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wearethekat · 2 years ago

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I went and saw a two-hour play version of Lord of the Rings today* (yeah, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy). this not surprisingly sent me on a several-hour long lotr rabbithole, which involved rewatching the documentary about Howard Shore’s score.**

and gah it reminded me of how much I love the films and specifically the score. All my favorite scenes-- Arwen's vision, Faramir's doomed last stand, Theoden arming before Helm’s Deep-- I love for the score. The score illuminates these scenes, lights them up until they blaze the way really good poetry does. Maybe it’s just how I feel about music. but oh, there’s something about these scenes that always gets me.

And now pulling up those clips on youtube for you all has made me cry (because obviously I had to watch them. couldn’t just attach the links.)

the score makes a great scene into an unforgettable one. and makes extremely mediocre movies (cough, the hobbit) into good ones. for me, a really good score does most of the legwork for establishing, hmmm, the characterizations and the emotional weight that may not be conveyed very well by the narrative? Objectively, the plot and the writing may have barely established the character, or failed to give the climactic battle a real stake, or just be really terrible writing that makes you wince. But as long as the score is good enough, as long as I hear the music I believe utterly in what it’s telling me.

like, in the star wars sequel trilogy, the writing is respectfully hot garbage. but the score makes me believe that Kylo Ren is actually a tragic hero, for as long as I’m suspended in that golden bubble of sound. The magic of John Williams can do that.

that's the one thing that makes me really sad about the new Lord of the Rings show, you know? the elf hair (or lack thereof) and the narrative choices pain me deeply. but to be honest I can handle it. I lived though the Hobbit, didn’t I?

But without the score, it's just a pretty but soulless big-budget fantasy series. I heard the score for the new teaser trailer and it was empty. It was just as meaningless as the score for whatever superhero blockbuster they churn out monthly. It was dead.

and that's a tragedy.

*it was wonderful. showstopping. fantastic. talking about it would be its own post but let me just say they not only had Tom Bombadil, they had him sing a funny little tune to the melody of “Margaritaville.” Peak theater.

**if possible, even more showstopping and fantastic. I was absolutely obsessed with the score when I was fourteen with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns. chain piano my beloved...

#lotr #hopefully no one comes and fights me over this (I *did* mention some scary fandoms)#but usually adding links nerfs the post's spread #oh well we shall see #thinky thoughts

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moonraccoon-exe · 6 years ago

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Consider this: FFXV x Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney. Noctis inheriting Caelum and Co. from Regis, advised by long-time family friend Cor. Cor being adoptive dad to Prompto, and the whole first case where you meet Maya. Ignis and Gladiolus being Edgeworth and Gumshoe. Caligo as Prosecutor Payne. Weskham as Godot. Umbra as Missile. Just imagine that~

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

YES

YES SO HARD OHMYGO DSAIJDJFKGDFSDKF SDOKFJ

YES OHMYGOD DEAR LORDS ABOVE THIS IS THE AU I DIDN’T KNOW I DESPERATELY NEEDED AND NOW I’M IN A…MIGHTY N E C E S S I T Y HHGNHNFGH

*THROWS TANTRUM*

I WANT THIS A U AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Dude, yes so hard!!

Defense attorney Noctis! I mean, he already has the black spiky-on-the-back hair and the blue thematic! Besides the non-impressed sort of attitude at times, where the bouncy sidekick is all “HEY HEY LOOK AT THIS FUNNY THING :D” and he’s just “…eh.” BUT without being a too-serious too-dead-inside person. It fits so ridiculously good, dammit!

Veteran defense attorney Cor, I just- *fangasms* HNNNNNNNGGGGGG, YES! Dear Cor being a mentor to dear Noct, aah. Imagine that; the two standing at the defense’s side, Cor being quiet and just going with hinting Noct at what to do. “Did you hear that, Noct? The witness thinks he’s so smart that he didn’t notice he just let out some vital bit of info. You should press him, but be careful with how you word it.”

Hnghngh

Maya!Prompto. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

BUT IT FITS SO GOOD!? The happy cinnamon roll that’s too pure for this world and is always such a happy presence. Always smiling, being a hyperactive little ball of adorableness, enjoying of kids’ TV shows, and being the most loyal of companions to Noct. :’) The very loyal and happy sidekick, that remains badass in his own way. THIS IS A MIGHTY NECESSITY THAT I HAVE FOR THIS AU WITH THESE ROLES GODDAMMIT *punches through wall*

Everything fits so nicely, but Maya!Prompto is definitely the most accurate. Even when they’re sad it fits! You can just imagine the one frame where Maya has the head slightly down, eyes on Phoenix, and tears on the corner of her eyes, and see Prompto like that instead almost like he was made to take the role aaaaaah!

Ignis as Edgeworth and Gladio as Gumshoe COULDN’T HAVE EVER GOTTEN ANY BETTER.

Prosecutor Ignis, though, CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT. UNGH. To start with, Ignis in fancy suits is already fantastic enough and I need it. Now imagine him going “Objection!” and being all smug and confident about his stuff. I just…love this.

And it also fits really nicely, considering the entire “childhood friends” with Noct! :O AAAAAH

Gumshoe reminded me of Gladio in some ways, but there were two or three parts where I was like “this is ABSOLUTELY some sort of Gladio”. I mean, Gumshoe likes puppies (he’s super fond of Missile, it seems!), he’s this big and tough looking guy but he’s really just a giant teddy bear, always laughing, and even a little naïve at times, he likes flirting with girls at times, but he’s not rude or bad with them, he has this absolute devotion to Ignis/Edgeworth…and not to forget about that time when Gumshoe arrived to Phoenix’s office asking for a job, saying he could be useful and cook, and said his speciality is “Instant noodles”. Hahahahaha!! And later on he says something about his salary being so poor that he’s been living on instant noodles for who knows how long. ABSOLUTELY GLADIO!

Caligo would work great as Payne just for the fact that they’re both annoying AND I HATE BOTH OF THEM.

B U T

I HAVE A BETTER ROLE FOR CALIGO.

Just imagine….it’s Caligo but he takes the role of one..

Prosecutor Manfred Von Karma.

*EXPLODES*

I mean, it would be SOOOOOOOO cool considering Edgeworth Ignis! Manfred and Caligo both are men older than Miles/Ignis, both killed a figure that was senior to Miles/Ignis, both hold a huge grudge against Miles/Ignis because Miles/Ignis did something better than them or ruined them in some way and both Miles and Ignis actually physically INJURED them, which is the reason both want revenge on the younger ones and want to ruin their lives, and both are always all “lmao I am so perfect”.

Imagine Caligo taking Ignis under his wing pretending to be an ally but really he’s just waiting for the moment to ruin him…D:

*CHIMES IN THROUGH THE WALL*

ARANEA IS FRANZISKA, RIGHT?

I mean, grey-haired dominatrix with a whip that goes around smacking Noctis and everyone but who’s just doing her job and is actually amazing at it B|

(Omg, Gladio being scared of Aranea, ahahaha)

Weskham as Godot.

OhmygOD….Weskahm as Godot….hnHNGHNGNFGNH-

*SHORT CIRCUITS*

*SHARP INHALE*

I LOVED WESKHAM AS HE IS. I LOVED GODOT AS HE IS.

AND YOU JUST MADE A MIXTURE OF THE TWO!?!?!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

DUDE, YES!! IT FITS SO AMAZINGLY WELL AAAAAAAAAAAH

The fancy guy in a fancy vest who talks fancily. I NEED THAT.

Imagine Weskham at the prosecutor’s side. He already has the clothes. And now he has a mug of coffee (or perhaps a cup of Altissian wine), and he has that smug smile and shakes the head.

Oh boi, did you see what you just did with Godot!Weskham?

You just shipped Weskham/Cor and made it very much canon, oh my~ ewe

speAKING OF cOr thOUGH

CAN WE PLEASE….NOT KILL HIM, THOUGH? ;A;

Hnhfgnhnfgmhfg, I know in some way Mia lives even if just through Maya and Pearly and in random flashes Phoenix has, but…it’s…not…the same hgnhgfngf

I mean, it would make quite a story! Your second case as an attorney, where they killed one of your dad’s best friends and who was a dear friend to you, and your mentor, and the defendant is no other but COR’S SON HIMSELF what the fahk ohmyfgidkjgfmfd, THE SCANDAL! AAAAH!

…I just- *deep breath* I don’t have the heart to kill Cor… ;w; Even less to make Prommy walk into his corpse…. ;w; and be BLAMED for it… ;w;

I DON’T HAVE THE HEART TO DO ANY OF THAT, CAN WE KILL SOMEONE ELSE AND CAN COR LIVE PWEASE

When I first read “Umbra as Missile”, and partly because I was waking up and half asleep as I read it, I was like “Missile, who the hell is Missile. OhnO, surely Missile is a dog that appears later on in Apollo Justice or DD or SoJ and I haVEN’T PLAYED ANY OF THEM, YOU’RE SPOILING MEEEEEEEEEEEE oh wait no Missi- *gaASPS* MISSILE IS THE- AHAHAHA of coooooourse! HOW CUTE! C:”

Goddamit, this is the AU that’s ENDING ME and I happilly accept this end. BOTH GAMES ARE TOO GOOD UNGH MIXING THEM IS LIKE MIXING EPIC WITH EPIC, YOU GET EPIC SQUARE.

Just- imagine that. B|

It’s Final Gyakuten Saiban Fantasy XV. Also known as Final Ace Attorney Fantasy XV. It sounds- weird now that I read it, BUT IT’S THE MOST EPIC GAME/STORY YOU WILL EVER ENCOUNTER.

Noctis Wright Caelum, rookie defense attorney in the job. He likes blue and black suits and has a spiky black hair, and usually comes up with ideas as he’s on the go. He’s usually “wright” ;D

Meet his mentor! Cor Leonis, a more experienced defense attorney and friend to Noctis’ dad, an attorney retired due to health problems (now worries, he’s fine now that he gets to rest). Cor Leonis, usually coming off as rather serious and cold, but is actually a very caring and friendly ally during trial.

His son, Prompto, a rather bouncy and slightly hyperactive young boy, Noctis’ age, passionate for photography, and with rather poor comprehension of the law, BUT incredibly useful when it comes to seeing people’s lies and contradictions.

And on the prosecution’s side, we have one Ignis Scientia! With a mysterious background, Ignis is smart, calculating, sly, dark, and he’s tagged as a genius, having started at age 19/20 and not having lost one single case up until now. And his mentor, oh, yes, the man that took him under his wing when Ignis lost his father under mysterious circumstances…

Caligo von Uldor, a FUCKING PIECE OF GARBAGE.

And he grows up next to one grey haired and slightly aggressive, super sassy Aranea, who started prosecution at age THIRTEEN because she’s a bloody genius. And cheats sometimes. Because she’s still a mercenary as a lawyer but HEY I DIDN’T MAKE THE RULES.

And let’s not forget the friendly and adorable detective Gladiolus Amicitia, a guy that may come off as tough looking at first, but is really just a noodle-obsessed pet-lover flirty adorable precious angel that just wants justice and for everyone to be happy and for those he cares about to be safe. He has absolute devotion to and admires prosecutor Ignis Scientia a lot and would do ANYTHING for him… :’3

Detective Gladio likes to hang with the dog-in-training at the police department Umbra! A NICE FLUFFEEH ADORABLE LITTLE BOY THAT WILL EAT ALL THE SAMURAI HOT DOGS IN ONE GO!

And I would talk about the mysterious prosecutor Armaugh, and maybe also about Cor’s former and apparently now dead boyfriend defense attorney Weskham, but that’s- quite a long story and I’m not sure I should write it all XD

GASPS.

Bro.

Bro…

Twins Stella & Lunafreya…

YOU KNOW FOR WHICH ROLES.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*HEAD EXPLODES DUE TO MINDBLOW*

CAN TALCOTT BE PEARLY PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Yes. Simply…simply YES to this AU… ;A;

[[There’s no more under the cut other than my own thoughts. It’s not a long answer but I’ll add a keep reading here, buddy c:]]

I recently beat the Ace Attorney trilogy for the first time just a few weeks ago and I’m still absolutely enamored and in love with it. I didn’t think it would be more than just funny criminal cases, didn’t know there was an entire plot and character building and development in there, and I had of course close to not a single idea I would fall for this series SO DEEP AND SO HARD.

And now, thinking about it mixed with the GLORIOUS FFXV that is sorta special to me…

*SOBS*I CAN’T.

THIS IS THE PERFECT CROSSOVER/AU AND I’M STILL IN THAT NECESSITY FOR IT ADH AHSDAS DHA *BAWLS*

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGH.

Thank you so much for sharing this with me. As I was playing I was trying to think of some way to mix it with FFXV but didn’t put much brain in it. But YOU, my friend, you landed it PERFECTLY and so exquisitely. URGH. Your ask was so glorious to receive and to read through because YES to everything!!!

I’M ALL THE WAY INTO IT FOR ACE ATTORNEY AND FFXV /AND/ FOR ACE ATTORNEY X FFXV ASDKJFKSDJFDS ;A;

I was so happy to receive something AA too, ahaha. I don’t talk much about it because 99% of the people follow me due to FFXV but I’d do it gladly anytime, so I’m SUPER HAPPY that you talked about it with me. BOTH GAMES FILL ME SO MUCH OF SO MANY AND SO INTENSE FEELS HFNJGNF

Now I desperately need art for this. Godot!Weskham, Prosecutor!Ignis, Detective!Gladio…URGH. IT’S ALL TOO GOOD AND THE MENTAL IMAGES IN MY HEAD ARE BRILLIANT (ﾉД`)

GODS, thank you so much for reacing out to me with this LOVELY and wonderful ask. I’M SO INTO THIS HELL AND AU AND I’D GLADLY TALK ABOUT IT ANY DAMN TIME AGAIN KALSDJKLDSFJD

Thank you so, so, so much for dropping this INCREDIBLY LOVELY ask in! I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW EPIC IT TRULY IS, AT LEAST TO ME, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Now I’m gonna be thinking about this FOREVER

(; ω ; )

I hope you’re having a WONDERFUL day or night, buddy! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ

#ffxv x ace attorney #coonanswers #glacian-apocalypse #fave!#OKJASDKLDSDJSD #CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS AU PLS #IT'S GREAT AND I LOVE IT

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renaroo · 8 years ago

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Any thoughts on Venus de Milo(tmnt)?

BOY DO I

I wonder if this is related at all to MovieBob’s recent video about her being the worst female character ever because the moment I watched it I wondered if anyone would be asking me about her.

So. Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation is... a thing that in itself is almost too difficult to explain outside of “you had to be there”, but I’m going to do my best. Because I was there. Oh, man. Was I there.

While I had VHS tapes of the original ‘80s TMNT cartoon I grew up with and watched religiously, the show stopped airing new episodes before I was born, and stopped resyndication by the time I was four. So while I definitely grew up with them and loved them and read the Archie comics religiously as a kid and watched the original live action movies pretty much every weekend we rented movies from the down the road movie rental store (anyone remember those?), my actual first memories of watching any TMNT show as it aired was the 1998 flop show, Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation.

In fact, I distinctly remember getting the chicken pox that year and part of the only good thing that came from it was I got to watch episodes of NT:TNM without impediment from my then-one year old sister because they kept her away from me as if I had the plague.

Which I kinda did, but regardless.

It was actually just 4 years later, in 2001, that I’d come to build an online presence with TERRIBLE Pokemon, Inuyasha, and Star Fox fanfics that I first started looking up geocities communities for various fandoms and one of those was TMNT.

If anyone remembers geocities or pre-ff.net fandom lore in the Ninja Turtles circle, here’s how old I am: I, personally, used to talk to the likes of Kali Gargoyle, Azure the Turtle, Kat, Sakan (FREAKfreak), Ame Musashi, Buslady, and Machias -- a statement that I can almost guarantee means absolutely NOTHING to 99.9999% of you.

Now, an interesting thing about the fandom culture just before the 2003 cartoon aired was that there was actually a large contingent of the fandom that were defensive of Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and thought of it as being only as bad as the current Power Rangers season of the time (which was the one right before Dino Thunder, so I can’t remember which one it was). In fact, people were so on the bandwagon for it, that the geocities community started an online petition -- which at the time was a difficult thing to do because it meant everyone sending a single email chain around and around so everyone can sign it with their online names and then email it to Saban, who owned the rights. The petition was to allow the show to have another season and tie up its loose ends with the (most likely misinformed) opinion that Next Mutation had had better viewership than the Power Rangers season it ran side-by-side with.

Did it deserve it? With my nostalgia goggles off, having bought the DVDs of the series and watched it within the last four years, can I say Next Mutation and Venus de Milo deserved that type of fandom swelling in support?

...

Um. Noooooo?

Okay, my extensive fandom history aside, I cannot defend The Next Mutation because... it was really bad. Like, made the Shredder a good guy in the pilot and got rid of the most iconic villains for the rest of the series bad. Instead we had the Dragon Lord (eh) and Wick (his servant, again eh), Silver the Gorilla... gangster whose gang came straight out of the (also flop) Dick Tracey movie, and...

Vam Mi. Who was probably the first indication my parents had that I was into girls. Because. Well shit. I mean.

A Chinese vampire obsessed with the female of the show and wore tight leather and heeellllooooooooo

Vam Mi is actually the thing I remember the best about the show and I could probably write an essay on defending the storyline “Unchain My Heart” which goddamn if we’d had episodes like that throughout the show and a villain like Vam Mi throughout the show, well it probably would’ve gotten that mythical second sense that would have made sense of the other garbage.

But I’ve obviously gotten away from your question. Which is about Venus herself. Or, as I prefer to call her (for reason we’ll get into) Mei Peih Chi.

The reason I’ve had all this build up and quandering about the show itself is because Mei herself is such a product of this series that removing them from each other leaves out how things went so wrong with an idea that came from such an obviously positive place. “Hey, little girls deserve to want to be Ninja Turtles, too!”

Best intentions. Worst executions.

If you read a lot of my meta, you know that I actually despise the concept of “Mary Sues” and how female characters are carelessly cast aside by people for basically having attributes of any main character. But. Well. Let’s just look at Mei’s character in its context:

Mei is a fifth turtle who was in the same bowl that fell into the sewers and was mutated along with the turtles (aka, does not have her own unique origin story and was there from the beginning but WE’RE JUST LEARNING ABOUT IT), she was found by a Chinese monk (Chinese, not Japanese which is the ethnicity of the Hamato family of the turtles and Yoshi, sort of glazing over the cultures as being interchangeable), was raised as his daughter in the monastery back in China even though... he seemed to somehow know about the others Turtles and Splinter and inform her where to go after his death in the pilot?, and she -- in a series called Ninja Turtles, was not a ninja but a Shinobi priestess with psychic abilities.

Oh, and throughout the show they keep bringing up the fact that none of them are blood-related, despite the turtles being brothers being a cornerstone to the franchise since the 80s comics, for the sole purpose of having a love triangle between Raph, Venus, and Leo without it being incest.

(This hilariously backfired and became the justification for the ever growing T-Cest fandom that shipped the boys together for years afterward by the by)

She is a fish out of water, has zero fun throughout the series, is not as physically strong in a fight as the boys, and is basically the plot equivalent of Deus Ex Machina in the end because Magic > Ninjitsu in a franchise that is completely dependent on the physicality and Ninja-ness of the characters.

Also. Despite Mei growing up in China, still learning English and Western culture, and having an obvious struggle with mourning the loss of her home in China and her Chinese father, in the goddamn pilot the main guys rename her “Venus de Milo” because she knocked the arms off a statue and they thought it was funny. Because while the guys are named after Renaissance artists, Mei is renamed and for all purposes “Anglicanized” for an art object. Like. It’s difficult to understand who okayed any of this.

Like. Were they thinking?

Mei, from the start, was kind of a broken character with a gross costume design (turtle boobs turtle boobs what’re you gonna do there’s a turtle with fucking boobs) that still forces girls to see themselves as thin and demure even if they’re bulky, shell having turtles. BECAUSE WE GOTTA HAVE THEM HIPS AND CURVES i guess.

She’s so loathed by Peter Laird (co-creator of the TMNT) that he made the overly drastic declaration that he’ll never allow there to be female turtles in the franchise again, period. Which I kinda... find extreme.

Because....

As bad as she is. As problematic as she was.

.... When I was six, I loved her.

How could I not love her? She and Vam Mi were the only girls on the whole damn show! (April and Casey didn’t even get cameos). The face value of representation for a long time made me defensive of Mei and of the show because of how it made me feel as a kid.

It’s that Maya Angelou quote personified: “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.“

I didn’t remember how bad the props and puppetry was until I rewatched the show. I didn’t remember how annoying Venus’ “spot” in the team was as immediate den mother and object to be fought over (like Raph and Leo needed more to fight over really). I didn’t even remember that the show kept pushing for the Turtles to not be a family.

I remembered having a lot of affection for seeing a female ninja turtle along with the characters I had grown up loving. I mean, seriously, do I have to post that picture again of me as a baby in the scariest Ninja Turtle themed grocery store ride in the history of ever?

So she’s bad. And there needs to be more effort in being progressive and being more inclusive, especially for old properties trying to adapt to the changing times.

And I’m someone who believes wholeheartedly that any idea can be done well.

.... Venus was not done well.

But she had her part in making me a lifetime Ninja Turtle fan. A complicated, twisted, only could happen in the late part of the Clinton administration way.

So I will criticize the hell out of Mei, out of the series, but I’ll always be mindful of how it made a six-year-old Rena excited every Saturday.

I’ll remember that and the hot vampire in leather.

#long post #Rants of Unusual Size #opinions opinions opinions #Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation #Venus de Milo #Mei Pieh Chi #Anonymous

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manifestoonmoralmanlove · 5 years ago

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Gormles Ch. 14 - DAD OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO…

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband. In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England. Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag. She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon. He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok. Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything. Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government. She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

Alexia solved the problems! So it’s time for our obligatory fade to black sex scene and cliff-hanger.

Chapter 14 – DAD OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO…

So this is our last chapter and boy does it TAKE A TURN! WOOF!

So the chapter opens up with the Maccons, I guess doing it, in the hallway right after the above conversation. And I do not like the language used.

“There was really nothing else to do when Conall was in one of these moods but to enjoy it.”

“Alexia sacrificed herself on the altar of wifely duty, enjoying every minute of it, of course, …”

My inner feminist killjoy hates the rape culture language used as well as the term WIFELY DUTY. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she enjoyed it and they make it clear in the text. I’m just irritated that they have to throw ravishment language all over it. Why can’t it be phrased as expressly consensual since it is? I know ravishment is a popular fetish…but it’s also everywhere and doesn’t apply here? WHATEVER!

The married pair go up to the Aethographor and message Akeldama, and Akeldama confirms that the Westminster Hive’s aethograhor broke. Real essential this information.

It is explained that Ivy and Tunstell eloped in a letter they left behind. In a letter that’s supposed to be funny but it’s just cringy and embarrassing.

In the middle of dinner Maccon decides to change his granddaughter into a werewolf. Apparently this works by chewing through her neck and drooling into the gaping hole.

Hot

Despite this very tame display Alexia faints.

When she wakes up LeFoux and Maccon are there. Sidheag was successfully changed into a werewolf hooray!

LeFoux explains that a lot of the symptoms Alexia is experiencing indicate that she is pregnant. Apparently SO FAR IN HISTORY a werewolf has yet to make someone preggorz.

So Maccon assumes that she must have had an affair and wowzers, he has the granddaddy of all freakouts.

He swears a blue streak and accuses her of sleeping with other men in awful and cruel terms, he screams, and carries on and it’s described with this kind of language.

“He was quietly, white-faced, shivering angry. And it was terribly, terribly frightening.”

“…But Alexia had never been actually afraid of him before. She was afraid of him now.”

“It was as though he’d placed the distance between them, not because he didn’t want to come at her and tear her apart, but because he really thought he might.”

LeFoux stands in a protective stance in front of Alexia at this time and is the only one who believes her when she claims she did not cheat on him. Maccon runs out of there all dramatic style. Sidheag, in polite terms admittedly, tells her to get her slut butt out of there cause she has to support the pack. Despite how Alexia convinced Maccon to make her a werewolf, stopped a violent person from tearing the pack to shreds, and got their werewolfism back. But okay sis, GO OFF!

Alexia leaves with LeFoux and her sister, and just stares longingly out the window hoping to see Maccon running toward them apologizing.

DAMN STORY!

DAMN!

I had a lot of mean shit to say about this story but that’s genuinely a good cliffhanger. The whole pregnancy scare conflict doesn’t seem uncommon for het romance fiction but I think it can be used to good effect. This maybe a more ME specific thing, but I am a protective kind of person. And this flares up hottest if a man is being shitty and unfair to a woman. So this I felt more viscerally.

Now this is objectively an awful fucking move on Maccon’s part. Like without a doubt he’s a garbage man, and he doesn’t get any kudos for NOT PHYSICALLY HURTING HER EVEN THOUGH THE TEXT PRETTY CLEARLY SAYS HE WANTED TO.

I think it’s kinda ridiculous that he NOT FOR A BRIEF FUCKING SECOND thought that either:

A.) She may not actually be pregnant. They’re just taking LeFoux’s word when she says she thinks the fainting and the trouble eating might mean pregnancy.

B.) We just very clearly and very recently demonstrated that nobody knows jackshit about Soulless people and perhaps it is possible that a Soulless can bear a supernatural person’s child.

C.) Since he’s without supernatural powers when they touch…and for pregnancy producing sex they had, they touched…soooooooo?

D.) That if it was someone else that caused the pregnancy, MAYBE, it happened without her consent? Real supportive there! I mean at the beginning of this book his bff Channing seemed pretty primed to rape her. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

Like he didn’t consider any of these options for a half fucking second. And instead just drops his pregnant wife like a sack of shit, to presumably raise a child on her own with only the help of the family that Maccon knows treats Alexia shitty. Violently tore apart your great granddaughter and abandoned your unborn child on the same day. IT’S NOT EVERY DAY WHERE YOU’RE BOTH THE SHITTEST DAD AND SHITTEST GREAT GRANDDAD!

Trying to have any sympathy for Maccon here is really undercut by the fact that Alexia bragged about being flirted with by a woman, just last chapter, and his inept jealous rage was played for laughs. If we’re really trying to drive home the HURT Maccon must by the betrayal of cheating…maybe don’t poke fun of the possibility 10 pages ago?

Unlike a lot of similarly styled stories, I suppose it makes a modicum of sense that he fears she may have cheated though. She’s literally spite-flirted before when she was mad at Maccon. I.E with MacDougall last book. She flirted with LeFoux throughout this book, not out of spite, but maybe out of ignorance cause she didn’t know two women could like kiss or whatever GOD. She also was asking leading sexual questions regarding that pretty bag of dicks, Channing.

So at least she hadn’t shown 0 behaviors beforehand and he’s utterly convinced she’d drop him like a hot potato as soon as a another pretty face roamed into frame.

But I will say I am just not looking forward to how easily he’s going to be forgiven next book.

Say something nice Faps:

Legit good cliffhanger. Color me pleasantly surprised.

Run away with LeFoux and raise your kids together.

Just kidding LeFoux is way too good for you.

#gorlmess #changless #riffing

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thegloober · 6 years ago

Text

HBO’s Comedy Series Camping is an Unpleasant Trip

by Allison Shoemaker

October 12, 2018 |

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The world of fiction boasts a long, proud history of stories of deeply unpleasant people you somehow care about, in spite of that visceral unpleasantness. (Mostly, they’re men.) These stories can be wearying, but when they’re good, they’re also rewarding. We recognize in these people the nastiest, ugliest corners of ourselves; we also recognize their, and our, humanity. We cringe, we laugh, and sometimes, we’re better for it. It’s like magic. If only “Camping” could manage such a trick. But hey, at least it pulls off the unpleasantness.

The last joint project from Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner (“Girls”), who announced the end of their writing partnership this summer, “Camping” is an American take of the British series of the same name, which was created by Julia Davis. It centers on a group of what one might be tempted to call friends, but which could more accurately be described as a loose collection of people who know each other, most of whom like at least a few people the people there and can barely tolerate others. They’ve come to celebrate Walt’s (David Tennant) birthday, a weekend-long event organized by his peevish, abrasive, and overzealous wife Catherine (Jennifer Garner, working extremely hard). Among them: Nina-Joy (Janicza Bravo), whose tension with Catherine threatens to capsize the weekend from moment one, and her husband George (Brett Gelman); Catherine’s tentative sister Carleen (Ione Skye), her boyfriend Joe (Chris Sullivan), who left his A.A. 30-day chip as a tip at a diner, and his teenage daughter Sol (Cheyenne Haynes); and Miguel (Arturo Del Puerto), whose recent separation from his wife makes the others believe he won’t show. But show he does, bringing a force of chaos in his wake: Jandice (Juliette Lewis), a DJing, reiki-practicing, pill-dispensing notary who some would call a free spirit and others would call unhinged. The weekend, unsurprisingly, goes badly.

It’s not that unpleasant people who treat those around them like garbage can’t be great TV. “Mad Men” comes to mind. So does “Girls,” for that matter. The problem with “Camping” is not that Catherine, Jandice, and company—but especially Catherine and Jandice—are people with whom you’d never in a million years want to share a campsite. No, the issue is that they’re not really people. For every glimmer of humanity or odd moment of self-recognition, there are 10 that bear no resemblance to reality without so much as a glimmer of the engagingly absurd. They are sketches, and they’re not entertaining ones; they say things that might be funny, if a human being said them, but as lines delivered by the caricature of a really disagreeable person, they’re just off-putting.

Nowhere is this a bigger problem than with Catherine, played with admirable but uneffective gusto by Garner. It would be easy to say that she was simply miscast as Catherine, a bitter, manipulative, painfully un-self-aware woman seemingly incapable of casual pleasant interactions. And admittedly, it’s not a perfect fit—”off-putting” is perhaps more in Garner’s wheelhouse than “loathsome.” But there are glimmers throughout the four episodes screened for critics of what might have been, had the writing for those episodes presented her with anything coherent to play. A scene in an emergency room in which a spiraling Catherine tells her young son Orvis (Duncan Joiner) that it’s possible to look fine but feel terrible plays simply and beautifully, a moment of recognizably human conversation that’s so welcome that viewers, if they’re anything like me, will drink it in as greedily as if it were an ice-cold beer on a very hot day in the middle of an interminable camping trip with some incredibly lousy people.

There are similar moments, some quiet, and hard to watch—she’s especially good with Tennant, who we’ll return to in a moment—but they’re depressingly rare. The rest is all blitzing through paragraphs about Instagram followers and detailed schedules and chronic pain and pelvic floors and near-constant assertions that everyone around her is constantly ruining her life, at every moment. When one line would get the point across—“Checking in, eight adults one child four nights at the Groupon rate,” in one breath, to the campground’s bemused proprietor (Bridget Everett)—there are usually four, and at least half are gruesomely on the nose. On “Alias,” Garner successfully sold the Rambaldi mythology, which involved Da Vinci and big red floating balls of goo. She got four Emmy nominations for that show. She can’t even kind of make this junk work.

Others fare better. The only remotely shaky thing about Tennant’s performance is his often comically thick American accent; in all other respects, he carefully crafts a portrayal of a loving, supportive man who is just about at the end of his gosh-darned rope and completely unsure of how to handle that. As the similarly put-upon Nina-Joy, Bravo gets to play something like the straight man, but instead of being the solid wall off which jokes can bounce, she’s the reasonably sane, clear-eyed person who reaffirms that yes, this is all crazy. She does it all with appealing reserve and emotional resonance. The same is true of Chris Sullivan’s Joe, who imbues his spiraling jackass with enough vulnerability and self-loathing to avoid making him another loathsome object. And while there’s nothing subtle about it, Lewis’ turn as the wild Jandice is so damned entertaining that it’s hard not to hunger for more. She’s occasionally funny, bless the Lord, but more importantly, she’s a force, an energy. Jandice enters the frame and things change.

“Camping” seemingly never stops, never shuts up, and yet somehow it still takes a good long while before it seems to be getting anywhere. Yet paradoxically, the slowest moments are the ones in which the best of the series seems to emerge. It’s not just that the acting is best in those quiet moments. When the characters take a breath, a real sense of place seeps in between the sentences. Directors Konner, John Riggi, and Wendey Stanzler—the last of whom directed the “Parks and Recreation” episode “Flu Season,” one of the best sitcom outings of the century so far—each evocatively capture the vast, dark, loud-quietness of a campground after dark, while Stanzler in particular makes every beige tent feel insanely cramped and small. In the former case, the cameras wander down paths, creeping up on the characters or catching sight of them from a distance. In the latter, it’s always crammed in somehow, one more unwelcome presence in a space that’s way too small to contain such uncomfortable people.

It’s effective stuff, but perhaps too effective at times. “Camping” traps eight adults, two children, in a campground at the Groupon rate for a weekend from hell. On such weekends, every day is too long, every irritation heightened. It’s not a good state in which to live, but it could be ripe material for comedy, or for good storytelling. What you’re given here is a camping trip you’d never want to take, with people you’d never like to meet, doing things you’re almost embarrassed to watch. With all that discomfort, there may not be much to stop audiences from packing up their shit and moving on.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years ago

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HBO's Comedy Series Camping is an Unpleasant Trip

Nowhere is this a bigger problem than with Catherine, played with admirable but uneffective gusto by Garner. It would be easy to say that she was simply miscast as Catherine, a bitter, manipulative, painfully un-self-aware woman seemingly incapable of casual pleasant interactions. And admittedly, it’s not a perfect fit—"off-putting" is perhaps more in Garner’s wheelhouse than “loathsome.” But there are glimmers throughout the four episodes screened for critics of what might have been, had the writing for those episodes presented her with anything coherent to play. A scene in an emergency room in which a spiraling Catherine tells her young son Orvis (Duncan Joiner) that it’s possible to look fine but feel terrible plays simply and beautifully, a moment of recognizably human conversation that’s so welcome that viewers, if they’re anything like me, will drink it in as greedily as if it were an ice-cold beer on a very hot day in the middle of an interminable camping trip with some incredibly lousy people.

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