#it's uncanny valley and that works to the game's favor

[vulpine-spectacle]

UNTIL DAWN FANCAST

BECAUSE THE MOVIE IS ALREADY PISSING ME OFF

ANYA TAYLOR-JOY AS SAM // JACOB ELORDI AS MIKE // KATHRYN NEWTON AS JESSICA // BRIANNE ASHLEIGH TIU AS EMILY // CHARLIE PLUMMER AS CHRIS // AULI'I CRAVALHO AS ASHLEY // CORTEON MOORE AS MATT // ALEX WOLF AS JOSH // ODESYA RUSH AS BETH & HANNAH // PETER STORMARE AS DR. HILL // MICHAEL GREYEYES AS THE STRANGER

[knightochan-official]

agree in general with the post about character design but Genshin Impact is not just "avoiding friction" with its samey thin character designs but rather is also constrained by its medium and materials cost.

the characters in dungeon meshi don't have to move*, so they can have more distinct facial features, body types, etc. that would normally require much more effort to animate in a dynamic gameplay environment. the moment your guys start moving, especially in 3d environments, flat colors and simple shapes take the day:

*"but dungeon meshi has an anime!" - yeah, more on that later

now obviously, this still allows you diversity in body type (I mean I literally put Monsters, Inc. in this example, just look at Sully, the big blue guy,) but the closer you get to human the less creative liberties you are going to get to take with physics and anatomy.

The Incredibles isn't just a landmark film because Brad Bird managed to sneak an Ayn Rand novel into a 1 hour, 55 minute runtime, but because the art team managed a distinctive cast of human characters who aren't uncanny valley monsters, which was a first for Pixar. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most dynamic action scenes still feature the characters' limbs in largely flat, one-or-two tone uniforms:

(Note that they still kinda cheated by making everyone a tubular homunculus. The Incredibles is a damn good looking film but it's also a good example of how style lets you get away with a lot.)

Even Dungeon Meshi's own anime favors a cleaner, flatter style to accommodate motion (although note that it's still fucking gorgeous and I think most would agree it still captures the spirit of Ryoko Kui's work):

add in that 3d environments with free movement are inherently more complex, and a desire to reuse assets as much as humanly possible to save effort (because sadly artists in games are still treated as loss leaders) and it's no surprise that Genshin Impact has the same 3 body types and faces with different pieces on them

I actually think it's very rare that most commercial character artists are avoiding character design diversity out of fear but rather due to the unreasonable constraints on their work.

My proof? Hoyoverse, the creators of Genshin Impact, wouldn't have given Ben Bigger a bespoke model in ZZZ if there wasn't a character artist in there who wanted more than the bare minimum mass appeal designs:

My takeaway here is not that we should let lowest common denominator design teams get away with a lack of character diversity scot-free, but that we also have to systemically understand the material conditions and medium constraints the works are made under. el problema es el capitalsmo and all that. (assuming you agree with me that it's a flaw, anyway)

[imagine-knb]

gom+kagami+hanamiya accidentally seeing their crush playing an otome game and trying to capture a character that is similar to them in looks/personality

Kuroko: There's the smallest of pouts on Kuroko's face as he watches you play, going after a character who you tut as very similar to him. He never expected to be boiled down to only a few traits, thinking himself more complicated and nuanced. "You don't like him better, do you?"

Kagami: There's a red on his cheeks that almost seems to rival his hair when he realizes how similar your favorite character is to him. He's actually a bit in denial when you point out the similarities. "You kidding me?" He ends his question there, unsure whether to take it as a compliment or insult.

Kise: "Oooh, that character looks really handsome!" Of course, Kise is holding a hand up to his chin, posing very similarly to the character on screen as he says this. He definitely sees the resemblance between him and the character and grins teasingly at you as he tells you he thinks he would've made the same choice.

Aomine: "Of course you would choose this character, he seems like the best one," Aomine teases as he watches you choose certain dialogue options for your favorite character. With how similar their personalities are, he's easily able to help you whenever you get stumped on an option, choosing for you.

Midorima: "This character seems rather sensible, if not a little stuck up." Midorima watches you, not realizing that you were choosing that character in particular due to his similarities to your boyfriend. When you finally point them out, he seems almost shocked an surprised, as if he couldn't believe he acted that way as well.

Murasakibara: The character looks nothing like him, short and chubby cheeked, but the personality seems pretty spot on. Murasakibara sits beside you as you play, pouting whenever you try to convince him how similar the two of them were. "No we're not, ____-chin. You're just saying that."

Akashi: "I see you've got a type, then," Akashi comments with a smile when he notices the similarities between himself and your favored character. It has an amused chuckle coming out of him as he watches you play, though it also gives him a bit of an uncanny valley sort of feeling.

Hanamiya: "That guy seems like a dick." It's comical how Hanamiya seems to insult the otome character you happen to be going for, as if his self awareness is nowhere to be found. He makes fun of the choices you make to woo the character, but he's unwilling to admit a lot of the dialogue choices you have would work on him too.

[suguelya]

Following your section examples :D

Mobile games & Loc:

Oh man, idk if you were there for global Rays but that was some very hazardous translation. Iirc they kept trying to translate Cless' constant puns with a really old-timey language for some reason? What truly deterred me though was the way they not only mistranslated but, similarly to ToV's eng localization, sometimes completely changed the original line. The biggest example I can think of would be Raven, back at the very beginning in one scene where he told Yuri and the others to go ahead while he dealt with some monsters and to which Yuri replied in JP something like "Don't overdo it, old man"...somehow they chose to translate it as "I don't want to lose you". Like ??? None of these words were in the original lmao. It's ooc enough that it worried me they'd keep mistranslating stuff going forward, and the knowledge that they wouldn't be able to botch even more characters (or yknow, Fluri, to stay topical) was my only consolation when the global servers shut down. I'd only want global Rays back if they were able to stay true to Rays' very conscious choice of words.

As for Cresty, I too think the translations were pretty good - a tiny bit too much gen z/internet slang in there for my taste but at least it didn't feel ooc! And I so agree with your frustrations re: transgressor Yuri, I'm still haunted just as you are that we were left hanging this way. I'd even have preferred never to have seen him because this tiny crumb was enough to start my curiosity engine...his design looked so good, too....we could've had it all ;o;

Since my opinion of Asteria wasn't very high (they favored a lot of the same characters over others and especially Estelle with little regard for Flynn) I was very cautious regarding Crestoria. Asteria loved to fuel Yu//stelle (notably with the awful wedding events, which Rays thankfully turned into Ristelle) so I was worried which way Cresty's pendulum would swing, and I think it shut down right before we could've known for sure...there were hints like Flynn's cameo in one of the events, their colors/faces being close to each other in other characters' artworks, and I'm sure he would've been involved in Yuri's sidestory, but I wanted to wait and see for certain before I let my guard down. Guess we'll never know, but the bits you've talked about for a hypothetical fic truly entice me!! I hope you'll go through with it!

Concerning Troy not coming back as Yuri, I think I've heard somewhere that Bamco did not call him back because he had unionized since 2008 and Bamco wasn't willing to go along with the rules set by the Union. Having worked 6 months at the European Bamco headquarters for an internship last year, I can sort of see that being true. Corporates are gonna corporate...that said, they could have had the tact to at least tell Troy about it. Grant George is...okay-ish if you're a casual but yeah, his additions aren't so much jarring as they are very "off". It's the uncanny valley of voice acting lol. I guess the closest they could've come to Troy was Matt Mercer but I'm pretty sure he's unionized, too. Grant must have been the 3rd choice, alas not a very good one.

I understand being attached to the Eng because of nostalgia but personally I've left it behind ever since I first heard the JP voices and so probably don't have to worry about much (unless Mamo or Tori pull a Sakurai, here's crossing fingers they don't).

Arise/Xillia/Zesty:

Aw, man, I see this is where our opinions diverge haha. Personally I had an awful, awful time with Arise because while the first half is decent enough, the gameplay is insufferable and the skits a chore to get through (lost all their anime charm and are nothing but infodumps). And then the het just keeps ramping up in the second half to become all-consuming, much at the expense of the already weak story. Tbh Kisara and Rinwell were the only ones I fully appreciated, despite Kisara's writing reducing her to a Hot Mom Friend and Rinwell's arc against that witch character making no sense. The rest are ranking from meh to absolute garbage in my opinion, especially Shionne for whom I had such hopes at first. She seemed like such an interesting and strong female heroine, and then turned into Estelle 2.0 with tsundere topping and a bonus het marriage & housewife package deal ending. I kept hoping their romance would remain left open like some of the past ones but this is the most openly het a Tales game has ever been (except maybe for Stahn and Rutee having a kid, but even then Stahn has more romantic chemistry with Leon). Trying to sort every single character into neat het pairs with little cross-interactions so there's no room to interpret anything else feels like an absolute slap in the face after the last couple entries tbh.

Arise juste felt like Okuda's wet dream come to life and the further I went into the story, the less interested and the more annoyed I became. That battle mechanics were actual hell like I've rarely experienced in a game before - I'm sorry but Cure Points are the worst feature they've ever come up with, especially since they cost an arm and a leg and money is even more sparse than in X2, and the bosses are overpowered as fuck even on easy. They even had to add an extra easier level shortly after release because the late-game dungeons were unbeatable (final boss battle made me cry tears of blood).

So yeah, I curse Tomizawa for this game that wasn't even supposed to be a Tales game, according to interviews he kinda forced the remaining original Tales devs, most of whom had already deserted to join Scarlet Nexus, to make this random game into a Tales entry. He even admitted himself that people were reluctant to his ideas at first but he "managed to push through" lol...add to that the ridiculous avalanche of merch and events Arise has been spoiled with in the past 2 years and you can see why a lot of the longtime fanbase has had enough of it.

Generally there's been a sense of disillusion lately, because the last 2 years have seen a huge decrease in general Tales merch/events (save for Arise ofc) and a disinterest by Tomizawa for the legacy he's supposed to represent as Producer. Remasters are being made with only a fraction of the effort, care and budget Arise stuff gets, traditions like the tales of orchestra or yearly livestreams are being cut, the few merch we get that isn't about Arise or The Top 5 Popular Guys are all just het hero/heroines sets, older games are being left behind to collect dust and never see the light of a localization day...right now the future of Tales seems kind of empty and uncertain. I do hope it gets better, and soon, but with Tomizawa at the helm I'm very doubtful.

On a brighter note, though, I actually really loved the Xillias. X2 is especially close to my heart since it was a far cry from Zesty's disappointment in almost every way...idk, I liked the choice mechanic a lot and you can unlock Ludger's voice in NG+! Also this is the first Tales game after Vesperia and Graces to make me cry, those endings killed me. Ludger and Elle are very dear to me and the affinity system let me pair up him and Jude to my heart's desire, the closest to Symphonia's at that point I believe! Queer-wise it's got its fair share of representation, too - at least in the localization, oddly enough haha. But that's all a matter of opinion and yours is super valid!

Queerness:

Yes it's those two NPCs I was talking about! My friend and I kept joking that they're on a world-trip honeymoon during our playthrough.

As for the Heliord knight, oh man, you have to check him out whenever you get the chance, his dialogue changes depending on the character you main and the arc you're in. Honestly I was kind of blown away by the explicity of his lines when they were shown to me. It's why I'm adamant they are genuine rep. A few of my favorites:

This guy is down bad for Flynn lmao (same, though).

As for Estelle, I'm so glad you agree since in my 12 years of fandom I've only come across a handful of people who don't worship her lmao. Would love to discuss that in private (maybe discord?) because fandom decided disliking a female character while also shipping an m/m pair makes you a nasty yaoi-obsessed fujoshi, which has made me lose all motivation to talk about it publicly lest I get called a misogynist again >>

I agree though that it is ridiculous how often people just skip sibling relationships in m/f when it's such a precious concept. I have 2 younger sisters and very much would burn the world to keep them safe, like that's not exclusive to romance at all. And as you mentioned before, he's just as concerned for Karol in the Blade Drifts so if Karol had been in Estelle's place Yuri would have acted the exact same way!! There's no romance to be had when he's protecting her out of a sense of duty and brotherly love. And yet there's still folks out there blind to that...sigh. Even Tori's sick of it haha.

Alisha is such a step-up from her, though, even if on the surface she shares the "pink princess" title. The entire fiasco with her and Rose was a stupid mess of an overreaction - at least at first, because the reason japanese fans riotted was that Bamco falsely adverstised Alisha as the heroine when Rose ended up taking much more space in the game, and it angered the waifu bros...but on the other hand, the reason why Rose took up more space in the first place is worth being upset over, too. Apparently Fujishima slept with Rose's VA and favored her in the plot late in the game's writing, creating this whole mess. In the end only Rose's VA paid the price as she had to publicly apologize during the following Talesfes, while Fujishima came off scot-free and to this day keeps working for Tales. Gotta love sexism. Hideo Baba also "quit" but it wasn't solely because of this problem, there were rumors of him being a bit of a pervert backstage as well (haven't found a lot online to back that up tho so take that info with a grain of salt).

Oh and regarding the TalesFes Tori episode, I guess I kind of agree? It's not not uncomfortable, at least. I think what bothers me more than Onosaka's "But she's the princess!" is his "違う違う" right after Tori yells the "I love you" meant for Flynn. It's kind of rude and invalidating imo, proof that he's not as on board with it even for the joke (which makes little sense to me as he always toes the homoerotic line with Konishi himself, anyway). So yeah in that regard I understand what you mean, even if Tori's response feels less like an response to Onosaka's remark and more like an explanation for the crowd that voted Yuri & Estelle lmao. Also because he's king.

I'm a little sad they've stopped making drama CDs altogether but given the serie's current direction, maybe that's for the better. There are incredible ones like the Cinderella play or the handcuffs episode, but others I like way less like Estelle daydreaming about Flynn and Yuri switching places in her rescue, or the girls having a stereotyped "which guy do you have a crush on" pillow talk. It's very much a mixed bag. It's also the same reason I'd be very wary of any Vesperia sequel simply because I have not trusted Bamco with it since TalesFes 2017. I do not trust them not to fuck up again, especially since Rita's VA joked about it being about a next gen story (speak: a hero/heroine child like Destiny 2) during a radio event some years ago. Even an anime adaptation scares me because of the potential for fuck ups lmao.

I'll just take the Vesperia we have now and enjoy it as it is with all its parts, good and bad, thank you very much ✨

I am 100 percent with you on preferring the JP line in that cutscene if only because it does feel more powerful (and his voice is SO soft, which is something that frequently gets completely lost in the dub in general. Mamoru carries a much softer tone overall for Flynn, similar to how Yuri's playfulness and carefree vibe got lost in favor of the dub's aim for a more "cool adult guy").

That said, I was not even aware they left the whistle out!!! I haven't bothered with that sidequest because the outfit is readily available for free as DLC.

While I enjoy having Flynn present in the last battle, I wish they'd just had him look back up at the sky and say that right next to Yuri right before the very end of the cutscene (since imo that'd be the best placement for it). No reason not to stick that back in!!!

But removing the whistle is just an outright crime and I am owed a fee from the people who decided that for the devastation I've been inflicted with.

Big same 🤝

I used to be such a fan of the eng dub but tbh ever since I experienced the original japanese (back when we still called it the PS3 Version lol) I never looked back. The wording is so, so, SO much more layered and leaves little room to misinterpret subtleties and subtext. Like you, I've had many gripes about the localization because sometimes they just plain insert stuff that was never there in the first place - iirc Troy Baker admited that apparently they rushed the dub so hard, sometimes the voice actors themselves were asked to chip in for the translation...he said he loved that (I'll bet), but that might explain why so much of the OG english script was already full of weird phrasings and insertions...add to that the even more sloppy and lazy DE localization and you get only half of the richness of the original japanese.

Also yes Mamo and Tori *are* Flynn and Yuri more than anybody ever could be. Sam and Troy do a good enough job but I agree that Troy may have been directed to play Yuri closer to a traditional "cool bad boy", which is hilarious given how the original Yuri is a twist on that very trope. Unfortunately, Troy gave him this uncharacteristically cold/aggressive edge whenever he talks to Flynn that it makes it sound like he's always annoyed to see him, and it strips their relationship of so much of the softness and playfulness that Tori lends Yuri.

Anyway enough about me ranting because I could go on for about 10 more hours about this issue lmao. Honestly yeah they very well could've rearranged Flynn's cutscene to fit in there at the end, like hell if you can change the entire camera angles of whole scenes you can change that one background, no?? Knowing Tomizawa though that might have been more effort than he was willing to grant this remaster - won't be his last time.

Same for the wolf whistling!! They replaced it with a skit that is just as funny...

....but void of the insane flirting the original had. Idek why they went so far as to change it, it would've been less work to just leave it as it was 😭

[ariapmdeol]

a few more refs for the Dream SMP Parahumans AU! + updated connections chart! This au is written by both myself and @gavinom !!

Masterpost here, bonus info + rambling under the cut!

5UP - Stranger 4

he's a rogue! does information/breaking and entering/spying/assassination for hire! in his civilian identity, he works with wilbur at a bookstore

his power is that when in direct skin contact with plants, he becomes unnoticeable/undetectable

he has a crush on Fundy's villain identity! Fundy, however, has a crush on 5up's civilian identity which creates... shenanigans

here's a lot of flirting involved

yes this is a Miraculous-ladybug style love square

he's the first one to figure out tommy and tubbo's identities! They come in to the store all the time in civilian identities, so when he saw them running around trying to be heroes, he decided to keep an eye on them and help them out! They don't know that he's HIM, though, they just think he's a cape who wanted to help them out!

CLAY WASTAKEN | DREAM - Master 6, Striker 2

THE MASTERMIND. THE PUPPETEER. Dream has two identities! His Villain identity is Dream, Villain Leader of the Dream Team and ruler of the city! His civilian identity is Clay Wastaken, Cauldron employee and scientist

His power is a possession power! He can possess any object he has physical contact and Possess it! This transfers his consciousness completely into the puppet, leaving his body fast asleep. Possessed objects are enhanced by virtue of integrating his consciousness with it, which adds a bit more.... uncanny valley type enhancements. It's not a LOT but it's there

His civilian identity is what he uses to interact with Cauldron, who run experiments on how to gain powers and how to create them! He knew phil in this identity as coworkers, and had kept an eye on techno as well! Ranboo, however, was the result of the project he oversaw personally

as a result, he's looking for Ranboo, Phil, and techno! Technoblade, as a limitless tinker thanks to chat, is a GAME CHANGER. this man is OVERPOWERED so of course he wants to get him back under Cauldron/his control! He takes wilbur as an underling for this reason too - more access to information about philza

Schlatt is working for him as a spy! Schlatt's working for the Protectorate (hero organization) and Dream at the same time, and is acting as dream's (reluctant) man on the inside. in exchange, he asked for Dream to look out for Tubbo and ensure that he doesn't get hurt or involved in any of this. little does Schlatt know,,, his nephew has become a vigilante.

so dream is keeping an eye out for Tubbo, and quickly figures out that he's triggered and is trying to become a hero. this easy favor? has become a lot more complicated

he orders his puppets from sam, a rogue Tinker! (rogue meaning neither hero nor villain)

DreamXD seems to take a very similar form... i wonder how they're connected?

JACK MANIFOLD AND NIKI NIHACHU | NEMISIS - Breaker-Changer 5 + Brute 3 + Striker 3 And Blaster 6

ROCKETDUO ARE BEST FRIENDS

they triggered together!

Jack Manifold is a PHOENIX, BASICALLY

his power manifested as he was literally dying in a VERY VERY public place! Bursting into flames and coming back to life is a very noticeable power

as a result, he doesn't really have a difference between his civilian and hero identities? Hes just Jack Manifold, hero and also college student

He's actually STUPIDLY popular

the Protectorate loves him bc he makes heroes more relatable

in detail, his power is as follows: he can't die! He still feels pain and stuff, but if he gets too close to death he bursts into flames and comes back to life fully healed, but with some... changes the more times he dies, the more visible those changes become this is things like his eye color changing, and it almost looks like he has magma or lava glowing under his skin he can also create fire! It must be generated from his skin.

Niki's power is also flame based! Her flames have different effects based on how she feels towards the target. If she cares about them, the flames heal them! If she doesn't like them, it burns them

Niki is on a villain team with Wilbur and Fundy as Nemesis

both of them know that the other is on the opposite side, but promised not to fight each other or use inside info against each other

so theyll just wave to each other from across the battlefield and it's very entertaining

Niki and ranboo are siblings! She's looking for him

She actually joined wilbur and fundy in working for dream because it means more resources to look for him

she doesn't know about cauldron or that ranboo's been experimented on

dream also doesn't know that they're both looking for the same person

and tubbo and tommy ALSO dont know that this black and white horned guy they found is connected to all of this

shenanigans ensue

[transmalewife]

You’ve quite rightfully criticized TCW in the past. Had you been in charge of the series, what would you have changed? If it’s too hard to list them all or such, try 3-5 examples.

ooooh ok this is such a cool ask. I'm gonna try to keep it general, because you're right, if i go into specific plot points we'll be here all night.

2D ANIMATION. this is both the biggest and the most personal taste one on the list. like, yeah i get 3d animation wasn't what it is now, but ratatouille was made a year earlier than tcw movie and it looks amazing. I know the budget was astronomically bigger for ratatouille, but what happened is later, when tcw series started having huge budgets, they were still beholden to the hideous style they started with, and it took them over a decade to crawl their way out of it. Like yeah, 2003 clone wars looks like it was made on a budget of some change production found in their pockets and calling in a few favors, and the animation was clearly wonky, oversimplified and reused as many frames as they could get away with, and then some, but the look is vibrant, striking, interesting. the fights are choppy, but dynamic nonetheless. In tcw they were, i assume, aiming for some sort of realism, but were forced to simplify the shapes and ended up smack dab in the middle of uncanny valley. stylization is not the enemy. bright colors and exagerrated movement in animation are not the enemy, they are the tools unique to the medium, that should be embraced, not avoided. this indecision between realism: detailed wrinkles on everyone's faces that just make them look a decade older than they should be, the dark, muted colour palette and the drab settings, with the horizon always masked by fog because they couldn't afford to render backgrounds, the choppy, awkward movements of limbs of realistic lenght bound by the laws of physics and not of film (none of these cool stretchy frames that trick your eye into thinking the movement is more elastic) makes the end product look like one of those music videos shot in the sims 2, but instead it's in a weird video game you'd get on a cd with your physics texbook in 2012.

related to the above but i desperately need a paragraph break: just the look in general. the show seems utterly uninterested in changing things from the source material, unless when it's exagerrating racist or sexist stereotypes or making everything more drab and boring to make their jobs easier and cheaper. they gave aayla pixar mom hips. they made padme ugly and her outfits boring, and that not easy to do. don't even get me started on ahsoka's tube top, it should get it's own point on this list. it's almost offensive to see someone take the functionally limitless medium of animation and treat it like a cage or burden instead of using it to make things more visually interesting and striking. 2003 clone wars did that, and 2d animation would have helped with if not solved it. you know how long it takes to draw a billion stories high skyscraper or massive temple? not much longer than any other background. do you know how long it takes to render it in 3d? impossibly long and expensive. same with fur or dangling earings or capes or anything that would have made the costumes, and therefore character design, more varied.

ok, i'm done with that hopefully. now, for the story. start before anakin's knighting. I get they wanted to introduce ahsoka in the movie, and i'm fine with that, but some of the season 1 episodes happen before she became anakin's padawan anyway, so they could have gone back to that. I guess what they wanted to do is sort of a follow up to the 2003 series, but since that ends right as rots begins it doesn't work either. there were always gonna be inconsistencies with the movies and all earlier media. it's star wars, it's at it's best when it can sell you the inconsistencies because you appreciate they make the story better. the prequels have plenty of things in them that don't fully click with the originals, and that's fine, because it's more important that the story holds on it's own than to make it fit every single offhand line from the original trilogy. In fact, clone wars is at its best when retelling a story we know from a different perspective (siege of mandalore and rots) so a tight, self contained 3 episode ark of anakin's knighting would have been a wonderful start to season 1. maybe told from the clones' pov to add a new layer to it, establish that this is their show too, and show us outsiders witnessing jedi rituals and adjusting to being led by a general who's barely more than a learner. and it would get rid of that cake eating and having it too quality of trying to show anakin's slow descent into darkness but also have disonnected random non chronological adventures in space.

speaking of which, get rid of non chronological structure of the first few seasons all together. does nothing but make things confusing. I get that this was before the age of streaming sites, but you can have an overarching plot without every single episode being vital to understanding it. rebels did it right. they even tested the waters with the non chronological shorts first. i guess sometimes people do learn from their mistakes. anyway they must have at least some long term plot ideas when starting tcw, because they obviously knew they had to get rid of ahsoka at some point. yoda even says they will on screen in the movie. so they should have just mapped out important character beats leading up to that, and to rots, and shoved filler between them, making sure that the filler still progresses the character's relationships to get them to that point, instead of just coming up with cool concepts for episodes then going oooh shit time to send ahsoka away. that said, that arc is still one of the best foreshadowed ones, presumably because they knew it had to happen from the get go. like sure, we might only see ahsoka's and barriss' relationship built over like 3 episodes beforehand, but that's still more buildup than almost anything else in the show gets, and it does establish a few important things about barriss that lead to her fall. how the way she has been taught to understand the code makes her own life and safety meaningless etc. I'd love some more focus on the council making morally dubious decisions and concessions to the senate earlier, the way we saw (a bit) later, in season 6, to establish firmly that this isn't normal or something they'd usually do, but that giving ahsoka up to be tried by a senate is a sign of corruption and fear on their part. also would love any weight put on the fact that palpatine was ready to give her the death penalty, would love to see him weasel his way out of this one in a conversation with anakin, would be a great way to show both the depth of his manipulation and control over anakin and how much power he had to do whatever he wanted.

also, cut like half the episodes. like i know in this dream world where i wrote tcw, theres no bad episodes to cut, but still. this show was way too long and they clearly didn't know what to do with the time they had. Even the episodes i love most drag at times, and I'd much rather see 12 episode seasons that are full of interesting plot than have to crawl through dozens of hours of television and potentially miss the one interesting plot point in an episode because i looked away. this may be a good moment to reiterate that i know this was made to be aired once a week and not binge watched, and for kids, but like. i admit i dont know much about how watching tv works, because i've never had to work around air times, as a child i got all my media nicely torrented onto blank cd's with the title written in sharpie. but there are, and always have been tv shows, even cartoons, with overarching season-, or even series-long plots, and people made do with reruns and shit. having a brighter, cartoonish visual style would already go a long way towards making the show more accessible for the youngest viewers than it is, and older kids would appreciate having something to look forward to next week, a mystery to solve, a plot waiting to be resolved. there's this weird dissonance between the visual gritty realism, the constant violence and extremely heavy topics suggesting the show is aimed towards older kids or even teens, while the sheer contempt for the audience's ability to understand complex plot, the almost compulsive need this show has to dumb itself down, fall back on cheap jokes and cool lightsaber tricks and ships wouldn't be out of place in something made for toddlers.

something i think could bridge the gap, and something this show desperately needs either way, is scenes of characters just hanging out. like, i get this takes place during a war, and you have to keep the stakes high but i'm not asking for a full episode of ahsoka on leave at the temple doing chores and homework, i want random scenes here and there of her growing, learning. A single scene of anakin actually actively teaching ahsoka something instead of her just child soldiering along. fuck knows they have a lot of bullshit to cut to make time for it. We could have gotten an actual look into jedi training, because both obi wan in tpm and anakin in aotc are adults on the brink of knighting, luke is obviously trained in unusual circumstances and other than that all we see is children. imagine if we got anakin trying to teach ahsoka something at the temple the way he was taught, but they're called away on a mission halfway through to show how much the war has disturbed the order's usual functioning. them trying to find time between battles to train together, ahsoka struggling to keep up or not knowing basic things because she was taken out of lessons early to go fight a war. "oh it's too dark, it's for kids" shut up. atla had a school episode. or even anakin, ahsoka, obi-wan, and padme, dear lord please padme. actually.

more padme. that's it

yeah so the main characters (hey remember the main characters of star wars? yeah padme was one of them at some point.) and rex, and cody too, because they should have been main characters, having conversations about what happened, or even shown avoiding them, struggling to deal with the horror and trauma of their daily lives and grasping at any respite they can find. the worst part is other characters do that. like there are lighter, shenanigans-driven episodes or scenes (the fucking droids arc the fucking droids fucking about on a planet arc the fucking no words spoken no stakes no plot arc don't get me started) there are even deeper conversations had, arcs focused on developing relationships rather than plot, they're just almost never between the main characters. Ahsoka hangs out with chewbacca, with steela gerrera, with old librarian, with aayla, with padme even. obi-wan hangs out with hondo. all 3po and jar jar ever do is hang out. (not with each other but i would actually like to see that episode instead of an hour and a half of r2 and 3 droids and a general we don't know doing bullshit) but it seems like the show is almost afraid to establish something deeper between the main characters, or address the shit they've been through because then they'd have to remember it later. so the episodes with the most important characters, the ones we care most about, tend to usually be high-stakes battles with little time for character or interpersonal growth, but because of the way the show is structured the battles are all separate events that don't usually build to a linear plot either. so at some point every episode starts to feel like pointless filler when everything goes back to the status quo. and unfortunately monster battle of the week doesn't really work sandwiched between two already established movies, because once in a while they have to bash you over the head with a major, earth shattering plot point and there was absolutely no build up either politically or emotionally.

3-5 things you said... well, ok let's do a tldr

1. make it look interesting. 2. get rid of ahsoka's tube top 3. give the characters emotions and growth

[spector]

what do they do in watch dogs?

theyre games in which you hack stuff in order to sneak past or shoot people and i think this would suffice as an answer but im gonna use your ask to talk about something interesting to me

watch dogs games have an uncanny ability to predict the future and i dont want anyone to think im giving these games credit bc i dont want to give ubisoft ANY kind of writing credit. i think this is more of a 'if you have enough monkeys slamming at typewriters, one of them will eventually produce hamlet' situation.

in the first watch dogs game (2013, i believe) there is a subplot about a special kind of algorithm which pushes certain phrases to the top of peoples feeds and this constant exposure subliminally affects their choices. in game, an example of this is when the city of chicago re-elects a shitty mayor only because his name was pushed thru the city operating system and he showed up everywhere, in ads, in comments, in curated newsfeeds etc. this was YEARS before the whole cambridge analytics thing happened in real life, watch dogs predicted the way social media could affect real life politics.

they sort of expanded this theme in watch dogs 2 (2016) in which a mark zuckerberg stand-in (whos a girlboss by the way) is literally making deals with another politician, exchanging exposure for political favors. watch dogs 2 is also about the silicon valley culture and how these start up companies influence cities around them, people living in them. there's very obvious commentary about how tech being developed by mostly white companies serves to further the interests of white people. one of the final missions of the game reveals that a seemingly innocent robot developing company is actually working on anti-riot spider droids meant to be deployed in urban areas. u know, like the boston dog robot will be. eventually.

and as for watch dogs legion (2020), the main ""prediction"" that stood out for me were the drones. wd legion takes place in like 2024 and i think its a little bit optimistic with the tech capabilities but i have LITERALLY zero doubts we're gonna end up living in that world. the london of wd legion is overcrowded with drones. the amazon-like company uses drones to deliver packages to people, police uses anti-riot drones that shoot tear gas cans and news companies use camera drones to record footage. the skies of the viritual london are crowded w/ drones and i also witnessed a scene when some npc got a parking ticket delivered by a drone and i swear to god, i dont wanna sound like a crazy conspirator but this will happen to us eventually. there's also great commentary on automation and how it will contribute to more and more unemployment but this post is unhinged enough. all im saying is that the watch dogs franchise is really good at predicting at how will the corpo-oligarchies of the world use technology to make their interests prosper while the lower class suffers and im ending here now and NOT proof reading this BYE

[sp1ne-sh0t]

Finally finished Control (at least the base game) and I gotta talk about it. Spoilers ahead if, like me, you foolishly put off playing until now.

Story:

I really loved the SCP-esque vibe the whole game gave off. I'm absolutely not a fan of horror, but it just worked so well here. You're by yourself through the whole game, but you never feel that sense of isolation and loneliness that a lot of horror instills, which I think works in its favor; both because of the way Jesse talks to herself/Polaris, and because of the other characters.

And man, the characters. They all felt so wonderfully real and alive! I got giddy and excited about all the sciencey bits right along with Emily 🥰, Darling made all the videos a joy to watch and I was so sad that I never got to meet him 😢, Arish was deadpan but still very earnest in his desire to protect everyone in the FBC, Ahti was a perfect balance of helpful yet mysterious, Langston talking about how much of an asshole his cat is, and his rambling poetry had me laughing my ass off for a solid five minutes, and Jesse.

God I love Jesse. She's so funny and snarky, and her little asides and quips about what was happening were so relatable. I love her so much! ❤ Also there was definitely some chemistry between her and Emily which I will absolutely be exploring in fanfiction in the very near future. 👀

Gameplay :

There were so many interesting mechanics and mods to tweak your experience with, the enemy types were varied enough that combat didn't get stale and it made me switch up my tactics, the countermeasures letting you essentially choose what kind of reward you want made them feel a lot less fetch-questy and more like, "well I'm already gonna be in the area, might as well score some new mods while I'm at it," and as @alexandrauditore told me, the progression of the powers you unlock really does make you feel super powerful and god like.

And speaking of god like, holy shit the Ashtray Maze.

That was THE. MOST. AMAZING. video game level I've ever played, and I will be listening exclusively to Take Control for the next month.

Seriously, the way they managed to tweak and edit the song to fit how far you were in the level was a stroke of genius I've never seen before and likely never will again. I felt like an unstoppable badass. For 15 minutes, I was the happiest person on earth. I'm going to be riding that high for months.

Also, I can't help but compare it to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, since it's the last game I played before Control. I've long been a fan of the AC series, and I enjoyed Valhalla for the most part, but quite often I found myself feeling like playing was more an obligation than an enjoyable activity, like I had to slog through to finish. Never once did I feel that way with Control. Every minute was enjoyable, even the few times where I was getting my ass kicked, but that was my own fault for not planning for the encounters. Not once did I feel like I had to keep playing to finish. I wholeheartedly wanted to.

Maybe it was the length and size of the game, maybe it was the way the gameplay changed up often enough to keep things interesting without feeling like it was all over the place, but I found myself enjoying it so much more than Valhalla that I almost feel...guilty? Idk. I'm getting off track.

Visuals:

The graphics were stunning. The reality warping, physics breaking elements were all rendered so believably, the Hiss were super creepy and horribly twisted, and the mocap and face rigging for the characters was masterfully done, no hint of uncanny valley. Their facial expressions felt so real!

Also, wow, the outfit designs! 😍 I'm still unlocking them all, but I love the designs so far. The Asynchronous Suit is my favorite. I wasn't a huge fan of the color scheme, but this mod gave me exactly what I was looking for and now it's even more badass!

DLC:

So now that I'm finished with the main game, I've started on the DLC. I'm almost done with AWE, for the unique mods, and so far it's been as enjoyable as the base game. I haven't played Alan Wake, but I don't feel like I'm missing context or anything. Looking forward to starting Foundation next.

Overall, Control is a phenomenal game. Easily a 10/10 and my personal GOTY.

[feitanswife]

So uh good news: due to reasons I finally have money and I decided to use it to finally play a Rune Factory game besides the first one. So I got 4s.

Less good news: I was a fool to think I could finish a Rune Factory game in less than a week. I was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that you can chop stumps from day 1 and only have four major dungeons.

I swept the first two dungeons before I even had a monster barn and never even bothered with companions. It’s not even summer yet and I’m like halfway through the plot. I’m already planning my wedding to Vishnal and what we’re going to name our kids. God he’s literally perfect and you all sleep on him so hard! What’s a man without animal ears gotta do you get some fan appreciation around here?

But that goddamn mansion. It is the stuff of nightmares. How many monsters can you fit in one tiny corridor??? That’s gotta be against fire code or something! I finally caved and started dragging my husband-to-be (even if he doesn’t know it yet) out into the woods with me cause there’s just more monsters than I can handle in that mansion and he’s honestly become more of a liability than anything else. He just dies, all the time.

So my dreams of taking this game with four games worth of quality of life improvements behind it and stomping it under the heel of my ten plus years of obsessive and damn near debilitating resource grinding from playing and replaying the first game of the series over and over... sadly, that dream is crushed.

Could I do it? Yeah, if I played it like you play rf1! Wake up, level until you’re about to drop dead, take a bath, and level until you’re forced to sleep for your own health. But unfortunately this game has a fully fleshed out setting with important characters and meaningful events.

I have to have a work-life balance? In the game??? I don’t even have that in real life!

Also... goddamn is this game pretty.

Since when we’re Rune Factory games like, beautiful??? I mean they’re always beautiful, I’ve been hopelessly attempting to emulate their character designs for as long as I’ve had the games.

But like... rf1 was clearly made on a potato. And this game is very clearly from the same series but god does it look odd in switch graphics! It’s like when I got glasses for the first time and was like “oh god you’re SUPPOSED to see the distance that clearly?”

They clearly have not changed the Medicinal Herb graphic since the series began, and I’m so glad that they never got rid of the weird graphical discrepancy where branches change color if you pick them up! I’ve always loved that!

But now the audio doesn’t bug out when it rains, and the Orcs designs look somehow better and worse in high def (goodbye tiny stick legs ;_;)

At least there’s still the arbitrarily small character limit on the names of everything! God forbid I want to name my Woolly “Prescilla”

Tl;Dr as someone who has only ever personally played the first game in this series and loved it immensely in all its buggy, potato-graphics, bare minimum glory, rf4s feels like a drug trip right out of uncanny valley. Not a bad one, but it’s definitely much different to play it myself rather than watch someone else do it. Very fun! It’s nice to have characters who like, have personalities! And a plot that makes sense! Unfortunately I will probably be continuing my trend of shunning every available love interest in favor of repeatedly marrying my fave!

Also the mansion can kiss my ass

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Pokemon: Mr. Line

“If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?” ~ Gary Larson

DESIGN

Mime Jr.’s actually pretty cute, looking like a tiny little silly clown. The design is a bit generic but also very effective, making it a creature with just enough clown parts so that you know it’s a clown without so many clown parts to look terrifying. It also manages to look a lot like one of those clown-faced ice creams you can get at some places, where the cone is upside down as a hat. The point is, Mime Jr. is a small, cute pokemon that works perfectly fine.

Next is “Kantonian” Mr. Mime, and I put that in quotes because this Pokemon isn’t actually Kantonian. As with Farfetch’d, Mr. Mime is called Kantonian because that’s the first region we as players could get it, but the only ones available in Kanto outside of Let’s Go are either from trades or from the game counter, plus a very tiny amount that appear in the grass patch south of Pallet Town in Gold and Silver but not Red and Blue, implying that someone in Pallet Town has been breeding and releasing Mr. Mimes, and I’m not going to say who, but we all know these Mimes are a certain protagonist’s half-siblings, don’t we?

So where is Mr. Mime from? Well, we’ve established that the first Mr. Mime we met, Marcel, didn’t come from Kanto, and there’s no Mr. Mime in Johto, Hoenn, or Unova. Alola’s a weird one, as they don’t appear in Sun and Moon but they do appear in both Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Still, they’re only in one location and Alola is known for having many imported Pokemon.  Sinnoh’s a possibility- while the Trophy Garden is clearly cultivated, Mr. Mime and Mime Jr. both appear in the wild in Diamond (but not Pearl). Still, I think the actual natural habitat of this Mr. Mime is the Reflection Cave in Kalos. Not only would a mime Pokemon make the most sense in the Kalos region, but it’d make far more sense for it to be living in a hall of mirrors than simply wandering grasslands as it does in Diamond. Further, this is in much closer proximity to the Galar Region, where Mime Jr.s and Galarian Mr. Mimes wander freely.  Thus, for the rest of this article I’m going to refer to this creature as Kalosian Mr. Mime.

And Kalosian Mr. Mime is terrifying. This thing is so Uncanny Valley that it goes down to becoming some sort of Uncanny Trench where light vanishes and there’s no hope for escape. It has all the most terrifying aspects of a clown, with a vaguely human form that isn’t quite right, hair that resembles horns, and an uncomfortably close relationship with your mother. Its bright coloration and curly feet are just sort of haunting, giving the illusion that it’s wearing clothes while in actuality that’s all just part of it’s horrible, horrible body.

In contrast, Galarian Mr. Mime is much friendlier looking. The pants help a lot, but so do the big gloves and the nose. It looks less like a monster and more like a cartoony man, and while it’s still weird to see a Pokemon that’s so humanlike, this version doesn’t feel inherently wrong and unsettling. Much better design here, unless the goal is to freak people out. That said, I just don’t buy this as an evolved form of Mime Jr. Galar really needed a Galarian Mime Jr. to finish the set, because as is Mime Jr. turning into Galarian form in Galar and Kalosian form anywhere else just feels off.  The other weird thing is that Galarian Mr. Mime, with its new focus on tapdance, doesn’t still feel like it should be called Mr. Mime. It’s something I complain about a lot with alternate forms, but if a creature’s called Mr. Mime it should be miming, not dancing, and if a creature’s called Sandshrew it should be sand based. 

Visually, I love Mr. Rime. He’s got all the charm of Galarian Mr. Mime but now has a silly hat and an ice cane. He also gets the red bubble on his stomach back from being a Mime Jr. which makes me question why Galarian Mr. Mime doesn’t have it. Mime Jr. links fine to Mr. Rime, but through features lost along the way, like its hat and its big red poofs. Mr. Rime is also clearly Charlie Chaplin, and I love the pun of its name in that it’s both Rime and Rhyme.

EVOLUTIONS:

Oh god this line is a mess.

First we get Mime Jr, which has first form starter stats, but evolves when knowing the move Mimic. With no TM or TR, Mime Jr. learns Mimic at 32, finally evolving into a Pokemon whose stat total is still a bit small for a final form. If it’s not in Galar, it stays a Psychic/Fairy type. If it is in Galar, it becomes a Psychic/Ice type, which then evolves again at 42 into something that’s not actually that big a boost over its previous for, making Galarian Mr. Mime a good user of the Eviolite.

And then Mime Jr. is an incense baby, so if you breed two Mr. Mimes (and you can because despite the name half are female) you get a Mr. Mime if you’re not using incense. This is a stupid mechanic that they need to get rid of. 

As with Farfetch’d, the fact that the original doesn’t get a new evolution while the regional form does bothers me, because it doesn’t do anything to bring the original back into playability, it just gives us a new different Pokemon that makes the original less relevant.

I will say Mime Jr. was a good addition. While some baby Pokemon are a waste of time, Mime Jr.’s actually a really solid early-game Pokemon, and Mr. Mime’s strong enough that it shouldn’t be appearing until mid to late game anyway. Adding Mime Jr. adds a lot of playability to this line in PVE.

Art by Zerochan923600

TYPING:

Kalosian Mr. Mime spent a lot of time as a Psychic type until we actually went to Kalos and found out it was a Psychic/Fairy type this whole time. Defensively, this is decent. It only has three weaknesses, and while it only has three ‘resistances,’ one of them’s a double and one of them’s an immunity. Offensively, it’s super-effective against four types and neither type works well against Steel… but that’s Steel, and most things don’t work well against Steel.

Galarian Mr. Mime and Mr. Rime are Ice/Psychic types, with their only competition in that type combination being Jynx and the legendary Ice Rider Calyrex. Defensively, this is a really bad combination, with six weaknesses and only two resistances- Ice and Psychic themselves. Offensively, this gives super-effective options against six types with only Steel as a shared resistance. 

Art by DarkraiLady

STATS

Kalosian Mr. Mime has a whopping 120 Special Defense, but a mere 40 HP, seriously inhibiting its ability to actually tank, and only 65 physical defense. It’s 100 Special Attack is respectable, but Speed 90 isn’t really enough to make a sweeper out of it,  even with Nasty Plot.

Galarian Mr. Mime balances its stats a bit, trading Special Attack and Special Defense for a bit more HP and Speed, but the only thing here that really works out in its favor is that it can equip an Eviolite, turning it into an actual defensive Pokemon, albeit one that still has poorer HP than most. 

Mr. Rime brings up most of its stats as evolutions do, but weirdly drops its speed from 100 to 70. It manages to be more defensive than average post-evolution, but its key stat becomes its 110 Special Attack. Overall, its stats are fine, able to dish out hits and take them, and its worst stats are only a bit below average.

Singin’ in the Snow by Pizapioart

ABILITIES

Kalosian Mr. Mime and Galarian Mr. Mime have entirely different abilities, with Mr. Rime having another.

Like Electrode, Kalosian Mr. Mime can get Soundproof, and there’s plenty of Sound based attacks out there, making this a decent defensive option. This improves in 2v2 where you can pair it with Boomburst.

Filter, a near-Signature ability of Mr. Mime, is another powerful defensive option, reducing the damage of supereffective moves from 2x to 1.5x. As you can reasonably expect most opponents to have Poison, Steel, or Ghost moves somewhere in their lineup, you really can’t go wrong with this.

Technician increases the power of any of Mr. Mime’s moves of 60 power or less by 50%, and in theory this is a good ability, but Mr. Mime just learns all the good moves anyway. There’s no reason to use a Technician’d Confusion when you can learn Psychic, or a Technician’d Magical Leaf when you can learn Energy Ball. Skipping this should be easy, because it’s Mr. Mime’s Hidden Ability.

Galarian Mr. Mime (but not Mr. Rime) gets Vital Spirit, which grants immunity to sleep. This is fine and usable and plenty of enemies will try and put you to sleep, but this isn’t the reason you’d be using this Pokemon.

Mr. Rime gets Tangled Feet, which is a garbage ability for garbage Pokemon. Nobody needs raised evasion when confused, what they need is to not be confused.

Ice Body, hidden ability of Galarian Mr. Mime and Mr. Rime, causes a Pokemon to heal in Hail. Of course, every Pokemon that can get this, other than the not-fully-evolved Seel, takes no damage in Hail anyway, and it really takes a fully defensive playstyle to worry about using your ability on sometimes healing 1/16th max HP a turn. There are ways to build Mr. Rime for this, but it’ll involve other Poekmon on your team setting up the Hail and wanting it, too.

Besides, Galarian Mr. Mime and Mr. Rime have the signature ability “Screen Cleaner” which negates Reflect, Light Screen, and Aurora Veil upon switching in. This ability is honestly the best reason to use these Pokemon, more than anything they’ll actually do once on the field. Any ability that has an effect on switch in tends to be good, because as long as it’s something you wanted done, you basically just got a free action. 

Art by  PeregrineJazmin, formerly Retkikosmos

MOVES:

Psychic and Psyshock are both great options for your primary attack form. Psychic is a bit bigger, but as you’ll have a special move of your other element to fall back on, Psyshock adds a bit more versatility.

Kalosian Mr. Mime’s only Fairy attack is Dazzling Gleam so you take Dazzling Gleam. Galarian Mr. Mime/Mr. Rime gets your choice of Ice Beam, Blizzard, or Freeze-Dry. Freeze Dry has the drawback of being weaker most of the time, but extra strong against Water Types, which are rather common. Blizzard is more likely to outright end something, but without Hail its accuracy is rather poor.

Coverage options are pretty wide for the mimes. Thunderbolt, Energy Ball, Shadow Ball, and Focus Blast are available to both, with that last one being super effective against the Steel types that resist Psychic, Fairy, and Ice. 

If you think you’ll get a moment to build up, Nasty Plot is always a great move, as is the more defensive Calm Mind.

Mr. Rime gets two particularly interesting options: it can Rapid Spin, which combines well with Screen Cleaner to reset the field, and it can learn Slack Off, the normal type equivalent of Recover. 

The Mime family’s move pools are actually rather deep, and there’s plenty more options in there, like Hypnosis, Reflect and Light Screen, Baton Pass, Iron Defense, Stored Power, and, via older gens, Healing Wish.

Art by albrt-wlson, which I have to assume is short for Albert Wilson, but might actually be Alberta Walesong.

OVERALL:

I love to hate Mr. Mime, though overall the whole family winds up in the range of ‘fine.’ Mr. Rime’s speed loss is its biggest hit, but other than that there’s a lot of good stuff it can do, especially with both Screen Cleaner and Rapid Spin.  Having below average speed on a Pokemon with so many weaknesses is a problem, but with such a strong variety of moves there’s a lot that can make up for it.

Kalosian Mr. Mime, unfortunately, really needs that stat boost that Mr. Rime got or the ability to use Eviolite like Galarian Mr. Mime, and it just doesn’t have either. 

The other thing that really bugs me about Kalosian Mr. Mime is its abilities or lack thereof. In flavor, Mr. Mime is THE Barrier Pokemon. Reflect and Light Screen are supposed to be what it does better than anyone else… but it just isn’t. Sure, Soundproof, Filter, and Technician are interesting, but I’d have loved to see Mr. Mime have something like Prankster or an ability that mimicked Light Clay, anything to say ‘this is the Pokemon that is best at Reflect.’ Honestly it’s a problem I see in the game a lot, a Pokemon having a specifically mentioned ability or a clear signature move that the Pokemon just has no reason to use. At least Mr. Rime clearly wants to use Teeter Dance with Tangled Feet, even if that strategy isn’t a strong one.

It just really bugs me when a Pokemon isn’t good at what it’s supposed to do, even if it’s good in other ways.

[scoobydoominuscoobydoo]

Can you write and example of "good shaphne angst?"

Oh there are so many different categories of angst that could be considered good but this tends to be my default so here you go!

(This was a slow process and I’m super sorry for the wait but writers block was intense the past couple of weeks!)

-

Daphne was no novice when it came to being tied up.

The whole routine of getting constricted by a bunch of rope and tossed into the nearest crypt or sarcophagus had gotten old and the amount of time it took for the gang to find her again was shrinking. It gave her just enough time to assess the damages done to her manicure or wonder how well she did on her chemistry test that Monday. It had all become rather lighthearted to her (at this point she had to get used to it the poor girl practically carried a big neon sign begging criminals in rubber masks to kidnap her).

That is - when she didn’t sense any immediate danger.

Men in masks had the tendency to just toss their hostages (Daphne) somewhere (see previous crypts or sarcophagus) and then forget about them which had worked out in Daph’s favor for the most part.

She’s really trying to separate herself entirely from the situation she’s in now. Being handcuffed to a lead pipe was not the same as being tied up with rope. The rope would start to scratch and burn her skin at this point if she was still struggling to get out of it. She usually wasn’t, just to avoid the aforementioned scratching and burning. The handcuffs however, started digging into her wrists right from the get-go and even if Daphne was perfectly still she could feel how raw the skin was becoming.

She wasn’t stowed away in some abandoned storage shed behind the creepy house at the end of the street that nobody talks about. No - Daph was actually cuffed to a lead pipe and sitting right behind the man who had captured her. That was all she was able to discern about her captor; the broad shoulders and large hands couldn’t belong to a woman. Although she has been surprised before. The space seemed to be some sort of rinky dink office with file cabinets and a big mahogany desk in the center of the room.

The man in the mask was currently sitting at this desk.

It sounded like he was shuffling through papers, Daphne would occasionally hear the scratch of a pencil. She noted that he was very careful not to speak around her - she wondered if she would recognize his voice if he spoke. I wasn’t much of a clue but Daph was doing anything she could to not let the nerves get to her.

‘Amazing that being tied up and alone in a crypt is more relaxing than this.’ Daphne thought, joking about the situation made her feel a little more at ease.

Shaggy was a lot better at it but he wasn’t here and Daph kept being plagued by the terrible thought that him and the rest of the gang had no earthly idea where she was.

If her mouth wasn’t sealed by a strip of duct tape than you would see her lower lip tremble. The image of Fred breaking down the door to this office was becoming more and more akin to a hopeless dream. Daphne was losing hope and she was losing it fast.

She ran scenarios in her head of the worst possible things this man could do to her and shuddered at all of the ones she genuinely feared. Over and over again, on repeat in her mind. Daph had no clue how long she was in that office but by the time her captor had stood from his chair and pressed the foul smelling cloth to her nose - Daphne’s legs had gone numb.

The last thing she remembered before darkness were vibrant green eyes. Eyes she had definitely seen somewhere before.

Daph awoke to a jarring change in scenery.

The cramped office was now what looked to be an abandoned warehouse. Although her vision was semi-blurry and her head was killing her, Daphne knew where she was. They had been here once before while investigating the case but had quickly ruled it as a dead end and crossed it off the map. She then noticed a second thing - it was nighttime.

Daph had first been taken in the late afternoon and thrown in the trunk of an old  blue Mustang. She stayed there for a little bit (she actually fell asleep at one point because this wasn’t her first time being locked in the trunk of a car) and when she was eventually taken out night had already fallen.

‘I’ve been missing for at least two days then...’ She thought as her head began to clear up.

She, once again, had both hands cuffed to a lead pipe (this one was a little bigger though) and was resting on her knees. The concrete floor of the building was a little too cold to be comforting and that was the first time Daphne noticed her shoes were missing.

‘Ugh and I just bought those too!’

The tape was still over her mouth, although Daph didn’t see much point in shouting for help since there wasn’t much of a chance anyone would hear her. It was at that point that Daphne realized she was currently alone.

‘Has that asshole finally decided to ditch me?’

She barely had time to consider it when a loud creaking echoed throughout the area. Her heart leapt for a moment, against all odds somebody had decided to investigate this seemingly inconspicuous location. Then everything in her went cold when she saw the familiar white coat of the man who kidnapped her.

The culprit’s whole shtick was somewhere along the lines of zombie mad scientist. Which - as dumb as it sounds - is surprisingly intimidating. Maybe it’s just how realistic the details of his mask are.

‘Nothing is truly creepier than the uncanny valley. And mullets.’ Daphne could almost picture the eye rolls that comment would earn from the gang. It embarrassed her since humor wasn’t exactly her forte but it never stopped Daph from giving it a shot. Plus, every so often her attempts at jokes would earn a soft laugh from Shaggy. And those laughs sent butterflies storming in her stomach.

Suddenly, the lump is back in her throat.

She misses him. She misses them. And she’s worried that they’re pulling their hair out trying to find her. Daphne hates seeing her friends so distressed.

She almost jumps out of her own skin when she sees that Zombie Albert Einstein is standing directly in front of her, just staring down at her.  

Without missing a beat, Daphne glares up at him and desperately hopes that it doesn’t look like she’s a step away from bursting into tears. Those green eyes seem to crinkle in amusement - evidently her anger wasn’t all that convincing. Daph’s shoulders droop and she tries with all of her might to swallow the lump in her throat.

And most likely with the desire of prolonging her suffering, Albert decides to rip the tape off her mouth.

The sudden sting is just enough to bring tears pooling in her eyes.

“Ouch...” she murmurs with a shaky gasp. Biting down hard on her lip with the hope of pulling it together. When Daphne let herself go hysterical then she went hysterical to the highest degree and then she wasn’t any help to anyone.

But then she hears a chuckle; it’s low and gravelly and so dang familiar that it’s killing her. And it’s telling her one thing:

She’s giving him exactly what he wanted.

All of her efforts to remain calm and collected have failed because he can still see how she really feels. He can see how hopeless Daphne feels.

She sucks in a deep breath through her teeth, trying desperately to hold onto that composure; trying so hard to put a face to that laugh. And it’s just not working - he’s still looking down at her like the game is finished and she never had a fighting chance.

As he turns his back to her and walks away, Daph bows her head and tries her best to cry silently. Not that there’s any point to it, Mr. Einstein already knows that she’s given up. She coughs out a laugh at the nickname she’s christened her kidnapper with in between her sobs - she can still find the humor in the situation and that brings her some comfort.

Shaggy did that all the time without any effort at all, boosting moral without even realizing it.

Daphne wonders how worried he is, if he’s able to keep the mood light so that Fred and Velma can stay focused. God she hoped so.

He was always the one to keep everyone grounded despite not ever being grounded himself. Daph couldn’t help but wish she tried more to be that for him; wish she was brave enough to say all of the things resting on her tongue.

Not just that she loved him (even though that was a biggie) but that he was valuable and mattered so much to not just her but the rest of the gang.

It was hard not to just force him to gain the self-confidence he lacked (since that was her main way of solving problems) but she knew that wasn’t what he needed.

Damn it she wished she knew what he did need.

If she ever made it out of this alive, she was gonna figure it out.

She sobbed softly through the night and eventually woke up to sunlight pouring in from the large windows and skylights above her. Leaving Daph to wonder when exactly she fell asleep and how long she’s been out.

Her decomposing captor was nowhere to be seen which fills her with a small amount of relief.

Judging by the color of the light and the angle that it was shining in on it had to be late afternoon-ish.

‘It’s been three days...’

At that thought, Daphne suddenly realized how hungry and thirsty she was. Her head was pounding her tongue was almost totally dry (which she was sure was really bad). She remained dizzy after waking up even after waiting for around an hour and Daph wondered if Albert had any intention of keeping her alive.

‘Ugh and I had just cried all night too! I just want to waste water and die of dehydration.’

She also noted that her body was still sweating, or at least trying to. This was not good, Daphne knew that she could survive for a while without food but water needed to be going through her constantly.

‘This is gonna make my skin look awful.’ Daph thought, finding it harder to make jokes about the impending doom her body was facing.

She could feel herself trembling and her stomach began to twist in knots as the whole warehouse seemed to start spinning.

Suddenly, she was shaken awake by the sound of one of the huge doors creaking open. Her whole body felt as if it was frozen inside a huge ice cube even though she knew it wasn’t cold. A shaken examination of the area showed that night had already fallen. The fact that she had lost consciousness without recollection was seriously concerning but she didn’t have time to worry about her health. Because Albert was dragging in another body.

The room may have been spinning and noises sounded a little echoey but she didn’t need to be at full strength to recognize that familiar shade of green.

Instantly her body became alert and she leaned forward, being stopped by the damned handcuffs. She’s soon able to process all the muffled noise as Shaggy talking a mile a minute.

“Listen- I-.. I don’t think you understand dude. Like we’re living in the 20th century and kidnapping minors - and probably eating them - is totally not okay! Look I get it... Entering into the workforce as a respected American citizen is hard and seems like a... like a major sacrifice of your time - not to mention your social life - but I promise you - anything is better than eating people!”

He’s being dragged in by his ankles and - despite the fact that he isn’t tied up - he isn’t making any move to escape. Which doesn’t seem on brand for the gang’s own Harry Houdini.

As Shaggy continued to nervously ramble, Albert dragged him to the center of the room beneath the largest skylight where most of the moonlight was pooling in. He was about 20 feet directly in front of her and right when Daphne was about to announce her presence to the highly distracted boy, she choked.

Daph fell into a violent coughing fit as her throat complained about the lack of moisture.

She begins to tear up and bows her head as she tries to calm the whole situation. When she looks up again, lungs on fire, her eyes lock onto Shaggy’s brown ones. He’s seen her.

Instantly his eyes widen and he begins to struggle with Albert for the freedom of his legs, “Daphne! You’re alive!”

Daph finds herself filled with so many conflicting emotions that she isn’t sure if she should laugh, cry, or yell at him for getting captured. Especially since it’s almost impossible to catch him.

Not that it matters anyway, she’s afraid to try and speak again. That fit had caused her head to pound even worse than before and now she could barely hear Shaggy over the drumming.

The fight for the freedom of Shag’s legs is brought to an abrupt end when Albert simply lets go. Shaggy’s heels crash hard into the concrete and Daph can barely make out his face contorting in pain. She pulls against the handcuffs again and this time she is aware of how irate the skin of her wrists is. Ignoring it, Daphne continues to try and lean further toward him only with the hope of seeing him in a clearer focus.

“Sha-...Shaggy...” She just barely rasps out and after a moment she can tell he probably didn’t hear her.

Perhaps because he’s a tad distracted, what with the massive demon in a lab coat pinning him down by pressing a knee right to the center of Shaggy’s chest.

“Alright! Agh- Okay!” He coughs, “You’ve made your point! A-And who...who am I to argue really?! Especially when you outweigh me by like 800 tofu dogs!” He lets out a nervous laugh and Daphne wants to cry again because she can just hear the trembling in that laugh.

She presses her forehead down against the cool warehouse floor; she can’t handle watching one of her best friends get hurt while she remains powerless to do something.

“Like, do you really wanna add assaulting a minor to the list of charges stacking up against you buddy?” Now the shaking in his voice is so clear it’s making Daph’s toes curl, she bites her lip.

A few seconds pass and Daph finds that she doesn’t hear anything, no cries of pain or anything. She has no time to deliberate if this is a good or bad thing because another few seconds go by and suddenly warm hands are gripping her shoulders. She gasps and looks up before shoving herself roughly against the wall in an effort to distance herself from whoever grabbed her. This doesn’t entirely work out in her favor because she forgot that there was a large lead pipe behind her and she had just slammed her lower back into it head-on. A loud clang echos throughout the building.

Daphne lets another shaky gasp, this time in response to the pain running all over her body.

“Jesus Daph... Like are you alright?” The warmth is back on her shoulders and it sends a wave a relief that almost overpowers all of her other senses. Evidently, Albert had been swayed by Shag’s persuasive words.

She nods slowly, “How-” Did you find me? Instead of choking out the rest of that sentence, Daphne rests her forehead on his shoulder.

Not that she even needed to finish the question - Daph knows that he understood. Shaggy just barely whispers out his answer against her ear and my God she is just so happy to hear his voice.

“Well we had gone back to ask the HR guy some more questions when we saw your shoes just chilling under a chair in the waiting room. Professor Freakenstein over there had left a note demanding some things in exchange for your location.” He said with a touch of annoyance at the end.

Daphne nodded against him, “I-... I was wondering where they were...” Whispering is so much easier than talking

“Yeah, like mystery solved.” He deadpans, she smiles in response, “Anyway... I wanted to go to the fucking police but you know how Mr. and Mrs Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands answered.

Her body tensed, “Is that why you’re here?”

There was silence for a moment and Daphne was building up quite the lecture when she saw Fred and Velma again. If she saw Fred and Velma again.

“Like, to be fair we all thought Fred’s trap was gonna work...” He mumbled. He explains that the note had a time and location for a meeting and so Fred and Velms had spent the day setting up a trap in the area. But she isn’t listening.

Daphne groaned, “I thought we agreed that ransom notes were when we actually get qualified adults involved. The vote was unanimous on that movement!”

“I don’t really think they pay attention during our staff meetings.” He replies with a lilt of amusement.

“They’re not staff meetings! They’re discussions on our code of conduct, we need rules Shags! Order!”

He lets out a short laugh before wrapping his arms around her neck and saying, “Shit I was so worried about you...”

Daphne feels her chest go warm and her cheeks heat up - she nuzzles further into the crook of his neck.

‘Shit I am so in love with you...’

She thinks.

And then... blackness.

When she awakes she hears the almost heavenly beeping of a heart monitor.

The second she opens her eyes three teenagers and dog practically jump on top of her. All of their words are overlapping and Scooby is licking at her face ferociously so Daphne doesn’t even bother trying to glean anything. The one thing she does do is reach out and grab onto Shaggy’s hand in a sort of death grip - something she wasn’t able to do with her wrists cuffed.

Fred and Velma both excitedly recount the details of tracking down Shaggy all the way back to the warehouse through tire tracks and corresponding surveillance footage. It truly was a riveting tale that Daphne couldn’t be bothered to listen to, she was way too exhausted. Plus, Shag was looking down at her with those beautiful eyes and how the hell was she supposed to look away.

“And! And - you’re gonna love this Daph - we called the police!” Fred stated proudly, eyes glittering like he was a child who cleaned his room without his mother asking him to.

Daphne’s eyes widened and she smiled, “Wow! I’m really proud of you two!”

Velma rolled her eyes, picking up on the sarcasm, “Whatever the big issue is that asshole got away.”

“Albert Einstein?”

“Professor Freakenstein?”

Daphne and Shag inquired at the same time, they both looked at each other and Shaggy smirked. Daph blushed.

“Riiigghtt... I’m sticking with that asshole.” Velma stated.

Suddenly, Daphne perked up, “Shags... You said that you guys found my shoes at the office building where Mr. Griesling worked right?”

Shaggy nodded and squeezed her hand; she squeezed back.

“Well before he moved me to the warehouse, I was kept in a private office-thingy. And this whole time I swore I had recognized the guy’s eyes before. I mean they were practically glowing green there is no way I would miss them!” She can feel her voice shake as she recalls the way those eyes pushed down on her when she believed she was gonna die.

Shaggy squeezes her hand again.

She takes in a breath and then says, “Well I was thinking about it for a moment and I remember that I saw one of the interns that worked for Mr. Griesling’s department had these gorgeous eyes and I was this close to complimenting him on them!”

Velma and Fred’s eyes widen and Shaggy gasps before saying, “Oh my God that fucking gigantic college sophomore! We’re idiots!”

Velms plants her face in her hands and Fred sighs, “Good thing we had Daphne and her attention to seemingly unimportant details.”

Daph smirks and shrugs, “Just make sure to keep me far away from him.”

“Like we will Daphne.” Shaggy says gently and the tone is enough to soothe all of the dread latched onto her.

[criticaltaurus]

Since I have no chill

My Avatar OC’s for each entity!

Under cut cause length

Buried! Since I love the esoteric meanings, they appear as a kind person who asks you a favor (slightly eye touched) but it soon becomes one thing after another and another until you’re buried in expectations and stress, especially impacts those with anxiety/fear of failure. No concrete design in mind, but probably a diminutive old lady (mama issues yo)

Corruption~ A nice church girl, who goes to church (and reads her biiibleeee) Who just really vibed with God Loves All His Children. When she saw a ladybug in her hair, she thought it was God showing his love to her (from an old saying her grandmother had), and when they started coming from her ears, eyes, nose, mouth, wherever, that’s just proof she embodies Gods love to show to everyone. Honestly well meaning, but thinks people are afraid out of shame rather than Whoops All bugs

Dark. (Okay since it’s so simplistic I have a lot of trouble with Dark but here goes) So they’re a subversive type, going more for blindness than actual darkness. Y’know when you shine a really bright light and it washes away the details of what its pointed at? That’s them, they are/generate such a blinding, washing light, that you’re as unaware as you are in pitch darkness, only it subverts the comfort and safety the light supposedly brings. They’d still be Edge AF tho.

End. A stone mason who makes headstones for people who haven’t passed away yet, but gives a date. Kinda like the weird death prophecy book, if they try to change it, the date will just change, but it’s even scarier when it doesn’t change. Secondary effect: The epithet will also show how one will be remembered, if at all, before inevitably deteriorating into nothing.

EyE. So there’s this one artist whose paintings always have one person looking directly into “camera” to be directly facing the viewer, basically that as a person, no matter where or when you look, you’ll always match eyes with them, and you don’t know who they’re really looking at.

FLESH Face-Stealer. Pretty Stranger-Aligned, but they vibed with the body modification more so than the uncanny valley aspect of it all. They’ll replace someone, murder their friends + Family and switch between them, because under the skin we’re all the same meat after all.

lonely. A simple kind of person, they have the power to warp perception, making someone hyper-aware of any negative social tick on a person, making them feel like everyone is against them or negative towards them.

Stranger? Happy Faces Everyone! Sort of the opposite of the Lonely guy, they’d make everyone around them super positive and friendly, for nor reason! Even the worst people, the most aggressive, will be kind with a big smile on their face (such as “You did this for me? What’d you do with the real *insert name here*) Feel like their kindness is a lie yet? Feel that paranoia set in? Feel the performative nonsense of it all?

V a s t . My main self-insert Sona, the eldritch park ranger! Loves the forest, and you will too! Or you won’t doesn’t really matter! Cause the trees start coming and they dont stop coming!

Web. Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match~ Find me a find~ Catch me a Catch~. Ties people together by “coincidence” and “chance” until they become convinced it’s not an accident, even if its contradictory to their nature. Why did you, who couldn’t care about makeup or skin care, walk into the beauty shop to see the girl who, while never playing a console video game, walked into your game store?  The two would never go anywhere though, always being tugged away by something or other before a match could be made, keeping the two in frustrated, endless pining, while removing any other choices.

Extinction, for fun! A modern tech CEO. Gentrification, anti-homeless architecture, making everything all bland and techy and overpriced until everyone is forced out or conformed, could give Elias a run for his money.

I saved four for last because i’ve come up with a sort of Eldritch Gang Band, and aside from my Park Ranger, i’ve developed them the most. They go by the Misfreaks as a band name, and do some good gigs outside of eldritch monster work

Khaos(Kah-oes) Kween, Desolation avatar, anti-capitalist, lead singer, and has one hell of a baseball bat swing. The most aggressive of the four, and loves to break everything. When she gets all Desolation-y, her bat gets red hot, but her real power is to melt away memories of anything she burns. Hates The Lightless Flame tho.

Hunter King (that’s actually his name). Hunt Avatar, and the moral core and common sense of the four. He keeps their targets on shitty amoral people, but he knows that’s according to his views. Drummer, and his main Hunt power is being a lie-detector, and a killer with throwing knives. ACAP (All Cops Are Prey)

Jack Slaughter, Slaughter Avatar, a bigender person kicked out by her strict parents, youngest in the group (?), main guitarist, basically got adopted by Khaos and Hunter, and is the most brutal of the group. His main power is blood knives. If he cant get any from someone else, he usually resorts to punching herself in the face.

Twist Joker, Spiral...avatar? Honestly none of the others really know much about her(?). Just kinda showed up when they were practicing for a gig, and can play the bass like a pro so no harm done! Scenecore personified, and whenever they talk or move, they leave a trail of rainbow after images, stays pretty close unless they move faster. The most chaotic, most energetic, but also peppiest. Her main power is to give sensory overload. Anyone targeted by her will begin to feel every color, every sound, every sensation more and more intensely until they snap.

[revchainsaw]

Sonic: The Hedgehog (2020)

Sonic: The Hedgehog (2020)

Greeting my flock of film freaks and welcome again to the Cult of Cult. Todays offering is a bit more of the mainstream blockbuster variety, but as films based on Video Games are still actually quite niche and vastly underestimated I think we should open our hearts to Sonic: The Hedgehog and hope that we find it a pleasing tithe to the cult. I am your beloved minster, The Reverend Chainsaw, and welcome to today’s service.

The Message

I must confess to the congregation that I was drinking mighty heavily of the lord’s Tennessee sour mash when I was taking in this movie. That said, I think that this is a great movie to have a drink with and I mean that in the best possible way. 

Sonic: The Hedgehog is of course based on the Sega video game franchise and stars Ben Schwartz as the titular blue rat. Schwartz brings his brand of high energy enthusiastic comedy to the voice role. While Schwartz is particularly on brand for Schwartz, is he on brand for Sonic? I’m not entirely sure, but I’m also not entirely sure I was ever in love with the old ways. I am not an avid fan or consumer of Sonic media and perhaps that means I am in a poor position to say. I am most familiar with the Sega games and Sonic cartoons from the 90s, and from what I have grasped the more recent entries with their more anime centric and high lore plots still owe quite a bit to the attitude era of the 90s. Sonic was a hero but he was also a bit of a cross between Mickey Mouse, the Flash, and Bart Simpson. As an angsty 90s boy I wanted to eat chili dogs and go very fast that was very appealing to me, but I’m not so sure it would be appealing to a vast audience of older millennials, or even todays kids. And though I think it would be a fair criticism to say that Ben Schwartz is playing sonic as basically the superhero version of his Dewey Duck from the VERY VERY good DuckTales reboot, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing. 

Dewey Duck the Hedgehog is a small mammal (also not a rodent, I wanted to say rodent and apparently hedgehogs are not rodents, just googled it) from an alien planet where his adoptive mother, an owl named Long Claw, fears that he will be hunted for his special powers, which I think is just super speed but it might be other things. In line with these concerns after an attack by pursuers Longclaw gives Sonic the Moses treatment and floats the special blue boy down the metaphorical river. Unlike Moses, however, Sonic is not found by ultra rich ultra powerful extra special people but is instead alone. Sonic lives alone in exile outside a small American town as a sort of local cryptid.

Thus begins a charming adventure. Through a poor decision to use his powers while working out some personal issues, Sonic inadvertantly draws the attention of the U.S Government and their nasty big brain baddy Dr. Robotnik. Sonic recruits a small town police officer with big city dreams to assist him in finding his magic rings so that he might flee from earth to an uninhabited mushroom kingdom. 

Now about these two human characters. Officer Everyman is played by cyclops from the X-men franchise. The actors name escapes me and so does the characters, and while, yes, I just looked up if hedgehogs were rodents, I will not be looking up this information. I like the review better this way. It makes me laugh. And while I don’t remember his name, I do remember that he used to live In Mt. Juliet, TN.�� Anyway, what you should know about Officer Goodguy is that he drives a Toyota Tacoma!

That Toyota Tacoma is also continuously abused by the mad machinations of our films biggest draw: Jim Carey as Dr. Robotnik. If we were to pitch a Sonic movie, I don’t think anyone would jump to Jim Carey as the must have for the role, but after seeing this film, boy was it the best choice. The way he chews the scenery and plays off the rest of the cast and situations is just so much fun to watch. It’s fantastic to see Jim Carey back in a larger than life role. The Decision to play Jim Carey as the kind of condescending nerd who has taken their lack of social skills and leaned in as opposed to working on themselves was a brilliant choice. We’ve all known that kind of guy who tries to play the misanthrope just because they are too egotistical to recognize their flaws. Here Dr. Robotnik has given up on human connection in favor of subordination. His intellect is his only value, and thus he demands everyone around him acknowledge intellect as the only quality that matters as he has. It was a great choice.

From the point the chase begins the film becomes a road trip flick, and despite the fact that Sonic could supposedly cover the distance required in the blink of an eye we watch the ins and outs of our heroes relationship as they learn what home, and being a hero mean to them. By the climax it is pretty by the numbers, Sonic has come to feel at home on Earth and now that he has friends who care for him they can begin to make a world from which neither will have to flee; and of course, they beat the bad guy. FOR NOW. we are treated to an even crazier Dr. Robotnik stranded in the Fungus Dimension bent on revenge.

The Benediction

Now for all things Holy and Profane in this film, please rise for the Benediction.

Best Scandal: Sonic the Cosmic Horror

The original look of this film was mired in dread when the early footage and trailers dropped revealing a hideously uncanny hedgehog monster in the form of sonic. The memes are amazing, the toys are unsettling, there’s still plenty of Quasimodo Sonic stuff out there floating on the web and I suggest that you search it out, the laughter is good for your heart. Also if anyone wants to send me any creepy sonic merch I’ll take it. 

Thanks to the work of online fans and internet harassments, the studio felt it was going to lose money on the project and reeled back the release allowing for the design department to give us a more cartoony but less frightening alien monster. I mean he’s a cartoon, it’s okay for him to look like a cartoon. 

Best Scene: Noodle Dance

It’s hard to choose, and it feels a bit biased, but there are a few scenes with Dr. Robotnik that are just what make the movie more than a forgettable IP adaptation. Not that Ben Schwartz wasn’t doing great as the character but I feel Sonic as a whole would be lost in the milieu of CG spectacles and Super Hero Origin stories that we are bombarded with every year if not for Jim Carey’s performances; and even with them Sonic: The Hedgehog is not completely out of those woods. That said, I think Dr. Robotnik’s Alone Time Dance Party has to be the stand out sequence in my memory. I can’t really speak to what makes it so enjoyable, but damn if it isn’t just the best scene in the movie.

Best Character: Silicon Valley Dr. Robotnik

Do I even need to say it? It’s Dr. Robotnik. I’m not a fan of this villain from any other media. I always found Dr. Robotniks look unappealing, I’m not a huge fan of his powers, or using robot henchman. it always struck me as pretty boring how Sonic didn’t have a cool rogues gallery (i’m talking about 90s sonic) the way Mario did. However, they did something with the design, characterization, and performance that just made him such a fun villain. Also, my friend Jacksons mom said I looked like him and it didn’t hurt my feelings so.

Best Actor: Jim Carey

Jim Carey. It really seems like he’s all I’m talking about in this movie. Once again, I think Ben Schwartz did great and Sonic IS basically Dewey Duck in this movie. Dewey Duck is my favorite part of the rebooted DuckTales series, BUT he is just outmaneuvered by Jim Carey in this role. I think it’s a compliment enough to say that Ben Schwartz was even able to keep up with his energy, let alone play his quicker perkier foil. 

Worst Scene: Toyota Tacoma Commercial

Sonic: the Hedgehog’s worst scene would probably have to be the forced friend fight between Sonic and Officer Wachowski  during the car chase. It’s an overproduced weightless car chase scene with a contrived buddy cop controversy meant to force apart our heroes so that they can ultimately grow a little and come back together later in the movie. Not that I mind a movie like this to be so by the numbers, but it just felt like two of the blandest things on this movies plate being forced into one scene. I do like the idea of giving me the crap part of the dish in one flavorless generic bite, but that still doesn’t save it from being the worst scene in the movie. 

That Toyota Tacoma took a beating though.

Worst Feature: Nothing Ventured/ Nothing Earned

I’m sure many fans would feel that the worst feature of the film is that it isn’t loyal to any previous lore laden version of the character, (probably the one they like the most). In the portrayals of both Sonic and Dr. Robotnik there were decisions made that drastically differed from the ways they have been portrayed before. Sonic is naïve and idealistic, a bit childish, Dr. Robotnik is driven by a lot of insecurity. Where are the Chaos Crystals and my original character Grindy the Wolf Cub?

But I think that these are over all positive choices in a film that otherwise chose to play it incredibly safe. In their cautious approach to appeal to the widest possible audience the film makers gave us a pleasant and appealing cartoon romp but we are left with little to hold on to. The worst feature of Sonic: The Hedgehog is it’s safety.

Summary:

Sonic: The Hedgehog is often touted as “the first good video game movie”. A label that I disagree with wholeheartedly. It is certainly a good video game movie, but it’s not the first, and it is not by leaps and bounds better than other video game movies as a whole. It’s a sub genre that gets a ton of disrespect, and in a world where the biggest criticism levied against the Super Mario Bros is that it’s not a faithful adaptation, I don’t understand how Sonic the Buddy Cop/ Road Trip comedy is escaping that attitude.

All that said, I had a good time with this movie. But it felt like playing on the playground as a toddler. You have fun and then you leave and you don’t really remember what you played or who with. I’ll think about Jim Carey and Dewey Duck, but I had a hard time hating or loving anything this movie did in any strong way. I usually feel that a movie that is “bad” or “corny” or “shlocky” is always better than a movie that is generic, or pointless, or boring. Sonics pleasantness and cheerful energy just barely save it from being another Transformers franchise. I get that origin stories are hard, so I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment, and hopefully it’s going to do something that sets it apart. Probably not. 

Overall Grade: C

James Marsden! I just remembered!

[ionicspacemarmot]

Modern Visual Effects and the Ethics of Digitally Revived Actors

Since its earliest days, illusions have been a staple of cinema. Filmmakers like Georges Méliès sought to use the medium to achieve visual spectacles which could never be accomplished in a live setting like theatre.

Over the past century, special effects have advanced to an unprecedented extent. We now live in a world in which just about anything that can be visualized can be translated to the screen, whether through practical or digital means.

When CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery, was first introduced to mainstream cinema, one of the main goals of VFX artists was to perfect photorealistic human beings. In this industry, one of the most difficult tasks is to create a human being detailed enough to fool the audience into believing it's really there. This is an art which only recently has even come close to being achieved.

Why So Complicated?

When a CGI character is present in a film, it's very rarely seamlessly integrated. Many would argue that it still has yet to be perfected. This is generally not for lack of effort or talent on the part of the artists, but rather the fact that human beings have evolved over many years to identify other humans based on the smallest details and microexpressions. We, as a species, are incredibly good at picking up on the slightest inconsistencies. When a character teeters too precariously on the line between realistic and unconvincing, it runs the risk of falling into what is known as the "uncanny valley."

What is the Uncanny Valley?

The uncanny valley refers to our empathetic response to humanoid creations who look real, but not quite real enough to be completely convincing, thus eliciting a discomforting emotional response from the audience. As explained before, we are extraordinarily good at identifying when something doesn't look or behave as it would in real life, as we experience real world textures, lighting, and physics every single day.

This discrepancy is especially true when it comes to identifying flaws in other human creations. The animal part of our brains immediately recognize that what they're looking at resembles another human being, but those slight imperfections trigger something inherently off-putting. (1)

This is why 3D animated films opt for more exaggerated, cartoony character designs. Mr. Incredible does not look like a real person. Homer Simpson is not designed to look as though he exists in the real world. Our brains have a much easier time registering these designs because they are not designed to imitate reality and fool us.

A Very Brief History

In recent years, technology and techniques have evolved within the VFX industry to the point where convincing photorealistic characters are quite possible. This has been the goal of many artists since the introduction of CGI, meaning there is a great deal of research and development behind it.

While Disney is known today, for better or worse, for their recent advancements in 3D human animation, this is something that has been attempted many times over the past twenty or so years, with varying degrees of success.

Even at the time, this movie was criticized for its creepy, imperfect character models who fell deep into the uncanny valley. That being said, this film was still an immense technical achievement unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for the truly groundbreaking effects of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, released the following year in 2002.

One of the earliest experiments in 3D human animation was the 2001 Japanese-American film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. This was the first fully motion-captured mainstream film, as well as the first film to utilize "photorealistic" human characters.

The Beginning of De-Aging

The Two Towers introduced audiences to Gollum, a fully computer-animated character who is still praised today for his realism. This film took the technology introduced in Final Fantasy far beyond its limits, taking Andy Serkis's motion-captured performance and taking the time to ensure his character was composited as seamlessly as possible into the live action world of the film.

A wide variety of films followed, all trying to perfect the art of CGI human beings. While some of these projects were well-executed and have aged quite well, such as (some of) the Matrix sequels. Most, however, failed to properly bridge the uncanny valley, notoriously films such as The Polar Express and The Scorpion King.

In 2006, Bryan Singer's X-Men: The Last Stand, introduced a new frontier to this evolving art: Digital de-aging. In this film, a flashback sequence shows off actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, both digitally altered to resemble younger versions of themselves.

Today, of course, the charge in the effort to perfect 3D human animation is led by none other than Disney. Specifically, Marvel Studios.

The Reign of Disney

While a bit jarring by today's standards, this was extremely new and impressive technology for 2006. It was also a technique that would once again be taken on by a number of other filmmakers in subsequent films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Tron: Legacy (2010).

Tron was Disney's first real foray into the world of digital de-aging technology. While once again, the de-aged Kurt Russell featured in the film is quite unsettling to look at, it paved the way for 2015's Ant-Man. This film opens with a flashback in which actors Michael Douglas and Martin Donovan have been de-aged approximately twenty-five years.

2016 would also see an unprecedented use of this evolving technology upon the release of Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Using a miraculously found, highly detailed lifecast of the actors face from the 1984 film Top Secret, the artists at ILM were able to produce an accurate 3D sculpt of the actor's face and composite it onto the motion-tracked performance of Guy Henry. (2)

This effect was remarkably successful and the film continues to be praised for its use of the technology. This technology would again be applied the following year, in Captain America: Civil War, which features a rather convincingly de-aged Robert Downey Jr.

While imperfect, CGI Tarkin was a groundbreaking achievement in terms of technological innovation. However, it did raise a number of ethical discussions. In particular, is it ethical to use this technology to revive deceased actors? And by extension, do actors have a legal right to their physical likeness?

Star Wars Changes the Game

A major element kept secret in the marketing for the film was the prominent role of the character Grand Moff Tarkin, a major character from the original Star Wars in 1977. The immediate issue here is that the actor who originally portrayed the character, Peter Cushing, passed away in 1994.

Ethical Dilemmas

For this film, the immensely talented artists at Industrial Light and Magic were tasked not with de-aging a character, but with bringing a deceased actor back from the dead. This daunting project was achieved by casting a stand-in actor, Guy Henry, who could not only imitate Cushing's voice, but also looked a bit like him.

While Lucasfilm did receive permission from Peter Cushing's estate to use his likeness, this is something they theoretically did not have to do. Legally, it can be quite tricky to protect one's physical likeness. That being said, because they were granted permission by the estate, the studio was not heavily criticized. However, it certainly opened up an interesting ethical discussion. (3)

Again, it begs the question: is this the beginning of a trend? Disney is far from the only studio to attempt something like this. Usually when a deceased actor is revived for a role through special effects, it's for a specific reason. For example, Brandon Lee and Oliver Reed both passed during production of The Crow and Gladiator, respectively. Special effects were used to finish a project they were already heavily involved in. A character like Tarkin is different. (5)

Soon after Rogue One was released, Carrie Fisher tragically passed away before she could film her scenes as Princess Leia Organa in the ninth installment of the main Star Wars saga. Disney released a statement soon after claiming they would not use CGI to recreate her likeness for Episode IX.

As it came to pass, the film ended up utilizing unused footage of Fisher from 2015's The Force Awakens. Writers JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio attempted to write scenes around her pre-existing dialogue to try and fit her into the overarching narrative. Whether or not this worked in the film's favor is besides the point. From a technical standpoint, it's undoubtedly impressive and a testament to how far VFX has come. (4)

One again, however, many questioned the implications of such a practice. Like Peter Cushing's return as Tarkin, Fisher's role in The Rise of Skywalker did not face much scrutiny due to the fact that once again, the production was given the family's blessing to use her likeness in this way. Her daughter, Billie Lourd, actually plays a significant role in the film and shares scenes with her mother's character.

While exciting for hardcore Star Wars fans like myself to see, Tarkin was a character that could have been absent from Rogue One, or at least kept more to the sidelines. However, Edwards chose to make the character a prominent player for the duration of the film, showing him off in great detail quite often. They have essentially used special effects to synthesize an entirely new performance from an actor who has been dead for more than twenty years.

So again, could this be the start of a trend in cinema? Will we see the return of great actors who are no longer with us? Is that a bad thing? Who gets credited and paid? This is entirely new territory that comes with our rapidly growing technological advancements in the film industry. It seems that this is a phenomenon that will continue for the time being. The question remains as to whether or not legal and ethical attitudes change as a result of this ever-evolving medium.

Notes:

Bill Desowitz. "Advanced De-Aging VFX Are Crucial to The Irishman, Gemini Man, and Captain Marvel," Indiewire, October 1, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(2)Bill Desowitz. "Rogue One: How ILM Created CGI Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia," Indiewire, January 9, 2017, accessed May 2, 2020.

Brian Welk. "How Samuel L Jackson’s De-Aging on ‘Captain Marvel’ Cut Shooting Time in Half," The Wrap, March 18, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Carolyn Giardina. "Will Smith, Robert DeNiro and the Rise of the All-Digital Actor," The Hollywood Reporter, August 10, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

David Ehrlich. "James Dean Is Just the Beginning: Critics Debate the Future of CGI Acting," Indiewire, November 11, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Erin Winick. "Actors are Digitally Preserving Themselves to Continue Their Careers Beyond the Grave," MIT Technology Review, October 16, 2018, accessed April 20, 2020.

Laura M. Holson. "A C.G.I. James Dean? Some in Hollywood See ‘an Awful Precedent’," New York Times, November 7, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

Leon Miller. "14 Actors Resurrected With Crazy CGI (And 6 That Can Never Be)," Screenrant, August 9, 2018, accessed April 26, 2020.

Luke Kemp. "In the age of deepfakes, could virtual actors put humans out of business?" The Guardian, July 8, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(4)Jordan Zakarin. "It Took More CGI Than You Think to Bring Carrie Fisher Into The Rise of Skywalker," Syfy, January 7, 2020.

(3,5)Joseph Waltz. "Rogue One: the CGI resurrection of Peter Cushing is thrilling – but is it right?," The Guardian, December 16, 2016, accessed April 26, 2020.

(1)"VFX Artists React to Resurrected Actors Bad and Great CGI," YouTube video, 13:20, "Corridor Crew," June 1, 2019. https://youtu.be/2ZKPnuUFwOk

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 08 Mar 2020 (Ghost flights over Europe, Patagonia joins Right to Repair, EU's R2R showdown with Apple)

Today's links

EU airspace is full of empty planes: Flight slots are use-em-or-lose-em.

European Right to Repair for phones is finally on the horizon: Will the EU finally defy Apple?

Patagonia offers tutorials and supplies to fix your clothes: Companies that guarantee their products for life have different incentives.

This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EU airspace is full of empty planes (permalink)

In the EU, airlines that do not fly at least 80% of scheduled flights risk losing their spots to competitors, so Europe's skies are filled with largely empty "ghost planes," burning tons of fuel for no reason.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-airlines-run-empty-ghost-flights-planes-passengers-outbreak-covid-2020-3

Covid-19 has crashed aviation demand, but not flights themselves. Miraculously, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps – an otherwise useless idiot – has led on this, asking British aviation regulators to relax the 80/20 rule.

https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/1235614933292920832

European Right to Repair for phones is finally on the horizon (permalink)

The EU has led the world on Right to Repair, with extensive regulation mandating both easy-to-repair designs and manufacturer cooperation with the independent repair sector. But there's been one glaring omission in EU rules: smartphones. Though the official reasoning for not mandating Right to Repair for phones – which are universal and a major source of e-waste – is that the sector is too fast-moving to regulate, it's far more likely that the EU shied away because were scared to pick a fight with Apple.

Apple, after all, is the most repair-hostile manufacturer in the world. It's official reasoning on this is laughably terrible and transparent.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/33977/apple-told-congress-how-repair-should-work-we-respond

Especially when considered in light of its investor disclosures, which make it clear that the company views the tendency of customers to fix and keep their phones (rather than buying new ones) as the major threat to its profitability.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

Apple is a one-company environmental apocalypse, with the industry's worst practices for old/broken electronics. Others fix systems, re-use parts, and keep parts available. Apple literally orders its partners to shred it all and turn it into landfill.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

This has the major advantage (for Apple) of curtailing the used equipment market, which means that potential customers are herded into buying new. It also means that those new devices have a hidden drain on their value, because they have no aftermarket commercial life. It's no wonder, then, that Apple led the industry coalitions that killed all twenty state-level Right to Repair bills in 2018.

Which brings us to today, as the EU is contemplating a new set of Right to Repair rules, including rules for electronics, including – possibly – phones. The new rules will be published this week, and Apple has lobbied heavily against this outcome.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/right-to-repair-will-the-european-commission-have-the-guts-to-stand-up-to-apple-et-al-details-on-wednesday.html

If the new ecodesign directive covers mobile phones, the Commission will finally be addressing one of the great e-waste sources worldwide. If they do, though, expect Apple to squawk, as they did when the EU mandated a single charger for smartphones, which Apple publicly freaked out about as though it was an extinction-level event.

Patagonia offers tutorials and supplies to fix your clothes (permalink)

People buy Patagonia not just because it's long-wearing, but because it comes with what amounts to a lifetime guarantee.

https://help.patagonia.com/s/article/Ironclad-Guarantee

Companies that offer lifetime guarantees want their customers to be able to effect their own repairs and maintenance – unlike companies whose profits depend on you throwing away and replacing your purchases every 18 months.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

So it's delightful (but not surprising) that Patagonia have partnered with iFixit to produce detailed repair and maintenance documentation for its products.

https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Patagonia_Product_Care

The official Product Repair Guide fits right in with the company's longstanding ethic and messaging (after all, these are the people who ran an anti-consumerism campaign called "Do Not Buy This Jacket!").

https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-fashion/patagonia-will-teach-you-how-repair-clothes.html

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Waxy and his mom trying to save journalism program in SoCal's Oxnard College https://waxy.org/2005/03/my_mom_fights_t/

#5yrsago Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes https://web.archive.org/web/20100310233037/https://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/09/waterboarding_for_dummies/index.html?source=rss&aim=%2Fnews%2Ffeature

#5yrsago Imaginary ISIS attack on Louisiana and the twitterbots who loved it https://render.betaworks.com/media-hacking-3b1e350d619c

#1yrago The media company paid by the EU Parliament to make a video promoting a copyright law it stood to make millions from once sued a photographer for complaining that they'd ripped him off https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190307/16175941758/eu-parliament-paid-news-publisher-afp-to-create-bogus-propaganda-video-favor-eu-copyright-directive.shtml

#1yrago Thanks to audiobooks, reading's popularity still strong in America https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks/

#1yrago Millions of Americans have left Facebook, led by young people aged 12-34 https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-look-numbers-showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions/

#1yrago A machine-learning system that guesses whether text was produced by machine-learning systems http://gltr.io/

#1yrago Towards a general theory of "adversarial examples," the bizarre, hallucinatory motes in machine learning's all-seeing eye https://perma.cc/3ZQQ-A7MY

#1yrago Chelsea Manning has been jailed for refusing to testify at a grand jury about her whistleblowing https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256173/chelsea-manning-wikileaks-jailed-testify-refusal

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org) and Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[avoutput]

Mercy || Battle Angel Alita

Many of my manga firsts happened in my middle school library. I think the strangest aspect of their selection, looking back, is how adult some of it was. I can’t recall if there was a rating system to them, but it seemed as though there might have been a list of approved novels, but not a list of approved comics, especially foreign comics. This is how I encountered Battle Angel Alita. The misinformed education system’s ignorance was my bliss. Either that, or some crafty librarian wasn’t afraid to get fired. And in their defense, it wasn’t like the translated manga had a wide breadth of work to offer. Possibly inspired by the success of Akira in the late 80’s, the spectrum of shipped anime was limited to teen serials like Ranma, re-imagined after school shows like Robotech, hard shonen like Dragon Ball Z, and finally violent sci-fi like Sin or Kite. The 90’s American anime scene was dominated by the hyper violent, cyber punk, dystopian scene. Sometimes this would include giant robots or maybe super huge or powerful guns. But the one thing they all had in common was a connection to the fragility of life and the strength of will to sustain that life. Better than most anime of its era, Alita taps into the indomitable human spirit by taking the broken shell of a conscious being cobbled back together by goodwill and an undying belief in the power of life.

How does Battle Angel Alita stand up after being in Hollywood limbo for over 20 years? The first thing I noticed was the bones of a film that could have been made all those years ago. Despite being a computer generated tour de force, you can almost taste the practical effects they would have used all those years ago. In fact, when it comes to the character models, most of whom are computer generated to one degree or another, they so completely clear the uncanny valley, you’d think Evil Kenevil himself made the jump. Even more impressive is that many set pieces are real, tangible objects with a clarity that surpass CG juggernaut films coming from the Marvel camp. Robert Rodriguez has accumulated a talent for directing green screen reliant films from his time with the Spy Kids franchise and fine tuned the perfect mixture of real and fantasy with films like Predators and Planet Terror, both on completely different ends of the spectrum. I can’t think of the last time I was this impressed, but I had mixed to low expectations going in, just to give you a balance.

While the backdrop helped drive the film, the acting really took it home. Rosa Salazar as Alita really drew me in. She was able to balance amnesia, innocence, anger, suspicion, strength, weakness and hope all while standing in the front of this incredible graphic space that wanted to pull your eyes in a million directions. It should go without saying that Christoph Waltz pulled his weight. An empathic delight in any role, even when he takes his turn as a villain in other films. His natural gravity lends strength to his other cast members. Jennifer Connelly’s character Chiren is a little more subdued than her story should allow for, but she still stands out with her signature calmness. The story doesn’t do Mahershala Ali any favors, but he still breaks through and pierces the screen with an icy, villainous stare, though he doesn’t get as much screen time as I would have liked. Keean Johnson does a fine job, but he comes off as pretty boy generic, which is really just a problem with his place in the story more than anything. Lastly, Ed Skrein as Zappa almost feels effortlessly entertaining. He really just chews up his role and plays a line between dangerous and clownish perfectly. I will be coming back to this movie for many reasons, but he is going to make it fun all on his own.

Where the movie becomes a bit muddled is in its tone. But, all good cocktails have “muddle” right in the recipe. And that is exactly what Battle Angel Alita is, a mix of Rodriguez movie making mentality. Its cheeky, gorey, funny, dark, and and totally for and not for kids. This was one of the hardest PG-13 ratings I had seen in years. Decades. I had to double check the rating when I left the theater. Back in the 80’s, the heyday of the blockbuster action-adventure film, they didn’t always have the 13 an older marker. Not necessarily because of that, but nonetheless, films that weren’t intended for children were adopted largely by them. Good examples include Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, and even Aliens (seriously click that link, it’s a 1992 Aliens toy commercial). Battle Angel fills a very similar place, although with a specific misalignment. In Jones and Busters, there is no sense of catering to younger viewers, but possibly in capturing the spirit of Japanese culture and ignoring the western barrier between adult and child, the film adopts a childlike nature in some scenes, and a literal deadly focus in others. This jarring presentation is a unlike anything I have seen in the recent past. It was like they took Terminator 2 and mixed in the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer with a hint of Spy Kids and a dash of From Dusk Till Dawn. Alita is an unbalanced cocktail of childlike wonder and violence that goes down hard, but delicious regardless. 

In a time of transition, where people are unsure of their next paycheck or where they will be in 5 years, Alita’s story offers us a beacon of light. It shows us we can be broken, changed, unable to produce in the way we used to. We can evolve, find our passage, and make change in the spirit of good. Robert Rodriguez also creates a new space for Anime fans. That Anime can be translated to the big screen, altered, and still entertaining and insightful across the border of both time and country. If you have read any of my work, you know I have a special place in my heart for the translation of video games and anime, so this really hit home for me. Like El Mariachi, From Dusk Till Dawn, and The Faculty, I will be re-watching this movie for years because of the ingenuity of everyone involved in all of these films.

~* 9/10 *~