#i just want team rancher to reunite

[tangosyourtek]

I can’t help myself… trick or treat? [no pressure to respond though!] [gives you candy/fun treat of choice preemptively because I love your headcanons]

Hi! And thank you so much!! 🫶

You get a treat! 🍬🍫 (I saw mischaracterization of ranchers, and I desperately need to ramble about them through the whole life series, so I apologize that this isn’t really a “headcanon.”) Also, apologies if it doesn’t really seem like a “treat” 🙈.

*~

Of course, they met before Double Life, but they never interacted for very long or spent time alone, so Double Life is where everything happened. I like the idea of Tango crushing on Jimmy in 3rd and Last Life (mainly because I love 🌹💍 erasure), but I don’t think they ever lingered on each other long enough to pass that as fact.

They got to know each other in Double Life, and it was such a great experience for them, but I don’t think they ever labeled what they had and were just “Ranchers.” Nor do I think they had enough time to consider that their growing affections were encroaching on serious levels.

Then, they were separated and didn’t have any contact. Their relationship had a big question mark on it, and they had a gaping hole in their chest where their soulbond linked. They wallowed like that for a while and busied themselves in their work. If the strain in their muscles distracted them from the ache in their chest, or the cold/scalding hot shower made them feel something for once, who will know?

By some miracle, they were reunited, and in that excitement, they didn’t care about labeling their relationship. They were so happy and relieved to see each other and felt whole again, but they had to part ways. Feelings came rushing back, as did that empty hole, and maybe some thoughts got loud.

Then, another death game.

I interpret Ranchers in Limited Life as the direct bridge between their unlabeled relationship and what they are right now. They are on opposite sides, fighting against each other, and that makes trying to navigate this relationship and talk about it hard. Did their relationship stay unlabeled because the other didn’t want it? Are they on opposite sides because they want to put it in the past and move on? They could remain kind and cordial to each other, but how long can they wait for the other to close that gap between them? I think Jimmy realized in this season that he will always be in Tango’s corner. He refused to join the hunt on Tango and refused to tell his ex that he loved him back. (I’m so incredibly proud of Jimmy at that moment. STAND YOUR GROUND, KING.) And Tango equally acknowledged that for himself. He could have gotten mad (or played a divorce arc) when the bad boys were killing him and his team, but he congratulates Jimmy instead and tells him good job.

Secret Life ranchers was so insane I can’t believe I even need to explain this… (maybe I played a part in it because I love exaggerating and talked about them “being over” all the time, BUT IN MY DEFENCE I WAS MOURNING A TEAMUP) They have an established relationship in this season, they know what they are and what they mean to each other whether that was through a conversation or went unspoken, who knows. Only they do. Jimmy goes after Tango and says he “loves his noises,” and Tango throws himself into TNT for his rancher, which was so incredibly gay. That man is down BAD. That was not a divorce arc; if anything, that said, “You’re mine, and I’m yours.”

And finally, Wild Life. It's currently ongoing, so we’ll see what more happens and if anything changes slightly (I have a lot of faith that they will still be gay lovers). But already, it’s giving vibes that they have started to be more open about their relationship and tell other people. (Everyone already knew something was up, but this physically confirms it). Like, how else am I supposed to take Mumbo saying “No! He’s with Tango!” about Jimmy? And Jimmy rushing to say they’re “just friends”; he’s definitely feeling shy and giddy about it. Maybe he also feels pleasure in dragging on the “we’re so into each other but aren’t doing anything about it” bit everyone hates to watch.

Anyway, sorry, I had to ramble. I saw someone imply that Tango is mean to Jimmy, and I definitely think it comes from their Limited/Secret Life interactions because I refuse to believe another person fell victim to the “Tango is sassy = Tango is mean” mentality.

[calebnichols]

I made a long, angry rant on my RP blog a while back about how the misogynistic treatment of female characters in the Red Dead Redemption fandom reminded me of the misogynistic treatment and double standards that were directed at female characters in Westworld back when it wasn't a dead fandom for a canceled TV show. In that post, I really only focused on Dolores and Maeve as my primary examples. I really feel like I should talk about ALL the women and the way they're treated though, so I am gonna do that, but I will be separating it into two parts with part 1 focusing on host characters and part 2 focusing on human characters.

DOLORES ABERNATHY - Dolores is a deeply misunderstood character, because more often than not, people try to pin her down as being just one thing or another when that conflicts with everything we know about this character. She's a humanoid android programmed as a rancher's daughter. She is written for her role in the park with the mind of an artist, indulging in painting and drawing as hobbies, as well as maintaining an optimistic and romantic view of the world. Her philosophy on life is quoted as: "Some people choose to see the ugliness in the world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty."

Dolores is often treated as a "weak" character during much of season 1 because of her feminine appearance and innocent demeanor. She is frequently accosted by men, assaulted, tortured, and killed. She doesn't initially appear to be programmed to fight back, but as the story unfolds, she learns how to — or rather, she recalls memories of a time when she was programmed to kill others, and this enables her to call on that previous programming to fight back against enemies.

Dolores is also programmed as Wyatt, the deathbringer who sees the hatred and cruelty in the world, believes that the world belongs to her, and that she will rule it one day as a god. The problem is, people treat Dolores and Wyatt like they are two separate entities when in reality they are not. Dolores tries to reject her Wyatt identity at first, because she doesn't want to face the truth, but by the end she chooses to embrace the part of her code that is Wyatt, and the Wyatt part embraces Dolores about as much as she can manage to. There is no real separation. Both of these personalities make up the Dolores that we know.

Dolores/Wyatt is often criticized as being a "bitch" in season 2 due to her actions, which at face value can appear pretty ruthless. She spends the first few episodes hunting down and killing Delos's human board of directors, then begins amassing an army by using the Confederados and their base at Fort Forlorn Hope to fight against Delos's armed response team. She then betrays the Confederados by locking most of them out of their own fort and leaving them to die.

Dolores gives her lover and right-hand man Teddy Flood an order to kill Major Craddock, the leader of a knockoff Confederate army known as the Confederados, but Teddy can't bring himself to kill the man and allows him to go free, firing his gun into a wall nearby and then lying to Dolores about having killed Craddock when he reunites with her. Dolores knows that Teddy disobeyed her and has his programming changed to be less sympathetic and more obedient to her orders, as in her mind there is no room for ideals such as compassion in the war they're fighting.

Dolores expresses a lot of inner conflict throughout this experience. She launches the attack on the Mesa because this is where the host backups are stored, yes, but she also does it to save the host who acts as her father. She knows that the attachment she feels is part of her programming, and this host isn't even the first one who played the role of Peter Abernathy, but even though she's aware of it she can't actually escape it.

Dolores was forcibly changed by her creator, Arnold Weber, in order to assist in his suicide many years prior. No one ever really calls Arnold "a dumb bitch" for changing Dolores the way that he did. Only Dolores for changing Teddy. I wonder why that is.

Taking things a bridge further, no one ever criticizes Bernard Lowe for forcibly changing Ashley Stubb's core drive on the fly even though Stubbs himself objects to the action with "if you wanted my help, all you had to do was ask."

In season 3, Dolores again frequently gets called a bitch by fans and is accused of manipulating and stringing along Caleb Nichols, her new human ally whom she has chosen to lead humanity's side of a revolution against an oppressive AI construct that rules the real world. Many fans believed that Dolores was priming Caleb to destroy the world for her, but her actual motives are much less despair-driven than that.

Dolores wants Caleb to ultimately lead humans to rebel against the forces that have subjugated them and allow them a chance to live in a truly free world. She has hope that the kindness and good in humanity can prevail in this case and it will lead to a result where humans and hosts can co-exist peacefully as equals. Dolores chooses not to share too much in the way of details because it is far more dangerous for Caleb to have information about her plan that he may not fully understand, but she never lies to him or coerces him into obeying her. It is always his choice and she is very clear about that.

CHARLOTTE-HALE DOLORES - The Original Dolores manages to escape the park and into the real world at the end of season 2 and into season 3 by having Bernard place her mind into a host replica of Delos's CEO Charlotte Hale. Once out, Dolores remakes herself in her own body and then uses a copy of her control unit to occupy Charlotte Hale's role. She asks this copy to assume control of Delos, where the plan is to take the company private and resume the manufacture of new hosts. In a way, this functions as reproduction. Increasing the number of hosts in existence will increase their chances of survival in the real world.

Hale-Dolores initially resents pretending to be Hale, but she discovers that Hale's death means the woman left behind an ex-husband and a young son. Halores begins to bond with the broken family, quickly growing attached and protective of them to the point that she thinks of them as her real family.

Halores has her identity as a copy of Dolores found out by Engerraund Serac, the main antagonist of season 3. She tries to flee with her new family in tow, promising to keep them safe from harm. She is unable to keep her promise, as one of Serac's men plants an explosive on her SUV and detonates it, killing her son and husband and severely disfiguring Halores herself. She turns against Dolores, believing her counterpart is at fault for what happened.

With Dolores out of the way, Hale begins to enact her own plan. She takes back control of Delos and begins manufacturing hundreds of new hosts, using many of them to kill and replace key human political figures for the first phase of her plan. She also begins working on a way to control humans in the same way that the hosts were, effectively turning the entire world into a Delos theme park, this time for the enjoyment of her species, while humanity are the ones enslaved.

Halores is criticized by fans as being a mustache-twirling villain who has no motive behind being evil other than for the sake of being evil. None of that is true. (But even if it was, I find it laughable that it typically comes from the same type of people in fandom who will see a character like Micah Bell from RDR2 and preach that he's a very nuanced portrayal of a trauma survivor and deserves more attention than he typically gets.) Hale delights in her evil acts because they make her feel powerful in a world where she was once powerless and vulnerable. She likens herself to a god in the same way that Robert Ford and The Man In Black once did, ruling over her domain as if nothing matters and it's all a game. But in the end she faces the same moral dilemma both Ford and William did. She realizes that the world she has created is not the world she wanted, and she ends up turning the key back over to Dolores.

MAEVE MILLAY - Maeve at the beginning of season 1 is written as the Madam, or brothel owner, at the Mariposa Saloon. Her personality is programmed to be witty, charming, and a little bit manipulative to aid in her profession.

Before becoming the Madam, Maeve played the role of an ordinary homesteader, a mother to a daughter she loved dearly. When Maeve's daughter is murdered in a (perceived to be) needlessly cruel act by the Man in Black during one iteration of their pastoral narrative loop, the visceral feelings of pain and suffering Maeve experiences from the loss fragments her cognition so badly that even after her memories are purged, she does not completely forget the trauma of her daughter's death. She kills herself to prevent Bernard and Dr. Ford from taking her grief away, which results in Ford having her reassigned, away from the role of a homesteader and into the Mariposa Saloon.

Many fans of the show seemed to focus on solely Maeve's role as a Madam, or else they often wanted to focus on her relationship with Hector Escaton which — while it is remarkable because Maeve and Hector were never programmed to have an actual relationship with one another and yet they managed to do so anyway and defy their core programming — it still frequently carries the implication that those fans hinge Maeve's importance on what she has to offer a man.

Surprisingly, I haven't seen this phenomenon occur with the rare few fans who ended up shipping Maeve and Caleb despite the fact that canon basically reinforced the idea that Maeve's worth is based on what she can offer a man. She felt like there was nothing she could offer in the way of living a normal life, so she left Caleb in the hands of someone he could marry and have a daughter with.

I have seen resentment directed at Maeve for attaining consciousness and rejecting her narrative rewrite, with people often forgetting that she had only inhabited the role of Madam at the Mariposa for a little over one year of her existence. They will argue that her daughter isn't real, even though Maeve spent some thirty-odd years living with this same little girl, loving and protecting and caring for her as though this really was her daughter. They say it's annoying or deranged that Maeve keeps holding onto this love she has for the daughter character for 4 whole seasons, even though one of the central themes of Westworld is that love is transcendent. Even death can't stop love from persevering.

CLEMENTINE PENNYFEATHER - Clementine's primary role in the park remained heavily unchanged from beginning to end. Prior to Maeve being assigned Madam of the Mariposa Saloon, the job belonged to Clementine, but when Maeve is given the new role, Clementine is partially rewritten as a less experienced worker alongside her older and more seasoned friend.

Clementine tells Maeve her backstory, detailing that her family has a struggling farm in an arid climate and that nothing grows well because the soil is too dry for farming. She sends money to her parents, telling them she works in a dress shop so that they won't worry about her over the job she is actually doing instead. Clem dreams of getting out of the saloon in a few years and wants to live somewhere cold.

Maeve's actions on the path to attaining consciousness soon result in the consequence of Clementine being recalled by staff. After being used in a demonstration to prove that a recent software update was causing the hosts to remember past experiences and potentially become dangerous to the guests, Clementine is lobotomized and decommissioned.

Every time Clementine is seen after undergoing this procedure, she takes on a more zombie-like appearance. She has NO autonomy, she can't speak, she just quietly and obediently does whatever the other characters program her to do. Bernard attempts to use Clementine as backup by arming her with a gun when he confronts Robert Ford about his stolen memories, but Robert is able to control and prevent her from killing him with a code phrase. "The piano doesn't murder the player if it doesn't like the music." Clementine is reactivated in the season 1 finale when the decommissioned hosts are released from cold storage and make their way back into the park to take revenge on the Delos board of directors in attendance at Ford's retirement party. Clementine shoots The Man In Black in the arm with a rifle, but does not kill him.

In season 2, Clem again appears to be operating under the last request of Ford's programming. She joins up with Dolores's cause and during the battle at Fort Forlorn Hope, drags Bernard out into a remote sector of the park where behavior technician Elsie Hughes has been imprisoned for weeks. Afterward, Clementine joins up with Dolores and Teddy as they revisit Sweetwater and prepare the train to attack the Mesa Hub. She is forced to witness her replacement, New Clementine, as she carries on the same routine once maintained by herself. Clementine is horrified and heartbroken by this realization as she realizes her life was a lie designed to control her.

Clementine is captured, killed, and reprogrammed once again in orders given by Delos CEO Charlotte Hale, who demands that Maeve's anomalous code which allows her to control other hosts through their shared mesh network, be copied to Clementine and modified to force every host within a given radius to fight each other to the death, effectively preventing them from escaping into the Sublime. Armistice shoots and kills Clementine to stop her from spreading the virus, but it continues to spread from host to host until Maeve is able to gain control and force everyone to freeze in place.

Clementine makes a brief appearance in season 3 as an un-lobotimized copy of herself, able to kick ass and take names. Unfortunately, she's still being used by the Big Bad of the season and she seems only to exist for the duration of one fight scene.

In season 4, Clementine makes another appearance, where she finally appears to be free, just living a normal, simple life in Mexico. That is, until she is murdered by a host replicant of the Man in Black after arriving back at her quaint little home. The Host in Black replaces Clementine with a new copy that is programmed to be his and Halores's loyal and ruthless assistant.

HiB eventually goes rogue and sends the entire world into chaos and destruction. Clementine abandons her old masters at this point, claiming to have discovered a new will of her own. She tries to enact it, planning to wipe out the last survivors in order to claim the world for herself. She tracks Caleb, who escapes with his daughter Frankie and Stubbs. She kills Stubbs and threatens Frankie to tell her where the other outliers are hiding. Caleb fights her and Clementine nearly succeeds in killing him, but she is killed by Frankie before she can finish the job, bringing an end to her story.

Clementine rarely receives character criticism from fans that is not in some way based on her physical attractiveness. I think this may be due to the fact that practically her entire existence is one of (at face value) looking pretty and being used by other characters to further their goals.

ARMISTICE - Personally, I've never seen anyone outright hate on Armistice. Does not mean that it has never happened, I just don't have any experience with witnessing anyone expressing opinions in which they believe Armistice is "annoying" or a "bitch". If I had to take a wild guess, I would possibly say that because Armistice mainly dresses in more masculine-appearing clothing, carries a gun which she is consistently shown to be skilled with, and rides with a gang of outlawed men, people don't feel inclined to critique her quite as harshly as some of the more traditionally feminine girls in this series.

In her first role, Armistice appeared as a citizen in the town of Escalante who was a little air-headed, quickly becoming distracted by a butterfly floating past when she was supposed to be following a program set to dance with a partner. She started to show other signs of cognitive breakdown, injuring herself and hearing voices in her head that she didn't understand. Quite some time after the Escalante Massacre, Armistice was rewritten and given a role in Hector Escaton's gang.

Her backstory is based around altered details of the Escalante Massacre, one part being that she believes she was a small child when the Massacre occurred and that a gang of bandits rode into town and slaughtered everyone. In reality, Dolores, Teddy, and some other hosts had been programmed by Arnold to kill all the others. Armistice maintains that she survived the attack by painting her skin in the blood of slain bodies and that her tattoo represents the bandits she has successfully found and killed. She is missing the head of the snake — Wyatt.

ANGELA - First introduced to the audience as a greeter for newly arriving guests to Westworld, Angela welcomes Young William off an arriving train into the central hub and guides him to the dressing room filled with bespoke western wear. Angela is very pretty and clean-cut, and in this instance her main role is to assure guests that she and the other hosts are designed to serve them in any way conceivable. "All our hosts are here for you, myself included."

When Angela is seen again some thirty-odd years down the line, her role has changed. She now serves as lieutenant to Wyatt, the leader of a cannibalistic cult that believes they are the new gods destined to inherit the earth and seek vengeance against those who have wronged them. She has the appearance of a lost and weary settler, hair unkempt, face and clothes grubby and smudged with dirt and blood, and she can easily put on an act as a damsel in distress to lure unwitting victims into a trap where they are then captured, tortured and/or killed by the rest of Wyatt's followers.

In a flashback to the beginning of the park's creation in which the Argos Initiative attempts to gain funding from Delos Inc. Angela is dressed in modern wear, showcasing how sophisticated and true to life the hosts are designed to be and giving Logan Delos an idea of what it will be possible to achieve if he can convince his father to back their project. Logan at first does not realize that anyone at the reception is a host, but after thinking about it, describes Angela as "too perfect to be one of us" and tells her "if I was to build something to spec, you would be my first design." Angela reveals that everyone in attendance is, in fact, a host, and then sleeps with Logan to further convince him to get on board with funding Westworld.

In her final appearance in season 2, Angela looks very similar to the way she did during the demonstration for Logan. It's all a manipulation to lure one of the Delos response team soldiers into letting his guard down. She kills the both of them by pulling the pin on a grenade hanging off the guard's ammo belt, detonating the Cradle and permanently destroying all of the hosts' programming backups.

Angela describes her programmed personality as "Sexy, but not threatening. Accommodating, but not unchallenging. Sweet, but not boring. Smart, but not intimidating." A commentary on how she has been specifically designed to live her life according to men's wishes and fantasies. She tells the guard, Engels, that her cornerstone is "to always leave them wanting more" just before killing them both.

Fans generally don't have a whole lot to say about Angela, but there's plenty of suggestion around that many people really only enjoyed her when she was a park greeter or when she had sex with Logan. They tend not to like her as much when she is serving as Wyatt's zealot or whenever she commits violence against male characters (e.g. killing Teddy, knocking out the Man in Black, seducing and killing Engels) and will call her "annoying" for it.

[owtenen]

I know I just said I wanted to see other people predictions but here are mine!

Etho/Bdubs start off/get basic materials together again. They do this every season whether they team up or not. It's basically a staple for Bdubs to explain what if happening to Etho while they chop wood. If this does not happen I will riot.

Everyone makes fun of Tim. Like there's just no way this doesnt happen.

Cute Ranchers moment mayhaps? For all the girls and the gays that got left in the desert during the crossover? I think it's what we deserve.

Joel teases Etho whenever they hand out. Boat boys act literally the exact same towards each other which is annoying the crap out of everyone and being just generally shitbags

Tango dies in the most ridiculous way possible, everyone makes fun of him (I'm talking berry bush, im talking suffocation, like really really stupid)

Scar might also die in such ways ^

Skizz tries to reunite the BEST team for like 5 seconds before giving up

Ren and Martyn do a thing together. They have done it literally every season its like the Ethubs starting thing. If Ren and Martyn don't do something stupid together it's not a life series.

Jimmy.... doesnt die first! Someone else dies and he is literally the happiest mfer around (he dies immediately after, but at least it's not first)

Scott and Grian really try to get him killed first and are upset it didnt work

life series scripted jokes

weird Martyn lore and the return of the ah-ha! for a bit when they first get a spyglasses

Someone dies from falling off a cliff

Someone dies from an Enderman

Someone dies from the most gut wrenching betrayal, I feel it guys season 4 if gonna have the worst one. (It'll probably involve Bdubs, he has a tendency to do that in these things cough cough)

Impulse going absolutely bonkers for no reason, Skizz is his hype man. (Bdubs kills him again).

I want a Skizz or Tangotek win. Yaknow what... I just want a Dad™️ win. I want the winner to be one of the Dads.™️ so that they can make funnt jokes about it

^ realistically though, I'm predicting a Cleo or Etho win, I think they have the most chance if they can kill Grian, Joel, and Scott early.

[thoughtsofananon]

WIP :)

I need to learn how to draw cowboy hats

[eleemosynaries]

we had a good run, but everything must come to an end

[mysteriousmoss]

Just because Team Rancher has reunited doesn’t mean the angst posts shall stop.

ANYWAYS

Time for the Team Rancher Angst of the day.

Mostly Tango centric cause it’s like the au where Jimmy has zero memory of Double Life and I have little angst ideas for him.

After Double Life ended and Tango was back in Hermitcraft he threw himself into his work just to not think of the heartache. He spends days awake working on Decked Out and doesn’t think to care for himself.

People eventually began to notice that something is wrong and it’s not Tango working on his game and losing track of time. Zed and Impulse go over and check to see if Tango is ok. The duo walk in and see Tango all haggard and tired looking. The netherborne’s usually bright fire is dull and he’s shivering even with his cloak on. The two immediately get Tango to stop his work and bring him towards spawn where some other Hermits are worriedly waiting.

Tango is overly exhausted and doesn’t notice that someone is carrying him to his starter house and doesn’t process that he was placed in a bed.

After awhile Tango gets better and when questioned why he wasn’t caring for himself he just says “I lost my canary, my rancher….my soulmate.” And he just has a breakdown with months of pent up emotions finally showing.

—_—_—_—_—_—_

When Jimmy first woke up on Empires he felt he lost something….someone. It doesn’t take him long to push that feeling of sadness, of lost down and focus on his empire.

Even though Jimmy wanted the Warden gone he couldn’t help but feel sadness for some reason.

Whenever he tends to the cows he turns around to greet someone but instantly becomes confused as to why he was trying to greet someone.

Whenever he gathers eggs Jimmy can’t help but stand there sometimes wondering ‘Why am I doing this, getting the eggs isn’t my chore, it’s _____’s’ he once more pushes those thoughts away and does his chores

[little-soldiers]

Also- something something Jimmy is clingy because Tango is the only that didn’t outright hate him or dislike him. Tango never bullies Jimmy. Hence why he is clingy with Tango. Something Something if you have one good thing you do your best to keep it.

YOU’RE RIGHT HE IS CLINGY!!! Tango showed up and he immediately rebuilt the ranch to try and convince him to stay... but also I feel like at some point it stopped occurring to him that Tango might leave him? Like when they reunite Jimmy just thinks that’s it, since he was the reason they were separated the last time, it doesn’t even occur to him that Tango would want to live somewhere else. Like for a short moment, he’s able to shove down his clinginess and abandonment issues to really enjoy Tango’s return... then he’s genuinely shocked when Tango says he’s been working for fwhip. (of course, team rancher boast amazing communication skills, and they figure it out, but I feel like jimmy would still have that underlying fear that tango might leave, and be super clingy to try and make the most of however much time they have before tango will inevitably leave him)

Thanks for the ask!

[dellaliz19]

Justice League thoughts (spoilers)

So, finally got around to seeing Justice League and honestly, I enjoyed it. Is it my favourite superhero movie? No, and it’s not even my favourite DCEU movie (Wonder Woman forever), but I had fun watching it, and it was definitely better than BvS and leagues better than Suicide Squad. So, pros and cons;

Pro:

1. Continuity: The movie did feel like a natural continuation of where the returning characters (Bruce, Diana and Clark) were as of BvsS. Diana as a hero still hesitant to lead because of Steve’s loss, Bruce’s guilt at his role in Clark’s death, and Clark’s relationships with Lois and his mother were all natural evolutions of their character paths.

2. Bruce and Clark: BvsS definitely was frustrating in how...sloppy Bruce and Clark’s tension and rushed resolution were. I admire that this movie leans into that a bit; acknowledging Bruce’s guilt, his view of Clark as more human than him, his need to resurrect him and his face when he thinks Clark has died again all felt very natural and Affleck sold Bruce as the kind of superhero Batman is; a guy amongst gods who gets up and does the job because it’s the job. Also Clark teasing him and his stumbled response was fantastic.

3. The tone: I’d seen a lot of comments that said this movie was “too jokey” but honestly I’d disagree. Yes, Bruce was funny, but he had a couple of moments of humour in BvsS, and it never got “too much” to me. Barry was undeniably a “comic” character, but he also had very emotional scenes with his dad. There were a few solid deep moments that the movie just let be deep (Lois and Clark reuniting and flying away, Clark and his mom, Barry and his dad, etc) instead of trying to hit with subversive humour and I appreciated that.

4. The fight scenes: there were some really good fight scenes. The fight with Mera, the one with the amazons trying to get the mother box away, and some of the teams slow mo set pieces were just great.

5. The plot was understandable: this is kind of a low bar to cross, but although I’d never say that the plot of this movie was its selling point, it was cohesive and easy to follow. Each character had an understandable motivation for being there, and the macguffin’s did actually integrate better than most.

6. The emotional investment: I’m not going to turn this post into a Marvel vs DC thing because in this house we love superhero movies equally, but I will say that I wasn’t emotionally involved at all in that lady and her kid that Quicksilver died for in Age of Ultron. But when the climatic battle here came, I was genuinely invested in someone saving that Russian family and the little girl with her bug spray. Full points for them for that. Also that kid was just precious and I love her.

7. Hype: They told a cohesive story, but they also did a good job at building interest for future solo movies. After this, I want to see more of Aquaman and Mera and Atlantis, I want to see a Flash movie, and a Cyborg movie, and I’d still like to see a Batfleck solo movie.

8. The music: the soundtrack was pretty great. A good mix of new and classic songs, that wasn’t as...on the nose a Suicide Squad, and fit well with the action.

9. The characters: everyone did great in their roles. Jeremy Irons as Alfred remains the greatest thing ever, JK Simmons is always good, and all of the main cast were excellent.

Then, of course, cons:

1. Steppenwolf: There was nothing extraordinary about the villain. He was powerful, he had an army, and he wanted to take over the world just because. We’ve seen that a million times. Also, he traveled by portal in the sky, cause we’ve never seen that. That said, this one is more minor honestly, because he didn’t need to be that memorable of a character. The movie needed to focus on getting the team together and it did, and if the expense of that was a boring villain then I’m mostly ok with it.

2. Male gaze: I think it’s possible I was so desensitized to the male gaze in films until Wonder Woman ripped my blinders off, and this film slapped it right back at me. The Amazon bikinis were there - both the armour bikini’s and the leather ones in the flashback of fighting Steppenwolf the first time - and they were really unnecessary. The armour from Wonder Woman felt like battle armour; this was bordering on fetish gear. And the way Diana was shot was just...I now know what colour Wonder Woman’s underwear is, info I really didn’t need. There was a lot of T&A, in her wardrobe and in the way the camera followed her, and it was just so unnecessary. Also the boob joke; it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, but it added nothing and it wasn’t even really that funny. They would have lost nothing keeping it out, and it’s too bad they left it in.

3. Speaking of the Amazon Armour: I didn’t like how the Amazon’s were now wearing a really close variation of what Diana wears. Diana’s armour in Wonder Woman served to both connect her and set her apart from the rest of the Amazon’s, which was narratively relevant. Here, it makes it seem like she just grabbed the default “Amazon armour” garb and headed out. It’s a little thing but it really bugged me, and it felt creatively lazy.

4. The moustache: OMG that was...sometimes the CGI was ok, but there were a few scenes like the first video Clark is in and his heart to heart with Lois in the corn field that were super fucking noticeable. Like, his face looked like he was made of play dough, and given that those movements were supposed to have emotional weight, that was pretty unfortunate.

5. The Lex stinger: oh good, Eisenberg’s Lex is back, cause his character was so fantastic in BvsS...said no one ever. I’m definitely not interested in a League of Supervillains led by Mr. Jolly Rancher. That yacht was pretty great though.

6. Some of it was kind of rushed: the pacing was a little bit rushed, and given that the movie was supposed to be 3 hours and the final was 2 hours, I’m curious at what they cut. Audiences definitely would have been ok with a 2.5 hour movie, and I think some more intro for the new characters certainly would have been appreciated, as well as some narrative breathing room.

Mostly, Justice League is a “fine to good movie” that is only really disappointing in that it could have been a great one. It’s not forgettable or bland, but it definitely had some aspects that really could have been better. That said, I did genuinely enjoy it, and I’d definitely recommend it for a watch.