#it really reimagines what a 'hero' is suppose to be

[firelise]

Stop feeding that dog. It's just going to keep coming back, expecting more. It just gives her hope. // [News: Baba Shakti today held a public prayer for victims of the ongoing land disputes, advocating that violence is never the answer.]

MONKEY MAN (2024)

[theflashjaygarrick]

So you've heard about the DC Absolute Universe and you're wondering what it is all about.

While details about Absolute DC is still coming out, I decided it might be useful to make a breakdown of what we know so far (mostly from SDCC).

DC Absolute Universe Breakdown:

The Absolute universe is a new alternate universe influenced by Darkseid energy. It is a 'darker' universe where all the heroes have lost something key to their Earth 0 selves which leaves them as underdogs. While separate to the main universe it will link in through the events of the All In initiative. There doesn't seem to be many superhero teams yet, but a lot of iconic heroes have had their own solo series' announced:

Absolute Batman (By Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta):

The series brave enough to ask...what if Batman was an absolute unit. This is a Batman with no money and no status as the Prince of Gotham. Instead he is a construction worker and city engineer who has turned himself and his costume into an absolute weapon. He has an adorable French Bulldog and is also apparently blonde.

This Bruce Wayne never had a butler but there still is an Alfred in the Absolute Universe: Alfred "Penny", the grizzled and tired MI-6 spy. They seemingly meet for the first time when Bruce has already began his caped crusade against crime (and the series' confirmed big bad Black Mask)

Bonus: The Jim Lee variant cover gives us a better look at his costume's armoured texture and one of his weapons. He's seemingly more of a heavy hitter than the Batman we know.

Absolute Wonder Woman (By Kelley Thompson and Hayden Sherman):

This Wonder Woman was raised not in Paradise Island but rather in The Underworld. She has no sisters and no quest for peace. Instead she is the last of the Amazons who becomes a warrior and a witch, and eventually the Absolute Universe's first superhero. She is more heavily armed, carries a massive sword, and flies around on a skeletal pegasus made of iron.

Unlike her Earth counterpart who is notable for not wearing a mask, this Wonder Woman seemingly has two, including a rather demonic looking helmet. Also, her colour scheme is based less on the American flag and more on the idea of lava under rocks.

She also has a Jim Lee variant cover which suggests she also will have a lasso.

Absolute Superman (By Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval):

Superman is the member of the trinity we know the least about. He is supposed to be more alien (suggested by his glowing red arms and the fact the cape seems to be made of pure energy) and according to the solicitation is "Without the fortress... without the family... without a home" but honestly we don't know much more.

We do have some cool art though (including another Jim Lee Variant):

Absolute Green Lantern (By Al Ewing and Jahnoy Linsday)

Absolute Green Lantern is a "first contact" story and "reimagining" of the Green Lantern mythos featuring Jo Mullein, Hal Jordan, and John Stewart. We have some cool concept art of it including a redesign of Jo that suggests the lanterns might be in civilian clothing illuminated green.

Absolute Flash (By Jeff Lemire and Nick Robles)

This is the book we know the least about. All we really can infer apart from the creative team is that the Flash is presumably Wally West and that he appears to be more tortured character than in most other iterations.

(Shout out to Bleeding Cool for posting photos of the SDCC slides for people who weren't there)

[yournewlodger]

I think the self-built criminal empire "drag yourself up by the bootstraps" ification of Oswald Cobblepot is indicative of a larger problem with Batman that refuses to address that hey, maybe billionaire politicians who hoard all the wealth with a refusal to relate to or in any way help the less fortunate, are bad maybe. Like of course the Penguin is a self-made criminal immigrant mob boss, because these days you can only be a Batman villain if you are 1.) Mentally Ill or 2.) An Immigrant. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with characters being immigrants. Before you say "how dare you piss on the poor" please understand I'm talking about intent when you see these characters always presented as villains.

And I'm all for reimagining characters for the modern lens, and I fully understand the inherent problematic nature of a character like The Penguin, and maybe I will be Bobo the Fool when The Penguin (the show) comes out, but I think reframing the Penguin as something out of The Godfather severely misses the point. Not only because never more have I wanted superhero media to critique billionaire criminal politicians running for public office (historically, the Penguin's whole bit), but because we don't need the Penguin to be something out of The Godfather. We have someone for that already. And clearly they know that. Because his name is Carmine Falcone.

I think that this notion that the only crime in Gotham City has to be drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism severely misunderstands the inherent whimsical nature of superheroes, and historically the Penguin. I mean we are circlejerking into infinity a self-hatred in superhero media. His name isn't even Oswald Cobblepot anymore. When's the last time the Penguin had an umbrella?

And here's the thing. I like Gotham (2014 - 2019). I do. But that universe at least understood that the Penguin is aesthetically ridiculous. Try as they may to present him as a threat, but he will always be a guy who calls himself Penguin.

I do think this problem started with Batman Returns. I'm not here explicitly to critique that version of the Penguin, but I do think it's where we began to lose the plot. Because once again the Penguin is presented as an underdog, a minority, an outcast. And again I ask you to think about intent when the Penguin is a villain and Batman is not. But that movie had Max Shreck to balance it out. What do we have now?

They are so, so allergic to presenting the rich as villains, because they'd be calling themselves out. Because calling the Penguin what he is, a cartoonish portrayal of a wealthy Gilded Age capitalist who preys on the less fortunate to further and further elevate his own wealth, doesn't align with their messaging, which is "billionaires are so awesome, and more importantly, infallible." The Penguin is meant to be an antithesis to Bruce Wayne, who is also generationally wealthy, but most importantly a philanthropist. Bruce Wayne is supposed to be someone who dedicates all he has to making Gotham City a better place, which also includes helping reform Gotham’s villains. But these days we see a man who more and more seems less like a hero, and more like a Penguin. Because if Bruce Wayne cared about Gotham City, really cared, beating every one of his villains to a pulp, just shy of his "no kill" quota, would be less of his focus. I mean how does a man with near unlimited resources allow institutions like Arkham Asylum to exist, let alone send his bad guys there?

And yeah, I know. The answer is the Batman mythos has turned it into The Good Place. His world is too complicated to do any real good. And yes, I know, it mirrors our world too. But why is it that the people who are pointing out that corruption, these We Live In A Society types, the villains? Why are they always the one presented as "insane" for pointing out what's right in front of them? And when's the last time Bruce Wayne did charity work, anyway? Tell me, who are we supposed to be rooting for in the end?

Anyway, the summary is this: The Penguin isn't a Capitalist anymore. The Penguin isn't even a Cobblepot anymore. Who is he? Because he isn't the Fine Feathered Fink I know. And we all know why. And personally, I'm sick of it.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #46 Lone Women by Victor LaValle

I was first introduced to LaValle with The Ballad of Black Tom, which is still for my money one of the best of last decade's crop of Lovecraft reimaginings/deconstructions/whatevers and has earned him a great deal of loyalty from me. Lone Women does not really live up to those heights, at least past the first act (or, better put, the thing it does isn’t what I was hoping it would), but the first act really is excellent and it does accomplish what it’s trying to with admirable skill.

The book follows Adelaide Henry, the child of homesteaders in one of the few areas of California where black people were allowed to homestead. She leaves behind a burning farmhouse with her parents corpses still inside, running away from the ruins of her life with a charmingly literal steamer trunk of her unresolved baggage that only she seems capable of lifting without help and which must never be opened or unlocked lest what’s inside get out.

The actual meat of the story is her settling into a new life in Montana, where a broadly worded law allows unaccompanied women to claim a homestead in their own right if they hold and work it for three years. With only an incredibly optimistic marketing brochure to guide her, she just about starves and freezes to death a few times over before beginning to make the connections she needs to stay alive (Montana in 1915 being so short on black people that no one really bothers to organize or make an identity around hating her on principle). From there, it’s a matter of enjoying the eerie atmosphere and waiting for the other shoe to drop (in this case supplied by a family of bandits) and see how quickly everything goes to shit from there.

This is a well-written book, but one where I struggle with whether to properly call it horror. The first act is, certainly – the portrayal of prairie life and the looming darkness in Adelaide’s past are both excellent, the sense of uncanniness and of building tension as you see her make friends and wait for something to inevitably go wrong are both absolutely excellent. It’s only in the third act, when the monster turns out to be a poor, abused child who only needs to be offered a hand, and the marginalized and outcast join together to build a happy new life for themselves outside the remit of the almanacs or history books, that it feels like a genre boundary was jumped along the way. I have a sort of principled opposition to conceptions of horror where the unstoppable preternatural monster is on the side of good and the townsfolk with their nooses and pitchforks are both evil and never had a chance to begin with.

The book’s afterward mentions that LaValle went back and forth on whether any of the heroes should die in the climax or whether there should be some sort of taint or tragedy to it, but decided that what was needed in today’s climate was an uplifting tale of the ‘lone women’ banding together and triumphing against society - I suppose I just have fundamental philosophical issues with that whole train of logic (or, at least, empirical issues with the idea that that niche is not already served).

It’s incredibly interesting to compare this to The Changeling, LaValle’s last book. Both are notionally horror stories centred around children that are ‘wrong’ and in some sense monstrous, and both are impossible to really understand thematically without the context of post-2016 American politics. Of course, in Changeling the child really has been stolen and replaced with a monster, and the whole thing is told from the father’s perspective (and quite sympathetically), whereas in Women the child was turned into a monster only by the abuse of her parents, and is eminently redeemable from the efforts (and told from the perspective of) her sister. Which is far more thematically agreeable to me, for obvious reasons, but imo does make for rather less compelling horror.

It’s interesting, as well, that Changeling is by far the more heavy-handed and explicit about its politics (to a degree that stood out even in the rather elevated environment of Trump-era genre fiction), but also felt far more personal to and a vessel for working out the preoccupations and insecurities of the author. This, meanwhile, felt like he wanted to do something with the fun rabbit hole of historical trivia he fell into and the actual story came out after – and so was very informed by a sense of what sort of story should be written in These Unprecedented Times.

The historical trivia is absolutely great, though. LaValle really captures a sense of actually living in a desolate frontier, and of the little bits and pieces of interaction and connection that made life livable in such a town. The afterword was at least half just lists of research materials, and he makes most of them sound genuinely interesting.

[goodlucktai]

tagged by @bobtheacorn like...... 3 weeks ago 😭 my bad

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

283

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,353,670

which seems.......excessive

3. What fandoms do you write for?

actively, one piece and tmnt, but that is ruled by the demons in my brain that control the hyperfixation machine.

fandoms ive posted 3 or more fics for:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends Good Omens Final Fantasy XV Undertale Mumintroll | Moomins Series Harry Potter Young Justice 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia 陈情令 | The Untamed King Falls AM Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rise of the Guardians Voltron: Legendary Defender

4. Top five fics by kudos?

Exclusivity - 11,116

walk straight through hell with a smile - 9,152

Inanition - 9,039

there is thunder in our hearts - 8,161

trouble is a friend of mine - 7,842

5. Do you respond to comments?

i do try to but i can't always :'( and i feel terrible if i manage to reply to most and then forget someone and only realize it months later. but i read every single comment and i appreciate them more than i have words for

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i tend to veer away from angst, but off the top of my head....

where the good men go or if i go i'm going on fire

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

99% of my fics have a happy ending because thats my BRAND but i suppose give me something that'll haunt me when you're not around or the weekend we were in love OR put your empty hands in mine

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not often, but i recently had someone who REALLY disliked the way things change because i 'villainized' raph. which is definitely news to me, since raphael is the love of my life

9. Do you write smut?

nope

10. Craziest crossover?

i wrote a tmnt/one piece crossover once ? but now that we are actually getting a tmnt/naruto idw run it doesnt feel that weird to me anymore

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

only once if i'm remembering right ?? it was a long time ago and wattpad related, which is a site that i dont really understand and therefore tend to avoid

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes ! i'll often have people request to translate my stories and it blows me away every time

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Devil took your hand was written by myself and @moogsthewriter

14. All time favourite ship?

ineffable husbands, wangxian, or leosagi

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

how much time do you have 😭

16. What are your writing strengths?

i want to say characterization and narrative voice. i'm also pretty good at maintaining a throughline, even if it sometimes gets a little wobbly

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

conflict ! i hate it ! i will avoid writing it at all costs ! i also tend to struggle with writing fight scenes, especially when there are several characters involved :') staging any kind of choreography is my opp

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

i try not to but if it feels unavoidable i google the heck out of it

19. First fandom you wrote in?

honestly it was either digimon (which also inspired my og penname) or xiaolin showdown lol

20. Favourite fic you've written?

i'm stealing bob's idea and going top 5:

there is thunder in our hearts - this story came together so easily for me, like i knew exactly how i wanted to tell it from start to finish

the only hoax i believe in - a kfam fic in my top 5s why yes and i'll tell you why. because i poured so much of myself into this fic that they could probably read it at my funeral instead of a eulogy

traveling so far to get there - after party au raph and mikey continue to take up so much real estate in my brain and for what

now the darkness comes alive - this one is more recent but im so happy with the way it turned out :')

if we could stay all day in the sun - it was a lot of fun reimagining one of my favorite fairy tales and doing a bunch of unnecessary research for this story i will stand by it until the day i die !!

i'm tagging @mykimouser, @owletstarlet, @portgas-d-aroace, @mad4turtles, @camsthisky, @remedyturtles, @pickledcarrotsandradish, @swordsmans, @mangogreent, and anyone else who wants to !

[gaypyro]

Rating the New Champions Variant Covers

So marvel recently revealed a bunch of Varient Covers of "What if every hero had a sidekick/youth counterpart" and while I love most of the designs, some definately are better then others

#22

I hate the Vision Design and I dont know why. Something just feels fundamentally off about it/ Maybe its the fact its a pitch white, skintight 8 year old? Maybe its the posing? The Debris? IDK Man is feels weird.

#21

and

#20

These two get paired together for a single reason

It's just Billy and Teddy. I love Billy and Teddy, their some of the only actual Gay Men in Marvel, but come one guys. Certainly you can do a young Dr. Strange and Young Hulk thats different? Strange goes higher if only because I like the art more, the Young Hulk I just dislike entirely

#19

Speaking of uninspired, the only reason Miles is above Billy & Teddy is that at least shes a different gender then her mainline counterpart. Other then that its probably the laziest design here. Also, you may notice the webbing seems off, that will be a recurring trend here where limbs or background elements were layered improperly or something.

#18

I actually really like this character design. It looks like a fun character in a superhero elementry school spin-off book. The only issue um... thats Storm. Its the next gen Storm and she's white. That's basically my only issue, and why shes above the 3 I actively somewhat dislike designwise, but... Storm is one the premiere Black Superheros. Having her next gen counterpart be white feels so weird. I

#17

On one hand, I can 100% see normal Deadpool wearing this. On the other, the My Boy adds way to much charm for me to rate it with the other uninspired ones, and at least I dont feel like its whitewashing anything. We are at the point where I'd unironically love to see any of these designs in a book, even if its an Elseworld instead of main universe one.

#16

Teen Female Wolverine has been done to death, but I do like how this one goes for a more monstrous Angle compared to Laura and Gabby. The tattered, beast up costumes, beastial feet, large Ponytail giving off the deelling of a mane, nasty looking teeth, and BONE CLAWS very much makes it feel more like a feral forest mutant then the more clean, assassin design Laura had.

#15

The big thing I like here is it isn't a reimagining of Carol Danvers current, captain marvel outfit, but her Miss Marvel ones. We already have Kamala for a new gen version of Carols current design, so a reimigining of the old one, in a way that doesn't feel super fetishy is nice. First I thought it was a dude, but it might be a girl? Unsure.

#14

I really love this design, but it doesn't really scream Black Panther... and I honestly dont care. I love bright colors, makes my brain go byr, and the fact she has a completely different powerset most likely intrigues me.

#13

I have a weakness for fishpeople of all types ok? I find the designs naturally appealing. Even still, Starlord's Chibi Starfish Successor is neat, but not amazing. The ideas done a lot better later on.

#12

He looks like he is having so much fun with his Mentor. I also like how, unlike everyone else, Black Cat's Apprentice is kinda chubby. I don't know man he just seems like he'd be a fun guy to hang out with at college.

#11

Whats better then a succesor to one hero? a Succesor to TWO HEROES! The Captain America Succesor I feel very much has some elements of Wasp design, and I always am down for High Tech Wingspans even if they weren't intentionally going for it.

#10

Instead of being the Scarlet witch they made her the Magenta Witch. All in all I just really like the sorta sorceror design, especially the chosen color scheme. Also ghostly mystical fire is fun you should follow it into the swamp.

#9

Listen I love this design. Its in the top 10 for a reason but man... that arm. Every time I see the image I cant help but notice how insanely small his arm is, like he was supposed to have both arms resting but they decided "Have him twirl a stake so people know its blade."

#8

Moon Squire is here to kick ass and pass third grade math! I just like the Cowl mixed with baseball cap design lol. Moon Knight always fucking kills it with the drip though so im not surprised.

#7

A Friend told me It's Gwen Tennyson cosplaying Magneto and now I cant not see it. I do like that shes implied to have a different powerset then Eric as well, always fun when they did that.

#6

The better Chibi Venom. Only missed the top 5 since I dont think he'd be able to carry a book as the main protag, he is the perfect sidekick though. Just this mildly creepy cutie pootie handing with the fairly creepy Symbiote. After Extreme Venomverse shouldn't be surprised the Venom varient is amazing, but I am suprised thats the direction they went.

#5

If Next Gen Storm and Next Gen Moon Knight are in the Elementary School book, Wee-Hulk is the main god damn character. She's just a very fun little kid hulk, I especially love how shes doing the Iconic "She-Hulk holds a Car Above her head" pose with an electric scooter.

#4

Listen, Non-Binery Latin America Iron Man with the Criminally Underused Grey Armor design is great. They gpt Green Hair, Pronouns, and the backing of Americas #1 Arms Dealer, ready to take on the world!

#3

The Thing has become one of them Yancy Street Kids, and the Fantastic Four are his gang. I just love the design, Spiky Rock person is always a favorite of mine.

#2

Miku Ghost Rider. On Roller Skates. With a fucking Hellfire Flail. I am imagining she has an entire like, Magical Girl Transformation Sequence whenever she transforms, just with a lot more demons and fire then normal.

#1

Listen, I get it. Legs dont bend like that. She is objectively less creative then the last 3 or 4. But, I like Crows. I like Ravens. I like Thor. And this Thor looks like she wont take any of Odins BS when he goes shit dad mode.

[paragonrobits]

today's random writing thought i will try to clarify later: efficiency is, in terms of power sets and general actions, kind of a villain thing

power sets and efficiency is like... villain powers are supposed to be intimidating or present a tough challenge. lots of great hero powers are either tool kits or have a lot of draw backs or limitations, which don't apply to villains. their powers work well with few drawbacks, making them much more fearsome threats even if they're actually weaker. consider the Dragon-Blooded in Exalted, especially in earlier editions, where they were a default antagonist; while weaker than the assumed Celestial Exalts, their powers have usually been established as far more efficient and as such are REALLY DAMN SCARY when the elite Water Aspect keeps no-selling all your attacks as your power pool gets drained, swiftly and brutally taking you down

efficiency as villain BEHAVIOR is like... heroes generally are not efficient because its more dramatic, or for character reasons. Batman doesn't just kill the Joker because he fears what he'll become if he does it for ANY reason no matter how justified, or because a hero CANNOT cross a line, but narratively its because that kind of simple answer ends up being 'well that's kinda boring', its too simple and not that interesting. Villains can be much more efficient and go for a ruthless 'do thing A to achieve goal A, no matter the consequences' and that makes them terrifying to deal with, or a dire threat to halt before they follow through

this might also line up with my growing dislike of rational fic (stories where a character is written, or in fanfic reimagined) to be highly efficieent and logical min-maxers; often they wind up being VERY morally dubious or even outright assholes, even when it doesn't really accomplish anything. they tend to be quite villain-coded to my eyes so it might be worthwhile analyzing it

[haljathefangirlcat]

Sometimes I wonder if Walther of Aquitaine is the one hero from the Nibelung/Volsung/Dietrich Cycle to have to most number of brain cells. He clearly gets the heck out of dodge when he can, and then afterwards refuses to be pulled into anymore slapfights. He and Dietrich are the only heroes from that cycle of myths to have happy endings (if you call becoming an immortal Wild Huntsman a happy ending) off the top of my head.

If you had to do a modern AU, would Walther be the one friend constantly facepalming at his buddies' antics?

Well... the only particularly extra thing I can recall about Walther right now is that one version of the story of his fight against Hagen where he throws the bone of a boar he and Hildegund had just been eating at Hagen. But I suppose that's more being good at thinking on his feet even when startled than being a drama queen, lol. There's also the final dialogue between him and Hagen in the Waltharius, I guess, but that's more a "you're probably not that normal if you're so chill about this" kind of thing. All in all, Walther does seem fairly level-headed and sensible by heroic standards. Whenever I think of Modern!AU scenarios for these characters, I like to imagine Walther and Hildegund as a rather reserved and lowkey couple, looking at all the drama going on around them and shaking their heads while sighing in relief that they're not involved.

However, especially in those scenarios, I also like to think they both have their dramatic and even petty sides. Walther has a few rather iconic lines in the Waltharius (my faves are -- not the exact quote from memory, mostly because I have a rather shitty memory, lol -- "Christ's thorn, you sprout such pricking foliage" and "you dance and jest, but when will you fight me?", both aimed at Hagen) and his attitude towards Gunther, no matter how justified, frankly cracks me up, so I do like imagine him as a rather sarcastic person and one who will hold a grudge if provoked enough. Which makes having him and Gunther occasionally be forced to interact as friends (or boyfriends...) of Hagen who can't stand each other in my little Modern!AU fantasies honestly hilarious. Plus, I also like to reimagine the allusions to the Aeneid in his relationship with Hildegund in the Waltharius, especially those in that scene where Hildegund thinks he's going to marry a Hunnish girl and is upset with him, as both of them having a genuine love for the Classics and bringing that into their admittedly rare fights. Often while Hagen watches on like "I've known you for years and I still don't know what's wrong with you guys."

As for Dietrich... this is ofc outside of Germanic heroic shenanigans, but did you know there's also a Latin story where the Devil himself turns into a black horse, lures him on his back, and then rides off into Mount Etna, which is conveniently a secret entrance to Hell itself? It's a bit like how Etzel's generally a good guy in continental sources but Atli's an asshole in Norse ones, imo. And I guess that's not really relevant to the conversation, but sorry, Dietrich is just so Extra about everything including his death, no matter what tradition you're looking at, and I kinda love talking about it. XD

[bloodyshadow1]

just some negatives and nitpicks about Scott Pilgrim takes off. The show is still great, but I need to get these out of my head to enjoy the show fully. It's just a me thing. Ignore if you're not interested, but if you're curious you're welcome to look under the read more

First off, I know the limits of what they had, they only had 8 eps, that's all they could do, but I'm still going to complain about somethings that couldn't really be changed in that regard.

I think the other members of Sex-bob-omb were underutilized. I completely understand why, but I feel liek they moved on from Scott's death really quickly and it would have been nice to see them team up with Ramona throughout the series instead of just the second half,

I think some of the evil ex's, at least Roxie and Lucas, were underutilized too. Roxie and Lucas were the only members of the league who I have sympathy for and they are the only ones that seem like they got real closure with her. I know Lucas shows up in the episode where he becomes Gideon/Gordon's bro, but Roxie disappears until the climax. I think the two of them should have stayed and maybe helped with Ramona's quest to find Scott as part of their stories. They just kinda get closure and go. Having them turn around and actively help Ramona is different than just moving on.

Which leads me to my next negative, we still don't really see the relationships between members of the league which I think is a shame. I get that they're not friends, barely even allies, but still, if you're going to reimagine the story, why not delve deeper into the relationships between the ex's. we know Lucas and Todd don't like each other since Lucas became an ex because Ramona left him for Todd, but that's it. Gideon and Lucas' bonding moments in the show were some of the best, and it would have been nice to see more interactions even if they're negative. They just kind of see Gideon get deposed by Matthew and then barely even interact. There's not any interaction in the comics either, I just think it's a waste

Even though it's set up for Ramona to get closure with her exes while investigating them for Scott's disappearance but she really doesn't. Gideon is deposed and moves on with Julie, Matthew took the rejection as well as you would expect but moves on by running the company he took from Gideon and finally becoming a theater star, Todd moves on from Ramona to obsessing over Wallace and is more depressed over getting dumped than he ever seemed to be with Ramona, and Scott comes back before she even investigates the brothers. I'm not sure if she even has a conversation with the brothers, they just move on because of future knowledge and that's it. I really liked how she was able to heal with Roxie and Lucas to the point of wanting more, while the others are just suspects if that and then she leaves them. and it just feels like a waste

Wallace... he just seemed to be a one note character in the series and that note is just about every mean gay man stereotype. He gets around, which isn't an issue since he's like that in the comic too, but his fling with Todd just seems unnecessarily mean and he doesn't communicate what it is until he dumps him. He's supposed to be snarky and sassy, but still a decent friend to Scott helping more often than not. In the anime, he's just mean and bitchy and it just felt unnecessary to me. Every one of Scott's friends moved on really quickly after his 'death' but Wallace felt more like Julie instead of himself.

Scott never really goes through the character development that he does in the comics. I have my criticisms about Scott as a character, but the one big important part of the series is him realizing he's a dick, that he's the hero in his own mind, and needs to grow up. He doesn't do that in the anime, sure he still fights and evil alternate version of himself, but he still doesn't really wake up to his own flaws, as much see the flaws in his future self. Which I can kind of get behind, but it still doesn't make much sense that he gets together with Ramona at the end.

this is the only one that I think is really controversial, but I still don't care about the relationship between Ramona and Scott. I understand that it's built into the DNA of the series and the franchise as a whole, but I still don't care.

Little nitpick to end on, but the sparks are a lazy way of writing and if they were in the original comic I would still feel the same way. They seem to be used as a signifiyer of true love, which is lazy writing in it's own way. Relationships are about growing and learning from and about each other. there's no reason to place such a significance on a first kiss. Yes I understand they're a metaphor for the spark you feel when you meet someone for the the first time, or kiss someone for the first time, but in real life that feeling will actually lead you astray and making it something concrete in universe just seems like weak writing to me.

I always seem to have more negatives to say about the shows I like than positives, but it's mostly because I think about the positives more while, the negatives are things that I kind of wish I could wish away or change for the better. Still, Scott Pilgrim takes off is awesome and again, highly recommend it

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

RICHARD RANKIN

Antonia Kuenzel 15th May 2024

From starring in The Tragedy of Macbeth alongside Saoirse Ronan to numerous BBC One dramas, as well as the hugely popular Amazon Prime series Outlander, Scottish actor Richard Rankin already has a huge film and series catalogue under his belt. Now, he can be seen in the titular role of John Rebus in the new BBC crime drama REBUS, which is a modernised adaptation of Ian Rankin’s best-selling novel. Set in Edinburgh, the six-part series showcases John as a younger character than he is in the books, and soon, he gets himself into quite a lot of criminal conflict.

In an interview with Principle, Rankin talks to us about all things REBUS, both the challenges and joys that came with it, how the series differs from the book, and much more.

Let’s talk about REBUS, in which you play the character Rebus as a younger sergeant. First of all, can you tell us more about your character and what initially drew you to the role?

Oh, that’s not an easy question. He’s a longstanding Scottish literary character. He’s quite iconic in Scotland. He’s been appearing in the books for years now. I think there are over 30 books written very beautifully by Ian Rankin and he still has a huge fan base. And there are still quite a lot of fans of the previous iteration of the show, starring Ken Stott, but this is more of a reimagining of the same sort of story, same protagonist but displaced into a modern world and made younger as he said. What attracted me to it is he is a character who is very much at odds with himself. He has a real duality to him. There are very much two sides to [John] Rebus. You see him in his work life, you see him in his personal life, and he can be quite destructive in both. His primary job is to uphold the law. But he doesn’t necessarily get there by conventional means. I think he’s very much of the opinion that if the means meet the end sort of thing, then he will find the best route to that. So I think that there’s something almost of an anti-hero quality to him at times. The dark, gritty side to him, which I think appeals to me as an actor because it’s just something quite inviting, quite exciting about playing a character that’s quite unconventional, kind of off the rails, quite an unpredictable personality. And I quite like that in a character.

Everyone loves a bit of an anti-hero though, right?

I think so! This series completely stands on its own. You don’t need any context. You don’t have to have read any of the books. In fact, we’re in a slightly different world from the books. But I remember filming, not to give any spoilers away, but you know he has some questionable relationships on the show, which made me think as we were playing it, and I kept raising this question, I thought, ‘Aren’t people gonna hate him at points?’ ‘Aren’t people gonna hate Rebus?’ And they constantly assured me, ‘No, they’re gonna be with you, they’re gonna be on your side, they’re gonna understand kind of where he’s coming from, hopefully.’ In terms of that, he’s got this self-destructive nature, you know? He gets it one way. He could take much easier routes but he deliberately makes things harder for himself. He has this very Presbyterian Edinburgh approach to his life. He even mentions that in one of the episodes, he says to Siobhan, ‘You’re in the city of John Knox, Siobhan, life’s supposed to be difficult.’ And I think he kind of believes that. It’s almost like he has this sort of self-loathing, you know? And he needs to jab at it. I feel that with the character, I feel that all the time playing the character and I feel it in the writing – there’s just this antagonistic friction with his own self. Going back to what you’re saying about people loving an anti-hero, I wasn’t sure. I really wasn’t sure when we were filming it. I was like, ‘I think people might hate him. I think people might think he’s an utter twat.’ But, that still might be the case. But you know, it’s exciting to be treading that fine line between a likable character and people absolutely detest but time will tell.

I think overall, they might support the character. There will probably be some scenes where they’ll be like “I bloody hate this guy.” But I guess we’ll find out. So as established, the series is based on the novels. Have you read these at all for your prep or did you read them throughout?

I read some a few years ago, and I read a few in preparation. I think it was Knots and Crosses, which was the first one. I went back and had a bit of a read of that. And then there was Even Dogs in the Wild. So I went through that. And a bit of Heart Full of Headstones. But yeah, so the source material was quite important to me to have an understanding of that and to go back and look at sort of Ian’s original version of the character. But Greg’s written a very different version of the character, kind of, it’s not so much that he’s a different character, it’s just that he’s displaced. So we’re in a contemporary setting in 2023 and the character is younger. So I thought I wanted to go back to the books and have an understanding of Ian’s version of Rebus, but then kind of knit that together with Greg’s version and make them younger which I didn’t think was gonna make that much of a difference, but it does, it brings us a very different character. I think there’s a bit more energy to it. I think there’s more scope, there’s more potential. There’s just feels like there’s more of a danger, more of a threat about him. I think it does a lot of things for the story, modernising it and making him that bit younger. I think that gives us a real frenetic energy. I think that we felt off the top of the first episode and I think that remains there through the whole season.

That sounds amazing. I can totally imagine it gives the character a completely new edge. Though I guess sometimes it can be tricky to find a fine line between making the character your own, when it’s based on books, versus trying to be similar to the novel character. How did you find that?

Yeah, absolutely. 100 percent. It was very important to me to do the character justice. It was very important to me that I had an idea of both of these versions of the character. And I did draw upon a lot of Ian’s writing for my version of Rebus. But the thing is, you can’t force yourself into a character, right? You can look at it and you can see what you can take from it and what you can take ownership of, but I don’t want to force the character because then it’ll just be false and it will lose its sensuality and it won’t have any sort of honesty or integrity. So I only took the parts that would bring a sense of the character for myself. A lot of that was his military background. He’s got a bit of SAS history and background. We’re also bringing him more into his youthful days. So what does it look like if you adjust that? You might have a 50-year-old Rebus where we want to be looking at more like a 30-year-old Rebus, right? So you’re shifting, you’re shifting at sort of a point in his life. So things in the earlier days become more relevant and more pertinent to the story. So I brought a bit more of his sort of military background into it in terms of his demeanor, his physicality, the way he conducts himself, kind of a bit of a psychology. I’m also aware that there is a huge fan base for the books. So I’m aware that there will be expectations from fans who already have an idea of what the character should be. But even when people are reading the book, even though you’ve got 10 million people reading the same book, I guarantee you that all of those people have a different idea of the character. So every one of them will have a different picture in their head, they will read it differently, and they’ll interpret it differently. So there’s no one way to go about it. And it’s not the first time I’ve brought a literary character to the screen. So I’m aware of what comes with that. It’s important to me that I do the character justice and that I’ve got as honest a portrayal as I can.

That’s very true, and you literally can’t please everyone. So with the series being about Rebus being drawn into all sorts of criminal conflict, what was it like shooting the more intense scenes and overall what scenes did you enjoy the most and which scenes did you find the most challenging?

That’s a good question. The thing that I was most aware of was the support of my other castmates. They were so incredibly talented. They brought their A-game every single day and the ownership, the passion and the integrity by which they went about their work was incredible. And that really pushed me. It really, really pushed me. There were times I was on set thinking, I really need to up my game here because these guys are absolutely smashing. And some of the performances were so nuanced, so beautiful. They just brought themselves to it. And some of the more intense scenes brought with them such spontaneous off-the-page moments. I won’t go into them in too much detail because actually some of those moments for me were maybe ironically from episode four onwards and I know you’ve only seen the first three. Just really touching, beautiful, spontaneous moments. And they were always looking for ways to play off the page. They weren’t always necessarily playing prescriptively or what was written for them. They would find all of the subtext and then layer it with their own sort of interpretation of the scene and character in a way that I didn’t even see coming. So that was one of the big driving forces for me was getting to work with such a talented and dedicated cast.

Nothing stands out as being more challenging than the rest. I think because of the way that we set the character up, and early, early, early on in the first episode, we already have an idea of how he functions, how he behaves, and you get an idea of that sort of short fuse that Rebus has, and how violent he can be quite quickly. So later on I don’t have to telegraph that too much. It does me a great service from an acting point of view where I can play everything in a really subtle way and you still get the impression that he might just snap at any given moment without any notice.

A supportive and inspiring team is worth so much, isn’t it? When you wrap up a project, do you actually like to watch it back or do you not want to see yourself? I heard some actors don’t like to watch themselves in a project that they’ve starred in.

I have to be dragged, kicking, and screaming to the Rebus screening. I was trying to get over it actually, but they made me go. Someone made a very good point of it being not so much going to watch yourself, but going to watch all of your castmates. And then when I thought about that, I thought, yeah, that’s true. I absolutely have to go to watch their work. And the only downside to that is I have to watch quite a lot of my own face to do that. But it took me maybe half an hour, an episode, to warm into it, but actually, I really, really enjoyed the whole second episode, and by the time it finished, I wanted to watch more. But I didn’t hah. I just don’t get a lot from watching myself. I just over-analyse what I could have done better. I start to look at things that I might do physically or with my face and I don’t think that serves me any great purpose.

I would be exactly like that. I could never! So now that you’ve wrapped up REBUS, are you working on any other projects like TV, film, or theatre-wise that you can already share?

I’m filming season eight of Outlander at the moment. I can talk about that for days. It’s been running for about 10 years. So this is our last season. The second half of season seven is gonna be out later on this year and then season eight will follow at some point after that. It’s fun to be back on board. We just started about a month ago, so we’ve still got about four or five months to go left of that. And then we’ll wrap that up and then who knows what’s after that. I wouldn’t mind going back and doing a bit of theatre, maybe some new writing or so. There’s a director who’s really killing it in the UK at the moment actually. He’s on Broadway as well, at the West End. Jamie Lloyd is his name. I actually got to know him earlier on in both of our careers and almost did Macbeth with him and James McAvoy. So I would like to have the opportunity to work with him. He’s a huge director now though, he’s much, much bigger than he was at that point. I’ve seen a few of his pieces now and they’ve been excellent. So he seems to have a real knack for bringing back some really well-known plays with some really great actors and giving it his own touch. But other than that, I’d like to maybe do some Shakespeare. I just finished Fall Out. I kinda want to be in that, actually. It’s well worth watching.

Well, let’s speak it into existence. Sounds like you are busy for the foreseeable! Thank you so much for your time. It was great speaking to you.

Rebus will launch on Friday 17 May. All episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer from 6am, with episode one airing on BBC Scotland on Friday 17 May and on BBC One on Saturday 18 May.

Posted 15th May 2024

[jackoshadows]

Unpopular opinion but the people claiming that Sansa is clueless about the poisoning of Robert Arryn because she’s 13 are missing the point. GRRM wasn’t able to do the five year gap but he carried on with his plans. He intended for Arya to be a 16 year old femme fatale who lures men to their deaths (at least in Mercy). He still did that (which we can and should criticise), so we can assume Sansa would still be ordering the maester to put sweetsleep in Robert’s milk at the age of 18.

Sansa is an interesting character in that she knows all these truths that's right in front of her face, and yet deflects and ignores because she selfishly wants her idealistic fantasies to be true. As explained here:

So yes, she knows that Sweetsleep is dangerous to SweetRobin's health. The Maester directly tells this to her. As much as her stans like to obfuscate and write about how Sansa does not have Wikipedia to do research on Sweetsleep (Yes that really is one of the excuses 😂) this is Westeros' version of a doctor who is telling her that this drug is harmful to a sick little boy suffering from epileptic seizures. Sansa is ignoring his warning because as she herself explains in her POV chapter 'Father and I have larger concerns' - like the plot to thwart the lords of the Vale and gain control and power.

In fact Littlefinger lays out his supposed plan to her, step by step, and one of the requisites of that plan - for LF and Sansa to succeed - is SweetRobin's death.

However, having a frail, little boy medically poisoned is not what Sansa's fantasy good people do. It clashes with her ideas of what makes for good people and heroes - beautiful, healthy, noble and titled (For instance she thinks that 8 year old SweetRobin is a coward because he has seizures).

So she reimagines the situation and justifies it in her mind as SweetRobin being totally fine and growing up to marry to marry and having a guard of knights and a grand tourney with an extravagant feast. Just like she blames Arya for Lady's death so that she can marry Joffrey and become Queen.

It maybe that it's SweetRobin's death that finally pushes her to confront the truth. I wish SweetRobin survives and is able to get rid of the LF/Sansa plotting. However, there's just too much stacked against him with only Maester Coleman looking out for his well being. And poor weak willed Coleman is doomed and possibly framed for SweetRobin's death.

[travllingbunny]

So it was quite weird for this person to take that and make it about Misogyny and Incels when that has very little to do with it. plus, in recent years I have seen more female villains receiving this treatment often from female viewers/readers. Characters like Princess Azula, Rei Todoroki, Catra, Harley Quinn, and Heather Chandler receive this in increasingly frequent ways often with the defense that any person who dislikes these characters is a misogynist who hates and opresses women.

(pt 4) It is unfortunately a common thing in many fandoms to do to characters, but lately it often seems that any criticism towards a female character, of groups of women, or even an individual woman. is taken to be misogynistic, born from a hatred and fear of women, and often seems to take the form that every man or even most men are just evil, malicious, people or out to get women, and control and abuse them it's quite frankly ridiculous. and I think its an absurd line of thought that needs to die

Finally to answer parts 3 and 4 of your ask.

Yes, you are right that this is also another phenomenom that's pretty widespread these days. But I don't see how you think that negates what was said about the Draco in Leather Pants trope.

In my first post answeing your asks 1 and 2, I've pointed out why I think this poster was right and that the trope itself is sexist - certainly the way it's described on the TV Tropes page is, and so is, in general, the focus on how silly fangirls are ruining everything by stanning male characters they 'woobify' and find hot - while ignoring the equally widespread idolization / whitewashing of villains like TDK Joker, Walter White, Tywin Lannister etc. by fanboys. And that also the examples on the page show that this trope can also just serve as an excuse for people to rant and complain about the fact that other fans dare like characters they hate.

Fans regardless of gender and sexual orientation (and whether they find the characters attractive or not) tend to whitewash and idealize their favorite characters, but also demonize and oversimplify the characters they hate, too. The main reason for this is people's tendency to want to see every story in black and white terms, as a Heroes vs Villains story, and it gets mixed with today's prevalent idea in pop culture that you can't just like or dislike things, you need to prove that what you like is morally superior, and that the things you dislike are morally bad.

I'm not familiar with the examples you mention, but I've certainly seen it. Sometimes it's worshipping villanous female characters (say, Amy Dunne or Cersei Lannister) who are reimagined by the fandom as girlboss feminists. It feels like the flip side of the phenomenom of fanboys worshipping male villains they admire as badasses, but now with added supposed social justice aspect. It may also be a backlash against the real and blatant misogyny that was very pervasive in fandoms (I remember the time when Sansa, Dany and Catelyn were the most hated characters in the ASOIAF fandom, with people using some... interesting arguments. The one that really got me was how many people in the fandom were hating on a pre-teen girl for not wanting to have sex with a grown man she was forced to marry by her captors who were killing her own famly... because they really liked that male character. )

It might also include the rhetoric based on a certain type of (pseudo-)feminism according to which women are inherently good and perfect and can only be heroes and/or victims, while men are naturally aggressive and abusive etc. This can get hilariously hypocritical: recently a Twitter user went on a rant against fans who like abusive male characters, while being a self-proclaimed stan of Cersei Lannister and Serena Joy.

But it's not like this kind of rhetoric is used just against men (you didn't explicitly say that, but I felt like it was implied in your ask). Women will often throw accusations of misogyny against each other, and women will often show internalized misogyny towards other women in those arguments - and both things will often happen at the same time. This also happens a lot in real life arguments about politics and social issues - especially when people use girlboss feminism to argue that anyone who doesn't support or, god forbid, criticizes their favorite female politician or celebrity, is "misogynistic" and that every criticism of her, no matter how legitimate the reasons are and how little they have to do with gender, are "rooted in misogyny". In the course of that, stans often don't have a problem with mocking, attacking and bullying any number of other (usually less powerful women), and using all sorts of misogynistic insults and assumptions about them.

Now, the tricky thing is that this doesn't mean that hatred or criticism or lack of support for a woman in real life, or a female character, is fully free of misogyny, even if the woman in question is very problematic. It probably always does play a role. Some people - maybe even a lot of people - will really say and do misogynistic things about a woman even when there are perfectly legitimate reasons to criticize her that have nothing to do with gender.

Take a female character like Cersei Lannister as an example. She is a narcissist with internalized misogyny who is abusive towards every woman and girl she had any power over, and is also extremely classist, ableist and racist. While the crimes of the GoT version were downplayed (at least before the season 6 finale), the book version, among other things, is guilty of the murders of many children including a baby, murdered her friend as a child, commits sexual assault, physically and emotionally abused her disabled little brother since his birth (she already abused him as a baby), is guilty of the murder of countless little people (just because she wanted to kill her brother), sends innocent women to be tortured and experimented on, sold a woman into slavery, orders a young boy to be whipped as a way to emotionally abuse her own son.tries to frame her teenage daughter-in-law and get her executed, and the list goes on. But Cersei is also a victim herself, and that's made very clear - of her father using her as a pawn, of her husband King Robert, who used to rape her while drunk and also is physically abusive. She feels generally constrained by her position as a woman. But her takeaways from that are not empathy or support for other women or for any marginalized and oppressed people, but the exact opposite. The complexity about her character is really more about the complexity of our response to her - her horrible behavior and personality makes us hate her, her victimization makes the reader feel pity and empathy, her delusions of grandeur are often hilarious, and there are some times when we may even feel on her side. One of those times is when, after she's done so many horrible things, she doesn't get punished for any of them, but instead gets publicly shamed and humiliated in a really gross and misogynistic way for the 'crime' of having sex outside marriage.

So, is hating Cersei misogynistic? In general, heck no! There are countless excellent reasons to hate her, and anyone who tries to argue that people hating Cersei is by itself misogyny is full of sh1t. But when some people focus not on any of her crimes but call her a wh0re or making fun of the rape and abuse she's suffered or cheer for her husband hitting her - that is misogyny.

It all depends on the type of criticism (or more often hate) - the kind of arguments, or slurs used, or when they are blatantly treated differently than male characters who do similar things. There are also certain things that fandoms are more likely to accuse of or hold female characters than the male characters and vice versa. When fans hate on male characters, you'll typically see them say the character is violent, abuser, rapist, murderer, or, a particularly popular accusation nowadays, "incel" (even if it makes no sense at all). Female characters, on the other hand, will mostly get criticized for their sexual behavior, who they have sex with/whether they have sex (they'll be either slut-shamed, or mocked as frigid women who have never had an orgasm), which male characters they reject, whether they are good mothers (male characters will get far less criticism for being neglectful or straight-up abusive fathers to their own children, while female characters' motherhood will get dissected endlessly), they will be blamed for the actions of men for the way they have supposedly infliuenced / manipulated them (whether or not there's any evidence of that) etc. while, on the other hand, actual violent crimes those or other women may commit might actually get ignored - because a woman committing violence is either unimaginable, funny or girlbossy. and that especially goes for things like rape, sexual abuse or domestic violence (because women are gentle helpless flowers who can never do such things, amirite). Female characters will also get criticized and hated and called a Mary Sue just for basically having the same tropes as male protagonists do all the time: being the Chosen One with some special destiny, being very competent in some area, influencing a lot of people. I've seen pretty much every female protagonst or supporting character who is described as being exceptional in any way as a Mary Sue - while male characters who are all those things to a much higher degree never get that.

So, there's a lot of sexism in fandoms. But there's also a lot of bad fath arguments and blanket accusation of misogyny as a convenient tool in fandom discourse, the same way that you'll inevitably get accused of being homophobic or biphobic jor racist just for not being a stan of certain characters or not shipping certain ships or preferring some ships to others. And again, there is real racism, homophobia, bisephobia, transphobia, misogyny in the fandoms, but fans will also try to use those accusations as a tool to win fandom debates and prove their side of the fandom is the morally right one, and the ones who disagree with them are bad.

I can't help but use the House of the Dragon fandom as an example, because that fandom is a huge toxic mess, with the fandom divided into Team Black and Team Green depending on which faction of the fictional dragonriding royal family fighting a civil war over the throne they like better....and the accusation of misogyny is especially popular. Quite a few of the Team Black stans are taking it to a whole new level by accusing everyone who isn't one of them of misogyny - because if you don't fully and 100% support the side that is trying to put Rhaenyra, a woman, on the throne you must be a misogynist. (Rhaenyra is the protagonist, but the story is very morally grey one without heroes or villains, and if you've read the source material you know just how morally grey it is, and that insisting that people have to root for either side is pretty silly... not to mention that it's all a fictional medieval monrachy, so why would you treat fiction as real life and also why would you then yell at people that they need to supprot hereditary monarchy in general?) The funniest thing is, however, the fact that many of those who are the loudest in those accusations are themselves making extremely misogynistic arguments against female characters on "Team Green", especially Alicent, the other main female character, who's the central charactre on Team Green. Rhaenyra gets some hate that is rooted in misogyny (such as slut-shaming or judging her more harshly than male kings or pretenders to the throne), but there are many more fans who idealize her and ignore or downplay her flaws and mistakes (in the show she's generally portrayed as someone to root for at this point in the story at least, but not as someone who's flawless - but most of the fandom hates nuance!), flattening her as a character in the process. But, since Team Black makes up around 80-90% of the fandom, it's Alicent who gets demonized, so it's much more common to find misogynistic takes about her (downplaying or mocking and making memes of her victimization and every instance of sexual abuse, rape and humiliation she's endured, arguing that she 'seduced' a grown man when she was 14 , trying to reduce her to an 'evil stepmother' trope, hyperfocusing on her as a "bad mother"- while the bad fathers, including her husband, don't get the same treatment, blaming her for the actions of the men around her...). The fandom also bullied both of the actresses who have played her, to the point that one left social media for a while, and the other has publicly spoken about the cyber bullying she was exposed to and how it affected her (and as a result of talking about it, got hated and attacked even more). At the same time, male characters who have done much, much worse and are actually murderers and/or rapists and abusers get whitewashed and adored if they are on the "right" team (even abuse against Rhaenyra gets downplayed if it's committed by a man from Team Black), and even the men on Team Green who have actually commited murder and/or rape are getting less hate than Alicent (and their crimes are often used to reflect on her).

And that's why the HotD fandom is a perfect example showing that many of the people in fandoms who use misogyny (or some other supposedly progressive issue) don't really care about it. It all just comes down to winning a fandom war.

[kiradical]

@badfriendsworsecompany tagged me to list my 10 favorite movies. So here they are!

Anyone who knows anything about me knows this is one of my all time favorite movies ever. It’s so funny and silly but also spooky! Basically me! 😂

And again, if you know me even a little you know this was gonna be here. My whole life I’ve wanted to be Cher (and Elvira) so… this movie is so funny and smart. A great reimagining of a classic Jane Austen book.

Listen, he’s my favorite hero for a reason. This movie is also the reason I know all the words to Salt n Pepa’s Shoop. I’m very glad Ryan Reynolds made sure to make the movie Deadpool as close to comic Deadpool as possible.

“Why the sequel,” I hear you asking. And dear reader I will tell you… it’s because this is the only one we had on laserdisc. Yes, laserdisc. And I didn’t see the first one until I was like 12 and caught it on Comedy Central. I saw this movie when I was WAY too young and it still scares me a little because of it. But that’s why I love it.

I’m sure absolutely no one will be surprised by this one. This is the first movie I saw in theaters and to this day is still my favorite Disney movie. No one can unseat Belle as my princess. And Beast… well let’s just say he imprinted on my psyche. 😂 But really this movie is beautiful and has a soundtrack to match. I listen to it sometimes and sing all the parts.

What can I say except “never give up on the good times?” This movie is CAMP and I love everything about it. I can probably recite it by heart if I tried hard enough. The tape literally lived in my VCR for like a year, just watched it over and over.

I don’t even know what to say. It’s brilliant? It kinda flipped the slasher genre on its head and made everyone else scramble to catch up (and most of em didn’t do it right!). My favorite horror series. Ghostface is bestface? I’m making that a thing.

You can try to tell me either of the other two are better but you’re WRONG. Fellowship lives in my heart. The whole trilogy is so well done and beautifully filmed, but nothing compares to the first. The soundtrack!!! The shire!!! Everyone is briefly happy!!! THE SHIRE!!!!!!!

Literally the only Sofia Coppola movie I’ve seen and enjoyed. And it’s probably mostly the costumes if I’m honest. I love the soundtrack too, but I’ve got a thing for anachronistic music in historical films. Mostly this one is just so pretty to look at. It’s officially what tipped me from “historical costume enjoyer” to “big fat nerd who knows way too much about historical clothing and sometimes it makes watching things hard.” (It’s also officially the reason I wanted to get into costume design, and sewing my own historical clothing.)

Truth! Beauty! Freedom! Love! The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return. Idk man this movie just enchants me. It’s so fun. The soundtrack is great (I used to sing Elephant Medley when I was alone in lawn and garden at Lowe’s when I worked there to pass time). I love the effects and transitions. But Luhrman is pretty good at that.

I’m supposed to tag 10 people but absolutely no pressure! @highasfshit @pataliemortman @musings-of-one @disguisedposer @tardistimelordyeahh @adhdtownsmarty @agrumpygirl @canitouchthat @squishiestmonsterr @curse-of-miss-mgm (and anyone else who I might have missed who wants to do it! 🫶🏻)

(I think all of you are mutuals here. If not… hi! Here’s my main! 🫣)

[lethal-highway]

Predictions

After having thought about it, here are my predictions for Sonic Shadow Generations. My predictions are mostly about what stages will be introduced for Shadow, since the standard stages in Sonic Generations will most likely already be included as implied by it being a remaster. It seems like this game largely exists as a lead up to Sonic Movie 3, which will be a play on the events of Sonic Adventure 2 (interesting that they're skipping the first Adventure title, by the way.)

It's probably to make Shadow marketable again, like with Knuckles. If this succeeds, he may very well become even more popular than ever before.

Main Prediction: Backstory Level Pack + Playable Character After unlocking him, Shadow becomes a playable character in Modern Sonic stages. Pretty straightforward, but they might add a few things to the stages in order to utilize some unique mechanics of his. You can see him teleporting in place of a homing attack in the few seconds of gameplay they show, so it's possible.

In addition, I predict for there to also be a smaller sum of levels for Shadow in order to sum up his backstory before heading into a conflict with a resurrected Black Doom. For this prediction, I'm selecting 1 per game.

Shadow Stage 1: Radical Highway That city stage in the trailer could easily be Radical Highway given the red siding on the roads. Plus, it's Shadow's first stage ever, it's very iconic, and Sonic Team loves to use the stage theme as a musical motif for Shadow. If they don't include Radical Highway in some form, I'll be shocked.

Shadow Stage 2: Final Chase This one's a gimme if you watched the trailer. His debut title is Sonic Adventure 2, and we get a brief glimpse of him on that very stage attacking GUN robots. It's only natural, since it looks like it'd get followed up with that reimagining of the Biolizard boss fight, which was the culmination of Shadow's arc in SA2. Shadow Stage 3: Hang Castle/Mystic Mansion His next appearing title is Sonic Heroes. I'll admit, this one's wishful thinking- there's not much evidence for it, since all four teams go through every stage in Heroes. It means none of them really have any special meaning to or association with Shadow, as a character. I love these Halloween stages, though. Sue me, I named myself after the fucking month of Halloween.

Shadow Stage 4: Westopolis His next chronological installment is Shadow the Hedgehog. To tell the truth, I'm torn between Westopolis (the first stage, and the one you have to do on every playthrough, ugh) and Final Haunt (the only stage that comes close to being good, a stage taking place in the alien landscape of the Black Comet, home of the Black Arms and Black Doom.) The trailer's city stage could still be Westopolis, though, given that red fog, which looks very similar to the fog in the hilarious opening cutscene of Shadow the Hedgehog, so I suppose my hands are tied. But my earnest desires are for Lethal Highway (gee, wonder why,) and Final Haunt.

Shadow Stage 5: Radical Train His next installment is Sonic 06. Normally, I'd not include one from this title, but Crisis City is literally in Sonic Generations. Anyway, Radical Train is the only stage anyone likes, so let's root for it. It's also the stage associated with the cutscene where Shadow roundhouse kicks Silver, and that one is truly legendary.

Shadow Stage 6: Mystic Jungle - Eggman's Facility This one was difficult: his most recent appearance in a mainline title was Forces, as a DLC character, with three stages for a short story explaining his involvement with Infinite, a prominent villain in that title. There's not much to go on here. Ultimately, I've picked this stage, as it's the most distinct of the three, involving infiltrating one of Eggman's bases. Nobody wants a second Green Hill stage.

[monitorkernelaccess]

Thinking about the implications of a female character created to support a man’s story, a secondary character who appears only in (what appears to be) a retelling of some tale. Who probably never existed even within the overarching story’s fictional world. Who was probably just created by one (fictional) man to explain another (fictional) man’s poor behavior. A girl who is young and pretty and at first seems independent, but soon becomes completely dependent on the man who swept her off her feet. And then an unmarried housewife. Who participates in events around the town until it gets too hard without her “husband” around (he never planned to be around). Who gets lonely and cries when she thinks no one is looking, and there might as well be no one looking because no one steps in until she’s at the window and her house is covered in weeds and the rain floods the ground into a swamp and she can’t reach him and he can’t reach her. A young girl who lost her parents an unspecified “long time” ago, who probably misses them and who may have gone without a father figure for some of her formative years, and maybe that’s why she was so eager to move in with a man twice her age, but it doesn’t matter because she wasn’t given that depth and she was never going to be given that depth. And probably none of that ever happened anyway. She’s a girl with no agency at all, not even over her own existence.

Thinking about the implications of taking this girl, this character, and giving her some agency. Turning her into the first character of a story within a story to be proven real. To have physical proof of her existence, to be given flesh and blood, and, most importantly, to have the power to tell her own story. But it’s the same story, more or less. Though this time, she gets to make the move on a man who’s only 10 years her senior, not 20. And he gets to be the virtuous hero who refuses her, the temptress. And her heart still gets broken, but she’s the one breaking it. And it’s almost silly, the way she pined after this man who only ever saw her as a child. Until you find out how it happened before. But it’s her story this time, and she’s the one telling it. It’s her poor decision, and she gets out mostly unscathed. But she’s not the hero, and she’s not telling the story for herself. It’s a story told to another man to explain another man’s character. It’s her story, and she’s the one telling it, but it’s not about her.

Thinking about what it might mean, if it means anything, to take her and reimagine her once again. To keep the love story (if that’s what it is) but get rid of the age gap, and make them high school sweethearts. So she gets introduced by name early on, and gets left early on. So everyone knows she’s one to pay attention to. And she’ll get to tell her story later, but not until the end. Before then, she becomes a looming figure. A name on a slip of paper. A name that’s the source of conflict, the central conflict that builds throughout the story. She’s almost the antagonist, except it’s not her, just her name and what it could mean. And she still gets to tell her story, and it’s still really about the men, etc. etc. And it’s the same story, for the most part.

Thinking about agency and storytelling. About who gets to tell their story and who doesn’t. Is it worth it to have agency if it just means you’re the one who makes the big mistakes? Is it even really your agency if that was always supposed to be your story anyway, like some sort of destiny? Are you just getting blamed for it? Is it still your story if you tell it for the benefit of someone else? Is it still your story if you’re not the one telling it? What does it mean to have agency within a work of fiction? Do any of these questions even matter because it’s all fictional anyway and no one has control and everyone is created to serve The Narrative and The Protagonists? What does it mean to be a woman in fiction? What does it have to do with being a woman in real life? If you tell your story within a story, do you still have agency if there’s someone else writing the larger plot? What does it mean for a female character if the author is a man? The screenwriter is a man? The composer is a man? The director is a man?

[deus-sema]

I would disagree with the anon's point that it's the shippers who are whitewashing Sauron by reimagining him as a good man or someone who wants to try to be genuinely good. Unless we are counting fanfics where anything and everything is possible, on the show, it's Sauron himself who believed, or still believes, that he could be 'good'. He thinks of himself as the hero. Even then, his definition of good differs from what it is generally supposed to be. He craves order and control above all else. According to him, he can be really good provided things happen and people act the way he wants them to. If they don't then it's on them. He would rationalize objectively wrong deeds like killing and consuming that innocent woman or leaving Diarmid to die and stealing his pouch as the need of the hour for it serves his interests. So, when he told Galadriel that saving and ruling is all the same to him, he was being completely honest for a change. Because from his perspective, Middle Earth can be saved only by a system of order implemented under his rule and everything else is merely a means to an end for the greater good. This is also what makes his dynamic with Galadriel attractive because it shows how the two, inspite of being compatible to some degree, will always have fundamental differences in principles.

Regarding Saurondriel shippers, ours is a unique position because unlike most ships we already know what exactly to expect. We know that Galadriel is eventually going to be the Lady Of Lothlórien with her husband Celeborn by her side and end up sailing West while Sauron will become the Dark Lord of and end up as an impotent spirit. Another fact we know is that he is going to try to get into her mind even during the Third Age. With this knowledge, what a shipper can realistically hope from the show is for Sauron and Galadriel to interact in any capacity, regardless of whether they are in each other's proximity or through mind palace shenanigans, and for their connection to be emphasized upon. But if the writers wish to give us fanservice in form of kissing and explicitly steamy scenes out of their own freewill then who am I to refuse such a gift?

So, the problem is not exactly with Celeborn's return but with the idea that his presence is needed in order to make sure that Galadriel toes the line and her connection with Sauron is sidelined or outright erased.

I don't think it will happen because, first of all, the writers and directors seem competent enough to portray multiple relationships in a nuanced manner without one overriding the other and, secondly, Galadriel and Sauron, along with the Stranger who may or may not be Gandalf, are the central characters around whom the show is built. It was a conscious creative decision to build up Galadriel and Sauron's relationship - call it romantic,cosmic or anything else - in the first season and from the information we have been given by the cast and the crew, it doesn't seem like that dynamic is going to be abandoned anytime soon. And we term it a dark romantasy or love story because "sexually charged cosmic connection which may not be entirely platonic" is too long to write.

What I like best about RoP is that the team seems to have a clear idea about how they want the plot and characters to develop through the course of time and they have the talent to back up their plans. Until now, even if I have no definite idea about how the plot intends to handle my preferred ship, as a fan and member of the audience, I have been thoroughly satisfied and entertained by the show and I hope this continues for all the remaining seasons to come.

I really don’t understand why people are so divided on Celeborn. Like he’s always just been there and I never expected TROP to change that. Sure he’s boring but I can acknowledge that for Galadriel he makes sense and that she does love him. It doesn’t effect the intrigue of her relationship with Sauron which already existed well before TROP. It’s just that the show was smart enough to realize that and flesh it out. I think some fans have a provincial view on love and don’t understand that various layers of it can exist without detracting from the other. I can believe that Galadriel is in love and happy with Celebron and STILL feels a cosmic soul connection to Sauron. I think the writers understand that this is the meat of this adaptation because there’s a reason certain tropes are classics; the whole dark/light, good/evil push and pull. On a different note it also makes me wonder why people feel the need to whitewash Sauron’s character as this man who wants to try to be ‘good’ in order to ship him and Galadriel. I think s2 makes it very clear that he is at his core a dark and evil entity who at the very most finds human morality an interesting curiosity and warps ideas of goodness for his own gain. And monsters can still feel love, like I think he definitely feels connected to Galadriel and will only ever feel as deeply as he is capable for another being, for her. But because he is what he is, he has no problem manipulating her for what he thinks is best for her and ultimately what serves himself. They are on totally different ends in how they perceive the world and yet they see each other so clearly. This is what makes it interesting for me at least. Anyway let me stop rambling now lol

yeah, i agree.

i see celeborn as this emotional support husband who (unlike many other male characters in lotr) doesn't "dominate" his wife and is rather her follower. there is a good malewife potential for him, lol. and he is pretty much just a background "husband" character, not taking away the spotlight from galadriel.

and yes, just bc galadriel ends up married to celeborn and they might have a nice soft relationship doesn't mean that she doesn't have a far more special and deep connection with sauron, more passionate and poetic even.

but the reason why they can't be together and the whole tragic beauty of sauron x galadriel is that her gaze is fixed on the light while he is the darkness incarnate. and the fact that sauron is this irredeemable evil yet still loves galadriel and her only but in his own twisted way is what makes it more fascinating!

i wish we could allow female characters to have complicated, complex and flawed relationships instead of trying to limit them to the simple wholesome and easily digestible ones.

that being said, i don't really think it's gonna be interesting to focus on galadriel's relationship with celeborn in trop. we know their story already, we've seen them together in other media. this is the story of galadriel x sauron and taking the focus away from this relationship by introducing celeborn would be far from compelling or satisfying development. that's the reason i don't really want to see him until the end of the show.

(also, again, the reason for celeborn demand and discourse is that a lot of incelbros want galadriel to be this tame wifey and they think celeborn is going to come and take away her sword, and a lot of moralists want us to stop shipping "taboo" ships such as sauron x galadriel.)