#im gonna make my meta compilation post soon i think

[mtsainthelens]

my across the spiderverse thoughts!!!

i did a similar writeup for the first movie but i think i deleted the post. no worries, i think a lot of it is irrelevant now anyway.

anyway.

-movie was incredible. animation was 10/10, most impressive i’ve ever seen maybe? the intro scene with gwen and miguel and the ending sequence where miles is swinging home were my favorites. writing was like 9.5/10, it always nails the comedy in such a natural and unpretentious way which is so perfect for a spiderman movie

-you can really feel the love and passion put into this movie. its a real shame to hear about the crunch conditions the team was put under but its remarkable that the movie doesn’t feel particular anxious or resentful in the way other crunch projects tend to be. really such a loving attention to detail in spite of the shit management. actually kind of ironic.

-also the energy of this feels so incredibly different from the vibe of the firet i supposed there really has been a culture shift! everything these days is about determinism and multiverses is that any indication of where we’re heading?

-miguels little jingle is fantastic. i’m gonna remember that sound forever

-i thought trans gwen was a theory but to me it seemed explicitly canon. unfortunately i felt mostly confused whenever i saw the trans colors appear explicitly in a scene because i didn’t understand the double meaning? i only understood a lot of her scenes in a literal sense

-those action sequences, goddamn. you know i never watched korra but i watch the best fight compilations on youtube. i love animated fights.

-i didnt know you could curse in sony movies i was gasping everytime….

-meta-commentary 1: the “what was their canon event” meme makes no sense because in the movie it says everyone has the same canon event!!! like it varies depending on the context but its all fundamentally the same its like not funny to me to think about cat gwen stacy dying or smth. not funny to me

-i love how this movie doesn’t make unlikable characters. i can’t think of a single character i dislike in either of the movies? if i was the kind of person who used the term “comfort movie”, well…..

-meta-commentary 2: i did notice the “spider-team” of miles, gwen, pavitr, and hobie was only on scene for like. that one sequence. i’m sure they’ll come back but what i saw of the fandom reaction to it made me go in expecting a lot more from that. this happened to me with the last movie as well i feel very detatched from the wider fandom reaction to it? nothing against it but to me the movies dont feel like either A.) hanging around a universe or B.) making a story that needs to be dissected through long ass essays. which is what i’m always looking to get out of a fandom experience and i think are my perquisites for being interested in a fandom experience at all. obviously im still a huge FAN of the movies but i can never really take them outside of what they are if that makes sense. they start and end at the credits for me.

-having said that i loved spiderpunk!!! i know he was like total…. fanbait if that makes sense? i usually feel averse to characters im supposed to like or who feel engineered to be liked or who are known for getting fang1rls but god he was such a sweetheart. that diy watch. he reminds me of a friend i guess thats why im attatched. i like how nice he was to miles im just incredibly endeared to him.

-and having said that. my thirst rating is that i didnt think hobie or migel or the spot or anyone else were hot. something about the way faces are rendered is very interesting but i cant find it attractive at all. btw im someone who can be attracted to fictional characters easily and i wish jeff the killer was my boyfriend. anyway….

-my only criticisms would be that some of the emotional moments felt not exactly flat but noticeably offbeat at times and that the final 15-20 minutes kind of wore me thin. forgivable.

soooo great. i think im going to rewatch the first one soon but it might make me feel really raw. i think theyre both fairly sentimental movies but the first one makes me feel just a bit sorer because it feels so sunny. hard to explain. i really wish Peter B was in this movie more but i get why he wasnt.

anyway back to work

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

old post i've been thinking abt lately since ppl seem to think i love ignoring stede's biases. now with my tags added!

#also the inherent nature of an Unlearning Biases arc is that like. in real life this is not an arc#this is not a ''person had X trait which was bad and now they dont and X is never problem again'' character arc ok#unlearning biases is an ongoing process that takes lifetimes. the personal work never ends#always watch yourself always hold yourself accountable always accept when you make a mistake#and in a fictional story. where there is an End. the show has to get to a point where they can close a curtain on a character#with the assumption that theyre not gonna have the same harmful behavior & if they slip up they'll own up to it + learn from it#which is different than a story saying ''This Character Is No Longer Racist'' but if ur not careful it might look like that!!#and it's ALSO hard to do all this when the focus of the show is not actually about this character unlearning their biases#it's about this character falling in love

for the record tho i DO actually have a bit of an issue with how stede's character arc of unlearning biases is like... subtle enough to almost be subtext. like [URL REDACTED] did have a point (one singular point) about how this season focuses so much on stede's feelings of inadequacy and guilt about abandoning his family. there's a lot of screen time dedicated to showing the audience how stede feels, and not a lot of him recognizing when he's said or done something out of ignorance

part of that is the nature of stede being the protagonist, obviously. he's the hero of a romcom, we HAVE to know how he feels or else this is the shittiest romance writing of all time. the logical next question to that is "well why is a white man the protagonist?" and for that one you'd have to ask david jenkins why he wanted to write a fictional romcom about stede bonnet anyway, and that's a WHOLE other extremely valid criticism of the show that people have talked about before. so the fact that the show is going to give us more insight into stede's feelings than to like, the rest of his crew, is just a reality of how this story is set up.

and then there's the issue of "how much attention can this show give to stede's Unlearning Biases arc before this becomes the White Man Unlearns Racism show." like, i've said before that i want stede to get called out on his bullshit, but what i DON'T want is a scene where olu sits stede down and very patiently teaches him about racism and stede asks a lot of questions and at the end olu claps him on the back and is like "on behalf of all BIPOC, i declare you Not Racist"

which obviously i don't think this show will do, bc ofmd has a lot more nuance than that. but on a spectrum of THAT to making the Stede Learns About Prejudice arc so subtle that people might deny it's even there... we're actually firmly in the second category, even though i think that's more the fault of viewers misreading the show than the writing of it. it's tricky to strike this balance of not excusing stede for the dumb shit he says and does, but not spending an excessive amount of the show on corny scenes where they rehabilitate a white man from his implicit biases. i think the show does a mostly good job of it, but they err on the side of subtlety a little bit more.

and the thing with THAT is like, we've only gotten 1 season so far, and stede's barely even started on this arc. so my opinion on how the show handles this is going to change one way or the other. right NOW, so far, i think the show can stand to be a bit harsher to stede about all this. but it makes SENSE that it's been pretty subtle about it so far! like, i said in the first paragraph that this season had so much focus on how stede feels, but the main focus of the plot was literally ABOUT stede learning what he feels. and what he feels is gay love!! now that stede knows he's in love and he's irreversibly committed to being a pirate, i stand by what i said in the post i linked above: i want his arc in season 2 to be about actually learning about this new world he's chosen to live in and learning that it's not just the thrilling adventure he thought it was. that's a much easier character arc to thread the Stede Unlearns Biases arc through in a way that isn't corny and annoying