#it feels like a less-interesting rehash of 'necessary evil'

[nyasialiveshere]

Movie review/recap 1.0

MIDNIGHT

The 2021 sleeper hit psychological thriller horror of my dreams.

it reminds me of that old movie with the Korean psychopath and the innocent young woman trying to avenge her sister monster.

but it feels like both an evolution and a rehash of the old Japanese dramas that purposely put disabled characters in shows to show more diversity. It works in midnight in a way I don't think many modern-day movies do.

Firstly we have a sympathetic character targeted by a ruthless predator.

in recent years, protagonists in horror films known as the final girls have purposely become the opposite of the old tropes. They are loud, bossy, annoying, and extremely modern. Which, to be honest, makes the audience less sympathetic when a terrifying sociopath is after them. In recent years, people not only don't care if characters get whacked in horror movies; they wait for it and enjoy it. Characters usually purposely embody one of the seven deadly sins in order for the audience, usually endowed with subtle Christian Judea values, to deep down believe the characters deserve to be punished. This is very apparent in modern horror films. In Midnight it takes you back to when horror movies had innocent characters you didn't want anything bad to happen to, like in the 1980s.

When villains punish evil people, the villains become more like anti-heroes. This bad becomes good trope has been popularized through movies like suicide squad

and Deadpool.

Where bad guys are not only cooler but more relatable than the goody two-shoes heroes. Yet in a world like the Avengers and Batman v Superman. The heroes aren't just saviors; they are people who cause millions of dollars of damages, cause people to be injured in the crosshairs and become a nuisance to the general public.

So a movie like this is refreshing because the bad guy is actually bad. End of story. No tragic backstory, no he-had-to-do-it, no revenge plotline. There is no reason for him to go after innocent women; he just does.

Not only does he go after innocent women, he goes after the most innocent woman he possibly can. A disabled woman who cannot hear and relies mainly on reading lips and sign language. Many people would definitely draw the line when it comes to robbing or victimizing someone who cannot properly defend himself but in this movie it becomes an afterthought to the villain, who goes after anyone who catches his eye. The easier the prey, the better.

Kyeong-mi is a nice change from the sassy, independent heroine people are used to, not because her personality is not tenacious but because she is pure, a quality the movie hammers down quite nicely.

It's an incredibly energetic movie. The chase just hits differently when a character has not got to live life yet. Kyeong-mi was not a party girl, nor did she have tons of friends or even family. She lived a nice, quiet life with her mother and she couldn't hear. It is the equivalent of a lion hunting a lamb.

This is in juxtaposition to the other women kidnapped in the movie by the stalker, who were either on their way to a date or were living their busy metropolitan life.

Thematically, it is just a more impactful story when a character who has done nothing to deserve it gets hunted. People feel bad when a gazelle is hunted but even worse when it's a baby animal. It's just necessary to pull on people's heartstrings; even animals hesitate to hunt young defenseless animals.

In this movie, Kyeong-mi is very resourceful, quick-witted and strangely athletic

though that could of been because she was running for her life

the most interesting part of the movie is when the story and the villain weaponize the fact that overemotional women are unlikely to be believed when compared to a smooth-talking, good-looking male.

Multiple times the villain simply pretended to be a regular guy trying to help the same women he was preying on. I believe it was a smart move to switch up the casting for a villain. I believe whenever movies portray all male predators as ugly, scary, or creepy, it paints a picture that men who are attractive can do no wrong and they should be who women seek out. But in reality, most predators are the nice, charming person that everyone likes. They are incredibly social, talkative, and have a great smile.

That's the most annoying part about when people have discussions about male predators: women always make sure to leave out their favorite sweet, charming, handsome guy, which is a very off thing to do. Always making sure to talk about how unattractive guys who caught abusing are and how they have to go after women because they are unattractive. This is not only completely ignorant but also incredibly wrong. The most successful predators are usually attractive, charming people because most of them are able to gaslight their victims. Most only slip up when they get sloppy due to their high ego. There are many real-life examples of very attractive men being predators; for some sad reason, women delude themselves into thinking it's only guys they do not find good looking but that couldn't be further from the truth. What women call predator behavior, any anthropologist would call natural male behavior. Males with higher testosterone, better looks, and greater pheromones get away with things lesser males cannot due to social hierarchy.

I think nature shows us the best that the more visually striking a male animal, the more testosterone they have and the more dangerous they are, but oddly enough in the media it is usually completely the opposite.

In the movies it's the dorky beta males that seek to prey on women while the alpha males are almost always portrayed as the hero.

though I guess to some degree that is displayed in this movie as well. It's definitely a hybrid of typical tropes, which I think keeps the movie interesting.

The best part of the film was definitely how the women stuck together to take down a man even though they just ran and saved only themselves.

I also appreciate the happy ending. Too many horror films feel the need to end with trauma or anguish. This ending showed strength and resilience, and I loved it.

I think it's a nice continuation of the disadvantaged woman vs. the handsome psychopath. Sadly, these are the only Korean movies I can really sit through now. I cannot stand Korean movies when they make commentary on classism when the movie is funded by a chaebol group. The cops being useless to the point of literally letting the killer walk out freely seems unrealistic unless you look up actual cases in Korea of the cops being very useless to the public and victims. So actually it is very accurate. But to be fair, they don't have that much funding, proper tools, or training, so it's a bit complex, but that's the only real issue I have with the film.

8/10

It's a nice watch alone or with a group. I somehow got my family to watch it years ago and it's fun. It has a high rewatch value as well.

[splendidemendax]

tbh i don't know if it's fair to say that odo "doesn't get" moral greys until s3: 1.04 "a man alone" already complicates things (his disapproval of the smuggler is more based on the guy's price-gouging than his law-breaking) and 2.08 "necessary evil" has him facing the fact that kira (in his mind, good) was not, in fact, "innocent of the crime [he] was investigating" (in his mind, bad). even flashback-odo, five years younger than show-odo, shows a deeper understanding of what justice looks like: he didn't turn kira in for the crime he thought she committed because he believed her punishment would be unjust.

some of this is certainly about odo's own positions, which i do think are interesting to understand in the context of him being a changeling. it makes a lot of sense, for example, that he would believe in heavy surveilance: he's from a species that fully lacks a concept of privacy, so the usually-tricky balance between "privacy" and "safety" is a pretty easy call for him.

if i may get a little doyalist with it, i think part of the reason for odo's inconsistent ideas of justice is a writer thing. it's clear that they all agreed "odo likes justice;" it seems to me that different people had different ideas of what "justice" means. in some episodes odo's trouble defining justice is very sympathetic and in some it's problematized, but in some, it is (in my mind) way off the mark but goes unexamined anyway.

tired of 95% of ppls criticism of odo being “but he’s a cop :\”. like he’s not even an actual cop. he’s a security guard in a campy 90′s sci-fi show. i guarantee you no one on here who likes odo is going “actually i like irl cops now” because they like him. because that would be fucking stupid. there is just as much if not more nuance to him than the rest of the characters and you’re refusing to acknowledge any of it just because “he’s a cop”. form an original fucking take. at least have it mean literally anything

[9w1ft]

feels a little early to be writing a year-in review but i find myself in a quiet moment so i thought i’d tap a few things out

in 2019, in all facets of my life, i faced a challenge of some sort and i surprised myself as i held my ground more often than ran away, which felt new. what *also* felt new was this sense of ease i began having professionally, when it came to conceptualizing and making decisions. sorta feels like a lot of things are crystallizing.

in terms of life on here, i didn’t have TSL for the majority of the year (anybody out there remember TSL?!) so i busied myself with crafting fun memories on my own. there were spans of weeks where i’d just get on a tear and run into one new thing after the other and it was all really just fantastic. i gave myself permission to indulge in the most decadent of things and to follow the most mercurial of assumptions to places i thought closed off.

i’m pretty sure i’ve smiled and laughed more over this year than i ever have in my entire life. no joke.

here are some kaylorverse moments that brought me joy in 2019:

it’s nice to have a friend

2018 was my first year being a kaylor and i just sort of was moreover on the contributor or commenter side of things so 2019 was interesting in that when taylor really leaned into the gay imagery leading up to album release, i started getting newer people sending me stuff! and asking me my takes on things! and like, my words suddenly had weight for some reason? it felt weird but i truly enjoyed getting to talk with so many different people and hear their ideas and laugh and such. that was markedly different from last year. from within this, 79-swift reached out to me with the eye theory, the most beautiful and rare of observations by a singularly lovely individual that i have dedicated my life to protecting and promoting. and i feel like i’ve gotten to know many people i knew through 2018 more deeply and have come to accept the role i play, lean in to it, and formulate my own truth of the matter, and that sort of heightened perspective on it has been a blessing and i’m so thankful for this strange sense of camaraderie that has formed with many of you? thank you??? and my conviction, and my wishes, for the girls to find happiness have only strengthened this year... im committed to seeing this through whether people like it or not!! harumph!

block ‘em

i also started proactively curating my experience.. that’s right! i began blocking trolls with reckless abandon, and i turned anons off! 😂 and damn it’s so much more worthwhile of a time on here when you set aside people that only want to ruin your day.

i got over my fear of eyeballs!!

😂 no seriously, body horror and in particular eyes out of context was actually sort of a thing that previously creeped me out BUT LOOK AT ME NOW. i’m gonna do my best not to rehash the eye theory, please read the post and recall the number of times i filipped out 😂 each and every one is precious to me

also

geeking out with bert and ernie gifs with kaylorfossil and making empsmd-blog drop her debit card need a mention.

the ME! music playlist.

i fell in love with so many songs and like, running into eye motifs in so many of the songs, lyrically and visually, was the most hilarious thing. but really just a lot of the songs really tapped at my soul with an ice pick and i even went to go see The Japanese House live in Osaka which was transcendental and i’m just so thankful for having taylor introduce Good At Falling to me because it was a *necessary* album.

i made and collected stuff

i made and amassed many artifacts that one day i can look back on and remember what a wild ride it has been. some favorites are my procuring of the pixel art heart ring from the ME! mv (a nod to my tsl days..), as well as the evil eye ring.. i didn’t physically make this but the eye theory made the taydar podcast and there’s nothing i enjoy more in this world than making someone giggle and i just love that the episode exists. making that kaylor straw was 👌 working on a mock-up of the golden locket has been very satisfying. i started incorporating fun kaylor winks into my artwork as well which was fun, and i also commissioned a collage from the very talented and lovely valheria and i couldn’t have asked for anything better 🥰

wildin in the TS7 tag was the best.

i made this observation that there’s this type of cocoon that looks like a cobra, which transforms into a butterfly over a period of 13 days, and like, the post got so many notes and i just had a lot of swiftie eyeballs all of a sudden on my blog which led to some hilarity. but honestly i just love geeking out over theories and it’s fun to get to do that as fans of taylor at large. things felt warm and effervescent.

my newspaper subscription

i subscribe to the TTB Times and let me just say the submissions and anons this year were overwhelmingly a delight to read through every day. also like, we did get cued in to stuff before album release and i am just thankful that there are people out there both who want to give us that and people who work to help them give us that. thank you ttb for moderating your blog (my newspaper of choice) however it is that you do and to everyone that contributed to her blog.

the whole lead up to the ME! video release

so glorious... but particular the hour before. i was rushing to pick up my kid from school and suddenly i kept getting messages from people that taylor was covering her face and framing her eyes, and i was like oh please yeah sure BUT THEN when the snake in the video had a blank eye like i don’t think you guys understand i had to wait at a bus stop and exchange pleasantries with the other moms but it was a *five alarm fire* in my mind

cause shade never made anybody less gay

stealing away to listen to YNTCD for the first time and hearing Taylor Alison Swift use the word gay in a released song for the first time was a transcendental moment

karlie’s hand in the YNTCD mv.

‘nuff said

daisies. daisies everywhere.

taylor said daisy kaylor rights, and she said it everywhere. *everywhere*. cannot, will not, get over how blessed we are.

gay gay gay gay gay.... taylor’s

sorry not sorry that wiz khalifa collab with elohim on her track FYM was ethereal and i still hope it’s a part of the preshow playlist for Lover Fest

clue hunting in klossy videos and karlie ads

call me a corporate shill all you want like, there’s always a little something in there and i also enjoy the little flickers of goofy karlie that jump out from time to time. and i know this is not the case for everyone but post eyepocalypse, karlie leaning in, winking that eye of hers time and time again was just pique comedy for me and it always made me chuckle. the brands karlie has repped have been really laying it on thick too and it’s been a joy to see. when taylor does it with her music it’s art, and for me karlie’s media presence is a form of art too 😌

oh kaptain my kaptain

kimby liked a comment of mine on her insta which was a distinct honor and privilege 😌 and really she was dropping clues left and right through spring up until she got her snazzy new job and things calmed down 🥰 of which i am so proud talk about an on brand job! also partially clearing the air about my TSL theory and the lead up to clearing that air was quite fulfilling for me and i am forever grateful for the time we shared. and to this point, the seesters in general (and kurt omg) have been quite active all year and we don’t deserve it but they’ve stuck around and it’s been calming.

album cover art release on the livestream

LIKE I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE NEVER HAD A FOURTH WALL BROKEN SO DULY

i love you forever, thank you for everything

when taylor came to visit tokyo this year i was basically reenacting the swamp scene from OOTW trying to get a ticket to the secret event... i listened to ME! on LINE MUSIC for over 2000 plays, i bought multiple CD’s, it was such an ordeal and then to not have a ticket after all but still putting on my thinking cap and managing to figure out where the event was while i was at disney sea and literally running from disney sea to the venue in high heels with The Man playing on my phone was oscar-worthy and actually *being correct* and the moment i knew i was correct and how i knew i was correct was so amazing 😉 and i play by the rules so i didn’t try to get in without a ticket and i didn’t lurk. but just to have figured it out and validated it was such a thrill. seeing her on TV live was amazing as well ///

lost in japan, reprise

oh and, last year for rep tour there was this theory i had which didn’t pan out but it had to do with the clues i thought shawn mendes was dropping through autumn 2018 and anyway that’s a story for another day but as i was bopping around town, looking for lockets, staying in rooms i have no business being in, drinking lots of whisky...just to know that while i was doing *everything but* successfully meeting taylor, she literally phoned shawn and had him record lines for that eye theory remix like, i will never ever, like, guys. guys. 😂 it’s too perfect for words. the world is weird like that sometimes.

Lover

and omg Lover the album? i absolutely love lover and i loves that honeymoon period of theorizing and parallel unearthing that we did and i love how slightly creepy-cute it is and i love the whole wabi-sabi thing going on and i absolutely love every song on the album, every one, they all have so much meaning to me... and each one is teeming with little blips and bloops and sound samples and seconds of silence and i love all the brass instruments and so many lush moments... i guess my shortlist (in no particular order) would be the archer, lover, i think he knows, daylight, cruel summer, false god, cornelia street, ME! (yea i really like me 🥰). and to think about everything that went in to the album and the thrill of what it might have been and the vastness of what we don’t know, but like, the weight of that potential?? it’s like this vast pastel and black abyss of drowsy and deep feelings and i love every inch of it. it’s a vibe that reflects so much of what this year has been for me and i’m happy to have existed in this time to have had it with me.

jesus this has gotten too long, and i still have like 24 more things to write out but um, basically, as i’m sure you’ve been able to assume? i wanted to say that despite 2019 being somewhat of a slasher film affair for our fandom, i still had a goddamn great time this year and i hope everyone can find some good memories and relive them as well 🥰

[codynaomiswire]

TTS/RTA - “Destinies Collide” Initial Reaction

Note: Spoilers and some unpopular opinions ahead.

Ok, so...I’m going to go ahead and be honest right away.  Overall...I didn’t actually like this episode very much.  Not all of it was bad to me, but I also can’t say that I thought it was very great.  Here are some of my general thoughts and opinions on it at this point for those interested:

Things I did like:

- As always, the animation, voice acting, and soundtrack were all really good in this episode.  Kudos to the animators, VA’s, sound design team, and music team for all their hard work on it!  You all did a great job!

- Special shoutout to Zachary Levi for his vocal work on Eugene’s song!

- Lance figuring out that destroying the statues would stop the ghosts from re-spawning!  Such a great moment for him, and he was honestly one of the best things about this whole episode in my opinion.  (Also the little acknowledgement between him and Adira was cute, and his complimenting Cass on her bravery when she went to retrieve the gondola from the middle of the gorge was really nice.  Was great to see those fleeting but sincere moments of him reaching out to other characters he doesn’t talk to all that often when he’s on screen.  It was a nice touch!)

- Adira running around like an old-timey cartoon character to catch Pascal as he was falling.  That was cute and funny!  xD

Things I didn’t like so much:

- The fact that the episode was stuffed to the gills with plot twists and red herrings.  Like a lot of fans, I do love a good mystery, and plot twists when implemented correctly are terrific.  But a lot of the twists in this episode felt really forced in my opinion, were too heavily concentrated, and the overall plot felt really rushed and chaotic.  Especially when we get such big developments as Eugene finding his long-lost father and Cass going turncoat, I think it would’ve been worth it to spread out those plot elements a bit more and to flesh them out better over the course of more episodes perhaps.  Probably would’ve been good on that note to take out some of the other non-plot-related episodes earlier in the season (ex. “Goodbye and Goodwill,” “Curses!,” “The Eye of Pincosta,” etc.), and instead give more time and attention to other plot-related elements that could’ve used it.  (It also feels to me like Disney in general has been trying to chuck out a TON of plot twists in their latest works, and that’s starting to get a bit wearing in my opinion.  Creators shouldn’t be afraid to use clichés or linear story lines if they happen to work out for the best.  Not everything has to be super surprising or edgy in order to be satisfying or captivating to the audience.  Don’t force it if it doesn’t work.)

- Eugene being revealed as the Dark Prince.  Ok, ok, don’t get me wrong here.  I don’t totally dislike this development.  I do think it’s good that the series has endeavored to give us more of Eugene’s past, and yes, I do congratulate those fans who figured it out/had the theory before the big reveal.  (Way to be observant guys!)  But I personally do feel like there are a few problems with this development:

Was it just me, or did Eugene seem surprisingly...unfazed by this latest discovery?  I mean, yes, he did have a song about having an identity crisis over it, but even then, I felt like he seemed to get over it pretty quick?  I know he’s been increasingly unfazed by all the weirdness of their adventures, but man, this takes the cake on that point.  He also didn’t seem to question it for very long (which is kind of odd, especially when Edmund himself is...a bit strange), he didn’t seem the least bit miffed with Edmund about sending him away when he was a baby, or really show much emotion at all over things save for a few words and shifts in expression.  I’m sure all this needs time to sink in for him, ok, but still.  His reaction wasn’t very realistic to me.

The fact that King Edmund seemed to just send baby Eugene away in the care of his nanny and...that was it.  Like, I know the show can’t go into tons of detail on things, but honest to goodness!  It looked like King Edmund just sent baby Eugene away into the wide, dangerous world with only his nanny to take care of him and to guard him.  Like, there were no other guards with her or a foster father as well or anything!  Nope.  Just send your kid off into the wide world with minimal security and resources and hope for the best.  Way to ensure a secure future for your child Edmund.  Way to go!  xP

The time spent on this development felt super rushed.  I think it would’ve been better if there had been a whole episode dedicated to Eugene’s past as the Dark Prince, and not just have it as a B plot for the season finale.  It is supposed to be kind of a big deal, right!?  I think it would’ve been worth it to give this development its own episode.

I also find it strange that Edmund identified Eugene as his son simply by looking into his eyes.  I mean...sure, I do think I see a resemblance between Edmund and Eugene, so it’s probably right anyway.  But I do wish there had been a bit more of an explanation or more evidence for the truth of this theory instead of just, “We have the same eyes.”  (Who knows, maybe we’ll get another twist in season 03 where we find that Eugene was not actually Edmund’s child, and he had been mistaken all along.  But yeah, at this point, I would not be fazed by that.)

It seems like this development came along in order to bring about some sort of deep conflict for Eugene, but honestly...I don’t feel like it brings a whole lot of conflict at all?  I mean, sure, it’s great that he’s come to find that he has a family and whole lineage that he can now learn about, and that’s a big change for Eugene on a personal level.  But otherwise it doesn’t really do much to change the trajectory of his life or anything.  I mean, if the Dark Kingdom were still a functioning place, I can see where this would present a conflict.  Eugene could’ve felt torn between his obligation to rule the Dark Kingdom as its heir, but then his love for Rapunzel would be the opposing pull that could tear his heart in two over the whole thing, and cause more tension between himself and King Edmund who would’ve wanted him to stay to rule, etc.  But that’s not really the case.  The Dark Kingdom is dead, and everyone has left.  So there really is no Dark Kingdom left to rule.  So...Eugene can just go ahead and marry Rapunzel and live his dream in Corona anyway.  No conflict really.

I also feel like the development does do a detriment to how Eugene’s character was played up in the Tangled feature film.  One of the things that Eugene’s character was supposed to do in that movie was put a twist on the original fairytale, where instead of a prince saving Rapunzel from her tower, it was a thief that people assumed was just a good-for-nothing nobody.  But he became the hero of the story through his own bravery and self-sacrifice, and not because of any royal blood in him.  So yeah, I kind of feel like this development undermines that whole aspect of the original film.

And just a quick personal opinion: I feel like Cassandra being revealed as the Dark Princess would’ve been more compelling than having Eugene as the Dark Prince.  Could’ve also been another reason why Cass seized the Moon Stone for herself, if that was the trajectory the writers would’ve taken things in any event.  If she was the heir to the kingdom in charge of guarding the thing, it would make sense that she could see it as a kind of birthright for herself or something.

- And thus leading into the biggest one for me...the whole Cassandra plot twist.  I know some fans think this is a fantastic plot twist, but I don’t really like it.  Here are my reasons as to why:

It feels like a rehash of Varian’s betrayal, but bigger, with a lot less buildup, less reasoning behind it, and fewer sympathetic qualities.  Now, I’m sure that something big happened to Cassandra beyond that mystery door in the shell house, and I do kinda hope that we’ll get to see just what exactly happened in season 03.  But wow, I gotta say, it’s going to have to be something super compelling in order to excuse this degradation of Cassandra’s character.  Especially after Cassandra had so much character development throughout both seasons 01 & 02, this really felt like it came out of nowhere and didn’t make much sense at all.  I know there’s a theory that it’s not really Cassandra (that she’s either a clone/doppelgänger or is somehow possessed by some evil entity), and that may be right.  Heck, with all the crazy plot twists peppering this series, most anything could be a possibility at this point.  (She could be Zhan Tiri’s vessel, or Mother Gother retroactively reincarnated before she fell out of Rapunzel’s tower, or a young Mother Gothel before she time-taveled back to the past or something.  Who knows at this point!?)  But from what we know right now, it just seems to be a spiteful action with purely selfish motives on her part.  (“I’m fulfilling MY destiny!”)  We don’t even see her struggle with her decision (unlike Varian, who did have his moments of second-guessing), or show any signs that she’s making it out of interest for others.  I mean, yeah, who knows?  Maybe we’ll get yet another twist in season 03 where she did do it to protect Rapunzel somehow, and it was necessary for her to be perceived as an awful person in doing it for...some reason?  But...sigh. (Especially when her solo song before this point was largely about her wishing she had the glory she felt she deserved...that whole thing just really rubs me the wrong way.  Again, don’t get me wrong, I feel like “Waiting in the Wings” sounds amazing, and I would sympathize with some of the lyrics talking about missed opportunities, feeling like you’re meant for something more but not being there yet, etc.  But it seemed like Cass was increasingly becoming some sort of glory hound, and nobody admires that or finds that sympathetic.  (“Selfishness has never been admired.”  ~ C. S. Lewis)  At least Varian was trying to save his dad in what he was doing.  Yes, he was going about it poorly, and there were some elements of selfishness in it to be sure, but at least he was understandable in his motives.  Not excused for sure, but there was at least an explanation that made sense and was beyond “Me me me me me.”)

It’s also strange when Cass’s life was really pretty good before that moment, so what could she have hoped to gain from taking the Moon Stone for herself?  She had her friends, a loving father in the Captain, a loving community back in Corona, a steady job, a dream to work towards, etc.  It just...makes no sense, and feels more wrong than epic to me as a big reveal.  Again, maybe there will be a good explanation for it in the future, but from what we know right now, it just seems to make her character a twist antagonist for the sake of having another one, and it just feels frustrating currently.

The weird transformation sequence when Cass grabbed the Moon Stone.  I mean, I can certainly can get behind the glowing white-blue hair and eyes (something that the moon![insert character name here] theorists got right!), but...wow, the crew really went anime trope on this one.  Which I’m not totally opposed to.  I think anime references are cool.  But this one just...felt a bit weird?  I mean, I know the Moon Stone is way more extra than the Sun Drop, so sure, perhaps the alterations it makes to someone’s appearance when being infused into them could’ve been a bit more than just a change in hair color.  But I think it would’ve made more sense if the armor Cass already had on became a different color or something (btw, RIP knight!Cassandra and armor, you were short-lived and will be missed), but instead it gave her what basically looked like a moon superhero jumpsuit.  From a purely aesthetic perspective, it does have a great design, and Cass did look quite striking in it.  But even though it looks great on a purely aesthetic level, I also don’t feel like it fits the tenor of the rest of the TTS/RTA aesthetic.  I just..feels kind of out of place to me.

On a personal note: I also think it makes more sense for Varian to have been the moon vessel/the one to take the Moon Stone in the series, so this development also honestly had me disappointed in that way.  I know, I know, yes, there is a bit of a bias to this opinion, but I also do think that Varian’s character had a TON of evidence to suggest this would’ve been more than plausible for his character, it could’ve tied into his motives to free his father, and he already had deeper connections to the Dark Kingdom than we’ve ever seen of Cass, and it would’ve been a great way to reintroduce him into the series.*  And hey, if not Varian, I feel like it would’ve made more sense for Eugene to take the Moon Stone instead of Cassandra, with Eugene being all, “I’m sorry Rapunzel, but I can’t let you do this,” or something like that.  I think that would’ve been way more compelling than Cass just doing it because of “destiny,” which she believed she had because of...reasons?  Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but as it stands right now, I don’t think Cass was the best choice to go turncoat and to become the vessel for the Moon Drop.  Or at the very least, they probably should’ve shown some sort of conflict in her over the decision.  I know she’s not a very warm character, but pure malice doesn’t seem to fit her either.  Just...weird.

*On the topic of Varian, I also have my opinions regarding how he as a character and a lot of the Varian fans have been treated in the aftermath of season 02 (by both other fans and some of the TTS/RTA crew members actually), but I won’t talk about that in this post as it’s not in the actual contents of the episode itself.  And while I may get into it more in another post, I don’t feel like getting into that drama right now, especially when things are so fresh off the tail end of the finale.  Just wanted to drop this note here though, as it’s another unpopular opinion I have related to this episode and to season 02, and I feel like the fandom and crew members could’ve done better in their responses to Varian’s fans.  Just saying.

So...yeah.  I guess that’s about it for now for my initial reaction to this episode.  You don’t have to agree with me on it, but these are just my own honest thoughts on the topic for anyone interested.

[coldtomyflash]

What do you think about Killer Frost? Like the concept of her... of Caitlin becoming evil... maybe not what the show has done with her, per se, but... the idea of her.

Thanks for your patience on this one. I’ve been collecting my thoughts on it, because it’s a broad question that actually cross-sects a couple of seasons, different versions of a character, and there’s the issue of the meta-textual analysis of the character versus the within canon one.

I’ve broken them down below the cut, but the tl:dr for anyone who doesn’t want to read a full analysis: the metaphor for dissociative identity disorder that Killer Frost represents is ableist and bad, but the narrative for the character is unarguably the best she’s had and lends something to the team and the conflict. There are ways they could have navigated all of this better though, and them chickening out of making Caitlin into Killer Frost full time is where we lose the most in canon from what this story could’ve been.

Metatextually, I’m not sure I like what they’ve done with Killer Frost. This is largely because it’s ableist, and it’s sexist.

On the ableist front, Killer Frost represents the science fiction version of dissociative identity disorder. It’s pretty blatantly the case - she’s an alter who takes command and who’s actions Caitlin has little to no recollection of, though Caitlin is aware of her prescence and some of what she gets up to (e.g., that she went to Burning Man). She comes out to protect Caitlin more often than not, and when Caitlin ‘sleeps’. And she remembers all of what Caitlin does.

They are distinct identities sharing the same body, and not in a way where each has ever existed separately but where Frost explicitly developed out of Caitlin. 

It’s science-fictiony because it involves metahuman powers, hair colour changes, and isn’t really that in keeping with actual practice of people who have DID, and it’s ableist because it’s a very toxic representation of DID. Pretty much everyone who has DID has suffered typically pretty severe abuse and pretty much always in childhood. Symptoms manifest through that and over the lifespan, and not when a person gets magical (metahuman) powers. 

Also, representing what basically amounts to DID as evil and villainous and uncaring? Not good. People with DID are victims, not violent and cruel and cold-hearted. This issue is repetitive across most representations of DID in media, including the movie Split. 

So… I have issues with that, ultimately. Mostly in the “stop making mentally ill people evil” vein. Even if it wasn’t a perfect representation of DID, I know they’re basically trying to pretend it’s not DID - “she’s a metahuman, it’s different, that’s why it is this way”. Which to me falls a bit flat, particularly with how they’ve done it, but if she wasn’t evil then the overall connotations wouldn’t be so bad.

(And yes, she might be ‘less’ evil moving forward, but she started as a villain and it’s only because she has a ‘good’ side that she stopped hurting people and trying to kill them, so???)

And it’s sexist too. Why? Because The Flash has done this before, but only with female villains. Remember Magenta?

Basically the same deal, though at least they represent her storyline of abuse in a much more accurate and respectful manner. The DID likely existed before the powers, but her powers manifested largely through only one of her alters and gave that identity the power to fight back against the abuse instead of just suffer it. 

But guess when else we also saw this?

Anyone else sensing a theme here? Eliza’s (Trajectory’s) issues came about as representing an issue of addiction, but it seems like Velocity made her have hallucinations of an alternate identity that she became after she took the drug. Also just a really terrible and ableist way to represent drug addiction, hallucinations, and potentially alters.

Note that we’ve never seen any men on this show have quite this same pattern of issues. Like women, powers may exacerbate their underlying angers and resentments, but they don’t seem to manifest these issues on The Flash the same way that female villains do. And I’ve talked about this before with these three characters, but let it said again:

“…things like Velocity or meta-powers… make (in this case) nice and sweet women turn into demon harpies but it’s not “their fault, that’s not who they really are, it’s the drug/powers.”

Basically, it’s a tired trope, and given that they’ve only had it play out with female characters, it smells a little like “all women are [secretly] crazy/hysterical” misogyny.”

So that’s… one side of the Killer Frost coin. And of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, it’s definitely the Ugly. But a within-canon and narrative evaluation goes in a few different directions instead.

Within-canon, Killer Frost is the most interesting thing to happen to Caitlin and was narratively necessary to make her add to the story instead of being sidelined by it.

First off, Caitlin’s narratives were… floundering, before this. I don’t think I need to explain why rehashing her constantly finding love and losing it and grieving over and over became a very tired plot and ultimately made her character feel like she wasn’t even that secure on the team eventually.

Earth 2 Killer Frost was (to me) the most exciting part of S2 for Caitlin. An evil version of her, one who became conflicted, one who disavowed even her own name, one who saved the team but was still selfish. One who was so diametrically opposed to Caitlin as this intense foil.

This was interesting. This was fresh.

So when, in S3, they set Caitlin on the path to being Killer Frost, I was pretty excited. The team was (is) overpowered in terms of metas, and losing Caitlin and making her a villain was an exciting way to balance that out. Not to mention that she finally got a story that didn’t revolve around falling in love and grieving, but which was about herself and an internal struggle. While I still hate the “powers make you evil / powers gave her DID and her alter is evil” element they went with, the narrative balancing act gave her character more purpose to the main/ongoing story than she had had in a long time.

For the first time since helping find Ronnie in S1, Killer Frost as part of Caitin meant that she was driving her own story and driving the plot instead of helplessly strapped to whatever direction it took her.

And then, of course, Caitlin died, and to ‘save’ her, Julian stole her meta-dampener and caused her to go “full Killer Frost”. This isn’t just my idea, I read someone else say that Caitlin truly died at that moment, and I think that’s something to consider. 

The problem with the narrative moving forward is that this was a turning point for Caitlin and should have remained The turning point, the definitive one.

Narratively, I think it would be useful if we could conclusively think of this moment as the death of Caitlin and the birth of Frost, full stop and forevermore. It would take care of a lot of the DID stuff, to be totally honest. It wouldn’t be that Caitlin and Frost are two separate identities or that Frost is an alter of Caitlin, it would be that once the cold (her powers) gripped Caitlin’s heart, she was fundamentally altered and became different. Still kind of a “powers make you evil” story but that’s at least balanced out by how many people we’ve finally seen with powers who aren’t evil (though seriously, more benign metas, please).

This complete change into Frost wouldn’t have ultimately changed much in S3, if anything. We’d seen Caitlin use her powers for good ends, before becoming Frost, and we’d seen E2 Killer Frost use her powers to help the team and for semi-altruistic acts (well, mostly helpful revenge) as well as selfish evil ones. We also saw Frost help the team get Barry’s memories back, and hesitate more than once. It was often like she was trying too hard to be evil, to be ‘Killer’ Frost.

It was too much. Even Savitar knew she wasn’t truly evil.

So we could have accepted after the end of S3 that it wasn’t that she was evil, it was that she didn’t know what else to be or how else to live up to this legacy and navigate the powers she didn’t want and which changed her. This would be especially with all the anger and resentment she’s built up over years of job loss and grief and being used and having some post-traumatic stress from being kidnapped (thanks Zoom), not to mention not being fully in control of her own brain and body once she got powers, and then Julian disrespecting her wish to die without becoming this.

So this scene at the end of S3…

…would still stand. Everything pretty much stays the same until then, I would argue. The only thing I would add is that she would say that no, she’s not Killer  Frost. She’s never going to be her E2 counterpoint. She’s just Frost. And that would be her proper name moving into S4. 

So the major problem now is that Season 4 is missing the boat again with this character.

Because now we have Caitlin ‘back’. We lost her and thought she was dead and forever altered and now that’s been essentially retconned. Her saying she isn’t Caitlin and isn’t Killer Frost was pointless. That duality is back.

And because of that, we’re essentially re-hashing the S3 struggle between her and Frost, though Frost isn’t ‘evil’ per se at this point. Her and Caitlin manage to navigate their differences in a much better manner. But honestly? I don’t know they wrote it as there being anything to navigate. I don’t know why we saw this:

Cold without powers. What does it add? 

I mean, I understand: Caitlin is a team member, and there is sentimentality there. It’s a hard pill to swallow if she were truly ‘dead’. But it was the implication of S3. And the best scenes of her in S4 so far have been Frost. It’s been Frost interacting with other ladies in particular, but especially Frost interacting with Iris.

This shit, right here. I would have preferred a narrative where Frost listens to Iris and almost no one else, because Iris is the person who’s death she almost orchestrated and Iris is the one who killed Savitar and set Frost free of his manipulation in doing so.

Wouldn’t it be so neat to see Frost slowly become friends with Iris and make amends to her for that? To become genuinely close in a way that Caitlin never managed to be with Iris? To tell it like it is and have more cutthroat ambitions and comments than Caitlin did, not because Caitlin didn’t think them, but because Caitlin was too soft to voice them. Have it become more clear over time that Frost is so much of what Caitlin was, just without the inhibition. Have it become clear over S4 that Caitlin isn’t dead (but she is, but she’s not) because Frost is still her. 

Caitlin the bartender was dull. Frost the team anti-villain (antihero?) is narratively rich.

And can you imagine Cisco and Caitlin in this scene in episode 1 if she was still Frost instead?

Him basically saying “I know that you’re different, but you’re still my friend” and her accepting that yeah, okay, she is different, but maybe she can still help the team. Note, this wouldn’t be Caitlin saying it, it would be Frost. The identity, the person, who wreaked all this damage, acknowledging that yes, despite the cold in her heart, she is willing to help them.

And I mean… maybe Cisco wouldn’t go to her immediately, in that case. Maybe he’d wait until they unstuck Barry from the speedforce and he was unwell, and then Cisco would ask Caitlin to help him with that, to see if something was wrong with Barry that she could detect or figure out. 

And that’d be when she realizes that even though she’s hurt these people, she can also still help them. (And wouldn’t that say something more about culpability and about making amends and learning to be a better person despite your anger and coldness?) The rest of her arc with Amunet and everyone else would still hold true, it would just be all Frost all the time.

(Of course, in a perfect world such as this, Dibny wouldn’t be a main/recurring because Frost would already create enough friction on the team as-is, especially the first time she meets Harry. Not only did she help cause HR’s death, she’s also so much like the Killer Frost from E2 who helped Zoom, and Harry might have a Reaction to that. In my dream world we’d also still have Wally around but now I’m getting off track. I’m also super curious how Cynthia would respond to Frost, to be totally honest. See, there’s just so much potential!).

So that’s… all I have to say about that. :)

[thewillowbends]

Thoughts on TLJ - SPOILERS

Now for some spoilery content!  Now that I've had a sleepless night going over some of my feelings about it, I can shuffle through what I did and didn't like.

- - - - -

TLJ Positivity:

-I liked the trajectory of Rey's whole storyline.  I had hedged my bets between two concepts - Rey as Anakin reborn (which, admittedly, I preferred because I'm an indulgent prequel junkie) or that she was a nobody, representing an entirely new generation to whom the Skywalker legacy was being handed to.  The wound up being the latter, but I'm not as disappointed as I expected.  While I have...many, many issues with some of the characterization in this film, hers felt like it progressed the most naturally.  This idea of legacies and prophecies going the way of the past, of letting a new generation start fresh but not at the expense of destroying it, of letting the PEOPLE take ahold of their destiny instead of the burden falling on a few "chosen ones" is not something I feel is necessarily a bad moral lesson for the audience nor fundamentally detrimental to the movies' previous material.

Note: I'm still writing that Rey-as-Anakin fic.  YOU CAN'T STOP ME DISNEY.

-Adam Driver has a really nice gym routine.  So does John Boyega.

-Kelly Marie Tran is adorable, guys.  She is literally the cutest.

-A film could never hurt for more POC and they could definitely use in the main cast, but I will say that the newer movies definitely feel more "casually diverse."  There are POC in the Rebellion, POC in villains, POC in the civilian culture, POC in the main cast.  It doesn't feel forced.  They're just THERE, which is how it should be.

-Adam Driver is also really good in this movie.  Considering we're not getting as extensive a backstory as most of us wished for Ben, he still does a remarkable job making the character engaging through his performance.  They essentially give him Vader's original plotline in ESB/ROTJ before the "Vader as Anakin" storyline came into fruition.  So he's sort of Vader's heir in a new and more devastating way.  Kylo isn't emotionally stable or enough of a visionary to really be the driving force of an empire, so it'll be interesting to see how that tension between Hux and Kylo works itself out in the last film.

- @ahollowyear  - I got a real kick out of how much of the actual storyline you accurately predicted vis a vis Kylo and Rey.  You wrote that fanfic, what, a year before the details of TLJ even started coming out?

-I am deeply relieved that we avoided the reductive light/dark balance the trailers teased at.  The dark side is still what imbalances the Force - it inevitably exists but is not necessary for balance.  Also, that the main cast's discussion of ~character complexity~ was not that open ended, since the film's protagonists actively reject more of the nihilistic viewpoints being thrown by side characters.

-Carrie Fisher is always and forever the queen. <3

-I liked the final scenes with Luke.  I really liked the choice of a binary sunset to bookend Luke's story.  Genreally, I'm not a huge fan of ALL POWERFUL JEDI, but I can deal with astral projected battles from a Skywalker because Skywalkers are special.  But he went out in a way that I found meaningful and touching.

TLJ Negativity:

WHERE THE HELL ARE RIAN JOHNSON'S EDITORS IN THIS MOVIE.

Seriously, what was going on with the writing process here?  Why is the plot all over the damn place?  (Answer: Because they didn't plot out this arcs in advance and it shows.)  Why do we spend 30-40 mintues on a casino sidequest that literally has NO ACTUAL EFFECT ON THE GODDAMN PLOT.  What are characters like Benicio del Toro's and Laura Dern even doing in this film?  We literally are trying to balance nearly two casts (OT/ST) worth of character development, the last thing you want or need is unnecessary characters distracting from the main development or wasted scenery.  And that's what literally the entire middle chunk of Rose and Finn's plotline - wasted action.

There are so many good ideas struggling to be communicated in the absolute muddled mess that is the middle of the movie.  We have a storyline about light and dark being natural opposite but neither being an inevitability outside of our personal choices.  We have the theme of the natural order of things, life begetting death begetting life, and the idea of legacies carrying us through strife so that we can become the heroes of our own making instead of relying on others to save us.  There's commentary about the significance of failures, how sometimes they're more important than victories because of what they reveal to us about ourselves and each other, and how we come to terms with them when they can't be easily remedied.  The casino is clearly meant to be a commentary about exploitative capitalism and the way the evil of fascism destroys culture and people from the top down.  All of these are great ideas, but you need to have that effectively communicated to your audience, and you need to communicate it meaningfully.

And the characters.  THE CHARACTERS.  The chaaaaaaaaaaaaraaaaacters.

Rey and Kylo I'm fine with.  Their development doesn't bother me.  I can even deal with Rose, though I wish her purpose in the plot wasn't so hamfisted.

But Finn and Poe?  Why did it feel like their character arcs literally rebooted for this film?  Poe is clearly inteded to be a kind of surrogate son to Leia ("mother of the rebellion"), serving as a foil to Ben, so I get why there's a general parallel there in the two progressing toward leadership roles - one who violently grasps at power, while the other faces some hard lessons about the reality and sacrifice of command as opposed to heroics.  I feel like that's a natural progression of what we saw in their relationship in TFA, but it still feels like a step back because the level of experience and confidence we saw in him in TFA doesn't mirror how Leia views him in TLJ.  If anything, he should have been growing into the position of command so that Leia can effectively and believably pass that legacy on to him.  Instead, what we get is a plotline that suggests to us that Poe isn't really ready for him, which is...regressive?  Like, all of these character should have been going through these changes at the start of the film, not ending on them.

(This being said, what the hell is wrong with Admiral Holdo that she can't understand the value of basic communication?  Like, she's meant as a lesson to the audience about mistaking reckless action for heroism, but it's hard not to agree with Poe when she's literally telling NOBODY UNDER HER NOTHING.  How easily could all of that drama been avoided if she's just said what the actual plan was instead of creating so much fear and uncertainty on the bridge?)

(I totally ship Leia/Holdo though.)

And Finn.  Oh my God, I feel so bad for John Boyega.  What a waste of his charisma and talent.  Most of TFA is Finn going from a deserter seeking *individual* salvation from the First Order and recognizing by the end the responsibility one has in the stand against evil.  So he basically...rehashes that entire character development here?  Wouldn't it have made more sense to see him struggling with his reputation as a hero in the Rebellion and then coming to terms with his new role?  Let him wrestle with the existentialist uncertainty of being able to make his own choices!  Explore the trauma of his experiences in the army by having him struggle with his fear and uncertainty while infiltrating the First Order - use it to emphasize the contradictions of his experiences with the freedom of his new life.

If you wanted to interject some moral ambiguity, why not have him address the issue that the New Order's army is essentially a SLAVE army?  Wouldn't that scene with Phasma held much greater power if he'd tried to appeal to his fellow soldiers about the destruction the New Order has wrought on their lives, about the potential they could have if they rose up against them?  If you're going to have Benicio del Toro nihilistically declaring that the war is endless and therefore moral standpoints are meaningless, why not have Finn reject that meaningfully to both the audience outside the movie and within it?  Legit y'all, my ideal ending for this man is to take his place in helping rebuild a newer, better system for all of them - and what better way than by helping to rehabilitate his fellow child soldiers?

Just ugh, out of everything that bothers me in the movie, Finn is the character that leaves the worst taste in my mouth.  He was my favorite in TFA, and his character development should be progressing beyond this point by now.

Also: GOD HELP ME if they kill off Leia in episode III.  It would be beyond heartless and irresponsible given the overall thematic trend of the movies.  The character who tells us dejectedly that she "went out fighting" is arguably the one who should live to pass the legacy on and die peacefully.

TLJ neutrality:

-I am on the fence regarding Luke's characterization, leaning towards finding it less problematic than others might.  He's pretty clearly suffering from severe depression, which can take a person to some pretty dark places.  Most of my struggles with his characterization center around his confrontation of Ben.  Do I feel that Luke is somebody who would pull the blade on his nephew?  Part of me violently rejects that, but there's another part that considers it from the perspective of somebody dealing with the horror of thinking he created another Vader, of knowing what Ben could become, of the Force showing him a horrific future...and giving into that temptation the dark side presents in thinking our choices are already made. I can dig the idea that part of nefariousness of the dark is in undermining our belief in full agency.  Could I believeably see him, in a moment of weakness, pulling his lightsaber?  I'm vacillating on the issue.  Ben Solo isn't all that particularly different from Jason in the old EU, and Luke toed the line of darkness dealing with his fall, too.

-I'd really like more EU exposition as to what exactly what down with Snoke and Ben when he was a child.  How was he already THAT damaged by the time of Luke's confrontation with him?  What was going on that Luke was either blind to or struggling to care for him without Leia and Han's help?

-I go between feeling like Leia was well used here to feeling like she could have done so much more, that we could have seen more emotional strife with her where Ben and Luke are concerned.  Instead, we knock her out partway through the movie, which is such a shame because we no longer have the option of the third movie to be her swan song.  Carrie Fisher was wonderful here, but I struggle with whether I feel like this story gave her the send off she deserved.

-The twins reunion.  It was touching and memorable, don't get me wrong, but it's sad to think that's the end of it.  I figured something like that was coming, but STILL.  God, Skywalker/Organa life depresses me.

-Speaking of, I'm a total idiot because it took me entirely too long to catch on to what was going on the astral projection scene.  Hurr hurr, I said, when did Luke build a new lightsaber?  And get sweet clothes?  And did he lift the X-wing out of the water to get there?  omfg, all of the hints were there, I'm just ridiculous.

-Yes, the scene with Leia saving herself with the Force is pretty cool.  Not sure if I feel it toes into ridiculous territory, though.

-SWEAR TO GOD DISNEY, if you give me a love triangle in the third film with girl fighting over Finn, I will flip my shit.

TLJ LOLs:

This movie practically made Rey and Ben canon, and I had a tremendously unkind moment of smug amusement at how the more obnoxious antis were going to react to this film. The histrionic discourse is the thing of legends, let me tell you.

[gascon-en-exil]

The Top Ten Women of Fire Emblem (As Written by a Gay Man)

#1 - Micaiah

When we were separated during the war, you changed, Sothe. And I changed too. I want to protect Daein more than anything. Our people must be saved, and if I can help in that effort, I will.

Let it not be said that this was an obvious pick simply because Micaiah happens to be a lord, and one from my favorite game in the series moreover. Although I thought it appropriate to end this ranking with a lord I’m well aware that all the women who’ve fulfilled that role in FE (excluding Avatars for obvious reasons) have had to work against writers determined to screw them over in one way or another. There’s not much point therefore in me rehashing the many criticisms, valid or not, that have been leveled against Micaiah over the years. I’m instead going to be breaking down just why I think she works for me as well as she does, and how thoroughly she earns the distinction of being the least narratively compromised female lord in the franchise...for whatever that’s worth.

Revenge of the Jugdral Waifs

Parts of Tellius’s worldbuilding borrow extensively from Jugdral, some in more subtle ways than others. Micaiah is one of its more obvious allusions, as both her look and class design owe much to a group of female light magic users from those games who also exist outside the framework of the traditional clerical classes (some - or all? - of them even share their starting class name with the Japanese name of Micaiah’s third tier class). Deirdre, Julia, Linoan, and Sara are all women of high standing, and three of them are linked by blood to the dark Loptyrian cult not unlike Micaiah’s association with the “dark” goddess Yune. In spite of circumstances that ought to grant them significant plot relevance however all four of these characters are diminished by the narratives of the two games, either kept on the political sidelines in preference to a man or turned into barely-characterized damsels in distress. To paraphrase Markoftheasphodel, Deirdre and Julia in particular encapsulate the whole of Jugdral’s particular brand of misogyny - some of the most important and powerful characters in the setting reduced to tormented plot devices devoid of personality.

It’s probably a stretch to suggest that Micaiah was intentionally written as a means of redeeming these characters after the fact merely because she owes so much of her design to them. Still, that reading is certainly there. Micaiah assumes Julia’s role during Part 4, becoming the human vessel for Yune as Julia is inhabited by the spirit of Naga during the last chapter of FE4. While there’s no arguing that Micaiah drew the short straw when it came to gameplay power-ups from her resident deity, in return she is allowed substantially more screentime and agency even when she’s sharing her body with someone else. Certain characterization threads relative to Micaiah and not Yune, like vengeance against Numida and Lekain and the back story of Micaiah’s relationship with Sothe, are followed through to their conclusions only during Part 4. Also, while it’s Yune calling the shots as the army ascends the Tower of Guidance Micaiah is still an active participant, taking responsibility for awakening Yune before Dheghinsea and saving Lehran among other things. 

It’s a common criticism that Ike takes over the plot of Radiant Dawn from Micaiah, but the truth is that he’s sharing the endgame spotlight with Micaiah and Yune together. Ike is still the saga hero of Tellius - the Seliph equivalent - but Micaiah displays none of Julia’s blankness and passivity at any point. She’s unquestionably closer to being the deuterotagonist of Tellius than any Leif equivalent (Elincia, perhaps?). What’s more, while Linoan must cede her political relevance to Leif and Julia’s epilogue has her being little more than a support to her emperor brother, Micaiah gets to rule the kingdom she’s spent the game trying to save - while not invalidating the rule of her recently-discovered younger sister over her own country, incidentally - whereas Ike leaves the continent to have adventures and gay sex. In Jugdral the best most women can hope to be is support for their ruling husbands; in Tellius all three beorc nations have women ruling them by the end. Indeed, even compared with the other non-Avatar female lords that’s a huge step forward.

Conquest Needs to Take Notes: FE10′s Villain Campaign

This should really be a more controversial statement than it actually is: the Dawn Brigade chapters of FE10, especially those in Part 3, make for a better villain campaign than the entirety of FE14′s Conquest route.

It’s sad how that it isn’t really an exaggeration at all, and even more sad that FE10 doesn’t rely on narrative shortcuts to convey the idea that you’re temporarily playing as the bad guys like Conquest does. Daein isn’t draped entirely in black, and its antagonistic history as a nation saddled with a legacy of racism and Ashnard’s goals of conquest isn’t swept under the rug or left to be inferred only from Path of Radiance. The Daein of Radiant Dawn still displays its anti-laguz prejudice from the previous game, and there’s no indication that that prejudice doesn’t extend to members of the playable cast or that it’s something that will be quickly and cleanly done away with after the credits roll. Micaiah herself plays to the wishes of her racist followers when she has to in Part 3, and though she’s not rabidly bigoted like Jill is in FE9 before her character development she does have a personal interest in not making waves.

I’m not only talking about her ambivalence toward laguz as a Branded, either. One of Micaiah’s most defining traits is her patriotism. It’s a curious element of her character, based in her feelings toward her adopted homeland and willfully unconcerned with Daein’s racism even as it forces her to hide her Brand. It’s rather amusing that probably the most common criticism leveled against Micaiah is that she’s a Mary Sue blindingly adored in-universe, not just because the same could be said for Ike but because that’s exactly what she’s built up to be. If anything the mounting conflict between Ike’s loyal followers - technically the Gallian army and later Crimea and Sanaki’s forces, but they all join together under him - and the cult-ish adherents of “the Maiden of Dawn” deconstructs this accusation. Everyone in Daein may adore her and may have rallied around the Dawn Brigade in a bid to remove the Begnion occupation, but by Part 3 that fervor is shown to be clearly unhealthy and something that Lekain is able to manipulate to his advantage. 

It’s not just the alliance with Begnion that places the Dawn Brigade chapters in villain campaign territory, as Micaiah is forced to resort to increasingly underhanded tactics to satisfy the demands of the senate, from ambushes in the dark to outright war crimes. All the while she’s being ironically proclaimed by her soldiers a symbol of light and divine will, a stark contrast to Nohr’s shadowy branding. It’s a matter of opinion whether Lekain’s blood pact is more or less contrived than the various plot devices that keep Conquest Corrin in line during the invasion of Hoshido, but Micaiah is actually allowed to be genuinely antagonistic toward the armies she’s opposing, in large part because of her pronounced nationalism and the atmosphere of blind worship she’s allowed to grow around her. One of the most important elements of a well-written villain story is that the characters involved shouldn’t think of themselves as the villains unless they’re fully evil and are committed as such (which usually isn’t that interesting anyway). Conquest focuses too much on Corrin’s angst over the ruin of Hoshido and leaves the motivations of the Nohrians vague, whereas Daein in Part 3 carries both its legacy of bigotry and militarism from FE9 and the memory of its glorious uprising against foreign oppression from Part 1. It’s not hard at all to imagine the members of the Dawn Brigade and even the Daein military thinking themselves heroes of their own story, bolstered by a leader determined to do whatever is necessary to save her people.  

The Token(-ish) Het of Tellius

I would be remiss though if I didn’t talk about queer content at some point, because Tellius pretty much runs off the stuff. In that regard Micaiah is admittedly lacking; she has her auto-A support with Sothe and almost nothing else, and while exposition on their early relationship reveals that their bond is a quasi-incestuous one riddled with age issues it’s not in the same league as Nailah/Rafiel totally inverting gender roles, Haar/Jill almost literally robbing the cradle, or Elincia’s complex feelings for her two closest retainers. One can appreciate though that Micaiah/Sothe displays a certain symmetry with Ike/Soren, from parallels in their first meetings to the experiences of one member of each pairing being Branded to their roles at the heads of their respective armies (from a gameplay perspective note that Soren and Sothe stand beside their partners when faced as enemies in 3-13 and 3-E respectively). I might go so far as to say that these symmetries provide additional legitimacy to Ike/Soren as a paired ending, especially since they get their own exposition-laden base conversation in endgame.

Ooh, Shiny!

And ok, my bias in favor of light magic users is on display here too. I was hyped for Micaiah as soon as she appeared in promotional materials as a caster lord, the first and so far only purely magical unit to hold that title. Even notwithstanding the fact that Radiant Dawn is arguably the worst game in the series in which to be a magic user Micaiah has some serious issues as a unit, but at least when she sucks in-game she does so in manner completely distinguishable from the likes of Leif and Roy. She can be a staffbot (she can use Physic as soon as she promotes), she can nuke stuff with Thani and/or Wrath crits thanks to her nonexistent defenses, she can riskily play around her late promotions with Resolve (Easy only, please), and even at the end of the game when she’s probably still frail and will never be fast enough to double everything she’s still the best candidate for Rexaura just because the saints are even worse. I appreciate too that light magic got some much-needed statistical buffs compared to Path of Radiance, and we most likely have Micaiah to thank for that. Even if the game hates her she can make for a fun if challenging unit to use to her greatest potential.

...Now I want to play FE10 again.

[cormorantcolors]

Oh don’t even get me STARTED bestie. Actually bc I’m trying not to post spoilers for my writing on here in case one of my followers wants to read it I’m not going to ramble about Kanta (yet lmao), let’s talk about Alta (:<

So, for the uninitiated, Alta Maiava is one of my many (many) D&D characters! She’s v angsty but I love her for it. Specifically what I’m thinking about right now is my pinned story, which I’m not going to rehash bc anyone who wants to can read it. I’ve been reflecting on her reaction to that. It happened a few sessions before the untimely end of the campaign and right before a major quest, so she didn’t really have time to process (or at least I didn’t have time to express any of it at the table). So anyways, Alta’s character changed a lot from when I first came up with her. Originally she had a lot more resentment towards her parents, specifically her father because she never knew her mother (which both meant less positive memories and less information to really harbor those feeling for, at least for Alta). As Alta became more fully realized, however, I came to decide that she really idolized Reluvethel. Heck, the new version of her warlock pact was actually a promise to bring him back instead of a promise of great power (again, to better fit the new version of her), so he became the only person she cared for in the world which she perceived to be so harsh and unforgiving. Then she found out that he built a war machine, sanctioned the organ harvest of multiple people, and had his soul bound to said machine after death. If this had happened later and I knew what I was doing this would actually be a major turning point for her character. It would mean both that Reluvethel, who Alta believed was a truly good person and undeserving of his untimely death, wasn’t as good of a person as she had thought. It would also mean that her pact with her patron (who she viewed as someone evil but necessary) wouldn’t actually be possible with the terms as they were presented face-level because Reluvethel’s soul was still on the material plane and in a body.

Oh yeah, it also would’ve meant that she killed him. (well technically her party member but yk)

Now something I’ve been exploring more recently with Alta is the feeling of guilt she would’ve had in regards to her father’s death. If Alta wasn’t born he’d be a wealthy scientist living in Maplefall and working closely with The Lady of the Autumn (aka Fen, one of the four most powerful and important archmages in the country). After literally killing him this time and then finding out that he and Fen weren’t so great, I feel like there’d be a lot of interesting conflict.

Hey bestie! This is your “rant about your OC pass”. Rant about your OC if you want to!

Now you gotta rant about your ocs😤😤 /lh

[katohz-blog]

The Importance of Near In Death Note

The Death Note Netflix movie came out last week, and somehow as they always do whenever anything Death Note related comes out, people used the opportunity to shit on Near. Well, I'm gonna come out and say it. I love Near. He is my favorite character in Death Note. And today, I'm gonna explain why. Because let me tell you, this has been a LONG time coming. Near is actually my favorite character in the entire series, but so many people think he’s terrible, or an L-clone with no originality, or just a plain-old jerk, or that Mello should have won in the end. Well, let me tell you why you’re all WRONG about Near. But before that, let's examine some of the problems that people have with Near.

There are a lot of complaints about his personality. Frankly, I can't argue with that, because if you don't like his personality, I can't get you to like it, unless you blatantly misunderstand what his personality traits are. I think one misunderstanding of his personality that gets thrown around a lot is embodied in this scene. Here, we see the SPK headquarters is being stormed by rabid Kira supporters being led by Demogawa. Near has a contingency plan to use money that he inherited from L to create a distraction so that he and the SPK can escape. People point to this scene as evidence that Near is wasteful and he disrespects L. This is a huge misunderstanding of Near's motivation here, and of what this scene represents. Near believes that there are good people in the world who agree with what Kira's doing because they think it'll lead to a better world. However, he also believes that there are people who just want to jump on the bandwagon because they're too stupid or too weak-willed to examine Kira's philosophy for themselves. He knows that those people are the ones at his door, and he wants to demonstrate their lack of dedication to Kira, which they use as an excuse for violence, by proving how easily distracted they are by blinding them with money. He uses the last remnant of L on this Earth to display how worthless these Kira supporters are. From a thematic standpoint, L's battle with Kira was all about defending himself from Kira's attempts to kill him. If there was ever a move that Light was about to make that could prove dangerous to L, L foresaw that move and took action to stop Light from being able to make it. And here, the last remnant of L is blocking Kira's attack. With all of that in mind, this moment should be celebrated, but instead it's pointed to as evidence that Near has a bad personality by people who don't understand what the point of this moment is. It's a testament to Near's respect of L. By showing everyone that Demogawa and his army of blind followers are greedy and not noble, he challenges Kira's very philosophy that the people who oppose him are the ones who are truly evil, and that good people would inevitably support him. This moment is evidence that Near is a perfect foil for Light's own belief of himself as a God. But we'll get to that later.

The next point that I want to combat is the ideas that Near is a clone of L. Near and Mello are both like L in their own way, because they were both raised to be L. Near is the intellectual side that has an out there way of thinking that leads him to make connections that no one else really sees and Mello is the emotional side that is driven to act, and will do whatever is necessary to achieve victory. That's the idea behind the theme that the two would have to work together to beat Kira. The most iconic Mello scenes are him speeding down the highway on a motorcycle with a hostage, or blowing up his headquarters to escape capture. He even attains a position of power that allows him to combat Kira through violence, namely finding a mafia boss that even Kira couldn't identify and cutting his head off Jason Todd style, while Near attains a position of power through more bureacratic means. Near outsmarts and Mello acts. This makes Mello stand out more as being different from L than Near does, as he's even more radical than L was. The contrast distorts people's perceptions of the character, causing them to view L and Near as being too similar despite their many differences, simply because they're both understated personalities and socially inept geniuses. Really, people simply overestimate the actual similarities between the two characters when all that they really have in common is their possession of genius level intellects and general dismissal of social norms. And of course, their childish nature.

Finally, we have the claim that the final arc of Death Note, the battle between Near, Mello, and Light was the weakest in the series because of Near. Even if that is what you believe, it doesn't make a lot of sense that people seem to pin that on Near. What people love about L's interactions with Light is how he confronts and challenges him almost constantly, often coming out and saying that he's suspicious of him and trying to catch him off guard. If these interactions were something that really pulled you into their conflict, then that's all the more reason you should love Near, because he is constantly doing the same thing. The very first sentence he ever says to Light is accusatory and throws him off from the very beginning. He's the character that keeps the cat and mouse element of the series alive. The characters that cause the biggest tonal shifts are Mello and Takada, as Mello's actions elevate the level of spectacle we're used to and Takada's involvement with Light add a romance element to the series. Personally, I think the Yotsuba arc is the weakest in Death Note, and I'd even say the dynamic between Near, Mello, and Light made the show more interesting and less predictable than the dynamic between L and Light, just by adding another major player. My favorite arc in the show is the first 9 episodes, when Light and L are both making moves to reveal each other without being in direct contact. It's the most interesting part of the show because being unable to directly speak to each other forces them to be creative regarding how they try to get to each other. Light leaving coded messages in suicide notes and L televising what can essentially be called a diss track are two of my personal favorite events. Don't get me wrong, I think every single arc in this show is a masterpiece, but the specific set up of two anonymous forces subtly working against one another was the most interesting part of the show for me. In that sense, Near's battle with Light feels like a return to form. They are able to speak to each other directly, but Near still has to figure out who Kira is and what he's up to, while Light also has to try to figure out ways to kill Near. It's different enough that it's not a complete rehash of what we've seen before while also having the same allure of the earliest episodes of the show, and it's all thanks to Near.

Now that I'm done defending him, let's get into what I like about Near.

Looking at all of the major players in Death Note, you'll see that most of them have an identifiable quirk. Specifically, the ones related to Wammy's House. L has his iconic sweet tooth, Mello has his penchant for chocolate, and Near has his toys. One of the things that I like about Near is that his toys actually mean something, contrasted from L's sweets accompanying him in most scenes as just another way to make him a weird character, or Mello's chocolate pretty much meaning nothing to the character at all, every single time we see him playing with his toys, it's a metaphorical representation of his thought process. For example, take this scene from the final chapter of Death Note, the flash forward one year after the conclusion of the Kira case. Here, we see Near surrounded by an impossibly huge house of cards. The metaphor here is that he's been spending the last year building something incredibly intricate and substantial: his career as L. There's also the scene where Light and Near speak for the first time, and Near is tossing darts at a dart board while he explains his thoughts on the case. With each comment, he tosses a dart at the board. He suggests that Kira might have killed Mello's hostage, which would suggest that he's someone with access to the Japanese police force's information. He's correct, but he doesn't have all of the details. At the conclusion of his statement, he misses the dartboard. He's not quite on the mark. Then, there's the moment when Near calls Light to tell him that they'll be meeting in the near future. During the call, Near is building a model of a tower. Then, we see imagery of Light and Near standing face-to-face in a similar tower. This metaphorically foreshadows that Near is in control of this confrontation. For a less subtle example, there's a scene where many of the SPK members are killed by the Death Note, and later the scene where Aizawa first calls Near. At the same time that the first SPK member falls, a stack of dice that Near had been meticulously piecing together falls. It all comes tumbling down as the organization that Near had built from the ground up is dismantled by Mello. When he talks with Aizawa, he begins building a new stack of dice. Clearly, like the house of cards in the one shot, these stacks of dice represent his career as a detective, or more specifically, his Kira investigation. These metaphors are abundant in the series and they add a level of insight into Near's world view that's pretty interesting to me. He uses his toys to represent the world, and plays with them the same way that he plays at life. This is consistent with him referring to L's death and Light's defeat as having "lost the game". Life's a game, and Near's Yugi Moto, baby.

Now, for the most important point in this entire video. Not only is Near a cool character, he is also the perfect person to succeed L, and to defeat Kira. The rivalry between L and Kira is elevated to absolute importance in the series, but what L and no one in the show seems to acknowledge or even realize is that this rivalry actually deifies Kira. L’s very introduction proves beyond a doubt to the entire world that Kira does exist, that someone out there actually is punishing the wicked. He puts a huge spotlight on Kira and their rivalry from the very moment that he becomes known to the world. A man with godlike power versus the greatest mind in the world. L states multiple times that stopping Kira is a cause that’s worth his life. This not only deifies Light in the eyes of society at large, resulting in cultist followers like Teru Mikami forming around the world, but it especially does so in the eyes of Light himself. This dude really starts buying into his own hype like crazy, to the point that by the time he does meet Near, he calls him “far inferior to L”, and dismisses him as a threat. The reason that this makes Near a great foil to Light is that Near does not think Light is special, allowing him to humble him in unique ways. Near says something to Light that I, as a viewer, had wanted to say to him throughout the entire show, and something that I guarantee you L would never say. Near calls Kira, Light Yagami, nothing more than a crazy serial killer. Light, who had defeated the greatest detective on Earth, his greatest personal challenge, is bested by a child who doesn’t even grasp the importance of what’s at stake. This is what goes through his mind in his final moments, and it’s the ultimate reality check. While Near tells Light that he’s nothing special, he holds up the Death Note as the most dangerous weapon of mass murder in history. The spot light isn’t on Light for Near. He instead identifies the truly unique evil and the real remarkable detail in this case, the Death Note itself. Light isn’t special to Near. The Death Note is. This, I think, is what makes Near the only character in the show that actually grasps the truth of the situation. The reason that Mello wouldn’t be as good of a foil as Near was, despite the fact that he’s in the same position of being L’s successor, is that he has the same problem that Light and L had, but regarding Near. To him, his rivalry with Near is the most important thing. Rather than denouncing Light as Near did, he’d probably have said something like “Beating you was the best way for me to beat Near.” All of this made him an even more perfect candidate for the final victor than Mello or even L himself in my opinion. Light believes that he is a God, and that it takes the greatest man he's ever known to even pose a challenge to him. Near defeats him, basically saying "I'm not as great a man as L was. I'm not as experienced a detective or as righteous as he was. However, I'm still enough to beat you, because you, Light Yagami, are not special." That's what I love about Near, both as a character and as a part of the plot.

[wildmuddyriver]

can you talk more about what you were saying about eminem?

YES YES YES

This is going to be a REALLY long disorganized post I’m so sorry I just love this stuff! This won’t all be completely developed because this isn’t an essay. I’m just throwing some ideas out there. I definitely haven’t researched all of this, it’s mostly just personal experience.

~Let me start by saying I try to be as humble as possible! These are just my opinions and experiences. I am ALWAYS open to new concepts and ideas. If I say anything anybody doesn’t agree with or I come across as offensive in any way, please let me know! I’m doing my best, but I’m definitely not perfect. Also, I love talking about Eminem, so I’d love a dialogue about this. :) I’m going to focus more on the positive aspects to his work, however few, far between, and obscure they may be. I think it’s important to talk about these things, even if I definitely don’t agree with the majority of what Eminem does. I’m not ignoring all the terrible parts of his music and professional persona, but I think because that is a main topic that’s already been beaten to death by the media, I’m not going to rehash it again. ~

Background! I wasn’t exposed to a lot of music when I was young, so once I was old enough to use the internet, I delved into the most popular music I could find because that’s all I heard about. I got really into Eminem when I was in elementary / junior high school. (10-ish years old?) I experienced a lot of abuse at home similar to what he claims to have also experienced as a child. We had a lot in common, actually. We both grew up in poverty, we were both white in an area predominantly of color*(I’ll comment more on this later!), we both had abusive mothers, we both had a father figure abandon us, and we both had a lot of aggression / mental health issues because of it. I grew up with a lot of issues that his music helped me to comprehend.

However, let me make it clear that I do NOT think I should have listened to Eminem’s music so young. Although I mostly listened to the less aggressive songs like Mockingbird, When I’m Gone, and Cleaning Out The Closet, it was still pretty unhealthy for me. When I was already upset, listening to Eminem’s music antagonized me and made me feel like it was okay to be angry, so I got angrier. I wish I could have found a better influence to help me understand my experiences at such a young age, but I didn’t trust adults enough to confide in one and the internet was not what it is now.

Let’s start with the domestic abuse. I was raised with very conservative morals. I, like a lot of people, thought abuse was a man hitting a woman. I did not understand that my mother threatening to kill me was abuse. I did not understand that alcoholism and mental illness made her do these things. I thought it was normal to hate your parents because that’s what I saw on TV, ex. Malcolm in the Middle. Eminem’s interviews and music helped me to understand that what my mother did to me was not okay. A mother does not hurt her children. Women can be abusive. Women can be mean and hurtful and abusive. I don’t think I’m the only person who’s had this experience. I think this is a reason Eminem’s music is so widely enjoyed by such a young audience. While I absolutely under no circumstances agree with the violence he illustrates in his music, (I can’t listen to his music anymore without feeling sick to my stomach because of it) I appreciate that he raised some very important points about this specific consequence of a patriarchal society. Consider the uproar in backlash against Emma Roberts for hurting her boyfriend a few years back.

Mental illness! Eminem is very open and honest about his mental illness. My perception of his mental illness when I was young was that he didn’t quite understand it, either. The concept of Slim Shady vs. Marshall Mathers resonated with me. It helped me to understand that I don’t have to be the bad version of me all the time. Yes, sometimes I feel bad and angry and I want to cry, but that isn’t me all the time. That’s only part of me. Sometimes, it makes me do things and say things I don’t ordinarily do. I am a person outside my mental illness. I know this sounds kind of basic and kind of ridiculous, but I didn’t know what mental illness was before being exposed to his music. Again, this made me feel like maybe I wasn’t quite so alone. I think a lot of victims of abuse listen to Eminem’s music. Yes, obviously, there were a lot of privileged little white boys who wanted to seem edgy by listening to Eminem, but I think a lot of kids had similar experiences as mine and Eminem’s. 

In addition, Eminem links his mental illness to his abusive childhood. In a general observation of his music, he explains that abuse stems from abuse. It’s a cycle. His mother hurt him, he hurts his wife, his wife hurts his daughter, etc. Abuse is generational. My mother always talked about how she was abused as a child, yet turned around and abused me. This connection, initiated by some of Eminem’s music, helped me to understand that if I want the pain to stop, I need to be the person to stop it. I have to stand up and find my voice and fight back. I have to fight my abusers along with myself. His music pushed me to use my anger positively, to defend myself instead of accepting the abuse. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience and it isn’t obvious when listening to his music, but it’s what I got out of Eminem’s raps. Eminem blurs the line between abuser and abused because the majority of abusers have been abused. 

Mental illness MUST be more prevalent than we think, or Eminem’s lyrics would not resonate with so many people and he would not be so famous. Yes, depicting mental illness as violent in nature is detrimental, but it’s also necessary to consider that some mental illness does result in violence. A lot of people who suffer from PTSD and people who are victims of abuse are violent. Violence is the result of a person who is not mentally well! My abuser was mentally ill! Eminem’s abuser was mentally ill! Abusers are not mentally well! No, this does not make abuse acceptable, but it explains it. In a way, this helped me to better understand compassion. I don’t believe people are inherently evil. I believe people want to be good and happy. We have scientific evidence to prove that people are soft-wired to be compassionate. When a person abuses another person, it is because something is wrong with their wiring. This helped me to come to terms with why my mother hurt me. I am not a burden, she hurt me because there is something wrong with HER, not me.

Some more ideas that I haven’t thought about quite as much as the others but probably should and will eventually get around to it :) :

Isolation! A main theme in Eminem’s music is how isolated he feels. This is because people don’t talk about abuse from women. It isn’t stereotyped, so people don’t quite understand it or consider it. This is sexism hurting children and husbands and boyfriends and other loved ones! Not good. I think his music helps his listeners feel less isolated because here’s a super famous guy talking about something they thought was just them.

In response to “he raps about his daughter and how much he loves her”: Mentally ill people are capable of love and other complex emotions! I totally support the original post and I think it’s really funny and true, I’m absolutely not dissing op at all, I just think this is a good gateway to discussion. Mentally ill people and abusive people are not one-dimentional. People stay with abusers because they are more than the bad parts of them.

Hyper-masculinity / sexism(?)! I think an interesting concept is that Eminem’s aggression may have been heightened by the fact that a woman hurt him. He felt emasculated. sorry this part sucks there isn’t a ton of lit on this topic and i am so tired i haven’t slept since november

Racism! This is last because I’m white passing and I don’t think my opinions on this are going to be the most relevant in the discourse. I would definitely like to hear opinions from some POC. :) I don’t think growing up around people who didn’t look like me negatively impacted me. I’ll never say I can understand the experience of a person of color because I have light skin. There are experiences I will never have in society even though I’m a woman and I’m gay and poor and have struggled with mental illness. While being white in a predominantly Latino community helped me view similarities between myself and Eminem, I don’t relate to Eminem’s “struggle” of this experience except for maybe feeling a little different. However, I’ve read a lot of discourse about racism and white rappers that I’d like to mention. For example, they use black artists as a gateway into hip-hop, exclude black consumers and artists from hip-hop, introduce color-blind racism to young fans, etc.

On a side note, I think Eminem brings up good points about how racism is used to subdue the masses - a house divided and all that - and distract from real issues like poverty.

I think Eminem’s music speaks volumes about the people who listen to his music. In high school, I knew several people in similar situations to mine who also listened to Eminem’s music. These people were not violent or aggressive. They were people who were hurt by their parents and by society. This makes me feel like it isn’t just me spouting out nonsense about my shitty childhood, but like I’ve shared this experience with other people. 

On the topic of “he’s actually a good guy and you’re a judgemental prick!!!!!! “ I would never genuinely defend a celebrity. PR exists for a reason. I’m defending some of the ideas, not the person.

Here’s the post anon is referencing

please talk to me about eminem the fad is over and almost nobody cares anymore but i love this shit fuck me up let’s go bond over this white trash

Thank you for the ask! :)))

[him-e]

Maybe Im just being harsh, but i don't get how people think RO was so much better than TFA. In my opinion RO lacked severely in character development which really caused a disconnect. People give TFA crap for being a rehash of old stuff, but RO has them too, and even more fan service i think. I also found the third act of them actually getting the plans to be so muddled and ridiculous. I don't think TFA doesn't feel like a star wars film just because time has passed and characters have changed

I think at the end of the day it’s a matter of personal taste. RO and TFA are two different ways of rehashing/expanding a known story. TFA is a sequel while RO is more like a “missing moments”. This is already a basic difference—some people naturally prefer the former and others the latter. Especially because in the latter the outcome is fixed, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room with the characters and their destination in the first place. You must be inclined and willing to watch a story that you already know in advance isn’t going to end well. 

RO lacked severely in character development which really caused a disconnect

Eh, I wonder where this perception comes from, actually. Because what I see is a two hours movie starring an ensemble cast who is just as developed as it gets in a two hours movie with an ensemble cast. Okay, we have characters like Baze Malbus who objectively get little characterization. We could have seen something more of Bodhi—his defection, the moment Galen entrusted him with the mission—and of Galen himself as well. Krennic, as a villain, is weak and doesn’t really work, because the film spends more time on cgi!Tarkin than him (I would add Vader to this complaint, but I won’t, because I’m too busy fangirling over his scenes. Nope, I think Vader was used splendidly). 

RO is a standalone film constricted within the boundaries of a necessarily fixed ending. Narrative-wise, character-wise, the horizon is much wider in TFA. I wonder, is Cassian really lacking character development compared to, I dunno, Poe? Is Finn’s defection actually better written than Bodhi’s? Do Jyn’s actions—her going from refusal of the call to accepting the call—make less sense than Rey’s? And why? 

I think one of the reasons the TFA characters are perceived as “better” developed lies in the potential. Anticipation of their future arcs and developments makes the way they’re written in TFA much juicier, it adds layers that aren’t necessarily there yet, it creates expectations, it encourages daydreaming about possible future scenarios (and ships!). This isn’t possible with RO, unless you leave canon behind and go full au route. Another example: TFA gets the luxury of telling us NOTHING about Rey’s backstory, nothing, just hints and a big ass mystery about who her family is, because it will explained in future films. Jyn’s backstory is laid out because there’s no other option, it’s now or never. Of course it’s not perfect. And of course people prefer Rey’s vague promise of a backstory because they can project whatever they like on it, while Jyn’s is fully established, and apparently not tragic enough to justify her abrasiveness? You might complain that Jyn’s story is cursory, or not satisfying enough, that her relationship with Galen and Saw is barely sketched, and okay, these are valid complaints but at least the backstory is there, instead of being handily postponed to the next episode to create artificial hype. (and while I’m at it, I wonder how much of the audience’s fascination with Rey revolves around her ~lost skywalker~ aura, rather than her actual identity as an orphan who grew up alone in Jakku? Do people really like Rey as a character, or do they like the puzzle and the skywalker mantle?)

Anyway. I agree that the third act of RO, minus the final sacrifice, is a bit muddled and—let’s just say that I would have loved to see less explosions and a more elaborated plan to infiltrate the Scarif base (which I think would also have offered less stiff, more organic ways to show the villains and have the heroes interact with them). But then again, the whole movie is muddled, due to the reshoots (TFA surely has a better flow). Also yes, if you go beyond the surface, you’ll see familiar patterns in RO as well (first act: set up + characters meet + the bad guys do something awful revealing how Evil they are + daring escape; second act: regrouping + meeting the Rebellion/Resistance; third act: hitting the bad guys in their ridiculously small and accessible weak spot, be it the oscillator or the death star’s plans + big battle ensues). However, I think RO simply does a better job at dissimulating these staple points, and that, combined with a less simplistic narrative (more moral complexity, the good guys have also done Bad Things, etc.) gave the audience the impression of a more innovative, less derivative movie. Some of it may be just smokescreen, but it clearly didn’t go unnoticed. 

Re: the fanservice, idk. What feels more fanservice-y, the death star appearing in a movie that’s explicitly about stealing the death star’s plans, or something that looks exactly like the death star, just bigger and called starkiller? Is it that weird to see Darth Vader, Leia, Tarkin and Mon Mothma appear in a movie ending half an hour before ANH kicks off? Is that more of a cop out to win the audience’s approval than having a carbon copy of the Empire rise 30 years later? (not that it matters, because at the end of the day, Star Wars is the infinite fight for freedom against oppression and totalitarianism, and the specifics may wary but must always be instantly recognizable, but I digress)

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Rogue One is necessarily “better”—I like TFA, a lot. The characters that are really going to engage me in the long run are Rey, Kylo and Finn. I like the Rogue One crew, but I also feel like it’s a well that is going to be soon extinguished, as personally I tend to thrive with serialized fiction rather than standalones. Also note that like I said I think TFA was a necessary step to ensure continuity between the old and the new canon; without TFA paving the way, I don’t think Rogue One could have existed. 

But I would also like to see Episode VIII take more risks and wander a bit in uncharted territory. Not that Rogue One is exactly uncharted territory, but it has some things I’m interested in (e.g. more nuances/shades of grey in the Rebellion/Resistance, not-likeable-at-all-costs protagonists, not-skywalker-at-all-costs protagonists, exploration of those who are more or less willingly affiliated with the Empire/First Order, etc). We shouldn’t be having a competition between the two movies, because, despite being part of the same ‘verse and the same new canon, they’re like apples and oranges. Neither film is perfect, and it’s ok to like one better than the other. RO was more of an experiment though, so they logically had more creative freedom than with TFA, which on the other hand had no option but become a worldwide success, so they played safe. I think people expressing their appreciation of Rogue One is a good thing for the franchise, because it’s the first movie that doesn’t belong to a trilogy, and it can pave the way for new stories to explore in this ‘verse. It means the creators will be more comfortable expanding new aspects of the sw universe in the sequel trilogy too, instead of limiting their options to the usual paths.