#it's weird that he's only adopted into the Navajo in canon right?

[zithcavooris]

Growing up on the outskirts of the Navajo Nation, Roy Harper always felt a little bit of an outsider due to his biracial parentage. This persisted even after his white father died a hero’s death, rescuing innocent bystanders from a forest fire. Although a troubled, angry youth, Roy worked hard to fill his father’s heroic shoes. He channeled his anger into fighting against bigger kids to protect the smaller, doing odd jobs to help make ends meet, and studying archery under his mother, a world-class archery master fittingly named Brave Bow.

One day, a man named Oliver Queen came to town looking to hone his already impressive archery skills as Brave Bow’s student. He became a family friend and would return many times over the next few years. On one such visit, one of Oliver’s enemies followed him, revealing his identity as the hero Green Arrow. Roy and Oliver wound up working together to defeat the villain, saving each others’ lives and further cementing their friendship.

Tragically, Brave Bow began to succumb to illness. Having no family, and nothing else in town to keep her son there, she beseeched Oliver to take Roy in and give him a better life elsewhere. Uncertain that life with him would be much more stable, Ollie nonetheless agreed. Roy, who insisted he was “practically an adult anyway”, also began fighting alongside Green Arrow as his sidekick. He was nicknamed Speedy, after his agility on both foot and bow, a nickname that everyone regretted once the two became friends with superspeedsters.

[tearlessrain]

okay are y’all ready for Spirit: Riding Free? because I am probably not

the opening theme is a catchy but generic country-ish pop song. not terrible. the animation is ugly af but still better than alpha and omega

wait wait wait hold the fuck up. so remember that part of the original spirit where the horse literally explodes an entire steam engine through the sheer force of his righteous anger to stop the humans from building a railroad?

FEELS LIKE A PRETTY HOLLOW VICTORY NOW THANKS WRITERS

every single one of them is rendered in a different art style and the one on the upper right looks like a mii. why is the lower right one two dimensional.

um. why is her dad like. an uncomfortably beautiful man.

seriously look at this

this is a man who meticulously maintains his eyebrows that doesn’t happen by accident he looks like an elven lord wearing a fake mustache

oh wait it’s her uncle that explains why she looks nothing like him

her name is Lucky? okay why not.

here come the wild horses oh booooy this is so much less climactic than the opening scene of spirit I feel like they should be playing the theme from the movie on a single kazoo in the background

I’m unduly bothered that not-spirit is joyfully racing with the train that his father(?) so vehemently tried to stop from existing, this seems slightly tone deaf

of course she already has a special ~connection~ with not-spirit, I can see how this is gonna go

oh they...they caught him. that was quick. OKAY kids wrap it up show’s over

okay look, I’m just gonna get this off my chest now because I feel like it’s gonna come up a lot in this show. mustangs are an invasive species. like they’re pretty yeah but they also screw up the ecosystem and there’s a dang good reason the BLM doesn’t let too many of them run loose at once. if it weren’t for people going “but wild west nostalgia something something american freedom symbol” there probably would be a lot fewer feral horses and that would not be a bad thing. and also they’re not wild horses. they’re feral domesticated horses. przewalski’s horses are wild. mustangs are like stray cat colonies that eat a shitton of native foliage instead of endangered birds. I love the concept of majestic horse herds roaming freely as much as the next guy and I’m definitely not saying shoot them all or something (mustang adoptions are great) but they’re still bad for the environment and the people who round them up really aren’t the bad guys here. I’m sure the horse wranglers will end up being cartoonish villains but her uncle is completely right.

on the other hand I love how everyone looked at this invasive foreign species that multiplies too fast and starves out the native ones and went “yep that’s the most american thing there is”

okay I’m done I’m ready to suspend my environmental salt for the purpose of a horse show for children now but it had to be said. invasive species.

they’re arrived at the sims 3 map they’re moving to

not-spirit is trying awfully hard to break free of those ropes but judging by the quality with which this show is rendered I’m pretty sure he could clip through them if he just finds the right combination of bucks and rears

ah of course we now have the obligatory Snooty Girl to go along with Posh Aunt, Adventure Uncle, Primary Horse Girl, and Problem Horse. this sure is a horse show all right.

I’ll be honest though, the writing isn’t awful

wait he IS her dad. okay now it’s even more of a horse show. gotta have that father-daughter bonding moment over a dead mother in there somewhere.

they have a surprisingly healthy and genuine relationship

I already hate Posh Aunt though her character archetype annoys me

so I’m glad the horses don’t talk and they kept that consistent but why does not-spirit understand english so perfectly?

and why did he just eat her ham sandwich this horse is a carnivore

maybe mustangs DO eat endangered birds

I knew a pony once who acted like he really wanted to be a carnivore his name was rocco and he was an adorable asshole who bit at least three people the one time I rode him. I mean bad training obviously but damn he was cute.

okay I know this is stupidly nitpicky for the horse that eats ham sandwiches and understands english but it bothers me that they designed him as if the dark nose is a marking that goes over the blaze. that’s not how white markings work, or how horse noses work, there should be some pink skin where the blaze runs into the nose or it should end before the nose. pick one.

that horse looks exactly like spirit’s mom from the movie. that’s... an odd choice.

I have just come to the terrible realization that I’m watching the Old West Saddle Club. token black girl and snobby nemesis included. god help me.

why is the horse named boomerang did they even have boomerangs in the old west

okay I literally paused to google this and apparently boomerangs didn’t originate in australia and appeared in a lot of ancient cultures from all over the world, and the navajo used something similar but the actual term boomerang appearing in the old west is still highly suspect

they forgot to move the reins they’re still dragging in front of the horse

beautiful

this is the pilot episode. the first impression they choose to make to the viewers.

yes most of their viewers are probably ten years old but that’s no excuse.

oh well if they’d just TALKED to the horse it would’ve let them ride, obviously, why didn’t they think of that

seriously why didn’t they, the horses in this universe very obviously understand complex sentences in english, I don’t see how this would be a secret

we have limited time and some people might die and we’re the only ones who can prevent it. TIME FOR A GALLOPY JOYRIDE IN A RANDOM DIRECTION.

okay know what that was impressive. they just did this shot where her hair tie fell off and the braid came loose and let me tell you they don’t have much to work with here with these models, but they did it. they used some timely zooming and strategic lens flair and they did it almost seamlessly. I’m not even being sarcastic here I’m proud of them for how they did that.

I think genuine effort is going into this show you guys

most untrained feral horses with no tack and a beyond green rider would run away from a giant explosion, but fortunately all she has to do with felaróf here is explain the situation and he’ll charge right into the exploding narrow space

GAAAH WHY WOULD YOU MOUNT A HORSE LIKE THAT

FIRST OF ALL NEVER BACK UP DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF A HORSE ESPECIALLY WHEN THINGS ARE EXPLODING

SECOND OF ALL THEY CAN’T THROW A FULL SIZE CHILD IN THE AIR WITH THEIR NOSE THAT’S NOT HOW know what fine why not this is fine its name is fucking boomerang it can do whatever it wants

well the saddle club is trapped in the exploding canyon I wonder if they will escape

the suspense

COOL HORSES DON’T LOOK AT EXPLOSIONS

I feel like the people who animated this are like... they’re genuinely trying. like the creative way to circumvent the model limitations with the hair thing, the overall way the shots are set up... I respect them in spite of the blatant mistake with the reins earlier and the overall visually mediocre end result. it’s really not their fault and I respect what they managed to do with the resources they had.

it’s not their fault the modelling team spent most of the budget on adventure dad’s eyebrows

whoa the guy who tried to ride not-spirit earlier is not-carol’s dad what a twist. I guess I should have seen it coming it’s not like there would be two unrelated black people in one town that would just be crazy

on the other hand I’m really glad that the horse wranglers are apparently not villains, way to go writers you’ve kind of written these people more realistically than the original movie

but come on we all know that colonel was just completely insane, most of his men were probably otherwise reasonable people following bad and frankly weird orders because they were afraid of being tied to that post. like what was his thing with The Post. that’s a terrible catch-all solution for the majority of problems he is likely to have but I bet he tries to solve all of them with it. “sir this canon is broken” “tie it to the post, no food or water” “but sir” “THE POST”

“he’s unbreakable” you spent maybe five minutes slapping a saddle on him and yanking his reins, clinton anderson, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to train him

oh right my mistake she’s just ~a natural~

oh no you are not about to name him spirit

you are

you did

it’s a good name for a horse I guess but most disney sequels at least don’t give the kid the exact same name as their dad in addition to looking almost identical

aw she’s letting horse-curufinwe go free

oh okay horse-curufinwe came back

(really though? with a little wiggle room granted for metaphor the original spirit’s full name could actually be translated to feanor. though I'm pretty sure fearanyo would be more accurate technically. I’m sorry this is going wildly off the rails. much like that train fearanyo exploded which his son clearly does not appreciate.)

he sure got over missing his herd quick I guess so much for original spirit’s legacy and freedom and shiz

and don’t talk to me about my BLM rant I said I’m suspending disbelief, things are different in the spirit-verse

and of course she doesn’t ride horse-curufinwe with tack because he’s freeee and it’s impossible to ride badly or hurt the horse without a bridle that automatically equals good horsemanship *coughclintonandersoncough*

well, that was a fairly predictable and aesthetically meh but not alltogether unpleasant experience. not exactly riveting but I would feel okay about letting a child watch this, especially one young enough to not have seen these tropes a few hundred times yet because they’d probably enjoy it. I feel like this series actually has potential if the writers/animators take it. even if they don’t it’s still better and more intelligent than alpha and omega.