#in terms of being a movie movie though I thought it was pretty awesome

[golgibodyodyody]

Watched the Robert Patterson Batman movie tonight and it was pretty funny.

My favourite parts:

- my mom: “I’ve never seen this guy before. Who is he?”

Me: “Robert Patterson. You know, the one from twilight.”

Her: “ohh, right. I was asleep for most of that”

My mom proceeded to spend the majority of this film asleep as well. Probably even more so than twilight. I guess Robert Patterson just has that effect on her. (that is a joke. My mom sleeps through like 90% movies regardless of cast. Especially action movies. Maybe she is just soothed by violence.)

- Selena ❤️❤️❤️😳😳😳🤭🤭🥰🥰🥰🫣🫣🫣

- I love how Batman is just some guy in a weird costume who shows up places. He’s just so ridiculous in a realistic setting and I love how bewildered everyone is by his appearance like “who are you and wtf are you wearing you look ridiculous”

- Selena being like “you must be rich 🙄🙄” to Batman and Batman being like “uhh what makes you say that O_O;;”

- also every time Selena was shit talking Bruce Wayne to Batman. Very funny

- when Batman and the riddler were face timing and you could see Batman in the little fucking window at the top of the phone screen. It was just so funny I couldn’t stop laughing through that entire scene it was just so goofy looking

- the penguin car chase

- when the penguin got tied up at his feet so he could only shuffle like a penguin

- actually the penguin in general was pretty funny. Loved his accent. Loved all of the accents in this movie tbh. I love accents

- also my brain is so poisoned by memes that every time the “there’s something in the way” song came on all I could think of was “there’s something in my ass. MmmmMmmMmmMm” but I feel like it added more than detracted from the experience

Solid 4/5 movie

[jezabelle9299]

Drive In S.R x FEM! Reader

Overture- Every year the drive in theater shows old movies for Halloween, and this time a guy caught your eye

CWs- Overdressing because of insecurity, Reader wears glasses, dresses, and tights, note passing, carrying pepper spray (but not using it)

A/N- Day 11, trying to get caught back up! This one is a little bit longer though.

Once every fall, in the middle of the week the drive-in theater near your house showed old movies. This year it was sun-down to sun-up of some of your favorites. You drove up to the little box office to get your ticket, since this place was so old they barely had a website, you couldn’t get your ticket in advance. After thanking the super cool goth girl working there, you found your spot. 

This particular theater, while the medium was a little outdated- usually only showed new releases, and usually only one or two a night on weekends. For this event though they go all out, concession prices are marked down to what they were in the 50s, and old cartoon ads count down the first movie. 

You got your trunk setup, turned the headlights off, and set the radio to the right station. Then you could finally head to the concession stand for a soda and a popcorn, before settling in for the night. 

While you had definitely made improvements in terms of self-confidence, hell a year ago you never would’ve been able to come to something like this by yourself, you couldn’t exactly match the standard of dress everyone else had on. Typical fare for something here was pajamas, or at least sweats. And you made an earnest attempt. You must’ve tried on all the pjs you owned, every combination of sets, t-shirts, mismatched and coordinated. But the thought of other people seeing you actually wearing them made you feel so, so vulnerable. So you went with your most comfortable dress, complete with black tights and a sweater. More comfortable than jeans, and a little easier to imagine being seen in. 

Realistically, no one cares. But when you walked across the lot, in front of maybe a dozen other cars, your self consciousness was a little quieter because you were wearing regular clothes. Your decision cemented itself in your brain as the right one when you saw a particularly cute guy, also overdressed in a sweater, button up, and dress pants walking the opposite direction. The brief window of what could be called confidence ended near immediately, as you promptly dropped your phone, glasses coming off as you bent down to pick it up. Awesome. That’s just awesome. 

“Shit!” you wince, turning your attention to the man who was now right in front of you. And clearly just witnessed all of that. In theory you could see relatively well without your glasses, but it was getting dark out and in the fumble to get your phone, you didn’t notice him grabbing them for you. Once your phone and the last of your dignity were secured, you looked up to him pulling a glasses wipe from his pocket, cleaning them off before handing them back to you. 

He had a nervous smile and immediately after handing your glasses back to you returned his hands to his pocket with quite frankly, impressive speed. 

“Oh, um, thank you-that’s really, thank you. Sorry about-” You gestured vaguely to the ground and started shifting nervously in a little 2x2 box of your own making. 

“It’s no problem, really. I like your glasses by the way. Did you know that glasses were invented in 1284 in Italy, but the idea of glasses was said to exist as early as 1000 BC?” You did not know that. And it was actually pretty interesting, but you unfortunately were caught off guard by the melodic sound of his rushed history lesson. You bit down on your inner cheek in an attempt to keep from beaming up at him while you tried to find a response, but he clearly took that as disinterest. 

“Sorry–I–um, have a good night.” He gave a small wave and started walking past you. But you couldn’t leave it at that. He seemed like a sweet guy, and he thinks you just totally weren’t listening. 

“I didn’t know that–about the glasses thing, I mean. That’s really cool that you just knew that.” In case he didn’t like you like that, you decided to back off. You gave him a smile, and mirrored his little wave before turning back around to keep walking. 

You got your drink and popcorn, your head swimming with every possible other outcome from that conversation. Everything else you could’ve said, how he might have reacted, how other people would’ve acted in your place. It was a long line. There was a lot to think about. 

When you began the walk back to your car in the blue glow of dusk, you noticed the car sitting next to yours. You hadn’t paid it any mind before, only briefly noting it as an interesting vintage car. But there was no one inside at the time, so you didn’t think much of it. But now there was someone inside. Windows down, stepping out of it to grab something from the trunk. The mystery man from before. 

He looked as taken aback to see you as you were to see him. He must’ve walked away before you pulled in, so you just missed him. And you were going to be 8 feet away from each other, all night. So you settled for a small wave, more of a hand raise than anything, and he responded the same, still wearing a confused look, but smiling. 

At this point you were pining.  You didn’t even know his name, and you were pining. The first movie was starting though, so you put all of your focus on the screen. It was dark now, so even when you did give in and steal a glance (or a solid minute of intermittent staring) it was only by the glow of the projected screen. 

The first movie in the lineup was the original Frankenstein, with the movies getting newer as the night goes on. When the credits started rolling, flashes of light came as families started leaving for the night. You grabbed the pepper spray from your keychain, it was late after all, and while the place was far from empty, it never hurts to be prepared. You made your way back to the small building to use the restroom and generally freshen up. Applying another thin layer of bug spray in a vain attempt to keep the summer bugs away. When you got back to your car a small folded piece of paper was waiting for you. Neatly placed on the ledge of your trunk. 

I read about the history of glasses in a book on renaissance medicine. I can lend it to you sometime if you’d like. 

-Spencer

Spencer. So that was his name. And maybe he did like you too, even after the couple of times he definitely did notice you looking at him. But you just averted your eyes immediately after, not letting yourself wait to see his reaction. 

He was gone from his car now too, so this was the perfect chance to respond. You practically dove into your backseat to find a piece of scrap paper and a pen. 

I’d like that, but I think I’d like it more if we just watched the next movie together.

-Y/N

You had to force yourself not to let out a little scream of anticipation. You’d never done something like this before, but he left a note first, so that made it a little easier. It was only halfway through the 15 minute intermission when you saw him out of the corner of your eye stopping a couple feet away from where you were sitting. 

“Hi.” 

“Hi. Do you want to sit?” 

You moved closer to the side of the car, and he carefully sat next to you. 

“So, renaissance medicine, huh? Are you a doctor, or just a big reader?” You shifted toward him, so you could look at him easier. 

“Both actually, I have PHDs not an MD. But with my job, it’s good to know random information sometimes.” 

“What is it you do then? Now you’ve got me curious”

“I do behavioral analysis, I work for the FBI. It’s actually pretty interesting, it used to be called behavioral science, the BSU. But they changed it to the BAU, and it’s now part of the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime.” It looked like he had more to say but he just looked down sheepishly. 

“That is interesting, I didn’t even know that was a thing.” You gave yourself a second to process all the information he’d just cited as if he was reading aloud. 

“I think so, but I’m sorry I have a tendency to ramble.”

“It’s ok, it’s interesting I think. The next movie is about to start though, do you want to watch it with me?” You asked him in your note, but honestly you just wanted to hear him say it. 

“I’d like that.” 

[megabuild]

so you like transfem etho right? how do you think she figured it out?

did pause call her a girl once and etho decided she liked it or was there more thought involved

i don't think she ever "figured it out" in the way most people would but that's mainly because i see etho as having a very weird upbringing. she was very lonely as a child and didn't really start meeting people from wider society who treated her like a human but also would inflict gender roles on her until mindcrack when she was like... mid 20s. and yeah there definitely was a bit of teasing there but i don't think it really awakened anything in her more just confused her. if you pushed him about a bit and called him a girl insultingly he'd be like ? No I'm not. Because he has lived so far detached from society he can't even conceptualise the idea of feminity being a "weakness" yet #feminist but also he was raised to play very particular roles and wear very particular masks and girl is not and never has been one of them, he is a Guy, theres no questioning that.

But then yeah of course there is because she leaves mindcrack on pretty bad terms and spends some short time alone before she gets pulled onto hermitcraft and while she's sitting alone she does eventually realise oh, people can do that, people can change. And that fucking terrifies her, so much, because she already has horrible identity issues and doesn't really fully understand it so to her it's an all or nothing 100% change of self, and that's sort of awesome in a way but also really scary because that means rejecting literally everything about herself both past and present and she goes AHHHH FUCK and puts that back in the box and then xisuma recruits her like at the end of iron man when they were setting up the avengers movie. And she goes to hermitcraft and doesn't think about any of that for a really long time despite the never ending horrors happening all the time.

In my head he sort of. Doesn't Get Over It but he comes to terms with all the weird shit that happened to him when he was younger re: 404 and the LP between HC 5 and 7 like he was away on a soul searching mission. And then HC7 has its own fresh nightmares as he comes to terms with HC5 because that was a can of worms itself but this time the difference is that he has friends around him who gets it and can help him. And this is roundabout the time she starts to think about it more because she gets quite close to grian post-mycelium resistance and grian is a trans girl who takes estrogen and everything which is like, everything etho was terrified of, and they have some very clumsy and candid conversations where grian is definitely Not the best person to talk to because she's like well you're fucking stupid. But after talking to her and maybe cleo a bit too though idk if they would have been close enough at that point and bdubs too because while he doesn't know anything about this he knows a lot about etho, she eventually realises wow this doesn't have to be a new mask or a massive upheaval this is just something i can try out on the side if i like it. And so she does! Originally just with her absolute closest friends using she/her sometimes (she ends up using he/she alternately, because she doesn't really have any problem with he/him) and while she never formally Comes Out because that's not her style it spreads until most people use it.

Etho is very much a character of certainty imo, he likes rigid ideas when it comes to himself so he knows what to live up to, so i think not making her label her gender (or sexuality except that's. A different can of worms albeit a slightly less complicated one) is a bit of a character growth thing as much as it is a personal decision. Learning he can not constantly stress over the finer details or try to live up to what others decide he should be whether that's a man or a woman or something else entirely and just accepting that she's herself, and that's her own choice, is a Big Thing for her. though i don't know if she recognises that .

[tiktaalic]

Hi so if you feel like it. Do you have any starter horror recommendations for someone who wants to watch more horror but is a wuss about it. For context I have an extra hard time with gore/body horror. Guy with knife much scarier than ghosts/demons/etc. Anything more thesis-horror is helpful because thinking about the thesis distracts me from the Scared. Weird/insane/unhinged women are borderline mandatory.

Again just if you feel like it but if you do thanks a bunch in advance!!!

hmmmmm okay. let me look at my letterboxd. gonna cut this one for lenght.

oddity - from my memory pretty light on blood guts etc. there's really only one scene where you see like. blood splatter. iirc. i thought it was really beautifully shot. ghosts AND guys with knives.

red rooms - there's literally one visible shot of "yuck" (bones) in the first 15? minutes but it revolves around a trial for murder so there are yknow. people detailing gruesome acts out loud but theres literally only the one shot in the whole thing. awesome women in this one. guys with knives.

creep + creep 2 - as far as a i remember more of a suspense thing than blood and guts. and also really good! crazy woman in 2. guy with knives.

hell house llc - i watched this one today and really liked it for what it is. there's one scene towards the end with blood but that's really it the rest of it is suspense. ghosts.

crimson peak - awesome. women in it. ghosts. i dont remember there being a ton of blood? people die in it but i dont think any of it is like. on screen close up on wounds. ghosts.

it follows - ghosts. i do remember going yeek! at one of the ghost forms. the soundtrack is great.

stoker is showing up when i sort by horror which i dont think is true. but it does rule and it does have nicole kidman in it and is in comparison to horror as a genre light on gore. women

whatever happened to baby jane another one that letterbox is calling horror that i dont necessarily agree with. but definitely OK as far as yuck goes. no yuck #noyuck. women

lake mungo - kind of a normie pick as far as tumblr rec goes. shows up on a lot of ppl's fav lists. shows up on a lot of lists for women in horror. ghosts. no blood guts even a little bit just ghosts that look creepy

poltergeist - as far as i remember really really tame. ghosts. obvs.

psycho + psycho 2. well its psycho innit. so.

signs - aliens in there.

the craft - witches. women. i dont remember it being a super gross one?

night of the living dead - it's literally night of the living dead

i grew up watching the old universal horror movies. wolfman invisible man mummy frankenstein dracula creature from the black lagoon etc. which i do think are worth watching.

looking at this list realizing i watch a lot of stuff that's very what if there was a fucked up guy. anyway. those i think are pretty safe bets in terms of. light on blood/body horror. if you feel braver. well.

bodies bodies bodies - not a scary movie just a silly one where people are dying. there is blood in it though. so. women

talk to me - ghosts. i liked it a lot. there is like. head slamming into a table repeatedly so hard someone goes into a coma though. woman

malignant - sillayyyyyyy. but quite bloody. kind of ghosts themed

12 hour shift - dont remember how much blood is in this one but it centers on organ trafficking so probably some. i remember liking it a lot tho. no ghosts. woman

us - scared the shit out of me the first time i watched it. no ghosts but . not classical guy with knife either. but quite good. woman

hereditary - theres blood in this one. sometimes things that are lauded are good. sorry.

raw - blood. but really good. and #women

cabin in the woods - blood in there but it is i think probably my favorite referential horror comedy.

jennifer's body - yeah you know it. dont need to say more

the descent - really fucking good really fucking scary people's bodies get fucked up. women movie of all time

28 days later - i liked it. i dont remember much about it but i liked it when i watched it. zombies

eight legged freaks - sillayyyyy. giant spiders

ginger snaps - classic for a reason. women. e blood

candyman - the original reallyyyyy good. havent seen the new one but the original incredibly good.

reanimator + bride of reanimator - silly one. with some. um. one blood. two. body horror. three. content warnings.

frankenhooker - nother silly one. with moderate very silly gore.

tremors - creature movie. silly. fun.

lair of the white worm - creature movie. awesome

killer klowns from outer space - quiteeeee silly dont remember where it falls on gore even a little bit.

hellraiser - i rmemeber it being good. but i mean. species of demons called pinhead. due to having pins, in their heads,

nightmare on elm street 1/2/3. one you kind of have to watch. 2 is bonkers homophobic it's awesome. 3 is just fun. demons. i guess.

the hitcher - guy with knives. blood. pretty cool though.

the thing - body horror as fuck. but really good. creatures

american werewolf in london - gore + body horror but quite good.

friday the 13th. i liked it! kind of guy with knives by definition tho

phantom of the paradise - another silly one. dont remember the blood content but its quiteeee silly and fun i liked it a lot

long legs - i liked it, but there's deffo blood in it, and i also think it should probably be watched in a theatrical setting to enjoy it.

my watchlist, which i havent watched, and cant vouch for:

may (women)

titane (women)

hatching (women)

[destinyc1020]

👋🏽Hey Destiny I never got back to you on the movie "Blink Twice". Sorry for the late review 😞

I really enjoyed the film. Listen, the fact that this is Zoe Kravitz directorial debut, I was really impressed and look forward to what she does next. The camera work, the sound design and the way she directed the actors was well done.

I will say though that there is a ⚠️trigger warning⚠️ in the beginning of the film that I can't say cause it will spoil the movie. So if that trigger warning is something you can't handle watching on screen then don't see the movie.

Also the way the film ended it makes me want to see the film again so I can watch a certain character from the beginning. But I really thought the film gave Get Out vibes. Just in terms of there being an underlying message disguised with mystery/horror. I have seen so many films try to pull off that concept that Jordan did and it just fall flat *cough Don't Worry Darling cough* lol.

A film that I think did pull off the "get out" concept brilliantly that I enjoyed was "The Menu" with Anna Taylor Joy and Ralph Fiennes. So shout-out to Zoe/her crew and the cast for being added to that list. Especially Channing, this film will make you see him a little different afterwards, in a good way though, it just means he played the character the way it was meant to be played for the story.

Thanks girl for your review of "Blink Twice"! 😁

Wow, so it was a wild ride huh? Sounds like it's pretty good. 👍🏾 Another friend of mine went to see it this past weekend and said it was really good!

I'm happy for Zoe that her first directorial debut is getting such great reviews! 😃 She might have more of a future in directing more films! That's awesome! 👌🏾 😁

If it's being compared to "Get Out", then that's really something! 👏🏾

[montyterrible]

Born to Hench, Forced to “Boss!!”

I’m not a Minion hater exactly—no more so than I am, ambiently-like, of anything “mainstream” or “popular.” At the same time, I also don’t tend to engage with any media in a “lol so wacky I’m going INSANE from exposing myself to this!” sort of way either. When I really think about it, you could see the Minions as particularly cynical, like the Disney animal sidekick thing on steroids. They have a simple, pleasant design (emphasizing the body/head, deemphasizing the limbs and fine detail) with room for a smidgeon of individuality/visual flexibility using a satisfyingly limited number of features or elements like eyes, and which makes them more or less Engineered for Marketability as a toy or just plastered on one thing or another. There’s an enormous Minion (I think) sticker around here somewhere that a friend of mine gave me once when I was visiting him that he (I think) got from a cereal box as a “prize.” It’s my understanding that Minion memes were somewhat ubiquitous on Facebook at one point, though I can also easily imagine adults (namely parents) harboring a deep-seated hatred of these things.

Upon initially firing up Minions (2015) and hearing those eminently recognizable chattering voices “singing” the Universal Pictures theme, I thought my fears were going to be confirmed—that this was going to be a very annoying movie for me. I imagined being a parent in one room hearing that tell-tale sound for the umpteenth time coming from a TV in another, and what that might feel like. I didn’t end up following this “lol so wacky I’m going etc.” thread any further, though, because I actually found the Minions (and their movie) pretty easy to like!

On the one hand, yes, they are adorable: visually, but also in terms of personality and thanks to the ambiguity of their emotional and intellectual maturity. The Bob character, in particular, is very child-esque, but all of the Minions are vaguely characterized in this same way, and so it’s easy to feel drawn to them in their extremes of feeling, to want to nurture or at least pet them. “Part child, part dog” may be another intentional element of their design, meant to reach children and parents and childless adults all in some primal way. Ironically, the chattering wasn’t an annoyance, and I think it may actually have made the predictably goofy and usually physical humor I expected from the movie more palatable. Rather than an endless slog of “That was SO awesome!” or other “That just happened!”-adjacent running commentary on every precious goof, you instead get these intervals (sometimes surprisingly long for such a movie) where no coherent sentence is uttered. The Minions speak a winning mix of total gibberish and real language (English, Spanish, etc.), and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a certain… confidence to having that be the medium of communication, visuals aside, of bits and pieces of this movie.

On another hand, I find the very concept of a “Minion” kind of fascinating. The movie starts with an initially wordless sequence showing off Minion evolution—how from their most primitive, water-bound state they’ve always latched onto the largest and most dangerous other creatures without conflict, which is a compulsion that takes them onto the land and forward through history until they gravitate toward humans and then “supervillains” specifically. The Minions are apparently immortal(?) and so, critically, out-live their beloved masters, sometimes apparently killing them by accident. I know I’m late to the Minions party in this regard, but that’s just such a weird and compelling baseline concept. Minions being so “Assigned Henchman at Birth” while also potentially, actually being the superior animal just makes for an interesting hook.

While Minions has a recognizable-enough dramatic plot, I found it kind of oddly… “empowering” to watch. You don’t so much feel tension or stress about the scraps and scrapes the Minions get into, so much as you eagerly wait to see how they’ll easily overcome the inconvenience and defeat their enemies. I’m not joking when I say that the Minions have more in common with Alucard from the manga/anime Hellsing than they do with other protagonists in similar movies. They’re essentially “over-powered.” There are some great, fun bits of action or imagery here, though a favorite might be when the Minions’ boss-turned-enemy, Scarlet Overkill, tries to have them tortured, and this includes a bit where the Minions are gleefully slipping through and playing around with a noose. It’s fleetingly dark, perhaps surprisingly daring.

(Of course, the “3 edgy 5 you” take that I’ve even heard out in the real world about the Minions is “lol Did they work for Hitler? lol” And this movie makes clear that, no, they did not. After serving Napoleon, the Minions were in exile in an icy cave until 1968, thus avoiding the Harry Potter problem of mixing magical beings and the Holocaust.)

I was also just surprised at how twisty the plot of Minions is. I did not expect Bob to pull the mythical Sword from the Stone, or for the spurned, exploded Scarlet to return for one last attempt at the Queen of England’s crown when it felt like the movie was already over. I had a harder time thinking of really distinct swerves than I expected writing this up, but it’s all just kind of inherently Interesting. The way that this world pivots around professional villainy (even if only in secret circles) reminded me a little bit of The Venture Bros. This still isn’t evil evil—It’s easy enough to see the Minions as conventionally likeable if not exactly heroic and Scarlet Overkill as conventionally threatening and villainous, but it’s a fun enough, kid-friendly flirtation that at least sort of eschews predictable plotting.

There are some character designs that rely a bit on fatphobic imagery for their visual identity/comedy potential, but I think the most offensive thing about the movie is its treatment of The Queen, who cutesily throws down with the Minions when they attempt to steal her crown for Scarlet and who is hanging out at a pub arm wrestling after she’s dethroned. Her toothiness might qualify as gentle caricature, but I would have (cruel Leftist that I am) preferred a much meaner treatment. I mean, really, the Minions should be latching onto her, right? What with the whole legacy of colonialism and so forth? Her being a sort of apex thief and whatnot?

I jest—Obviously, that’s far too subversive and cerebral for such a Childish property! The Minions are instead drawn to the biggest cartoon of villainy, which means Scarlet at first but then ultimately a young Gru. Minions almost tells a standalone story using the critters but then has to wrap back around to Despicable Me, which means there’s a heavy Gru emphasis at the very end and during the little credits sequences. I would have preferred that it not do this (and also that Scarlet be an anthropomorphized wolf-woman for the entire movie and not just the “bedtime porry” scene), but I know this isn’t really For me, in the end, and have just accepted that with as good as a shrug. Which is how I’ve felt about the Minions as a property and/or marketing gimmick for years now.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Hi! Do you know any good media/writing sources with androids/robots or any writing advixe about it? I’m planning on writing an original fiction story that has two of the major characters as robot/androids, with one being a POV character, and I was wondering if I could see examples of how other people have done it.

…Actually, on that note, do you have any advice on how to write aliens? This is a really weird book.

I love your and Vinelle’s works - they’re really good and every time I think about How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bacchanals I just sigh in awe of how awesome it is! Have a great day!

Ooh, look @therealvinelle, praise!

Writing Advice in General

The thing about writing is it isn't like art.

There are no guides on how to write specific characters the way there's guides on how to draw certain animals, people, objects, etc. If there were, I wouldn't trust them, as they wouldn't be written by anyone who has any idea what they're doing.

Writing advice kind of starts and stops with classic prompts, breaking down stories into the traditional structures (hero's journey, three-act tragedy, five-act tragedy) and noting well-known writing techniques.

And this is because what you're asking is what I'd call... advanced.

You're at the point of creating your characters to tell a story and want very specific things. You have to come up with what that is and why that works, people can't do it for you.

My Two Cents: It Might Not Matter

The thing about both robots and aliens is they're all over the place in terms of characterization. What you do and how you do it is dependent on what story you want to tell.

There's works where robots are very benign and essentially human, works where robots are not benign but essentially human, where robots are benign but not human, and where they're malicious evil.

Similar with aliens, some works have incredibly human aliens (in both appearance and behavior) some have wildly different aliens.

My point is that you can get away with almost whatever characterization you want, so long as you're consistent and it aids your story your readers will not care.

Whenever I do it, personally, I think of characters being informed by their society as well as... we'll call it biological imperitive. Machines are created to serve a person (one that may not align with human values/traditional human desires), aliens will have their own psychology that will greatly inform who they are and what actions they take.

Think at a base level what the characters want and value and that will inform both what they do and how they communicate.

Things with Aliens and Robots

If you're looking for examples though I suppose I can list out a few.

Alien (great inhuman/malicious aliens as well as androids, highly recommend)

Prometheus (the film by Ridley Scott) (great human/malicious android, less aliens)

I, Robot (the book) (not the best writing or the most interesting but Asimov laid the groundwork for thinking about robotics in science fiction, everyone has some nod towards Asimov and it's good to at least know of)

Blade Runner (great very human robots who aren't quite up to snuff)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (not as much focus on the robots but one should always read PKD)

Ex Machina (the android and what they know is the focal point of the movie)

Casshern Sins (the entire cast is androids)

Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick (not all his stuff is about aliens and androids but... it comes up a lot and it's very good)

The Left Hand of Darkness (the aliens are very human in this one but it shows a lot of nuance of a very different society and what that would mean for the aliens)

The Host by Stephanie Meyer (yes, bear with me, Wanda's very human but the aliens are very well thought out and make a lot of sense)

Dune and Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (not on aliens, really, but Paul gets very out there in terms of his visions and it's very good at looking at why cultures develop certain ways due to environment and terrain)

And I suppose I'd be remiss/a coward not to note that I've written several fics that star inhuman/alien/robotic characters so you can see at least how I've done it.

The Seventh Seal (starring essentially an alien/android)

Of Shepherds and Kings (starring the personification of a nation)

Morilden (starring essentially an alien)

October (starring essentially an alien)

Finishing the Hat (starring an alien god)

The Wasteland (starring essentially an android)

Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun (starring an alien)

Most things I write have aliens or androids, actually.

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

Erica's Basic Info

Name: Erica Paige Mills

Erica's faceclaims for the 90s and now were a lot easier for me to figure out than ones for the 60s and 80s, for obvious reasons, but I do have them, all the same. For the 60s, we have the lovely Pam Grier (the picture is from her 1975 movie Friday Foster) and, while she didn't act in anything big in the 60s, she would have been in the right age range. For the 80s, we have Lark Voorhies (Saved by the Bell). My immediate pick for the 90s was Trina McGee (Boy Meets World) as her overall style and acting, especially in BMW felt very much like Erica. Finally, for present day, we have Andrea Chaparro (Rebelde) - I saw her picture on Pinterest and it just instantly clicked.

Nicknames: Big Dip-Shit (her friends’ term of endearment connected to the freckles on her arm), Frog (she was the highest jumper on the volleyball team) and Dumbass (mostly by Jade, but, like with Jade, their friends call her that as well)

Age: 18

Date of Birth: August 10

Zodiac: Leo

Birthstone: Peridot

Nationality: American and Puerto-Rican

Sexuality: Lesbian

Birthplace: West Side, Manchester, NH

Current Residence: Winnisquam, Tilton, NH

Occupation: Leader of the robotics club, setter of the high school volleyball team, songwriter and guitarist for Blissful Chaos, babysitter of her younger siblings, and cashier at Spencer’s Gifts

Talents/Skills: Gives pretty awesome haircuts, video editing, can memorize practically anything just by seeing it once, and somehow is able to get people to trust them with their secrets, even if they only just met - something she considers both a gift and a curse.

Birth order: Oldest

Siblings: Cora Jane (15) and Elijah Michael (12)

Parents: Michael Douglas Cooper and Sofia Adriana Garcia

Signature:

Height: 5’6”

Race: African-American

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Naturally black, but dyed blue

Glasses or contact lenses: She doesn’t need them, but thinks she’d look cool with glasses. She will wear some pretty crazy-looking contacts for fun events, though

Distinguishing features: Dragon tattoo between her shoulder blades, dagger with vines tattoo on her right arm, and a set of seven freckles on her left bicep that Jade connects with Sharpies to look like the Big Dipper

Mannerisms: Clacking her nails together to the tune of songs, humming theme songs to her favorite shows, and drawing doodles while talking on the phone.

Health: She is allergic to pineapple and is lactose intolerant, but still eats pineapples on pizza and mac-and-cheese like her life depends on it. (Yes, her old one was a typo lol)

Hobbies: Chugging energy drinks, drawing, buying too many vinyls from the record shop, thrifting, and volleyball

Greatest flaw (in their opinion): How expressive she is. She doesn’t always notice it right off the bat, but her expressions give away her thoughts on everything. Even if she’s not entirely vocal on her opinions, you can practically tell what she’s thinking as her face displays it all in high definition. Many times, her friends will have to either elbow her or remind her to “watch her face” to get her to fix it.

Best quality (in their opinion): Her quick thinking. As a setter on the volleyball team, she has to be quick on her feet, have a good grasp of the situation they find themselves in, and be ready to make calls on the fly; Erica thrives in that sort of environment. Whether it’s for volleyball, work, songwriting, or a DND campaign, she loves coming up with plans contributing ideas as it makes her feel a lot smarter than she feels she is.

Biggest fear: Failure of any kind. Oftentimes, she feels as though she has the weight of the world on her shoulders despite that being far from the truth. As the oldest of her siblings, she strives to be the best sister and role model she can for them. As the setter on her team, she allows losses to hit her harder than they do anyone else. As the manager at Spencer’s, she deals with the brunt of every Karen encounter and fights through days of faulty machinery while making sure her coworkers don’t feel guilty for anything going wrong. As the band’s songwriter and guitarist, she feels as though the fault would be hers if the band were to fail in any way or if a song wasn’t a hit. Although she goes through everything with a smile and shrugs off failure like it’s no big deal, on the inside, she’s screaming.

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

Favorite ice cream: Pistachio

Favorite color: Green

Favorite number: 6, how many months it took for her and Jade to get together

Favorite songs: Memories by Conan Gray, Perfume by Lovejoy, and Boyfriend by Dove Cameron

A place they want to visit: Amsterdam, Netherlands

[the-somewhat-rambling-reviewer]

Peaceful Property, EP 5, Review

Open to Peach having a nightmare about finding a dead chef in a kitchen, and in the nightmare, he doesn’t have his glasses. 

I really wish he and Pangpang would either buy or get Home to buy them two beds. At this point, though, even if they just got a decent-sized mattress to share, that would be good. They’re sleeping together on the floor with what looks to be a thin futon under them.

Dialogue establishes it’s been three years since he found the chef. Telling her to go back to sleep, he goes to get some water, and Tay is great at playing vulnerable and traumatised.

Someone else posted about the picture of him, Best, and a third person with the face covered before this episode, and I’m impressed by people who pay attention enough to catch such details.

It’s interesting, despite covering the chef’s face, Peach or Pangpang, probably Peach, choose to put the picture on the fridge along with the sweet pictures of the two siblings together.

Before Peach can make contact with the picture, Kan texts him, and I’m hoping she assumed the text wouldn’t wake either sibling if they were sleeping.

I like the camerawork where the information Kan sent is blurry and the shakiness of Peach’s hand is shown.

After the credits, the restaurant from Peach’s dreams is now decrepit along with the surrounding area, and Home and Kan enter it. There’s a flashback of a living chef being haunted by the ghost of the chef from Home’s nightmare, and he deserves it. He didn’t wash his hands before handling food after touching his clothes.

I’ve worked as a dietary aide in a nursing home, in a convenience store, and in fast food (and please, send positive thoughts that I never have to work in any such places again), and this type of stuff does occasionally happen. It shouldn’t, but it does. I will say, one of the few good things about my former workplaces was: Hygiene and food safety was taken seriously.

I don’t know about Thailand, but it always bothers me when I see movies or TV shows set in certain countries where people in restaurants prepare food without gloves. If they’re at home, fine. But gloves are a legal requirement in certain areas, and some places take it seriously.

Exposition is given: Chef Hong was famous, and then, she had a scandal involving a patron almost dying from an allergic reaction. Then, she was found dead in the kitchen, and it was ruled a suicide by gas poisoning.

The weird thing is, unless it’s a translation error, ‘murder’ is used more than once when it doesn’t apply. It’s established the allergic reaction put the patron in a coma but didn’t kill him, and later, I’ll go into the other instance of the term being misused.

Home decides they’ll sell it as something other than a restaurant, and he wants to talk to the siblings. Kan reminds him she has an errand to run, and it’s further established she absolutely isn’t interested in or impressed by him. Good.

Over to the siblings, Peach refuses to help with this particularly property, and unless Home’s Uncle is pulling even more strings than are being shown, it’s weird Peach didn’t come up in the research Kan did on the place. Or I guess, Kan could be hiding stuff from both the audience and the other characters, but I’m hoping the show will be a fair-dealer.

Home tries bribing the siblings to help, and they refuse.

When they leave, he goes over to a couch with the declaration he’ll do everything himself, and there’s a neat transition to him on a different couch with his bodyguard, and the bodyguard is using Home’s legs as a stand for his laptop.

1, I love the physical, assumedly, non-sexual, intimacy between these two.

2, Home is going to get his legs burned if this goes for long. Laptops are not designed to actually be used on a person’s lap without a cooling pad underneath them. The heat can get through clothes pretty quickly.

It turns out the bodyguard is not proficient at typing. He suggests Home get Kan’s help.

Over to Kan, she is awesome, and there are times I have to shake my head at her.

So, the tape she found of the uncle discussing a murder case with a detective, she’s just taken herself over to the detective to confront him with the tape.

I don’t know if she’s fearless or just lacks comprehension of how dangerous this could actually be.

There’s comedy where he tries to threaten her, but pestering Home keeps calling.

I’ve actually been in a way lower-stakes situation where a family member and I were arguing, and my coworkers at the time were having a group chat that kept making my phone go off. This was a flip phone that I don’t think had the ability to mute conversations or people, and I didn’t know how to remove my phone from the group-chat.

Anyway, Kan blackmails the officer with the threat of leaking the recording, because, she is either fearless or incredibly naïve, and he gives her the case file for the restaurant Home is currently trying to sell.

I could be missing something.

Back to Home, now, the bodyguard’s legs are being used as a stand. Idiots.

Kan calls, and Home sees a picture she sent of the restaurant including Peach and Chef Hong.

Over to Pangpang, she’s in a different restaurant, and I have to wonder if what’s about to happen was meant to be a surprise to the audience. It was to me, but as established, I don’t always pay the best attention.

Soon, Kan, Home, and the bodyguard will reveal themselves, but they’re very clearly shown in the shot before the reveal happens.

Kan texts Pangpang about Home meeting the siblings, and Pangpang sends a text saying they’re out-of-town.

And so, the trio kidnap Pangpang, and when she threatens to sue them, Kan brings up countersuing.

Pangpang is not happy about the lack of female solidarity going on, and based on Kan’s response, I’m guessing lesbian couples with children are not legally recognised as both being mothers. Boo!

Giving in, Pangpang starts to tell the story of what happened.

Into flashback mode, Best is back! Yay!

He and pre-glasses Peach are competing for a job at Chef Hong’s restaurant, and Peach is easily startled when trying to chop vegetables.

Tay is awesome, but I’m really impressed by Perth during this scene. Sometimes, not reacting is just as important in acting.

This scene reminds of when I first became a Perth fan when I watched the first season of Love by Chance. Perth’s character, Ae, walked into to find his roommate masturbating, and aside from maybe a tad bit of annoyance, he had absolutely no reaction, and he just casually changed his pants.

I’d label Ae as demisexual, but whether the character was specifically written as such or not, someone, whether Perth or a director, understood the assignment: Ae viewed everything sexual with utter detachment until Pete came into the picture. It was completely natural to him to change his pants after finding his roommate masturbating, because, him changing clothes had absolutely nothing to do with what his roommate had been doing, and he found his roommate a little annoying, but his issues with his roommate were more along personality and possibly making waitresses mad at them than the masturbation.

In this scene, Best did briefly react to what was going on, but he calmly kept working through it all, like a chef would, I imagine.

Another detail about this scene is: Chef Hong plays a prank on Peach involving making it look as if guts fell out of her stomach, and ghost her did this earlier. Like someone else I saw online, though, I’m wondering if stomach issues might have played a part in her death.

I’m wondering if Best saw her planning this, the camera angles could imply he saw her doing it, or if he just had absolutely no concern for the person he wants to hire him being sick.

Chef Hong declares, “A jumpy thing like you wouldn’t survive as a chef.”

So, Peach starts to leave, but she stops him.

If it were me, I wouldn’t want to work for someone who said such a thing, but Peach and Best are both happy when she decides to take them both on.

It’s interesting how this episode shows Best and Peach likely were never that close. During the first episode, I thought they’d just drifted away, but here, if I hadn’t seen the first episode/the scene with the picture, I wouldn’t assume they were friends. Best was fine with Peach being talked to like this, and Peach never showed any sign of being hurt that Best was fully willing to take this opportunity with someone who’d do his friend in such a way.

Yet, despite this, the picture with Best in it was still put up on the fridge.

There is a cute moment where Best leans over for a fist bump, and Peach joins the league of many adorkable characters who don’t completely get the concept of fist bumps.

There’s a scene of the picture being taken, and I’m wondering if Perth is standing on a scully box. Best and Peach look to be almost the same height, and I know they aren’t. Perth might have grown since LBC, but there’s no way he got that tall.

Next, everyone leaves for the day besides Peach, and he accidentally cuts himself. Bandaging him up, Chef Hong offers him a chance to help her serve an important guest, and he happily accepts.

Outside, he’s walking when a car hits him.

At the hospital, Pangpang is told he’s dead, but then, a nurse comes to say they’ve gotten a pulse back.

I’m not sure what to think of this doctor.

Obviously, this show falls under Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy, or Supernatural Fiction. (I’ve read the TV Tropes entries numerous times, and I’m still not exactly sure how to label shows like this).

If Peach was completely dead, no pulse, no heartbeat, no brain activity, resuscitation attempts had failed, and when the doctor went to talk to Pangpang, a supernatural force yeeted Peach back into his body, fine.

If, however, Peach coded, and the doctor just said, ‘Eh, I’ll go inform the family,’ and either someone else managed to resuscitate him or he managed to pull through before full death occurred, then, what the hell? Please, someone take his license ASAP.

Later, Peach asks a ghost the time.

A nurse interrupts, and she tells the patient on the other bed, who, incidentally, isn’t physically there, died this morning. Translation error or just weird way to say that there’s no one currently over there?

Also, she didn’t answer his question of what time it is.

I wouldn’t say this is out-of-character, but Peach’s mind can be strange.

Instead of assuming someone else was in the room but went to the bathroom or something, instead of assuming he was still sorta dreaming, instead of expressing concerns about any medication he might be on, he immediately ran away from the room and informed Pangpang he can now see ghosts.

It’s touching how Pangpang immediately believes him, but I would not automatically believe a loved one. I wouldn’t assume they were lying, to be clear, but I’d be talking to their doctor about what medication they’re currently on and possible neurological issues.

I know Pangpang’s heart is in the right place, but she isn’t helping things here. Peach correctly says he can’t go back to work in this condition, but she urges him to just ignore the ghosts.

No. Call the chef, explain about the accident, and then, talk to a doctor.

At the kitchen, the chef explains about the special patron’s allergy to legumes, and she asks about Peach’s injuries. He lies he just tripped and fell.

I know many places, including but certainly not limited to Thailand, have frelled up work expectations of people, but I really think getting hit by a car should get a person enough guaranteed time off to heal physically, and hopefully, to deal with the emotional toil, too.

One thing I do like about this show is: No one is solely to blame for any bad thing. Peach was hit, and this caused ghost sightings, but tragedy might have been avoided if he’d handled things differently. Likewise, Chef Hong would have had legitimate reason to say, Yeah, you can be my sous-chef some other time. I’m not letting an important client see one of my employees like this.

She takes him to meet the patron, and the man is odd, likely due to his grief. The doll with him represents his dead daughter, and Peach sees said daughter.

At this point, Peach is acting so odd himself I really think Chef Hong should have taken him off-duty for this meal, but she truly cares about him. She’s trying her best to help him succeed in their shared career.

Back in the kitchen, Peach has a freakout over the daughter appearing, and if he’s going to be let to prepare this meal, someone should thoroughly check his work first.

But then, how would anyone see the soybean oil he accidentally used to coat the pan with?

The patron has an allergic reaction, and this is when the chef, instead of immediately calling for an ambulance or getting someone else to do so, figures out about the soybean oil.

Impressive she could do this by smell, but priorities.

In the present, the trio ask if this what caused Peach’s hand tremor, and Pangpang says no, it’s even more complicated.

Back in the past, the restaurant is closed down due to everyone blaming Chef Hong.

Meanwhile, Peach has sent a message asking her to let him make a certain dish as a sort of apology. Or actually, he sends a picture, but he erases the message before sending it.

She immediately texts back telling him to meet her at the restaurant, and he’s happy.

At the restaurant, however, he smells gas, and he runs to find her dead. He sees the gas valve turned, and he heartbreakingly begs her to wake up.

Instead of calling for emergency services, but still, Tay does wonderfully with this scene.

Then, he sees her ghost, and the hand he was shaking her with starts to tremble.

In the present, it’s revealed Peach has perfect vision but wears glasses to try to help shield him against seeing ghosts. I’m assuming he wears non-prescription lens, which clearly don’t work. If he’s deliberately screwing his vision up with prescription lens that he somehow got, that’s still not working.

I’ll give the show this: If he stops wearing glasses in the future, it’ll be better than many shows, both Asian and Western, that have a character stop wearing glasses.

When it comes to this trope, I can understand a character wanting to get their vision corrected or switching to contacts, but I hate how the implication is that a character is suddenly more attractive once they no longer wear glasses.

And Home gets credit for nicely asking if there’s anything they can do to help, and also, have they consulted a doctor.

The next scene, I don’t the show has built up to this moment happening enough, but it’s a great scene all the same. Home goes to the restaurant alone, and calling himself Peach’s friend, he asks Chef Hong to help Peach become a chef again.

After this, he goes to the siblings, and he insists Peach either exorcise Chef Hong so that he can build a condominium, or the siblings are fired and homeless. During this, Peach has a line about how Home would have had to kill someone to understand how Peach feels.

Peach looks at Home with something close to hatred, because, in this moment, he’s realising Home isn’t and won’t ever be a friend.

At the restaurant, refusing to let Pangpang keep Peach company, Home and her watch from another room as Peach tries to make a stir-fry dish.

Chef Hong appears, and just as he once did, Peach cuts himself again. Home locks him in the room, and through the door, he suggests Chef Hong didn’t kill herself.

There’s a scene of Home talking to the gas man, and there’s a scene of Chef Hong refusing to let the gas man change the gas cylinder for her.

No death has directly been anyone’s fault.

Rak’s horrible boss made things worse, but she likely would have died a painful death, leaving her mother and husband behind, even if he hadn’t unjustly fired her and ruined her reputation. Ride had rode in rainy weather numerous times before; him trying to bring a gift to a girl he loved didn’t put him in a situation he wouldn’t normally be in. The magician’s daughter might have been able to be helped if she’d had access to better healthcare, but her father did everything he could to keep her as healthy as possible despite her sickness.

Here, this gas man, established to be a friend, could have insisted, but he believed, even with her slightly tipsy, she was still capable of doing it herself.

He leaves, and she starts to make a meal for Peach.

A gas thing comes undone, and I don’t know if it was supernatural forces or human error.

In the present, appearing, Chef Hong touches Peach’s cut finger, and there’s a flashback scene of her tending to his wound. They have a conversation where she’s declares he’s more determined than anyone else.

I do like this scene, but huh? He was willing to quietly leave when she said he didn’t have what it took. Again, part of me thinks he should have, but unless she knew his plan was to find a different place to work as a chef at, he didn’t do anything to give any indication she was wrong.

There’s a transition where Ghost Chef Hong touching his finger turns into Home doing so.

Peach breaks down further, possibly a little from the realisation Home is a friend, and Home hugs him.

After this, Peach makes the dish, and Chef Hong accepts it with a smile.

I love you, Peach doesn’t say aloud, but she knows. He may never know how much she loved him back, but he has a chance at being okay with her gone now, and that’s all she really needed.

Home comes in, and it’s established Pangpang is outside and Kan is getting the errand Home prevented her from completing done. Also, Home is selling the restaurant as a restaurant instead of a condominium.

It’s been said this won’t be a BL, and either the people involved are lying, or they like teasing the audience.

This scene is so romantic. Home bandages Peach’s cut, and that quote about sitting in the car with a beautiful boy comes to mind. Peach is looking at this boy, and he’s finding himself falling in love.

Home maybe recognises this or is maybe just projecting his own feelings a little bit, he’s in a kitchen with this kind, beautiful person, and he likely has no chance, but the feelings are still there, brewing inside.

“Hey, don’t look into my eyes like that,” he says. “You’re in danger of falling in love with me, just like Kan did.”

Thankfully, no, on that last part. Otherwise, though, maybe accurate?

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he adds.

Home’s failing at warning himself, though.

The conversation turns to the hit-and-run, and this goes over to Kan. She finds out it was Home who hit Peach, and his uncle, against his grandpa’s objections, covered it up.

So, unless the uncle and detective knew Peach coded but didn’t know he’d be brought back, it doesn’t make sense for them to refer to this as murder case. Attempted murder is an actual legal charge. But otherwise, even if a person enters clinical death, if they’re successfully resuscitated, there’s no murder. A person has to be permanently dead for a straight murder charge to be applied.

Also, patient-confidentially, Miss Nurse?

On a different note, I don’t agree with what the uncle did, but I’m taking this as him possibly not being a big bad of the series. For all I’d be pissed if someone protected a person who had harmed one of my loved ones, I can’t say for 100% that, if I had the means, I wouldn’t protect one of my loved ones if they did something terrible.

I do know, one of my family members, they would call the cops themselves if they knew anyone, including a family member, did a hit-and-run, but I’m not sure how many people, when actually in such a situation, would have such moral fortitude.

Someone else pointed out that this puts Home’s refusal to drive when Ride was freaking Peach out in a whole different light.

And I’ll give Home a tiny bit of credit: He possibly did a horrible thing, but he has taken steps to ensure he never does something like that again.

The thing is, it’s not clear what caused him to run over Peach. Was he drinking? On drugs? Texting? Sleeping? Speeding? Or was it just an unfortunate accident?

Did he call for help? Or did he just drive away? Did he ask his uncle to cover for him, or did he just choose not to admit what he did to others upon finding out his uncle did?

If he accidentally hit Peach while sober and alert, then, him not taking responsibility is the main issue. If he deliberately endangered others by getting behind the wheel when he shouldn’t have, that’s a whole different, deeper conversation.

Fin.

[whaleaddict13]

Bored and did a tier list of the legendary groups

Explanation for every one under the cut because I can’t be normal

Top Tier:

Treasures of Ruin: my favorite thing to come out of Scarlet and Violet. The designs? Awesome. The lore? Even more awesome. Their abilities? Cool. Their music? So so good. If not for my bias towards the weather trio these would be solidly my #1, but they’re just fluidly #1

Weather Trio: I think they are the epitome of a legendary group. While their design is simple, it clearly conveys what they represent. The lore between Groudon and Kyogre is great but I think we all know which one excels in that category. Music as always is a banger and their signature moves and abilities are cool too. ORAS’ addition of the primals and megas made them that much better

Creation Trio (+Arceus): though I never played the sinnoh games, I think they’re really cool especially in terms of design and lore (hard not to be cool with everything Legends Arceus did too). Their music is cool, their signature moves are cool, and Arceus’ ability is cool. The trio kinda got the short end of the stick with abilities (pressure being the like. Default ability for legendaries) but they’re still cool to me

Aura Trio: never played XY or the ultra games but they are visually and lore-y really cool. Life and Death and then the Ecosystem where they interact. Poor zygarde got the short end of the stick in terms of. Well. Everything. But the Ultra Games picked up the slack enough for me. Music’s cool too, xerneas and yveltal’s moves and abilities are cool, but zygarde’s are cooler. Like the music too.

Light Trio: these are really cool to me. Especially necrozma. They really took the sun and moon title of the games and went. What if literally. The designs and lore are cool (especially Necrozma), and the fusion mechanic was a nice addition. Ultra necrozma is really funny. The music is really good too.

Dogs & Eternatus: I just think they’re neat. Really like their design and the tie in to the dynamax mechanic, but I wish we got more out of Eternatus. Lore is classic fairy tale heroes vs dragon which is always fun to see. Come on though. Pressure as an ability again?

Really cool

Mew and Mewtwo: I like the duality kinda thing of the genetic ancestor and the genetic descendant. Design is good, but not my favorite, and they’re really held together by the movies.

Galar Birds: THIS is a good redesign. Cool moves too. Not much to say about them, they kinda just show up, but they look super cool so they make it up here.

Eon Duo: they’re this high up because I’m biased. Getting a legendary in the middle of the story that can mega evolve? Cool. The eon flute? One of the coolest things GF ever did.

Regis: at first they were cool. Then gigas came along. Still cool. Then swsh gave us 2 new ones. Super cool. The fact you can have a full party of regis is so funny to me. Plus, giving more thought into the whole typing system. I like them because I only ever got them in swsh so I didn’t have to learn braille. That would have pissed me off

Calyrex + Horses: much as I despise them in vgc, the crown tundra story and design are really cool, so they get to stay up here. They’re kinda cool too. I guess.

Island Guardians/Tapus: good way to introduce terrain as a mechanic, also they look really cool and are lore cool too. I just don’t see them on the same level as those in the above tier.

Definitely have their place

Ho-Oh/Lugia: Ho Oh was my first legendary pokemon card, and it’s really cool. Never played the johto games, but Lugia drags it down to me. So much potential, but does not get there. Psychic Flying? Guardian of the seas? Interesting choice. Ho-Oh has a great theme but Lugia’s is kinda just okay to me

Forces of Nature: I actually think they’re quite cool. Even enamorus. The therian and incarnate thing is pretty cool, I also transform into something else in a mirror. Lando T is also funny and has a slot on my VGC team. Not because of intimidate, but it certainly helps and is my only counter to the bane of my existence (Urshifu)

Tao Trio: I never played BW. Or B2W2. I have no emotional connection to these guys, so they are just White Fire Dragon and Black Lightning Dragon to me, and I don’t really like their design. Kyurem holds them up a lot higher for me, as the fusion mechanic is really cool here. The music also kinda just feels like Legendary Pokemon music until the sound effects, and they never felt connected to the mons for me

Cresselia/Darkrai: I think they look cool, but that’s pretty much my only opinion on the matter. Design alone and dream theme gets them up this high, but honestly, seeing either of them in the daytime weirds me out

Koraidon/Miraidon. Really. Ko-Ride-On and Mi-Ride-On? For the pokemon you ride on? It’s fine though, their design is cool and even though they’re way overpowered they’re really nifty in the story. Sandwich smiley face

Great

Lake trio: only this high because of their music. One of my favorite themes in the series. Design wise, they needed to be similar, but they’re kinda just okay. Story and red chain gathering session from PLA make me like them enough

Paradox Swords of Justice: an improvement on the original designs, so I like them more. But a lack of paradox keldeo is truly unfortunate

Paradogs: also an improvement on the originals that make me like them more

Good

Kanto legendary birds: they’re. Kinda just fire ice and electric birds. Not much interesting about them for them to be higher, especially when you compare them to their Crown Tundra redesigns. Like the Spanish counting thing though.

Johto Dogs: much like the birds, they’re kinda just there. They get a little boost from the burning tower story, and their designs are a little better, but they aren’t as special to me as the other ones.

Swords of Justice: again, never played the unova games. They’re just like. Alongside the lake trio, they’re the first ones that usually appear on the mirage islands, and they’re kinda all just okay designs to me. Keldeo is cool though, so they don’t get their own meh tier.

Loyal Three: um. Of all the legendaries, this group is the one I’m most unsure of GF’s intentions. Did we need some poison type representation? Yes. Was this the move? I don’t think so.

[queen-erika-the-songful]

Hi there, Erika! I hope things are going alright for you during this pride month. I'm planning to watch The Princess and the Popstar bc I realized I misjudged it too much and to give it a true chance. Anyways, I'm probs opening a can of worms and discourse in the year 2024 by doing this... do you think Tori's actions would be excused if she was a masc character? Because I've been in too many fandoms (for live-action media) to see how fem characters can be judged harshly compared to masc (white, more often than not but that's another discussion) characters. And I wonder if the same can be said for Tori. The only reason I was hesitant because of how she acted (i.e: the Aunt Amelia stuff) but later, I saw posts mentioning how she grew and developed and I went 'huh, I guess I was wrong', and well. Yeah, basically. I apologize if this is an odd question and if it doesn't make sense. Regardless, sending grand wishes to you and may Pride month go well for you! 🌈🌈🌈

HI there! Happy Pride to you as well!

I love that you're giving Popstar a chance. I think it's a fun movie with good vibes and great songs. I don't really like the villain but I adore the leads and especially Tori's character progression. Keira personally helped me when I was a young teen because I saw her as bisexual before I really knew the word and it helped me figure that out for myself.

That's an interesting point you suggested about Tori. I do think there are certain characters that would be less viscerally hated if they were men, and in Tori's case - well, it could be possible. Like you said, there are some characters in various fandoms that feel like they get more passes for being masc and white while trashing on fem characters and characters of color but I'm not like entirely sure in Tori's case. I feel like there's this trend recently of doing hard on literal child characters so maybe Tori wouldn't get a pass no matter her gender. I really don't know though. I guess if she was more masc, then her pranking people could be seen as more of "charming rascal" or something. Maybe more people would pay attention to some of the detail in the storytelling more in order to be like "see THIS is why this character is like this!" I'm sorry that I don't really have a definitive answer and I'm pretty bad about talking about these kinds of things because it's hard to articulate my thoughts without sounding like I'm just mashing words and terms together.

Speaking of those details, I feel like people don't seem to grasp that Tori's acting out is most likely because of a few things. I already covered them in this post but I'll repeat them here: 1) she appears to have little/no princess duties outside of being a figurehead; 2) her mother is dead and she may not have grieved properly; 3) her sisters are much younger than her and she doesn't have anyone her age to relate to; 4) she may not get to spend a lot of time with her father; 5) her Amelia acts more like her governess than her Aunt. Not saying she didn't do some honestly awful things (seriously why would you hide someone's teeth Tori that's just mean) but there are a lot of factors that could absolutely contribute to her behavior. Plus, when she does realize that she hasn't been paying attention to her kingdom, she immediately wants to fix things and be a good princess. Her arc really is great. Sidenote I wish Keira had gotten more of a proper arc too but I guess it's alright she's still awesome anyway.

The movie as a whole honestly is better than what most of the fandom gives it credit for and I wish it was more appreciated instead of just stripped down to "bad Pauper remake". And remember this is coming from one of the biggest Pauper fans.

Thanks for your ask; you really made me think about some things. I hope you enjoy/enjoyed the movie and I would love to hear what you thought of it (even if it turns out you didn't like it! It's just satisfying to see someone give it a chance!)

[damoobiefeater]

The Little Mermaid (2023)

Awesome remake!!

Halle Bailey was SO PERFECT, she definitely looks like a mermaid, and she has such a naive and curious disposition and appearance to herself and her acting!!

The costumes were so creative and beautiful, I loved the different mermaid designs, especially the colors and details on Ariel’s costume, like the frills on her top, and I appreciate that they didn’t limit themselves to a direct translation of the animated version. I also loved triton’s armor that had the pattern and pearlescent or whatever effect to it

Speaking of king triton, I loved that he directly addressed his wrong but still needed some time to come to terms with the fact that Ariel coming home safe wasn’t the solution he thought it was, and that her desire to go above land wasn’t a silly, passing phase, definitely not purely a matter of infatuation with Eric. She had a passion for learning about land and the culture of humans just as marine biologists have for the sea and it’s creatures, hence her extensive collection of artifacts. Eric was only a vehicle for her to explore that interest, maybe a catalyst when her father learned of him and destroyed her grotto

The first time through I thought he came off as more lowkey abusive than the animated version, but I think that’s because they cut the scene where he’s looking on in pride and admiration at his other daughters’ concert before he realizes ariel isn’t there, and we didn’t get to see him being excited about her finding love and having the little flower etc- which all show more explicitly that he wants to be a good, supportive dad

It was an interesting choice to say that her mother was killed by humans and that was when the decision to stop going to the surface began. Even though I see the rationale behind it, it’s such a trope that I kind of prefer a separated ignorance of the human specifies (from what I remember of the original, but maybe I’m forgetting and this detail was cannon)

Some of the scenes looked STUNNING and magical and whimsical, just everything disney stands for to me, making me experience wonder again, especially the “under the sea” scene. But a few of the shots looked awkward or cheap which puzzles me a bit, as if they didn’t do well at evenly dispersing their budget- like the scene where Ursula gets giant is kinda bad to me. Also when it’s the iconic scene where Ariel comes out of the water onto the rocks, I don’t know what or why but her fingers moving over the rocks as she moves to the side to center on the rock looks really bad to me almost like she’s getting moved on a platform or something out of sight.

Halle Bailey has such a beautiful voice but I think it was definitely the best in Under the Sea, and I can only think of why because she gets to do her own little vocal riffs or whatever they’re called instead of directly matching the source material like “part of your world”

I loved the decision to make scuttle female, I think the personality grated on me less somehow, and I thought the scuttlebutt song was a cute addition, although when Sebastian started rapping it lost my appeal a bit- I genuinely love a lot of rap and think it has its place but this one in particular didn’t appeal to me as much as (for example) the one in encanto. It just reeked of a generic Lin Manuel Miranda haha- as much as I love him!

I did like the world building and the scene with the shopkeepers was pretty and warm! Very lively and showing ariel exactly what she felt she’d been missing such as her desire to dance! Eric’s room of collections was also a HUGE plus to this movie for me- because it showed how much they are kindred spirits. They are both explorers and dreamers who long to travel and learn whereas the original seemed like they just kinda happened to fall in love

I could be wrong about this but I appreciate that the deception by Ursula’s human form plus the wedding seemed more concise in this one- I hate lengthy sequences of misunderstandings

This is silly but I do wish that triton had made the rainbow across the sky, as it was one of my favorite memories/scenes of the original movie! But I think it’s nice that instead of getting married right away (but also not degrading it or denying the eventual possibility) they set off on an adventure together! Shows that a happily ever after can be chasing your passion and dreams and the love can come along with it!! In the original I get the vibes that the marriage is what finally settles ariel and Eric’s desires for something outside of their bubbles, but I think that’s boring and unrealistic!

Finally, it does bother me as always that it seems like media refuses to just let black characters have a black family/cast- it seems like they always have to be offset by either other marginalized races or white people- they’re often biracial with one white parent or it’s all blind casted or whatever, I just wish they’d let Ariel’s family be black! They do have a little explanation for it- the races coinciding with the oceans they belong to, and representation is good, so I’ll let it go, but it was something of note to me! Especially if we are to believe that ariel was supposed to inherit her father’s place in whatever ocean they’re in (I clearly haven’t done research and don’t even know if that’s a real assumption to be made- but in the original, their tails are the only ones that match, I think, and I get the vibe that although the older sisters have their responsibilities elsewhere, that ariel is expected to stay here which also gives explanation to her desire to explore and her sisters’ indifference to it, plus more motive for her dad to want her to learn to be happy where she is- but I’m glad they didn’t put that in explicitly because that’s very Moana haha

One random other thing is that I think it would have been cool if the merpeople had helped retrieve some of the things from Eric’s sunken ship at the end of the movie, but I guess it all would’ve probably been ruined by then anyways and the humans don’t have much to offer the merpeople if we’re trying for a symbiotic relationship. And really, now that I’m thinking of it, I think I’m okay with them not coming to that cliche conclusion- just because they might now have the right to go on land/to the surface if they please doesn’t mean that they have to all agree to merge cultures and forge connections with one another. And realistically, how much coexisting is really happening when one of the communities is at the bottom of the ocean haha

Over all 10/10!!

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

...and the winner is Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show!

And I completely agree! Although I'm ngl, the results are way closer than I thought they'd be, people were pretty split on this for a four-way poll.

My personal rankings under the cut. Under the cut because (this is the part where my followers pretend to be shocked) this gets kinda long:

4th Place - The PPG Movie

This is frustrating because first 10 minutes or so and climax and ending are great! Lots of wholesome moments and awesome action. But middle is so dour. Too dour. There not much action either, outside of the tag scene. It doesn't fit the overall tone of the show. Powerpuff Girls is usually light-hearted, if a bit edgy. There are darker episodes like Speed Demon or Knock It Off, but those work and were memorable because they were rare.

Also the movie is kinda unnecessary, what do we really learn that isn't covered in the intro or episodes prior to the movie from the show itself? That Townsville used to hate the girls for being too destructive (and to a lesser extent for looking weird)? Which...uh....

This isn't rare. Stuff like this happens specifically because of the girls every other episode.

Prior to the movie you could've shrugged that off, but now that the movie confirmed that being too destructive is literally what caused the girls to become outcasts once before, you'd think the girls would try to be more careful than they are. I get that in a lot of cases (like the first two) the property damage isn't really their fault and was inevitable, but stuff like blowing up the Citysville bridge clearly establishes that they're used to being reckless consequence-free as if this has never caused them trouble in the past.

It's frustrating because the beginning and end of the movie are amazing, but the second act/middle of the movie just really brings it down for me, in addition to the premise (it being a retelling of an origin we already know) being kinda lame.

3rd Place - Wakko's Wish

Anyone who follows me for my Animaniacs content might've just went "WHAAAAAAAAAAAA-?"

Yeah I like Wakko's Wish, but would I say it's the best cartoon movie ever?

Nah.

As an Animaniacs fan I'm so glad one of my favourite shows of all time got a movie, but the movie itself is...fine. I rank it above the PPG movie because it does a better job keeping consistent with the tone of the show and is a new story for the characters to star in rather than a retelling, but it still has some tonal issues. Weirdly enough, it almost has the opposite problem: It's a little too cheesy at points. I don't think they go too far with it, but I can't deny some scenes feel kinda...weird. I don't wanna say cringeworthy so I'll go with "weird".

Other than that, it's a decent flick! The songs are fun (though I think the show has done better), the animation is the best it's ever been for the franchise at that point, I wouldn't say it's hilarious but there's a lot in good gags in there. Although I feel some characters got pushed to the side in terms of plot relevance or are characterised weirdly (Yakko doesn't really do much, some characters like Katie Kaboom and her family have been demoted to background characters in this despite being co-stars in the show, Slappy could've been more violent here, the Goodfeathers don't show up until the movie's over halfway over, stuff like that).

I go more into detail about my thoughts on the movie here.

Overall, it's good. Just...good.

2nd Place - The Spongebob Movie

I think I've seen this movie more times than I've seen any of the other three...combined.

It's a blast! It's tone is consistent with the show, it's just a little deeper with its messaging and and has higher stakes. It has great animation, the jokes don't stop coming and ALL of them land, and the movie has a legitimately good theme and arc for Spongebob! Yeah it's a funny talking sponge movie but there's honest to god themes of self acceptance, embracing your inner child, what it takes to be an adult, and kid empowerment.

I only have a few problems with it. 1, any character from the show who isn't Spongebob, Patrick or Plankton just DO NOT MATTER in this movie. The half the main cast and the majority of the recurring cast don't get to do squat. I get it, it's in the title, it's Spongebob's movie, but it's hard not to care, especially after later movies give the rest of the cast more to do. 2, the whole point of the movie is that Spongebob doesn't have to be traditionally manly to be capable, but...he's not capable. Not in this movie anyway.

The bar scene?

Luck.

Getting away from Dennis?

Luck.

Getting back from Shell City?

Luck, luck, luck (although I guess you could argue him and Patrick letting themselves cry rather than holding it in just because they're men ended up saving their lives, so that was sort of their own doing...but come on, they didn't know that would happen).

Yes it's a comedy film and most of these were gags but the film can't try to have a theme and then barely do anything to prove that its message is true. The most Spongebob does by himself is getting through the trench in "Now That We're Men" (and even that was partially thanks to Mindy) and the Goofy Goober Rock scene, but more scenes should've been like those, Spongebob and Patrick getting out of situations in unconventional ways.

Oh, and (3) I guess Patrick having a crush on Mindy. Putting her supposed age aside (it's never actually mentioned in the movie, and the way I see is if it's not in official source material, it's not canon), it's kinda annoying the only female character who gets to do something significant just had to be a potential love interest. I guess it's for the sake of the innuendo of her "turning Spongebob and Patrick into men" but...eh. Kinda funny, kinda gross. Again, considering she's the only female character who does anything.

OK I just realised that I've written about the flaws of the movie for longer than I did its strengths, but don't let that fool you I really do love this movie. The comedy and heart of the film are so good I don't mind the flaws that much, but they do keep it from second place.

1st Place - Big Picture Show

Ed, Edd n Eddy is another one of my favourite shows of all time, and honestly a big reason for that is that, more than any cartoon I have ever seen, it stuck the landing.

The animation is top notch, unsurprising given that the show, specifically in the later seasons, already had some of the best hand drawn animation a cartoon series has ever had. It's energetic but handles slower moments brilliantly, the slapstick feels like it hurts, which makes it all the more funny. It can be fluid or snappy if need be. Characters squash and stretch and bend and sometimes break, and most of all they are expressive. The characters are always have incredibly unique and sincere expressions.

Now imagine all of that on a higher budget. Pictures won't do it justice, I suggest you at least watch a clip, you'll see what I mean.

The humour of course is great. I actually think the Spongebob movie has it beat in terms of comedy, but EEnE's typical snarky, slapstick, and wacky humour, as well as the visual gags, shine through here.

We either find out something new about many of the cast or they do something for the first time:

--Sarah has to use her brain rather than just her brawn after getting overpowered physically.

--Same with Ed! Except in this case what held him back from resorting to a physical confrontation was fear, not being overpowered. He uses his brain towards the end to beat Eddy's brother without having to touch him.

--Johnny is heavily implied to have social anxiety during the bus scene, which may explain why he drew Plank. He also becomes the new outcast by the end of the movie, but that makes sense. The show always implied if not for the Eds Johnny would've been the neighbourhood outcast instead.

--Nazz is revealed to have a crush on Kevin. She clearly liked him on the show, but it was never clear if that was just platonically or not.

--Kevin stands up for Eddy (and the rest of the kids, but other than Double D, who you would expect to anyway, he was the first).

--Lee is enraged by Eddy's brother bulling him, revealing Lee may genuinely like Eddy beyond tormenting him with kisses and the like. All the Kankers want to rescue to Eds from the rest of the kids in this movie, but this moment implies that wasn't just an excuse to stalk them again. This makes sense when you remember later seasons already implied her sisters, May and Marie, genuinely had romantic interest in Ed and Double D beyond infatuation.

Everyone in the cast gets a decent amount of screentime (although unfortunately Rolf isn't given much to do character or plot wise), which I appreciate, especially when comparing it to the Spongebob Movie or Wakko's Wish.

And like Wakko's Wish, there's a lot of call-backs to the show (Double D's labels, Captain Melonhead...honestly just go look at the wiki), in addition to the payoffs and reveals of things set up in the show. Except this time we know the events of the movie are actually happening to the characters, making it all the more impactful!

Then there's the big reveal of Eddy's brother, someone who the show acknowledged for multiple seasons but was never shown onscreen. ears of build up and slowly learning about him from how ither characters talk about him are paid off here, and he does not disappoint (writing-wise...personality-wise he sucks lol). His appearance here recontextualises a lot of episodes, now that we know Eddy was just trying to look cool to get people to like him whenever he brought him up, or tried to get other kids to fear his brother, and hence fear himself, in an attempt to gain respect because that's what he thought respect was. Yet in reality he feared his brother the most. Maybe it was also a way to lie to himself, to convince himself his brother wasn't that bad, as long as his brother wasn't around to disprove it.

As for Double D, he finally stands up for himself against Eddy, something Eddy had a long time coming, and once it looks like he might lose Double D for good, the usually arrogant, loud and rude Eddy...apologises. That and the ending where he drops the act and owns up about what he said about his brother all those times, it's a perfect explanation and end for Eddy as a character. Double D and Ed have good moments too! Ed did something smart (on his own) for once without it being played off as a joke and Double D grew a spine. Best of all the Eds finally get what they've always actually wanted: not jawbreakers, acceptance and respect.

A version of this show where the Eds aren't outcasts cannot exist. Ed Edd n Eddy (the show) is the mean-spirited yet humorous struggle of its titular characters. It is the way it is because the Eds just never learn their lesson...until they did.

But a show where the Eds are perfectly happy and popular just...isn't Ed Edd n Eddy. It can't be. It shouldn't be.

So the show ends. I appreciate when a show knows when end and doesn't overstay its welcome.

This not only is my favourite cartoon movie, but my favourite finale PERIOD. Of any show. 15 years later, and it is still one of Cartoon Network's greatest achievements. I mean that with full sincerity.

Cartoon Movies...

With a bigger budget and higher stakes, once a cartoon got one of these you know it made it big.

[bluemoose86]

Thoughts on The Woman King

Spolier-free:

First of all, I loved this movie! And so did the other two people I went with; the three of us literally talked about how we all wanted to see it again after it was over

Great fight choreography, loved getting to see a bunch of women go absolutely feral in battle without them being sexualized or still having to “look pretty.” There’s a lot of close-ups during fights of the Agojie killing people and it’s not pretty, it’s brutal and it’s fucking awesome (the movie is PG-13 though so it’s not overtly gory, which I personally appreciated)

THE ACTING???? On point the ENTIRE movie. Give Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, and Lashana Lynch ALL the awards RIGHT NOW. Viola Davis embodied Nanisca perfectly and was equally impressive in the epic battle scenes and in the emotionally vulnerable scenes. I’ve seen several articles talk about how this was a career performance from her, and she herself called the film her magnum opus. Lashana Lynch stole every single scene she was in. Izogie my beloved. I also enjoyed John Boyega’s portrayal of King Ghezo and Sheila Atim as Amenza

Also I literally had to do a triple take when I found out Thuso Mbedu, who plays 19 year old Nawi, is THIRTY ONE?????? SHE’S ONLY THREE YEARS YOUNGER THAN LASHANA LYNCH???? SHE’S THE SAME AGE AS SHEILA ATIM???? In other pictures she looks older but I am actually 19 and I stg when I found that out, I felt old

And still speaking of the actors, really cool how the majority of, if not all the Black actors in this movie were dark skinned, particularly the women. I read that when the movie was first being pitched, some studios wanted to cast light-skinned and well-known actresses, but the producers refused

The beginning felt a little rough to me in terms of pacing, but the movie hits its stride around the mid-point or so. And trust me, when it starts working, it works.

The script was also a bit weak sometimes, but I thought the performances made up for it

I’ve seen some people online saying the movie glorifies the slave trade or glorifies Dahomey while brushing the kingdom’s involvement in the slave trade to the side, which really confuses me because...it doesn’t? The movie opens with a text-scrolling intro à la Star Wars that literally mentions the slave trade, and several characters in the movie talk about it as well. Nanisca and King Ghezo have a conversation about how Dahomey profits from the slave trade, and how Ghezo’s brother sold their people—including his and Ghezo’s own mother—as slaves for profit. And then it gets more overt when some Portuguese men land at the port city, one of them specifically to buy slaves, and when we go into the city and LITERALLY SEE slaves being chained up, kept in cages, and brought onto the block to be sold. The movie both shows and tells you how awful the slave trade is, and how the people in the movie are impacted by it. At one point, some of the women are captured and prepped to be judged and sold and the entire process is presented as brutal and degrading. I’m seriously convinced that the people who say the movie is “glorifying slavery” have never seen it

Wanted to end this section on a good note lol so I’ll once again say IZOGIE MY BELOVED!!!!! Favorite character without a doubt, also gave off fruity vibes but y’all let me know if you picked up on that too lol

Overall, I definitely recommend this movie and I will 100% rewatch it in the future. Also this movie BETTER win some fucking Oscars or else 😤😤

Spoiler thoughts below!!

Izogie’s death scene was very well done. I kind of guessed they would end up killing her off since they really built her up as a character, but that didn’t lessen its impact at all. Lashana Lynch and Thuso Mbedu acted their asses off (as they did the whole movie, but particularly here). The actual set-up was good too: having Nawi convince her to stay alive so they could all escape together, setting her broken arm and then having to pretend like it was never broken, having her be the only one who actually escaped but deciding that Nawi was right that the Agojie should help each other and trying to go back for her, only to get killed while Nawi is begging her to keep running. Heartbreaking, but that’s what made it so good

By contrast, Nawi’s friend’s death (the Mahi prisoner, I forgot her name I’m so sorry) was not really impactful at all, beyond her dying right after being accepted by the other Agojie who had a problem with her before. I wish they had spent a little more time on both Nawi’s friends as individual characters and their relationship with each other. We barely saw Nawi interact with either of them before they became best friends, and after the Mahi girl died, neither Nawi or her other friend mourned her on screen (I know Nawi had been kidnapped at this point, but the other girl survived and wasn’t kidnapped)

I loved how Nanisca and the other Agojie went to the city intending to just rescue their own but she found out that the slave traders killed Izogie and Nawi was missing and she said “burn it to the fucking ground.” Iconic as HELL and I wish more stories would let their MC react like that

Also loved that the prisoners that Malik freed drowned the slave trader he came with. Fuck you dude

A woman literally getting to kill her abuser? We love to see it

I wish they’d brought up Nawi being an orphan a bit earlier in the movie, since it seemed like it was introduced rather suddenly after she became an Agojie. They could have pretty easily tossed in a line from her parents admonishing her for acting so terribly after they “rescued” her from the orphanage. 

I also really enjoyed Nanisca and Amenza’s relationship! I got kind of gay vibes but the only thing that was explicitly confirmed was how close they are and how much they mean to each other, which I was also happy with. I’m so glad Amenza survived the movie lol

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.