landing heavy hits, having only Blake’s Aura even flicker really undercuts the idea from the commentary that this wasn’t meant to be a stomp for RWBY and they had to work together and be in synch to win.

Which is why Yang solos two of the Ace Ops whle Blake plays support, Weiss beats Marrow alone and then kill steals Harriet from Ruby, all while the song playing is an extended diss track from RWBY to the Ace Ops about how badass they are now, and the commentary itself says the Ace Ops are hard carried by Clover’s Semblance (because you gotta love basically saying four POC were only competent because a white guy led them, and then have them lose because said white guy wasn’t around to carry them!). Great job guys, you really sold it.

And talking of Clover, I feel it worth mentioning Qrow vs Clover vs Tyrian. It’s animation wise near perfect, but unfortunately I do feel it would be remiss to not mention that I feel the writing really has to bend over backwards to justify this fight. A lot of it is stuff I would say in that hypothetical Robyn essay, but I feel Robyn, Qrow and Clover all have to become massive idiots for this specific sequence of events to occur, and for Clover especially every retroactive attempt to explain why he prioritized Qrow over Tyrian just sounds more and more desperate. Between the references to MCU Captain America (a person whose entire arc is about learning when it’s OK to defy bad orders) or the attempt in the commentary to say “Oh Clover thought it would be easier to take out Tyrian alone instead of Qrow,” none of them land and just further drive home how much the plot had to stretch and reach to get that moment of Tyrian killing Clover. I like the fight. But I hate the road the show took to get there.

Some of the misc fights are also weak like ORNJ vs FNKI and elements of the Mantle Grimm battle, but those are the big offenders. Otherwise, again, the fights are largely good.

7) The soundtrack wasn’t... great

I mean the vocal songs only, don’t crucify me. Trust Love is just lamer Let’s Just Live/Triumph, Celebrate and Let’s Get Real are so boring I thought they were the same song until the OST dropped, Brand New Day is boringly peppy and Jeff’s vocals are dreadful. I completely forgot Touch the Sky until I was checking the tracklist to make sure I didn’t forget any songs. War has good singers but tries to sell the RWBY-Ace Ops bond as way deeper than it was. The lack of a villain song did really sting though, those are always the highlights.

There are good songs. I really like Fear, I feel it encapsulates the themes of the volume well and serves as a good condemnation of Ironwod’s mentality. Until The End is finally the Ruby song I’ve waited for since Red Like Roses 2 and I enjoy that she got a melancholic song, and Hero is easily, hands down, best track of the record and probably best RWBY track, full stop. Caleb killed it, I loved the second verse, opening opera was strong, guitar riffs were a plenty. Stellar work all around for that one.

The OST has great work from Jeff and Alex as usual, but the Jeff and Casey songs are really starting to lose their appeal. Going for a peppy feel this year didn’t help cover the cracks that are beginning to show with RWBY’s vocal songs (especially Jeff’s vocal range), and while a few standouts remain such as Fear and Hero, they are the slim minority in an otherwise very boring vocal tracklist that barely scrapes above Volume 5 for weakest set yet.

8) It wasn’t as funny as it thought it was

Comedy is subjective but man a lot of these jokes didn’t land. RWBY really needs to realize that does work in traditional 2D does not translate into 3D and just comes off as making official reaction GIFs for your Twitter account. Making characters SUDDENY SCREAM LOUDLY is not good banter. Please stop making Nora into Harley Quinn. Marrow was probably the most consistently funny character but that was it. Also I dunno why CRWBY thought Forrest was funny or what the deal was with that FRWBY crap.

“Honorary” mention to the JNR food scene in Cordially Invited which is genuinely one of the worst scenes in the entire show and I hope whoever animated it has their save files deleted for a game where they were about to beat the final boss. Nothing sums up JNR’s pointlessness in the series more perfectly than this.

C) Conclusion

See what I mean about Volume 7 being frustrating?

It’s weird that I overal think of Volume 7 as a mid-tier volume. There’s so much here I genuinely adore, with some of the best stuff to do with the show coming out of this season (barring lame, overpriced merch that feels like clothing gacha), but simultaneously the whole thing is let down by outside circumstances that unfortunately are ones the show can’t ever really recover from. Put bluntly, Volume 7 is the most technically proficient season of the show with the best lighting, backdrops, (some of the) character models, etc. CRWBY definitely didn’t slack off this year, but the problem isn't with them. It’s with the writing. A wider reaching problem is just that Miles and Kerry can’t really improve to the level that the series now requires. Eddy and Kiersei’s first season could have gone far worse, but it definitely was notable whenever they took over. Volume 7’s core problems are fourfold: The comedy is terrible and none of the jokes really land, the season focuses on the wrong plots and gives them too much effort, too many episodes are spent building up to new plots only for them to be weakly resolved (especially the Mantle Riot/Grimm attacks that are shoved off-screen), and the character bloat strikes hard here and leaves a lot of the cast feeling like dead weight. CRWBY don’t need more writers. They need more editors willing to tell the team what has to go instead of them hemming and hawing themselves on if they if they can include a plotline. The election never should have gotten past its first draft, there was too much already in this season before adding that.

When this is an unironic shot in your series... you’ve got character bloat issues.

At this point, I think JNR need to go. The show had no idea what to do with them throughout the season, leading to Jaune just being comic relief while Ren and Nora became characters I actively dislike. Renora was the easiest ship in the show to land, and they still managed to blow the engines and ram at least three icebergs just to prove that RWBY can’t romance to save its life. Team RWBY themselves are little better, with Ruby’s feelings about Penny’s return being shelved, Weiss’s victory against Jacques feeling un-earned and undercut by comedy, while Yang and Blake are benched for the volume and become a singular entity with how tied at the hip they are. Maria basically yeeted herself out of the show and I didn’t notice, Pietro is just a death flag, and while the Ace Ops had a good intro, it was undercooked by how they had to play the villain role to give RWBY something to do in the final hours. Cinder and Neo didn’t need to be here. Robyn had one of the worst introductions for a character I’ve ever seen, I never enjoyed her moments and it genuinely feels like she only has a fandom because RWBY’s community are in fact that desperate.

On the brighter side, Ironwood’s arc is fucking perfect and Jason Rose deserves all the love. Great fight, great song, great design, love the beard, it was a perfect downfall for Volume 7’s true protagonist. Qrow had a fun volume and I loved his dynamic with Clover (I don’t see the ship stuff but that’s more because I’m an IronQrow main so my blinders were on). Clover was also way cooler than I remembered. His fights stood out but the guy’s just really cool at the end of the day, with Chris doing great work as a VA. Oscar even managed to do stuff this year which was a shock and a half, but a welcome shock and a half. I didn’t mention it, but the Ozpin fear monologue is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show and it and the Ironwood/Oscar confrontation in the vault save the finale. And of course, Watts and Tyrian were the MVPs. I don’t have a bad word about either of them, they fucking nailed their roles and I can’t wait to see them again.

And that’s kind of what I mean when I say Volume 7 flummoxes me. It’s frustrating at times with how it handles seemingly easy tasks and drops the ball. Renora went from “everyone liked that” to wondering how badly Ren’s stuff got butchered for him to be the way he is. RWBY themselves could be almost entirely cut and so little would change, and the fact that the finale basically hinges its entire emotional stakes on Winter, Penny and Oscar is a staggering call. And it really feels like the season was compressed beyond necessity because they decided going in that Volume 7 had to end on Salem’s arrival. There’s two volumes worth of material here, and maybe it would have been best to have broken up these events. Volume 7 does too much in too little time, and RWBY especially suffered from it. But when it works… it’s good. Never close to the highs of Volumes 6 or 3, but there’s genuinely good material here. The fights are mostly getting better with far less missteps than previously, the acting (mostly) continues to improve and it’s obvious that RWBY is a very good looking show at this point. Ironwood’s arc is franchise-wide highs, I loved Clover, and Marrow remains the best boi. But it’s frustrating that despite all the tech advances Volume 7 has made, it still makes such threadbare, rookie writing mistakes in cast management, comedy and character arcs. I’m glad Miles and Kerry finally realized that they needed more writers, but it won’t mean anything if the show just continues to circle the drain on the core mistakes it’s been making since 2013. Volume 7 has good in it. But I can see where it could have been great.

Thanks for reading, stan IronQrow and please get Whitley a therapist.

And for the love of God already make an Ironwood vs Watts shirt!

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beevean · 4 years ago

Note

Since you like unpopular opinions so much, may I ask for more Sonic unpopular opinions, 30th anniversary edition? :P

Ohh, Latin coming in asking for spicy takes out of nowhere :P

I’m probably going to repeat myself, but anyway...

- I have fun with ShTh. I had more pleasure in all-A-ranking that game than even attempting to try new missions in Adventure 2. I will never call it a good game and I completely understand why it’s considered among the very worst titles in the series, but fuck it I find it oddly adorkable and sometimes I feel the need to complete one of its absurd paths.

- Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Advance 3 are my favorite 2D games in the series and I love replaying them. Sonic 1, the Rush duology and Mania would come in second place, then CD and Advance 1, then 2 and Advance 2 (apparently I have a thing against sophomores lol)

- To expand on this, I think Sonic 1 is not a great Sonic game, but a very good game overall. Sonic 2, on the other hand, may have refined the Sonic formula and fixed many of S1′s flaws (such as reducing the number of acts from 3 to 2 to allow for more zones), but I feel like it’s barely as half as fun to play as Sonic 1.

- Marble Garden is one of my favorite levels in S3&K, I love how big it is and all the gimmicks and how Eggman straight up destroys these important ruins for the sole purpose of killing Sonic. Conversely, Stardust Speedway may be my least favorite level in the Classic series because it’s so incompetently designed - it’s not even “gotta go fast: the level”, it’s “where in the fuck are you sending me now, please let me go this way NONONONO DON’T HIT THE SPRING”. I find it very ironic then, not to mention satisfying, that in Mania SS Act 1 is a reskin of Marble Garden, just as it deserves :> (I still genuinely think MG should have been remastered in place of Hydrocity, which is so good in the original that the Mania devs only worsened it)

- I don’t really care for an Adventure remake because 1) it already had one, it’s Adventure DX, other games need it more (hello heroes), and 2) it’s such a polarizing game that how would you even “fix” it without pissing off half of the fanbase? Same thing with an Adventure 3 (or 4, more correctly :P) - considering how different the first two Adventures are, which characteristics should another title have? It’s too complicated, for me I’d just pick Sonic’s gameplay style in SA1 and build a game around that.

- There is no Sonic game with a good plot. No, not even Adventure and Unleashed, although I do agree that they’re the best written games. Remember that best doesn’t necessarily mean good and worst doesn’t necessarily mean bad.

- RCS is my favorite Sonic voice actor in the games, and he’s been consistently good since his debut unlike Drummond and Griffith. If you have a problem with the things he says, that’s not his fault.

- Lost World has some of the best characterization for Sonic and Eggman, and the idea of “Sonic almost dooms the world due to his character flaws” is great. Props too for having Sonic emote and show actual sadness, regret and anger, especially during an era where it seems like he’s only allowed to be cocky. I also don’t mind Tails being snarkier and meaner... I just wish the finale proved him wrong (and also wasn’t written with a pen stuck in a buttcrack).

- Elise did not deserve all the hatred she got for years. She’s as bland as a piece of bread left on the table for the entire night, but her concept is interesting and she doesn’t really do anything bad (or anything at all). also for the love of any god you believe in stop with the kiss jokes it’s not bestiality and it’s not necrophilia and it’s not sonic “making out with a princess” AAAAAAAAAAAA

- I don’t mind Boom’s characterizations because, in my head, those characters are not “really” the same as the ones in the game canon. Yes, in any other context, Boom!Knuckles would be beyond OOC, but... I don’t really register him as Knuckles? So I like his pseudo-Kronk personality. Same with Eggman and him being reduced as the village bully. (I don’t even know how unpopular is this opinion, but I know some people don’t like Boom due to how different the characters are)

- Eggmanland is probably in my top 10, if not top 5, favorite levels in the franchise. Too many difficult levels in Sonic are difficult because they’re cheap (Scrambled Egg, Cannon’s Core) or have some questionable design choices (Lost Impact, End Of The World), btu Eggmanland somehow, even the very first time I played it in 2009, felt like that kind of difficult that pushed you forward to try again and again. I never managed to get more than an A-rank, but it’s the best climax I’ve played in a Sonic game <3

- Sonic isn’t dead, dear youtubers who love making doom-and-gloom videos about Forces killing the franchise. Stop. You aren’t interesting. And while I’m at it, stop gushing about a game by shitting on others. If you want to say that Unleashed is great, you can say “Unleashed is great” without adding “unlike Lost World and Forces which suck ass”. Believe me.

- amy in advance 1 is fun you’re just mean

Your turn :D

#sonic the hedgehog #i probably forgot something lol #latin-dr-robotnik

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hb-pickle · 3 years ago

Text

Favorite Quotes from Frozen 2: Dangerous Secrets 🌃 🌌 🌠 🎑

Quick list of all my favorite quotes and scenes from the book "Frozen 2: Dangerous Secrets" by @marimancusi 😚💜!

Dangerous Secrets came out almost 7 months ago, and despite my harsh criticism, DS was actually very fun, flavorful, coherent, brought something to the table, complex, had lots of fun lore and additions, and all that good stuff a super fan would love. I was VERY entertained and I do stan 😌. It felt like a genuine, heartfelt addition to the Frozen canon and I love and respect it, despite its flaws. So here's a little Dangerous Secrets appreciation featuring my favorite quotes! 🌟💛💫🎉🎊🎖🌙

➽───────────────❥

#1 - 12 year old Iduna, after first arriving in Arendelle for the 1st time, is interrogated by some townsmen who don’t recognize her.

"Please," I whispered, my voice hoarse from the smoke I'd inhaled. Though I hardly knew what I was asking for. Mercy? - PG 31

I just think this line f*cking SLAPS. “What was I begging for? Mercy?” NOW THAT’S REAL LITERATURE.

#2 - Iduna goes to the Enchanted Forest and is stopped by the mist.

A crushing despair began to weigh on my chest. Everyone I ever loved was there behind that wall. - PG 61

I like this specifically because I like how its a subtle reference to the rest of the Frozen franchise i.e. Elsa from Into The Unknown “Everyone I've ever loved is here within these walls”. A lot of tie-in books tend to go heavy and obvious with the references, but this felt very well crafted and professional.

❂

#3 - Agnarr, in a fit of passion, ask Iduna to always tell him the truth and that they should never keep secrets from each other (making Iduna panic a little because she has been hiding her true identity their entire relationship).

I trailed off, unsure what to say. Not sure if I'd ever know what to say again. Every word that came from my mouth tasted like a like, even the ones that were true. - PG 106

This one felt REAL good because Iduna’s anxiety around Agnarr has been built up really well throughout the whole story, so we really feel her panic. Especially coupled with Agnarr’s blinding ignorance (affectionate) 🤣🤣🤣 Also just.... that last line... POETRY.

❂

#4 - Teenage Iduna and Agnarr go on their bi-annual trip to investigate the mist. [Purple = Iduna, Green = Agnarr]

"Did you finish your section?"

"Yup."

"And...?"

"Oh. There's a big gaping hole. Crazy huge. Sorry, was I supposed to tell you?"

She didn't laugh.

"Sorry. Bad joke." I felt dumb. I should know better than to mess with her at the mist.

"And yet somehow you manage to repeat it every year," she grumbled, testing out another section of mist. - PG 87

This is definitely the funniest line in the book because you can really tell Iduna is SICK of his ass 🤣. Also the fact that this isn’t the first time Agnarr tried passing this same shit is hilarious. I also feel like this really nicely exemplifies both character’s personalities as lighthearted, stupid, and unweildy (affectionate) and stern and serious but forgiving.

❂

#5 - Adult Iduna tries to comfort panicking teenage Elsa. [Purple = Iduna, Blue = Elsa]

"I understand, sweetheart," I said at last. "Just... hang on a little longer, okay? My brave girl." My voice cracked on the last part and I felt a tear fall from my eye, sliding slowly down my cheek. Elsa saw it and to my suprise, she suddenly stepped forward, closing the distance between us. I watched, breathlessly, as she reached out with a shaky hand and swiped the tear from my cheek. It froze on her fingertip-a perfect crystal trapped in time. The she flicked it away, looking at me with her great, deep, deep, sorrowful eyes.

"I love you, mama," she said slowly. - PG 268

I like this scene because it really caught me off guard!! I didn't except Elsa to touch her mother, especially this deep into her trauma. And this scene is just so sweet 😭 and a nice small bonding moment before the tragedy at the end. Plus the tiny crystal tear is beautiful imagery ❄

❂

➽───────────────❥

Honorable Mentions for other scenes I just liked:

• Iduna rejects Agnarr's first proposal and he drops the love spoon out of the tree. - I think that's a very good use of setting, plus trees are very important symbols in A&I's story <3

• Iduna and Agnarr get married and they do the wedding ritual where you pull the top rings of the Kransekake to predict how many children you will have. - This one was really fun because I liked the little bit of lore/culture! Plus its a little fun nod to their beautiful babies uwu

• All the horny^TM scenes - because it made me question what the age range of the book was for 🤣🤣🤣. Plus it was just super funny

#frozen #frozen 2 #disney frozen #disney frozen 2 #agduna #iduna #agnarr #frozen 2: dangerous secrets #dangerous secrets #king agnarr #queen iduna #elsa #elsa frozen #anna #anna frozen #northuldra #arendelle #frozen analysis #frozen 2 analysis

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howtowhumpyourhiccup · 4 years ago

Note

Httyd!

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character:

Hiccup Haddock!

Least Favorite character:

Idk, I guess, Grimmel?

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Hiccstrid

Vigcup

Eretcup

Toothcup

Stalka

Character I find most attractive:

Hiccup! (And Astrid+Heather come in as very close seconds)

Character I would marry:

Hiccup (Like, how can you not?)

Character I would be best friends with:

I'm just going to say Toothless before I answer with "Hiccup" again! :'D

A random thought:

"I really want to work on this one Httyd fic."

An unpopular opinion:

The Httyd comics aren't bad, actually.

My canon OTP:

Hiccstrid

Non-canon OTP:

Toothcup

Most badass character:

I'm sorry, I'm supposed to make a choice in a cast that is purely made up of badasses already? :'D

But I would have to say Hiccup takes the top spot for me, purely because of how little faith people have put in him growing up and how strong of a character he truly is.

Pairing I am not a fan of:

I don't really know? As a multishipper, I generally like all pairings, even if I don't go out and search for fics or fanart of them.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

Drago Bludvist. I like him a lot as a villain, but I feel like he could've definitely benefitted from more screentime. And I do miss the role he could've had in Httyd 3.

Especially after his moment with Hiccup, when he watches Hiccup pull Toothless out of the Bewilderbeast's control. The way Drago says "How are you doing that?" sounds so filled with genuine surprise, I wish Drago was explored more.

Favourite friendship:

I would say Hiccup and Toothless (it's what the entire franchise is based on, after all) but I also want to give some attention to Hiccup and Snotlout. Because if you see where they started versus where they ended? Amazing! Such growth!

#asks #anonymous

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smokeybrand · 4 years ago

Text

Endless Love

10. Ice

Ice was a real surprise for me. It’s the only entry in season two that is classically animated so it already got bonus points from me but, as an entire short, it was amazing! The second we got outside of that apartment and into the wider world, i wanted to live there. So much content could be embellished from that all-too-short time spent in that world. More than that, i loved he relation ship between Sedgewick and Fletcher. I’m not saying an entire show abut those two is necessary but i wouldn’t scoff at them being supporting characters in a more anthology or ensemble show about that world.

9. All Through the House

This one is just cute. It’s a genuine short and i i don’t think there is a ton of legs in exploring that world but i had a fantastic time with what we got. The animation was gorgeous and the premise was outstanding. Of course, I'm curious about the “Naughty” but we don’t necessarily need confirmation about that I think that little glimpse into the world was more than enough.

8. Three Robots

Three Robots is in the same boat as All Through the House. i loved the time spent in this world but i don’t think we need to to revisit it in any capacity. What we got was the perfect amount of time there. It was beautifully animated, ingenuously written, and executed perfectly. This was a surprise for me to be honest because, in my order, it came right after Sonnie’s Edge and The Witness so shifting thematic gears like that was a little jarring. Jarring and welcome.

7. Helping Hand

Helping Hand is everything i wanted Gravity to be. This one won me over with the sheer panic of it’s narrative. The storytelling was incredibly intimate but that tension was f*cking palpable! It was able to really instill the utter despair and unbridled dead Alexadria felt as she began to spiral off into the infinite nothingness. I was absolutely enthralled with the humanity and sacrifice she made in an effort to straight up survive. Like, how many of us could do what Alex did in that situation? How many of us would have the absolute balls to make that call? Absolutely brilliant storytelling.

6. Pop Squad

5. The Witness

The Witness makes this list based strictly on the strength of it’s aesthetic. For me, the art design in this short was the strongest of the first season and i say that knowing it’s only the fifth entry on this list. As a narrative, it’s a closed looped so there is a ton of lacking substance but the way it’s executed is too f*cking dazzling to ignore. This thing smacks of that Spiderverse animation style but does it in a way that sends you into a surreal trip of colors, glitches, and nudity. I as completely in awe of what i witnessed in that entry.

4. Snow in the Desert

Snow’s adventure was my absolute number one of season two. It’s f*cking incredible. The animation, the character work, the plots, the world building; All of it is an absolute marvel of execution. It presented a complete universe in a matter of minutes and i found myself not wanting to leave. Indeed, of the eight new entries, Snow’s wold is one that i absolute need more of. I need to see his life before Hirald, before his balls got a bounty. I want to explore his very human life with his wife and why she did what she did. I want to see what that world looked like two hundred years before we got our fleeting glimpse, and what Earth looks like in present day. Snow in the Desert was so goddamn great, i was upset it was so short. That’s only happened to me with one other entry on this list and at the very top.

3. Beyond the Aquila Rift

Now, i just gushed, full tilt, about how much i loved Snow in the Desert so why is Aquila ahead of it on this list? Why are there three more ahead of it on this list? Because the remaining three left me with a complete feeling in their narrative while leaving the door open for deeper exploration in to their worlds. Plus, i mean, Aquila’s presentation was f*cking chef’s kiss. Watching that short felt like watching The Fifth Element. Between the space setting and the killer music, it definitely gave me Luc Besson vibes and we all know how much i enjoy Besson’s movie movie making. Aquila is rife for anthology storytelling, just the world Greta could fabricate in her mercy killing duties as a giant spider nest is prime for infinite narratives. Think Tales from the Crypt but sexy and full of Alien Spider Mistress.

2. Sonnie’s Edge

Sonnies Edge was my first glimpse of what would become the utter brilliance of Love, Death + Robots. I Was absolutely enthralled by the character designs and the overall world because, if you don’t know this about my, cyberpunk dystopias are kind of my thing and the world of Sonnie’s Edge it my neon drenched wet dreams perfectly. Watching this felt like watching those old, excessively violent, gratuitously sexy, Eighties anime entries i grew up on. I missed all of the blood and f*cking and gore and violence. Sonnie brought that all back for me, leaving me satisfied but with a nagging hunger for more.

1. Good Hunting

Of all the shorts submitted between these two season, Good Hunting is my absolute favorite. I absolute love every second of this entry. The animation is fluid and top tier, giving justice t the gorgeous art direction and character design. The mix of computer and classic animation mixed perfectly, never outshining one over the other. I’m not he biggest fan of Steampunk but this is the rare entry that really grabbed my attention with how intricate, how absolutely stunning, all of the the iron work is in that world. As i gush about every aspect chosen to present this magnificent world to us, the crux of my adoration lies with the relationship between Liang and Yan. That sh*t was a real pleasure to see and, even after the tragedy, their love for each other really resonated through to the end. I want more of this world than any other we’ve seen so far and i hate that all we got was this one short.

Look, this is just the top ten of my list and, in all honesty, this thing stays in flux. With the exception of the front three, any of these shorts can make my list on any day of the week. I really like Automates Customer Service, Zima Blue, The Tall Grass, Suits, and Shape-Shifters. I’m sucker for classic animation so Blindspot has a shot, even if it’s the weakest of the first season, and The Secret War is just a feast for the eyes. The is a lot of good to great in this show and i can’t wait for the third season. Love, Death + Robots is a bastion for pure creativity, something that mainstream Hollywood lacks. That, i think, is why i adore this series so much. I miss when cats took risks and created unique masterpieces. You see that with smaller studios like Neon and A24 but that spirit has long since vacated the major studios. Thank the stars for Netflix because without them, we’d never have wonderful little nuggets of pure inspiration like this show.

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0poole · 4 years ago

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Bloons

Honestly the entire Bloons series has been some of my favorite flash/other-than-flash games out there, and I feel like it’s worth bringing it up since I just crossed the 365 day threshold for BTD6. Maybe in the past, but nowadays I definitely don’t feel like I ever play a game daily for a year straight. Chances are it was a little desperate when I first started playing, but as of now literally every single day I open the game up and play the daily challenge just for the sake of it. Plus, since the chest technically resets every 9 hours or so instead of 24, I could’ve cheesed it a bit, but I didn’t. That’s a pure 365 days of playing the game.

And even apart from that, the entire Bloons series has been in my mind since the first one and my middle/elementary school Coolmath Games days. Even though the puzzle, pure form of Bloons wasn’t as much in my interest, the staying power of the Tower Defense version is crazy. Flash Tower Defense games are plenty, and yet the one with the stupid monkeys throwing darts at balloons was the best.

I went back semi-recently and played a round of each BTD, and I gotta say, it was fun seeing where everything came from. 1 is absolute garbage, forcing you to just spam Super Monkeys if you want to get anywhere, but a good starting point obviously. I honestly know nothing about the people creating these games, but obviously it wasn’t made by a AAA crew, so you can’t expect everything to be put in place in the first iteration. 2 and 3 feel much better, but obviously not much after being so used to the modern stuff, and 4 and 5 are the ones that really shine the most, apart from 6 obviously.

I definitely was one of the types of people who initially reacted poorly to the artstyle change of 5 and 6, but I’ve definitely turned over. I don’t know if the whole BTD community rioted at that point, but I at least was like “ew, they’re cute now” when I first saw it. Thankfully I turned over, and realized the current designs are the absolute best out of the entire franchise. Also, I love their cuteness, as I love cuteness in general, so basically just call it character growth. Even though 2D art always is more interesting for games than 3D in general, the entire art direction of 6 is genuinely really good, being so bright and cartoony (at least before the fifth stages of upgrades) really fits the cartoony idea of monkeys popping bloons. 5, and the entire franchise before it, really is proof enough how horrible a pure top-down perspective is. On the title screen, you can see what the monkeys are supposed to look like, but in-game they literally look like weird blobby scorpions. Even though in the back of my mind I knew what they were supposed to look like, the pure top-down perspective completely ruined the image. Not to mention the OG designs for the monkeys was really weird and bad anyway. Even if you wanted a goofy fat kind of monkey, there are a million better ways to achieve that than how it used to be. Again, of course, they weren’t exactly AAA game-level quality, so you can’t expect such perfect character design.

But, oh my god. One of the things about this game that must’ve kept me through 6 was the character designs. If you know anything about me, it’s that I love a good character design, and 6 is full of them. It’s so interesting to see how they extrapolate the main concepts of each tower into their three different paths. The generic Superman-based monkey can turn into a Batman-based monkey, a Terminator-based monkey, and a fucking ancient god of the sun. The seemingly chill Druid can smite people with the power of Zeus, become the much more expected forest-based type, but also turn into this completely out-there being of pure wrath. I could go on and on about that, but needless to say for so many of them look and are designed so great. I think the tower with the coolest level 5s of the game is the Ninja. It’s hard to explain, but they all just look really cool while also not deviating too much from the cartoony-cute art style. I think my all-time favorite level 5 is the top path of the Wizard, mostly just because he looks really cool, but also because the parts of the path before it show him aging and growing out his beard. I also have to say the 2-0-3/4 Wizard also looks exactly my style, with the dark purply-ness and gold rims. Also, if you haven’t noticed, the Magic monkeys are my favorite type, and not just because their signature color is purple. That’s part of it though. Magic is also just cool in general. My main RPG-class of choice is almost always a mage/wizard.

Also, the heroes are also really fun. As someone who often creates species of aliens/monsters, I always feel like I want to create a dedicated character out of them no matter what, so I feel like the heroes are basically just that. And, of course they have good designs too, and of course as you can probably guess my favorite is Adora, basically being the same thing as the 5-0-0 Wizard with the Sun God aesthetic. Since she has her own stage and a special interaction with the True Sun God/Vengeful Monkey, I think she’s a pretty big deal anyway. I will say that I highly slept on Gwen, but then for Easter they gave her the Harlegwen skin and I fell in love. It’s insanely good stuff. Apart from looks, it does feel nice to have some sort of interchangeable tower that you basically just place and forget about, aside from using their powers. Plus, it makes a really easy type of thing to periodically add to the game to keep things fresh, even with the skins in general. It definitely is much better than the stuff they had in 5, where you had to use Monkey Money to buy each one, and you could only use them once per stage. Obviously 6 has the extra powers to help you out, but they feel much more optional and cheaper than the heroes of 5. Since I barely buy anything with Monkey Money to begin with, and since I’ve obviously had 365 chest openings, and AND since I barely use them to begin with, I’m completely stocked up. I only ever use the farmer and sometimes the tech bot if I get lazy. I did use the portable lake I got from my 365th chest opening after I got it, just for the sake of celebration. That’s literally how my mind goes.

6 does have the slight tinge of a mobile game artstyle, but in this case it’s really just better. I’m not into mobile games, and especially not the generic artstyle they have, but it is really pleasing to look at anyway. It did chase me off before I converted, though. That, and the fact you had to buy it now. Like a true gamer, I was put off by the fact that something that was once expected to be free now has to be paid for. But, then, I realized that the entire franchise has provided much more than 10$ worth of entertainment to me throughout time, so it was extremely fair to pay that. It is still kinda weird how 5 has to be paid for for mobile, when it is just free online, though. However, unlike a true gamer I think the microtransactions of the game are extremely fair. Considering they just give you things that you don’t need, and can get for free otherwise, I think it’s completely fine to have them. It sounds bad on the surface to have to pay for the game and have there still be microtransactions in it, but since they’re completely optional there’s no good reason to hate it. I think people assume that means that you have to pay for the game, and pay extra for different major parts of the game, and that sours their opinion on everything. Gamers are a strange, irrationally angry breed. I do hate using my phone for pretty much anything, though, so once I bought 6 on Steam I haven’t played it on my phone since. It’s just so much better in every single way...

I bought the game around the time of one of my family’s semi-annual trips to England because I thought it’d help when we were traveling between wi-fi spots, and it really did wonders for me then. Probably looked like some asshole teen to strangers who don’t know I barely ever use my phone for anything, since I was playing it so much. My sister even saw me playing it and bought it for herself, although I don’t know how much she’s played since then.

For the sake of stats, I have 235 hours played of it on Steam alone, and in game I’m level 115. My most complete map is Monkey Meadow with all medals except CHIMPS, which I put the effort in because it’s the default map, and definitely not because it’s an easy/good map because it’s just kinda bad compared to so many other ones. My Dart monkey has a total of 4 million XP, and the only towers that haven’t crossed a million are the Ice, Heli, Alchemist, Druid, and Spike factory monkeys/tower. I think the farthest I’ve actually gotten round-wise is 200 once or twice, but I don’t remember if I’ve actually beaten that level and continued on or lost there. I think I might’ve gotten past it once, but just sort of lost interest in micro-managing my powers and let myself lose. I probably got there once after that and lost on it. As someone who didn’t look up the optimal strategies for things until very recently, I think that’s pretty good. It definitely feels like the kind of game where if you know the best strategies, you can literally just replicate that over and over and win really easily, but that just sounds kinda boring. Since I pretty much only do daily challenges nowadays, it forces me to use a limited amount of towers, so I either go much farther because it forces me to build up less towers more, or it makes sure I can’t even pass round 90 because it just was made to get you to round 40 and that’s it. When I have the full range of towers to use, I feel like I try to get the instant satisfaction of getting a new tower to increase DPS instead of making the few towers I have/need reach their full potential, which seems to be the better option. I also don’t really sell anything when I don’t have a limited number of monkeys to place, which I think is also a good strategy if you can eliminate the major money loss in it, since it can give you a massive boost in cash to get you the better upgrades quicker. I may or may not try to learn the strategies to wipe the rest of the game clean eventually, but right now I’m fine with just doing the dailies.

But yeah, that’s like the whole thing with Bloons Tower Defense and me. Something something reject modernity, embrace monke, or whatever the kids these days are saying.

I will say that if I didn’t have so many OCs to work with and could just pump out animated shorts on the reg, I’d love to do some sort of Bloons shorts. They’d all lean into the ridiculousness of it all. Like, the first one could do the 2001 thing with the monkeys learning to use sticks, and as the main one is bashing the ground with one or whatever and throws it up, an ancient, leathery patchwork bloon flies overhead and accidentally bumps the stick such that it lands back on the main monkey’s head, knocking him out. Cue the monkeys around him to go berserk and start throwing other sticks at the ancient bloon, and once they pop it using a sharp stick, they realize what they must do. Cue a long montage of the different stages of war and invention using the monkeys finding better ways to fend off the bloons, with the whole idea being that the monkeys are getting irrationally angry at the bloons, who are just sort of around and not actually sentient, even though they assume they’re malicious because of their history and upbringing. Absolutely no political message in there whatsoever. Just comedy.

Other short ideas could include, for the start of the modern time story, it could be the backstory of some sort of chiseled veteran main character, which would involve a bloon floating into his town, and from the people’s panic someone knocks over a lamp post that sets his town ablaze, only for him and his people to blame the carnage on the bloon, causing his classic edgy character motives for fighting against the bloons. Another, much more golden idea, would be an interrogation scene, where a bunch of monkeys capture a bunch of bloons for interrogation purposes. They’d obviously do the whole “Silent treatment, eh? Well, we have ways of making you talk...” thing, except the “way to make them talk” is to strap them to a wall with one dart guy on one side to systematically pop them to try and extract info. But, of course, it would look and play out exactly like the classic Bloons puzzle game. That’d be the fun part. If not that, then it could be like the classic carnival game that likely inspired the idea of using darts to pop balloons. I really just think this weird world of monkeys and bloons is perfect for some good comedic content. Watching the monkeys severely overreact to the bloons sounds extremely fun, and I’d love to see someone do something with it some day.

#bloons tower defense #btd #6 #poole #rant #rambling #opinions #bloons #ninja kiwi #nk #flash

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grrlinthefireplace · 5 years ago

Note

Hey so I’ve been seeing you post a lot about La Casa de Papel recently. What exactly is it? It looks kinda interesting.

Thank you so much for asking!

I am delighted beyond reason to have the opportunity to tell you - and by extension the entire world - why this show has cleared my skin, watered my crops, and legitimately healed my soul after this particularly soul-crushing season of Grimdark White Man Television almost broke me as a human being.

I will attempt to keep this as spoiler-free as I possibly can, because this is a show that should be experienced in the moment, but in a nutshell, La Casa de Papel is a heist show set in present-day Madrid which follows both a found family of thieves who rob the Royal Mint of Spain, and the law enforcement officials on the outside who are chasing them.

If that is enough for you, go right to your TV or computer, fire up the ol’ Netflix, and don’t waste any more time.

If, however, you need a little more, here are the top five things I flail about to every single person in my life to convince them they need to start watching this show like immediately and then come back and tell me all about it.

For visual flair, we’ll intersperse them with some gifs of ladies, because I know my audience.

5. character driving plot > plot driving character.

You know that infuriating thing lazy TV writers do where, in order to to hurry up and get to the big explosion or battle scene or dragon attack or whatever, which is the only bit they really care about, they handwave away the whole concept of motivation and make some character do something that any halfway-attentive viewer will immediately clock that they would never actually do?

There is none of that bullshit here.

In its simplest form, the plot of La Casa de Papel is as follows: a brilliant criminal mastermind devises a heist which cannot possibly go wrong, and then we proceed to watch all the ways in which it goes wrong.

This is a fantastic setup for an action story, made even more breathlessly exciting by strategic use of my favorite heist movie plot device (as perfected by Ocean’s Eleven): namely, “scene where it looks like our crime heroes have been outsmarted and are now threatened by a completely unforeseen disaster” immediately followed by “flashback to the team prepping for the heist where we learn that of course they prepared for this exact scenario.”

But from time to time, things do actually go wrong (as they must, or else there would be no story); and, when they do, it is never because you can tell a writer just wanted to write a scene where bullets go flying, and didn’t care how he got there. These characters are so clear, their behavior so consistent, that when gasp-worthy plot twists happen, they happen because of course that character, in this exact scenario, would do that exact thing.

I’m telling you, I came to this show for a ship (more on that in a minute) and I stayed for a swooning, heart-eyes writer crush on the impeccably-designed plot structure and characterization.

4. High stakes, low gore.

Tone-wise, on a sliding scale of Heist Film Intensity where a really fluffy episode of Leverage is a 1, Reservoir Dogs is a 10, and the Ocean’s franchise is somewhere in the 3-4 range, I would place La Casa at a 5 or a 6, which is perfect for me. I love action, suspense, drama and adventure, but I hate gratuitous violence (especially when it’s pointless and masturbatory and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot) and have a very low tolerance for blood and gore. So I kept waiting for the story to eventually take a hard left turn into Tarantino Land, until eventually it was all just one huge pile of dead bodies, and was genuinely surprised when it didn’t.

This is how I learned just how badly my brain has been fucked up by lazy showrunners who think shock deaths are the only way to raise stakes. During the first season of this show, before I had figured out that it was a Flawless Gem of Television Which So Far Has Not Once Disappointed Me, there were probably a dozen moments where I was absolutely convinced that some character was about to be gruesomely killed for shock value … and I was wrong every single time.

Reader, it was fucking wild.

Every single time I was convinced that person A was going to shoot person B in the head because blah blah maximum angst over here in this part of the story and then it will motivate person C to do this other thing, the show did the hard work of finding a smarter, more unexpected direction to take that character’s story. That means that when deaths do come along - and there are a couple - they feel genuinely earned, and they matter deeply to the story and to us.

3. I would die for these women.

This show loves women. Like it truly, authentically, uncompromisingly loves women in all our fucked-up messy glorious complexity. There are no “types” or cliches here; no one is forced to be only one thing. Fuck your one-dimensional Strong Female Characters, lazy writers.

For one thing, on many shows you might be lucky if you get maybe one mom who is given a personality and a story outside of motherhood. Often, on shows written by men, the fact of her motherhood diminishes her strength or her agency. On this show, nearly every one of the central female characters is both a mom and an action hero simultaneously. Seriously. By season 3 there are four different battle moms. They’re all different, they’re not all on the same side, they have different perspectives, and their role as mother impacts the story differently, but that’s the joy of having a whole lot of different kinds of women - no one has to be everything to everyone.

These women are complicated. They laugh, they cry, they crack dirty jokes, they get laid, they have babies, they fight, they make mistakes, they fall in love, they grow. Men pull sexist shit and they shut it the fuck down. Some of them have love stories, some of them don’t, but they are never defined by or triangulated around relationships with men. They get to have relationships with each other. All of them are excellent at their jobs.

Tokyo is the kind of hot mess antihero protagonist we’ve been watching middle-aged white men play for decades.

Allison is such a realistic teenage girl it’s genuinely painful to watch.

Monica has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen on television, this is not a drill.

Alicia is terrifying. (A pregnant black ops interrogator! ON WHAT OTHER FUCKING SHOW!?!??)

Nairobi is unlike any other character you’ve seen on TV before; she’s got a little bit of Parker from Leverage, a little bit of Raven Reyes from The 100, but she’s entirely her own creature and you will fall in love with her instantly.

And Raquel. Oh, my love, my angel, my hero, Inspector Raquel Murillo. Love of my goddamn life. A fierce, kickass hostage negotiator swimming upstream against a tide of workplace misogyny who sometimes has to make the frustrating little male-appeasing compromises we all have to make to get through the workday. A beautiful, sexy, powerful heroine over 40 whose femininity isn’t diminished based on some bullshit notion that, for example, pairing your tough-bitch suit and gun holster with red toenails and a lacy blouse detracts from your strength. A loving mom and daughter who has to juggle raising a small child and caring for an aging parent with the stress of, you know, trying to stop the biggest robbery in the history of Spain. A domestic violence survivor (TW for those who need it; nothing is ever shown onscreen, but it’s discussed several times) who is given the space to discuss the things that have happened to her and how she has worked through them with such dignity, accuracy and respect that you can tell the writers did their homework.

This is a show where you can tell there are women in the writers’ room.

2. The Professor and Raquel. I don’t want to spoil a single thing for you here except to say that I myself was lured into this show by the promise of electric sexual chemistry between a criminal mastermind and the police inspector hunting him down, and my God I was not disappointed.

1. Love.

This show came into my life at a period where I was so weary of cynicism on television - so fucking furious at showrunners who dangle hope in front of us and then crush it, who only care about building anything if they can tear it down later, who treat love and fun and joy and hope and family and happiness like they’re intellectually lesser than grimdark nihilism with no soul - that I was honestly kind of broken by it. I was just so. fucking. tired. Tired of “the way we show this heroine is strong is to kill off her love interest.” Tired of “sorry but all this rape and murder is NECESSARY because of REALISM” (particularly rich when coming from shows featuring evil A.I.’s or dragons and ice zombies). Tired of getting invested in relationships - whether ships or friends or found families - only to realize that the show I was watching was always going to sacrifice character to force plot mechanics into place, and those relationships were never going to get the kind of care and focus I wanted them to get.

But that is not this show.

The single most revolutionary thing, to me, about La Casa de Papel - the thing that sets it apart from every other rollercoaster action thrill ride on television - is that every single thread of the plot is tied to love.

Every.

Single.

One.

Love of all different shapes and sizes - parents and children, friendships, doomed crushes (straight and queer), toxic exes, blossoming romances, siblings - and over it all, a deep, deep love for humanity.

The thing I said before, about how when things go wrong they go wrong in character-driven ways? It’s this. Love is why everything on this show happens. Love is what makes children want to live up to their parents and what makes parents fight to leave a better world for their children. Love is why deaths have stakes. Love is why we spend so much screentime lingering on small moments another show might ignore, like all the thieves at heist camp sitting down every night to have dinner together and argue about paella techniques. Love is what causes chaos in the middle of the heist; when there’s one person in the room you care about more than the others, you can get distracted and take your eye off the ball. Love is how your enemies can get to you, by leveraging or blackmailing the people who matter most, knowing that you’ll crack if they’re in danger. Love, gone wrong, causes toxic men to develop possessive and controlling behavior towards women. Love is how the Professor gets the idea for the heist in the first place. The plan is flawless on paper, but it doesn’t account for the human variable, and over and over again we see that relationships and connection and sex and family and love cause people to behave in unpredictable ways and throw the whole plan into chaos, which is what makes for a dynamic and compelling story.

How refreshing to see a show simply refuse to grant the oft-repeated premise that a show cannot have both high-octane thrills, and a big soft squishy heart, at the same time.

ANYWAY, I’VE TAKEN UP ENOUGH OF YOUR VALUABLE TV-WATCHING TIME, GO JUMP ON BOARD THIS TRAIN AND COME SCREAM ABOUT IDEALISTIC SPANISH ROBIN HOODS WITH ME, AND LET THE GOOD SHIP SERQUEL INTO YOUR LIFE, YOU WON’T BE SORRY

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

#lannister-slings-and-arrows #la casa de papel #money heist #from the inbox #i have a lot of feelings about this show #is this entire post just one long subtweet of 'the 100'#listen #maybe #i'm still pissed about kabby and will be for awhile #but legit this show was HEALING and CATHARTIC in some unexpected ways #yes virginia you CAN have functional loving stable relationships and high-stakes drama at the same time

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gojira007 · 4 years ago

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Movie Meme

Took me a bit of time, but I was tagged by @bunnikkila to list my nine favorite movies, and since I can’t help but be ridiculously verbose about that very topic, you can see them all under the cut 8D

As for who I tag? Well, as always with the caveat that you are free to ignore if you don’t wanna, I’ll go with: @elistodragonwings @kaikaku @donnys-boy @robotnik-mun @sally-mun @fini-mun @werewolf-t33th @cviperfan and @wildwoodmage

and don’t worry, if you DO go for it, you don’t have to get as Extra as I did about it XD

9.)

Look, the meme is about Favorite Movies, not necessarily the BEST Movies, OK? And for the most part this list consists of films where that division is less meaningful in terms of how I evaluate the other movies on here. But in this specific case, “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie”, which is ultimately not all that different from the “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ TV show it spun off from and thus not particularly impressive as a work of Cinema Qua Cinema, makes the cut primarily because it’s a movie I know so well and have enjoyed so often that I can practically recite the whole thing to you by rote; I quote it all the time in my day-to-day life, I think about it often when I need a little smile, and it’s also become my favorite tool for introducing newcomers to MST3K as a whole since it was designed with a slightly broader audience in mind than the more willfully-eclectic series. And given how much I love MST3K As A Whole, that’s an especially strong factor in its favor.

8.)

Looky looky, @bunnikkila, we (unsurprisingly) have a pick in common! I’m sure this is the one and only time THAT’S going to happen on this list. 8D

Y’know, nearly thirty years (and one fairly useless remake >_>) later, I think the thing that impresses me about “The Lion King” is just how much it is still able to grab me emotionally. Some of that is unquestionably tied up with how strongly I associate this movie with my family, all of whom it became very special to as a Shared Experience. But I also don’t know of a lot of people who haven’t had that same emotional experience with it, and that to me suggests there’s more going on here than just Nostalgia. The mixture of Shakesperean plotting with Disney’s signature strength of Character, for one thing, granting the movie’s story an Epic Scope that never forgets the emotional inner lives of its cast. The music for another, not only its instantly-iconic song-book but also its memorable score, armed with both Big Bombast and Gentle Sentiment. And the unforgettably gorgeous animation, rendering every last element of its world with believable naturalism and strongly-defined personality. All of it, together, makes for what I still personally consider the Crowning Achievement of the Disney Renaissance.

7.)

I think, if I had to name the thing I find most lacking in far too many modern Action Movies, it’s Clarity. They all tend to lard their plots up with a bunch of unnecessary contrivances and complications in hopes of making themselves appear more clever than they actually are, and all it usually does is just dilute the impact of the whole thing. “Mad Max: Fury Road”, by contrast, is all about Clarity. I could sum up literally its entire plot in a paragraph if I wanted, because it is basically One Big Chase Scene from start to finish, never really deviating from that structure for more than a few minutes at a time. And that, combined with its exceptionally well-crafted Action Sequences, means that the full weight of its visceral power hits you full force every time. But don’t be fooled; that simplicity is not to be mistaken for shallowness. Indeed, precisely by getting out of its own way, knowing exactly what it wants to do and why, “Fury Road” also delivers a story that is, in spite of what you might guess, genuinely subtle and smart. Every character is immediately unforgettable and compelling because their role in the story is so well-considered and their personalities all so stark. The world it crafts feels at once fascinatingly surreal and yet All Too Real at the same time because even its most Fantastic elements are ultimately just grotesque reflections of things the audience knows only too well. And most of all, it tells a story with real, meaningful Themes that are deeply woven into each of its individual elements, such that the whole thing is deeply satisfying emotionally, but also piercingly Relevant in all the best, most affecting ways.

6.)

Oh look, another pick I have in common with @bunnikkila! This must be the last one, right?

But yeah, this is just a legitimately great movie, at every level, in every way. Stylistically, it is one of the most radically inventive things to have ever been made in the world of Western Animated Movies, gleefully mixing together a vast array of Aesthetics and Techniques that are at once viscerally distinct and yet coherently connected, all rendered with a fantastic eye toward the world of Comic Book Visual Language that keeps finding new and extremely fun ways to play with that instantly-recognizable iconography. For that alone, I would call it one of the greatest triumphs of 21st century animation. But then, on top of that, the story it tells is one that is simultaneously Arch and self-aware, delivering some of the most fantastically hilarious punch-lines imaginable more than a few of which are at the expense of the very franchise it is working within...but also entirely earnest, sincere, and emotionally affecting. It is, at once, a movie that manages to be about The Idea Of Spider-Man in its totality while also being about just one kid coming to grips with who he is, what he can do, and what his life can be. I don’t know that I can remember the last time a movie so immediately and unmistakably marked itself as an Enduring Masterpiece, but “Into the Spider-Verse” absolutely pulled it off.

5.)

Ordinarily, I would cheat and give this slot to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in its totality. But somehow, the fact that this is about “FAVORITE” movies instead of just what we think the BEST one is compels me to narrow it down to just one. And if I had to pick just one, it would be the first of the three, “Fellowship of the Ring”. It’s not necessarily anything that the other two movies get wrong, either. All three of the LotR movies possess many of its keenest strengths, after all. For a starter, there’s the keen understanding of how best to adapt the source material without being enslaved to it; capturing many of its most iconic moments while cleverly tweaking elements to make them more cinematic, knowing what scenes to focus on for the sake of more clearly focusing the emotional through-lines of the story, and knowing what scenes, no matter how good on the page, ultimately don’t fit to the shape the adaptation has taken. There’s also its pitch-perfect casting, each and every actor doing a fantastic job of embodying the characters so well that even as your personal vision of them from the books may differ radically from what is on-screen, they nonetheless end up feeling Right for the part and a strong, compelling presence. And there’s the deft visual hand of director Peter Jackson, who knows exactly how to craft a Middle Earth that feels at once lived-in and real but also Fantastic and magical. “Fellowship”, for me at least, thus wins out mostly because it has the good luck of being adapted from the strongest of the three books, the point at which the narrative is at its most unified and thus has the strongest overall momentum. But also because so few movies have so swept me away with the sense of stepping into a world I have always dreamed of in my mind’s eye, and that’s the sort of thing that can only happen at the beginning of a journey.

4.)

Now here’s a movie that is literally sown in to my very being. It’s the last movie my mother saw in theaters before becoming a Mom. I grew up watching the “Real Ghostbusters” cartoon all the time and playing with the attendant toys; I had a “Ghostbusters” Birthday Party when I was, like, four years old. It has been my annual Halloween Tradition to get myself a big Cheese Pizza and watch this movie for about as long as I’ve had disposable income to myself. There is, quite literally, no point in my life where I don’t remember “Ghostbusters” being a fixture in it. And as a nice bonus? It is, legitimately, a Genuinely Great Movie. I realize that isn’t quite as universally agreed upon these days as it was even a few years ago (thanks, Literally The Worst Kind Of Virulently Misogynist Assholes lD; ), but I still feel pretty confident in saying this one really is That Good. I still find basically every one of its jokes hilarious; even now I could quote just about any one of them and get a laugh. I still find its central premise, What If Exorcism Was A Blue-Collar Business, a brilliant, almost subversively clever one that takes The Supernatural out of the realm of The Unknowable and into a world where even you, an ordinary person off the street, can in fact fight back against it. I still think it’s one of the all-time great examples of how to balance Tone in this sort of High Concept Genre Bender, by allowing The Story to be played relatively straight while allowing the comedy to flow naturally from the characters’ reactions to that story, allowing its Ghostly aspects to land as Genuinely Scary (or at least Worth Taking Seriously) without getting too Stern and Serious about it. And I still listen to that unforgettable Title Song all the time! So yeah, even if I could be more objective about it, “Ghostbusters” would almost certainly make this cut.

3.)

And so we come to the third and last pick I have in common with @bunnikkila, not coincidentally a movie that played a key role in solidifying our friendship, as bonding over our shared love of it was a big part of how we got to know each other on deviantART waaaay back in the day <3

By 2008, I really didn’t think it was possible for a movie or comic or TV show to really become “part” of me anymore, the way things like Sonic the Hedgehog or Marvel Super Heroes or Some Other Movie Character Who Might Be At The Top Of This List had. And then “WALL-E” came along and proved that to be completely, utterly wrong. I didn’t just love this movie, I was inspired by it, to a degree of strength and consistency that I’m still not entirely sure has yet been matched. And to be sure, some of that is undoubtedly because the movie had already basically won the war before I’d even bought my ticket; Adorable Robots In Love is something like My Platonic Storytelling Ideal, after all. But even setting that aside, “WALL-E” is a movie where even now I can’t help but be keenly aware, and gently awed, at the beauty of its craft; indeed, watching this movie in a theater did a lot to make me better understand why movies work on us the way they do, because I left that theater chewing so much on every last one of its elements. Its gorgeous animation, the way it conveys Character through Actions more so than language, the dream-like quality of its musical score (even as i type this i get teary thinking about certain motifs), the clear and meaningful way it builds its theme and story together so harmoniously, and the particular perspective it takes on our relationships with each other, with our environments, and with our own technology...all of it speaks to me deeply and profoundly, and it’s no coincidence that I have seen this movie more times in theaters than any other on this list (twelve times, for the record, and I still remember each and every time XD).

2.)

This one needs no personal qualifications, to my mind. Yes, I have some degree of nostalgic attachment to it for having seen it relatively young with my brothers and being deeply moved by it then, but it’s not at all like the kind of Nostalgia I have for “The Lion King”. “Princess Mononoke” is just flat-out, full-stop a complete Masterpiece, not just my personal pick for one of the single-best animated films ever made, but one of the best films period. It’s almost difficult for me to put into words how great this movie is, certainly in a way that hasn’t been repeated to death by thousands of other smarter people, because no one of its elements quite answers the question of why it is so great, to my mind. Yes, the animation is absolutely gorgeous with a design sensibility that brings Ancient Mythology to life so vividly that its influence can still be felt today (The Forest Spirit alone has been homaged all over the place). And yes, the music is hauntingly beautiful, at once capturing the gentle rhythm of nature but also the elegiac tone of Life Moving On. And yes, the story is an incredible mixture of the Broad Mythic Strokes of an Ancient Legend grounded in all too human Emotions and Ideas about the balance of nature, the full meaning and cost of Warfare, and perhaps most important of all, about how we determine Right and Wrong when everyone involved in a conflict is fighting simply for the right to survive. But all of those things add up together to something even greater than a simple sum, because each one isn’t just good in its own right but because each element so perfectly reinforces the other. And even having said all that? I really could just carry on singing this movie’s praises. Just...an absolute masterpiece, top to bottom.

1.)

I don’t imagine any of you are terribly surprised at this, right? I almost feel like it’d be redundant to explain my love for this movie, given how self-obvious I imagine it is to basically everyone who knows me Literally At All. But heck, I’ve rambled on this long, why not go all the way? Because the thing of it is, “Gojira” (to be clear, the original Japanese movie from 1954 rather than its American edit, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” from 1956) doesn’t just top the list by being a Great Movie. Though to be clear, it really is. Flawless? No; there’s a reliance on puppetry that even for the time can be a bit chintzier than the movie can really afford, in particular. But brilliant, even so, a heart-wrenching example of Science Fiction Storytelling As Allegory, one that, in a rarity not just for its own genre but indeed for many movies in general, very meaningfully lingers on its deepest, darkest implications. Many a film critic has pointed it out, and it remains true: the stark black-and-white photography heightens the sense of Implacable Horror at the core of the story, and the way the central Melodrama, a tragic love triangle that carries with it many aspects of Class Conflict and Personal Desire VS. The Collective Good, ties back into the main story is truly beautiful in its elegance and emotional impact. Still, for me personally, it tops the list, now and always, because it is a movie that affirmed something for me, that the character I had fallen in love with as a child convincing his family to watch a monster movie with him on television to prove his seven-year-old bravery, really was as genuinely as powerful and meaningful a figure as I had always imagined him to be.

#movies #meme #gojira007

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aedroths · 5 years ago

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inspired by @indoril-nerevar-mora post about positivity, here's a 5 by 5 positivity tag!!

talk about 5 things about tes that you love and then about 5 of your favorite tes blogs!!

tes, in general, is a great franchise, and honestly talking to another person irl that loves it always makes me so happy and glad to have a friend to talk about it with!!! and i admit I've had my problems with this in the past, but instead of approaching everyone with anger and hatred that disagree with us on the nuances, we should be glad to have an ENTIRE community to share our oc stories, our ideas, theories and things that just make us happy about tes. obviously this doesn't go the same for vigilantly hateful people like nazis, racists, homophobes, transphobes, MAPs... basically anyone that enters this fandom to attack people bc of their identity or have a harmful intent. there is no debate about basic decency, and if you're someone negatively affects the community, shame on you!!! no one should have to tell you to be decent and kind

anyway, we as a community need to be more positive and loving. most of us use tes and tumblr as an escape (not therapy 👀) from reality - from personal home issues, from politics, from heartbreaking stories on the news. we need to be more supportive, more understanding and more kind. why escape from the harshness of life only to log onto to see dreadful disk horse and people attacking another over opinions?

ANYWAY getting to the point (i know i ramble lmao) here's five things about tes that i love:

the soundtrack. admittedly, I've only played oblivion and skyrim but their scores are so relaxing. double that with the scenery, and it's no wonder people spend HOURS on this game. it's soothing and helps a ton w anxiety (and insomnia - even my 2 month old seems to sleep better with it playing in the background).

characters and their backstories. mine, specifically are sapphire, serana, miraak, nazir, sanguine, sheo, malacath, azura, mara, and brynjolf. it would be an essay on why i love each SO

the lore. it's complex, frustrating, but so fun to read about during feeding my son (hint: breastfeeding is exhausting lol). with the exception of nearly everything written by kirkbride (and several other racist/sexist aspects...), i appreciate the thought that goes into expanding tamriel.

the fact that with nearly EVERY game, there is so much exploring to do. under every rock is something new, and you find so many breathtaking destinations unmarked. like i said, it's no wonder people spend hours on the game.

the armor, weapons, etc. it feels immersive that you really can become a badass warrior, or shadowy thief, or intelligent mage (but it really seems like by dialogue in skyrim, they have a specific build in the writing :/) it also gives you the ability to create a multitude of ocs, with a range of stories, skills, personalities,,, even to ship with favorite characters. the open world really feels immersive idk

so to also spread the positivity within the community, here's my top five favorite tes bloggers (PLEASE don't take it personally if you're not on the list!!! all of you are creative, beautiful people!!)

@airiat her ocs are adorable, her writing is beautiful and she's genuinely a great person w such a positive energy (im getting SUCH a lavender vibe from u luv). we're both into astrology and tarot, and she has an amazing talent reading BOTH. like her analysis of astrology is so accurate and reliable. she is so easy to talk to and and just SO friendly and kind. and i absolutely ADORE her ship of her oc fjoara and teldryn 😍😍 honestly anyone would be doing themselves a favor by following this angel 🕊❤

@partyatsanguines she raised to popularity seemingly quick in this fandom and she absolutely deserves it!! the thought she puts in her memes, shitposts and her amazing ocs is amazing! her jokes are hilarious and definitely have made me laugh when i was having a SHITTY day. she has such a no-nonsense attitude and I'm getting a velvet red vibe from her. she's so smart (seriously i don't understand anything with math and yet here she is!!! fucking majoring in it i am just WOW) and you can see it in her jokes too. honestly i used to envy her jokes!! like i would wish i was witty enough to come up with HALF that she does. you deserve every follower and kind message queen!! ❤

@doomedteaparty i think she was actually one of the first people who posted about tes. she's incredibly creative, artistic and just really an amazing person. i love her ocs, and the ships she has with her ocs, her screenshots are always amazing. she's insightful and knowledgeable, and hearing her opinions honestly seems to give me a spare brain cell. she has such an ocean blue vibe 🌊 babe you're doing SO great don't forget that!!! 💕💕💕

@trinimac i haven't been following her for too long, but I've seen her posts about malacath (she's definitely the reason why i love him now!!!) she seems to have such an astounding knowledge on lore, and really just funny as fuck. her posts always slap frfr. im getting a sunset orange vibe?! i don't know much else but honestly keep doing you, you have such an amazing mind ❤❤

and of course @indoril-nerevar-mora !! honestly hes an absolute angel, and a strong person!!!! with everything he's been through, he's an inspiration 💖💖. && him and his boyf are honestly SO adorable and relationship goals as fuck 💕💕 i love his ocs, their stories and honestly just how badass he made them!!! and his screenshots are just 💯💯 has on point opinions and has great insights. DEFINITELY picking up a pearl vibe 🥰

whether you're tagged or not, everyone should post their top five by fives, and spread a much needed positivity (and if you don't, no pressure!!) tag as #tesblrpositivity bc i def want to see why everyone loves tes and tesblr!!! 💕💕💕

#tesblr positivity #tes #skyrim #oblivion #morrowind #eso #hannah speaks

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televisor-reviews · 5 years ago

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Top 10 WORST Movies Of 2018!

As everyone is talking about their favorite and least favorite films of last year, I’d much rather take a look at what came out two years ago! This is what I do every New Year, get used to it. And keep in mind that I haven’t seen every film from 2018, so as bad as I’m sure Sherlock Gnomes and Pacific Rim: Uprising are, I haven’t gotten around to them. If you’d like a list of every film I have seen, I have them listed on my Letterboxd: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1HnDnQ4ibO82ryM9lOCGgw1FZhVLdC4SZ

#10. Fifty Shades Freed On my 2015 list, I didn’t even bother putting Fifty Shades Of Grey on it because I thought it was absolutely hilarious! On my 2017 list, I placed Fifty Shades Darker at the very top for its lack of even the basics of what makes a decent flick, notably there being no real plot. So I guess I’m meeting this franchise in the middle by putting Fifty Shades Freed at the tenth spot for just how batshit this movie is. Shit kinda just happens randomly with little to no reason while also not being funny in the slightest. In fact, large segments of the film is kinda boring, particularly the sex scenes in which there are so many that by the 20th time, you’d just get used to it like a jump scare in Winchester. Really, the biggest reason this is only at #10 is because Fifty Shades Freed has Freed us all from this series, assuming that a film adaptation of Grey isn’t made. And that’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever given to one of these movies. #9. A Wrinkle In Time I once heard someone justify Disney’s live action remakes by saying they help fund their more unique film escapades like Nutcracker And The Four Realms (which barely didn’t make the list). The problem with that is that I don’t want those ether! And considering how Solo and The Rise Of Skywalker turned out, maybe Disney’s live action department should just stick with Marvel movies. Honestly, I don’t completely remember why I left the theater after seeing A Wrinkle In Time so angry, like legitimately pissed off. I remember the girl who looks like one of the Mean Girls being treated like a member of the Losers Club, how terrible the child acting was, how even worse the adult acting was, how annoying everybody who wasn’t Chris Pine was, and how that little kid was named Charles Wallace because the characters said it at least a million times! Considering how angry I am just writing about it, I’m guessing it was a combination of all of those elements being wrapped up with a pretentious bow. Honestly, A Wrinkle In Time was a humongous waste of my time. #8. Show Dogs It’s a bad sign when the movie starring Bojack Horseman yelling at Ludacris dog is only at #8 on my list. The big reason for that is because this is so terrible that I had to break down laughing at times. Not because Show Dogs is genuinely or ironically funny, it’s just so batshit insane that I had to laugh. Almost like a defense reflex: like if I wasn’t laughing, I’d end up jumping off the roof. The plot is crazy, the acting is crazy, the whole fucking idea is crazy! I’d like you to stop and imagine Will Arnett with the straightest face possible yelling at a dog voiced by Ludacris that nobody can actually hear in the middle of a very serious police station about the dog fucking up an undercover job and somehow not laughing your ass off. That is what it was like watching Show Dogs. You’re welcome. #7. Slender Man I think people really downgrade how good horror has been lately. I know that in a world of Insidious: The Last Key and Truth Or Dare, it’s easy to be pessimistic. And I think people also dismiss the greatness the internet has had on modern pop culture. Considering how bad things like Daphne And Velma and Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle are, I kinda get it. In reality, these tend to be the outliers among a lot of greatness, but after seeing Slender Man, I’m starting to think similarly. I was one of the only people who was actually excited about this movie because I’m young enough to remember a time when Slender Man: The Eight Pages was the scariest thing in the world and after seeing how well Hollywood treated the character in Beware The Slender Man, I was really hopeful. Little did I know that Madhouse Entertainment had one of the least interesting and least scary horror movies I’ve ever seen with boring characters, a monster that’s barely in the movie, and a script that’s closer to Rings than it is to its source material. I really hope this’ll go the way of Ouija and Annabelle and end up having a really good followup or else Slender Man will be a huge blot on the legitimacy of the internet. #6. Snake Outta Compton I’m gonna be straight with y’all, I have been doing a pretty bad job at keeping up with horror B-movies lately. I mean, I did watch The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time and Leprechaun Returns but those were mostly just mediocre, even within the context of the rest of their franchises. So when I saw the title Snake Outta Compton, I knew I had to watch it expecting something really stupid and funny as all hell. Instead I got a boring and uninteresting barely even an attempt at cinema. I really hated this film, it’s just such a boringly dull film where little to nothing ever happens and I hated every dumb second of it. The terrible rapping, the awful effects, the horrendous acting, everything in snake Outta Compton sucks and I hate it. #5. Norm Of The North: Keys To The Kingdom Remember that god awful polar bear movie starring Rob Schneider from a few years ago… yeah, they made four of those. Normal people would say the first Norm Of The North was the absolute bottom of the barrel, I say “No!… It’s Norm Of The North: Keys To The Kingdom,” and even more suicidal people would probably say it’s Norm Of The North: King Sized Adventure. If you thought the animation in the original was bad, you’ve seen nothing! This is so bad that I’m not even sure it should be considered animation! This is so bad that it makes Duck Duck Goose look like The Grinch! This is so bad that they couldn’t even get Rob Schneider back! The plot, it’s like this is one of those straight to DVD Disney sequels that were made up of episodes of conceled TV shows except why would anyone try to make Norm Of the FUCKING North into a TV show! But apparently it made money considering how (and I’ll repeat this again) there are four of these! Maybe the immense failure of Arctic Dogs will stop Entertainment Studios from making any more. #4. The Thinning: New World Order Speaking of sequels that’ll make the originals look like masterpieces, we’ve got Logan Paul’s magnum opus, coming straight outta that Japanese suicide forest. A film that tells you that a country made up of the smartest 95% of citizens are stupid enough to not catch on to the pretty obvious government plan going on in this universe. Even more so, apparently presidents to be are allowed to just make major laws that’ll arrest about 50% of the population before being sworn in as president. But even more so, I’m to believe that Logan Paul of all people is smart enough to escape these poorly conceived concentration camps. This is a key example of suspension of disbelief gone too far. I don’t believe for a second that this world actually could exist. And I want everyone reading this to remember The Thinning: New World Order after seeing what I put at number one that even liberals can make terrible movies too! #3. The 15:17 To Paris No shit, this is easily the worst movie I’ve ever seen in theaters. No joke, no sarcasm, the Clint Eastwood trainwreck that is The 15:17 To Paris is by far one of the worst movies of the decade… and it’s only at #3 on my bottom 10 of the year. Let me explain. Where the absolute bottom of the barrels of the year are total slogs that I wouldn’t be able to stand watching again, this is actually really fun to watch. Immediately after seeing it in theaters, I wanted to see it again just to make sure it wasn’t a fever dream. In every conversation I have, I recommend this movie because it has to be seen to be believed. Of all the films on this list, this is the only one I’d actually recommend to people. No other film has the balls to portray three normies with ADD talking as boringly as possible taking selfies in Venice for 30 minutes for no goddamn reason. In no other movie will you see a bunch of comedians try and do serious roles that they had no right being casted in. When I went back to school and brought this up with my film nerd friends, every one of them had a different story of watching this. My god, please watch The 15:17 To Paris so that we can convince Clint Eastwood into making The 15:18 To Paris. #2. Gotti Let me tell ya, Gotti is one of the wurst felms ya’ll evar see! Who in da hell convinced John Travolta that he culd do serious roles! But in all seriousness, this movie sucks. I’m not super familiar with the story of John Gotti, and by that I mean I’ve never even heard the name before seeing this film. And I’m pretty sure that to even get what’s going on in this, you’d have to see a 3 hour documentary on the guy beforehand or else you’d be incredibly confused the entire time because I know I was! Don’t even ask me what happens in Gotti because I have no clue. It goes all over the place with different characters doing different things at different points in time and eventually, I stopped paying attention! I do remember that there were about 20 characters named “John,” John Gotti only kills one guy though I’m pretty sure that as a mob boss he’d kill more, and I have no idea how this mafia makes money. Oh, and this convicted feline is apparently also Jesus Christ. I’ll tells yas, ya can live 100 yeers an neva see a moovy as bad as Gotti. Before we get to #1, let’s do some runners up!

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom I wanted so bad to put this on the list because as a pretty big Jurassic Park fan, I can fairly say that Fallen Kingdom is easily the worst film in the franchise. If only because of that dumb ass twist at the end with that kid I kinda forgot even existed. Or just for those annoying ass comedic reliefs that are consistently useless. Or just because on a base filmmaking level, this movie sucks. Hurricane Bianca: From Russia With Hate Listen, I’m openly and proudly bisexual, so I get how important it is to get good representation out there in the film industry. And I also get why a lot of the Ru Paul: Drag Race fandom has latched onto this series. But Jesus Christ guys, drag queens can do better and they deserve better. From Russia With Hate is definitely a step in the right direction with it being way more interesting and fun than the first Hurricane Bianca… but come on guys! These aren’t good movies! Just watch more Drag Race, it’s much better. The Happytime Murders Disney, please let Muppets Now be good! The puppetry artform deserves better than this garbage! The Happytime Murders is a movie in which half the jokes is that a puppet is jizzing a lot. Honestly, my biggest beef with this film is that it doesn’t even get to the heart of what people love about the Jim Henson style of puppetry, notably the fun. Look at most of the cast, they are very humanoid compared to Kermit The Frog or Fozzy Bear. This movie is, first and foremost, not fun. Bob Lazar: Area 51 And Flying Saucers This is my nomination for worst documentary of the year. It’s just annoying to me that this guy can get away with lying to so many people without any repercussions. In fact, he gets this whole documentary that’s basically sucking his dick the entire time! I went in expecting something along the lines of Behind The Curve, a doc that takes an even stance at looking at its crazy subject matter but in a respectful way. In reality, Area 51 And Flying Saucers isn’t even in the slightest being totally on Bob Lazar’s side without questioning his all knowing wisdom for a second and is n’t respectful in the slightest for the intelligence of its viewers! Fuck this doc! A Simple Favor This is my nomination for best worst movie of the year. A Simple Favor is a crazy film with a cast and crew taking it weirdly seriously for a comedy, all with super monotone voices. None of the actual jokes are genuinely funny but lots of them are ironically hilarious. Granted I was very high while watching this, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the best state of mind to be in while watching it! And did I mention how nobody acts during this but rather just say their lines monotonely! Loved it! God’s Not Dead: A Light In Darkness This was the year Christian propaganda got boring. I was so excited when I went to see I Can Only Imagine in theaters as my first theatrical Christian film experience only to be totally disappointed when it turned out to be pretty dull. Even more so when, later on in the year, the newest installment in the world famous God’s Not Dead franchise, the same one that first brought upon this new age of Christian based filmmaking that’s brought me so much joy before, turned out to be similarly dull. There was a split moment when a character states, “Jesus Christ was the original social justice warrior,” when I was brought back to life with its own stupidity, but it turned out to be fleeting. Not outrageous enough to be put on the list, but too outrageous to be any good. So this is how God’s Not Dead ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper. The Meg And speaking of boring, The Meg has to be the most boring shark movie ever made. A film that feels like it lasts for days and in which no real stakes feel like are in play. This has got to be the most boring and dull and uninteresting and BORING movie of the year! And considering how boring of a year it was for film, that’s saying a goddamn lot! Mary Poppins Returns I feel like I went through an arc of my own while watching this. I went from, “this isn’t bad,” to, “okay, this is a little too much like the original,” to, “why the fuck am I watching this?” Mary Poppins Returns feels like one of the Disney live action remakes because it’s basically just a shittier version of the original with absolutely no good reason to exist let alone to watch, especially compared to said original. And the climax makes absolutely no sense with the logic of the film universe; she can literally fly! And by god, does this feel like anything but Mary Poppins. Blockers Listen, I get that this film is sex positive and that’s a really great thing and all the actors are really trying their best. But it is all in vain for this film with a really unfunny script and that’s kinda important for a comedy. Sometimes Blockers can get a chuckle out of me because of how over the top it can get at times but those are just outliers in a mostly mediocre movie that got built up too much because of how much positivity is in this. Proud Mary Proud Mary is the perfect example of a film in which just because someone can do it well, doesn’t mean everyone can. Ever since Quentin Tarantino has been making movies like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, throw back action films have been really cool to see. Then, all of a sudden, the director of London Has Fallen had to come around and remind everyone that they can’t all be winners. Mostly dull dialogue between characters I don’t care about waiting for the action that isn’t even all that good. I was really hopeful that Proud Mary would be fun, but it’s anything but. #1. The Trump Prophecy Listen, I get that when I say that a movie literally titled The Trump Prophecy is the worst film of the year, it comes off as if I’m making a big political statement but believe me, I am not. Politically, admittedly, I am pretty liberal but I’m not really a political dude. But I do know terrible filmmaking when I see it, and believe it or not, a film about a crazy firefighter who gets a vision in his sleep from a god orb that Donald Trump must be president might not be very good. In fact, fuck this cynical, piece of shit, taking advantage of conservatives, monotonely acted, with no love or passion put into it, goddamn movie! As much as I didn’t like any of the movies I’ve mentioned on this list, it’s clear someone, anyone, was passionate about making them. But considering how clearly the director never asked any of his actors to do a second take, no love is clearly put into this. How cynical, how shameless. As someone who does genuinely love the art of filmmaking and would adore the opportunity to make a relatively big budget movie myself, the fact that something as lifeless as The Trump Prophecy gets to be put into any theaters really pisses me off. Say what you want about The 15:17 To Paris, at least it had its heart in the right place. Say what you want about Gotti, at least John Travolta was obviously passionate about the project. This has nothing and is easily the most hatable film I’ve seen in years!

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