#like i'm kidding but i'm also not? i kind of feel like deliberate almost 100% perfect gender fuckery is an integral part of the bit now

[gynoidgearhead]

[Image caption for original post: quote as follows. It is attributed "John Waters on the sorry state of today's rebels (WSJ)". Begin quote.]

"When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you're a hacktivist. Which I probably would be if I was 20. Shuttin' down Mastercard. But there's no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has Wikileaks caused a look? No! I'm mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that."

[End quote.]

 the only criticism of millennials l accept

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 5 for the first time. Random thoughts.

Episode 1: Well...that dinner got dark. From what other fans have told me apparently Glimmer gets a lot of hate for her decisions during the series and I just find that odd. I was more annoyed with her in the early seasons where her actions were more harmless simply because she had no patience and wouldn't listen because of her immaturity. Season 4 and here though? Even her most reckless and risky actions have at least been fueled by the genuine desire to keep people safe during a very hard situation. Even here, yeah, she tells Prime something it's very bad for him to know but he was going to have Adora and everyone else literally murdered before her eyes if she didn't. I can't really be mad at Glimmer for making a bad choice when it flows logically and fueled by the desire to keep the people she cares about from being slaughtered.

I don't think we've ever seen Catra this completely at the mercy of another person before, save maybe for Shadow Weaver when she was a child. She has nothing to offer that Prime doesn't already possess. Nothing he wants that he can't get for himself. Her relationship with everyone these past few seasons have been either "I'm your commander and you have to do what I say" or "You are my commander and here's the reason you have to keep me around". This time she has nothing to protect herself behind and the only reason she's still around is because Prime might think of a use for her later.

I love having Scorpia on the heroes' side.

Episode 2: That ending though.

I think what helps elevate Entrapta for me and keeps her for being annoying or irritating is that the show really sells that she just genuinely has trouble understanding why she should/shouldn't be doing certain things. It's not stupidity or even pure self-absorption, she just struggles with people and social ques while machines and science is a lot more straightforward. Heck, she was probably able to bond so well with Hordak because work together in the lab was them meeting on a common middle ground she could understand and relax in. The way she's trying to overcome the issue to help save Glimmer reminds me a little of Mob from Mob Psycho 100, feeling a little frustrated in not understanding something that she knows she should be.

Episode 3: Anybody else get a Disney's Hercules vibes at the end there?

Catra: "Besides, O Oneness, you can't beat her! She has no weaknesses! She's gonna kick your...!"

Prime, smiling: "I think she does, little sister." [Strokes Catra's hair] "I truly think...she does."

This episode really sold how completely isolated Catra is. With the sole exception of Glimmer, she's in space, no idea where exactly she is, onboard a ship filled with nothing but Prime and hundreds of cultist clones. Throughout the entire series we've seen Catra push everyone away and now that she's in a situation where she is almost well and truly on her own with no power, freedom, or authority, she seeks out the one other person around to find any sense of comfort in. Despite everything, Catra doesn't like being alone.

Little child Catra lashing out because she didn't want Adora to have any friends other than her kind of reminds me of Glimmer and Bow during the Princess Prom episode. I imagine it's the same mentality. Growing up in isolation, even if in different forms, and finding only that one person they feel thay can really lean on, there is that fear that they'll find someone else they like more and start caring about them less, or even outright stop. The difference is Bow set Glimmer straight, assuring her he'll always be her friend no matter what but he's not going to be just solely dedicated to her. Her fear was understandable but she was not respecting him as a friend either. Adora never really had that with Catra, one because she was much younger and less mature than Bow, and Catra was probably all she had too, to an extent. As we saw season 1, she was always trying to look after her, even when Catra needed to take responsibility for herself. Bow is not Glimmer's keeper, while Adora too often was that for Catra, so Bow and Glimmer have a better foundation of mutual respect while Adora and Catra's dynamic has been really screwed up for a long time.

Kind of tying into that, despite all that's happened between them, the minute Adora hears Catra's in distress she starts panicking and tearing up. The last time they saw each other they were very much enemies and Adora was done reaching her hand out to her. I suppose you could make the argument she's really been hoping all this time that Catra would finally do the right thing for once, just probably didn't expect it to be like this.

Prime better not mind wipe Catra like he did Hordak.

Episode 4: See, calling the heroes the rebellion now makes sense since they are rebelling against the established power, which is Prime.

Love that trick with the reflections, where you can sort of see/sort of can't see She-Ra. A nice little tease for what I imagine will be a big reveal later.

I really like that explanation for what Bow's going through. Last season's finale was the last he'd seen Glimmer and was desperately trying to save her, and he's been consistently worried for her since then. Now that she's safe he's starting to let himself process his other emotions towards her, and I totally get it. It's hard to be mad at someone when you're also terrified over what might be happening to them, even if your anger is justified. While I get why Glimmer last season did what she thought she had to, it was still a big risk that Bow warned her about and she didn't listen, putting them all in danger. This situation and Glimmer's words is a very mature way of handle this topic. He's not wrong for being mad and it's not a contradiction to what we've been seeing from him this season. Humans and emotions are complicated.

Episode 5: SHE HAS PAAAAAAAAANTS!!! (I will miss the cape though)

That almost makes up for them cutting Catra hair. Seriously, that mane was beautiful!

But boy, speaking of Hercules, that return of She-Ra definitely felt like Hercules emerging from the pool of souls to save Meg.

With the one clone being disconnected from the hive mind and having a breakdown over it, that does make me wonder if Hordak has been connected to it. Wasn't he deemed a defect because Prime couldn't connect to his mind? I suppose it's possible that flaw was corrected. Clearly Prime can take over minds other than just his clones, like with Catra. But if he could do that I'm wondering why he just didn't when Hordak was first created and he instead cast him out to Etheria.

Was Catra purring at the end? I swear there was a sound that sounded like purring.

Episode 6: Assimilation is easily one of my biggest fears in fiction, be it zombies, Borgs and Cybermen, Get Out, the freaking Sapphire Dragon from Xiaolin Showdown that scared the hell out of me as a kid! Just the concept of having your free will and autonomy completely ripped away from you, potentially with you still being aware but unable to do anything about it, is horrifying! At least with Prime's chips the process is reversible.

Anyway, in lighter plots, I kind of love Wrong Hordak. He's really funny. I feel bad that he's being deliberately misled, but he really shouldn't be following Prime anyway, so...

I do like that Adora is being a little more tough on Catra. She needs kindness, yes, but she also needs honesty and discipline, the kind that has actual love and care behind it, unlike what she got from Shadow Weaver. Adora is genuinely trying to help so Catra needs to stop acting like a brat and LET HER HELP.

Episode 7: Catra was definitely purring.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume people probably ship Scorpia and Perfuma. Not that I have any problem with that. It's like the Midoriya/Todoroki ship; I don't ship it myself but I totally get why others do. It's a relationship based in mutual respect and one of the characters having a significantly positive effect on the life of the other. As long as the shipper themselves is not horrifically toxic, I don't care.

Also, I don't think I've ever been so intimidated by Mermista before than I was with that one shot of her in silhouette, just before the reveal she was chipped.

Episode 8: Okay, I definitely love Wrong Hordak. Just that realization of his. "Horde Prime...lied to us..." There's just something about it that's so full of character. Obviously he's a brainwashed clone but he was truly devoted to Prime and just to find out that he would keep something so big from them, from the hive mind that's supposed to be so open to him and each other, it destroys everything he ever believed in. It's hilarious to watch him prepare to lead his brothers in a revolt against Prime.

I assume magic is Prime's "weakness" in that he himself cannot control it. Obviously he can control magical beings like Spinnerella and have them use magic but magic itself is too free and too powerful for him to contain and fully fight back against. He's all about order and stillness and magic is basically chaos.

Episode 9: I like to believe the mushroom kingdom they saved is a Mario reference.

Something I like in hero stories is "the power of a name" or "the power of a symbol". Something as simple as Superman's S-shield can have so much weight and meaning behind it just because of the person it's tied to. She-Ra isn't just a powerful warrior to the people of Etheria, she's a hero of legend. We saw it touched on even back in season 1 how much Adora returning She-Ra to the world meant to everyone. She-Ra to them is a symbol of hope. If they have her on their side, then they believe they might be able to win and with that ordinary people can find the strength to fight too. It's something I think the Green Lantern put best with how the Blue Rings of hope supercharge the Green Rings of will but lose a lot of their functions when the greens are not around. Hope is useless if you don't have the will to also act, but in turn hope can give people the will to act. The more hope they have that they can win, the more they will fight to win.

That was the nerdiest comparison I've ever made.

Episode 10: I appreciate a good bad dad joke and that's why I can't approve of "punderstand". It's too much of stretch to flow well. "Ruined" was good though.

I'm less surprised that Scorpia's been chipped and more that she's even alive. She was at the bottom of the ocean when the roof broke and she's a scorpion woman. I don't think water is a very friendly element for her. She's even commented on how good the desert was to her.

I wonder her She-Ra mode is not working for her simply because Adora is exhausted; mentally and physically. I don't think she's ever used the form this continuously before, and she's been doing it without the First Ones' sword that she has experience with. Her new sword and its transformations may be made out of her own energy for all we know. And then there's just the emotional toil of having Catra back in her life while it feels like more and more of the world is being turned against her.

Episode 11: Oh, I'm definitely shipping Hordak and Entrapta.

I think Re:Zero has spoiled me on dark magic. While Micah with his dark magic is a threat, in this show and many others dark magic basically just equates to "spooky, evil, bad stuff" magic that isn't that different from most other kinds of magic other than being either harder to control or more geared towards causing harm. In Re:Zero, dark magic was DARK. It felt unnatural, like a perversion of how their world's magic is supposed to be and that it didn't belong in this reality. Micah's dark magic is basically "I'm attacking you with shadows, oOoOoOo so scary!"

Not really surprised Catra left. She just got Adora back and now she's potentially about to let herself die. Perfuma said it best, letting people in and letting herself be vulnerable is hard. Caring about Adora and watching her die would be a huge blow, so Catra would rather curl back up into her shell and block out Adora again than have to risk taking that hit.

Episode 12: I keep saying it but now having them right next to each other, yeah, Mara's She-Ra outfit is better than Adora's. I don't know, there's just something grander about it. Anyway, on topic, I'm a big fan of superheroes and legacy and all that and I really like Mara's words to Adora. All she did and sacrificed was so that others, especially the next She-Ra, wouldn't have to do the same. It doesn't matter how noble and heroic it is, tragedy is tragedy and anyone who knows that kind of pain doesn't want anyone else to have to go through it.

I'm not surprised by the love confession between Glimmer and Bow. I felt it could go either way with them either hooking up or just staying really good friends, but that in itself is a sign of how good and natural their friendship is. I can easily buy how it would evolve into something more between them. The situation they're in probably helps. When Glimmer was taken they both thought they might never see each other again and that fear and worry probably caused them to reevaluate how they feel about the other. They've been clinging to each other since getting back, as every day could be their last. Something like that is naturally going to push two people together.

Episode 13: So...are there any plans for a season 6? Or a comic continuation like Avatar and Korra got? Because this was a good finale...buuuuuuuuut I feel there are definitely some things that needed a bit more exploration.

This is typically why I like stories with epilogue endings, especially those set some number of years in the future. Little glimpses of what everyone's doing now, allowing the audience to fill in for themselves what happened in-between. There's nothing wrong with this episode but it does just kind of...stop. They beat Prime. Everybody's cheering and happy. Adora suggests they bring magic back to the universe. And...that's it. We don't see anything more. No aftermath, no post-war, nothing. We end on the moment of victory, and while it's not a bad moment it leaves the ending feeling a little incomplete.

It kind of feels like the writers either really had to rush to the ending to make the 13 episode deadline or simply didn't want to address whatever happens with Catra and Hordak now. With the bigger threat of Horde Prime it makes sense why everyone puts aside past issues and works together. But now that the crisis is over, naturally everyone would have to address everything the Horde had done to Etheria for years with Hordak and Catra leading it. Don't get me wrong, I believe that Catra loves Adora, I believe Adora loves her, and I believe Catra wants to be a better person. It's not like I'm saying she needs to be locked up or executed. But she did cause a lot of damage and put Adora especially through hell, and just because Shadow Weaver is the one who screwed her up so bad doesn't mean she doesn't have any responsibility for her own actions. So it just would have been nice to get even a little bit of lip service to show that Catra would be trying to right her wrongs from this point forward, instead of just "Prime's gone, everyone's happy, bye!" At least with Entrapta she seemed to genuinely not understand why what she was doing at the time was wrong and Scorpia, like Adora and Huntara, defected from the Horde to do the right thing despite it being even more part of her upbringing than anyone else. I can't even imagine what happens with Hordak now.

Don't get me wrong, this is far from the worst I've ever seen a redemption handled. I haven't read/watched any of Boruto outside of the movie and Gaiden tie-in but I've read all of Naruto and there is no reason that Orochimaru should just be walking around and casually talking with people after all he's done. Kaiba in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga built an entire theme park to try an murder Yugi and his friends and they bring it up like twice after that arc. Kylo Ren turning back to the light was one of the potential paths for his character, so that made sense in TROS, but they essentially did "He died heroically and therefore totally redeemed himself for every terrible thing he's ever done."; basically a cop-out. Catra's alive and can at least potentially still own up to her actions and work to redeem herself. And I love Steven Universe, but kind of like with Catra nearly killing everyone (including herself) via the unstable portal, fans have naturally pointed out that the Diamonds enslaved and committed genocide on multiple planets and really faced no consequences for that other than "Stop it". Catra's not at the gold standard of redemption stories, which for me is probably Zuko and Endeavor, but she's far from the bottom. I think the best way to describe it is that Catra had as good, if not better, reasons for being so bad and screwed up as Zuko did, just as good step-up for turning good as Zuko did, but she didn't have nearly as much payoff afterwards to make it feel like a full journey like Zuko did.

But enough about all that. Love the basically goddess She-Ra Adora became. Given the emphasis on healing powers with She-Ra we've had, I'm guessing that's essentially how she destroyed Prime. She purified Hordak and Prime was basically an infection within him. I like when heroes snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but I also when there's an implication towards the villain that "Wow. I never stood a chance." She-Ra's power just dwarfs his. Full potential realized by Adora and he was just gone.

Also I don't know how I forgot that Prime could jump into the bodies of his clones but his possession of Hordak got me. I genuinely couldn't think of how he'd survive after Hordak shoved him off the edge (set free by the power of love!).

And even if the ending feels a little incomplete, the episode itself still did well with my emotional investment. I was gripped by during Catra's confession and the tension within the heart.

Season 5 and overall series verdict: I'm very glad I saw this series. Even though its ending falls a little short for me, this was still really good. Seasons 3 was probably my favorite overall but this story had a very good flow to it. It steadily built up bigger each season, with Catra and Hordak being really compelling villains driving the whole thing. Not that Prime was bad. He was a genuine threat and his cult of clones is a good creepy concept. He's just not as good as the other two. I'm sure part of what elevates him up is because I'm thinking of the JL director's cut but Hordak really is just better Steppenwolf. Everything that worked about that character, Hordak is that to an 11.

Given how I've talked about her more than any of the others, Catra is probably my favorite character. Just the damage that girl has been through. I always understood why she was doing what she did, even though there was rarely a moment I'd agree with exactly what she was doing. Again, it's one of the reasons it feels like the series just kind of ended. There's a lot to be seen with Catra's character now, a lot that can be done, and it just feels like a shame to really not show any of it. This isn't a fault of SRPOP itself because so many series, especially animated and anime, are guilty of but it always bugs me when a series ends on two characters hooking. Relationships are interesting, I'd argue more so than the build-up to them, but no writer ever wants to actually explore them after the hook-up. I never cared about Korra and Mako being a couple but I still found their relationship as a couple more interesting and character building than any of the will they/won't they build-up to it. And I actually like the idea of Adora and Catra as a couple. It's a big reason why I'm so happy the Harley Quinn animated series got renewed for a third season, as it otherwise would have just ended on a hook-up between two characters who, like Adora and Catra, love each other but have had a complicated dynamic for a while. I believe Adora and Catra love each other, but they've got a lot of stuff to work out and I want to see that! Catra's got abandonment issues and that in turn caused her to be unhealthily possessive over Adora. Just seeing the two of them try to work through that alone would be fascinating.

Like I suspected early on, Scorpia's my favorite supporting character. Entrapta's a decent 2nd. Took a small dip when it seemed like she was joining the Horde over feeling abandoned by the princesses when they thought she was dead but that picked back up once it was made more clear "Oh, okay, you're not being petty or stupid. You genuinely don't understand." It made her a more interesting character, and I love her and Hordak's relationship.

Least favorite characters...probably Sea Hawk and those three former Horde friends of Adora and Catra. I never hated them but I never cared about what was happening when they were on screen. They fill out the world a bit, they drive the plot, they're not wastes of space, they even get some laughs. There are just so many other characters in the series way more interesting than them.

Biggest surprise for me was definitely Glimmer and Bow. I never thought I'd dislike them but the best friends characters in series like this can kind of go one way or another with how relevant or deep they are. Glimmer especially I was surprised how much I was invested. She really grew a lot as a person throughout the series and I thought the dilemma over the Heart of Etheria was a good one.

Honestly there's a lot more I could talk about but I have only so many words and my thoughts are a jumble right now so I'm going to leave it at that. I will say I really appreciate how supportive you all on this Reddit have been. It's something I hate about some other fandoms I'm in where they basically are so toxic that they make no one else actually want to watch/read the thing they're fans of because they can't help but associate it with them.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o2p6wq/going_in_blind_watching_season_5_for_the_first/

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 30: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible III)

I bet the powers that be at the Mission: Impossible movie factory didn't lose any sleep over the stupid colon in the title that screws everything up. I mean, just look at that up there with the colon after my date, then the colon in the middle of the OG title, and then it's like, well, you can do whatever you want with punctuation but we're adding a subtitle after it now and you just have to deal with it. On posters and stuff it's just "Mission: Impossible" and then underneath those words they put "Ghost Protocol" so they don't have to deal with it. What a mess. I tell you it is a damn mess is what it is.

Anyway, we have arrived at the M:I movie that, more than any of the others, just really hit the spot for me when I saw it upon its original release. I saw it at the end of a frustrating and tiring work day and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. At some point in the middle I realized that I was enjoying it thoroughly without having to tolerate the kinds of flaws that were apparently part and parcel of this kind of movie. Maybe there were flaws that I just wasn't registering. We'll soon see.

Continuing the tradition of making very hip choices for the directing duties, here we have the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird, who started off directing episodes of The Simpsons before moving on to no less than The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Dude had two Oscars on his mantle by the time he showed up for this. Press play already!

Um Sweet Christ those opening shots look gook in 4K like HOO boy

Whoa, neat opening where Sawyer from Lost is chased off the top of a building in Budapest but his jacket deploys an air mattress right as he almost-hits, but then he's shot by Lea Seydoux in an alley, rat-a-tat-tat with the action here, like what is up

Simon Pegg is back, and he's being tricksy with the tech in a prison! He's opening cell doors and the prisoners are surprised and delighted with that twist! He plays them a jazz standard on the intercom and Ethan Hunt suavely emerges from one of the cells. Fun silly things ensue involving Ethan's rebellious and confident independent strategy and a small riot that seems kind of like a bar fight.

He has made a pal in the joint and he's breaking him out. Some kind of cool tech creates a really sweet vortex-y hole in the floor and they are swooped up by their helpers, it's fun.

We're introduced to Paula Patton who is a new team member, and then the credits roll, and they are spirited in a way that recalls the first movie, also showing real scenes from later in the movie.

Flashback to the thing that was happening with Sawyer shows how that botched operation, something about a file and a courier, got Sawyer killed because lots of bad guys were all over the place there. AR contact lens technology figures prominently, and that is a good idea (plus we totally might have those soon, right?).

0:18:16 - Once again we begin the movie without the leading lady from the previous one, but we're starting to get an explanation here. Or just a tease of one I guess.

And quickly we get a sneaky-style self-destructing message that sets up that Ethan has to disguise himself as a specific Russian and sneak into the actual Kremlin. This movie 100% gets what a Mission: Impossible movie is supposed to be.

This time, they aren't using fancy masks or voice shifter things, just costumes and a fake mustache. They comment about that in the dialogue but don't explain why.

0:24:52 - Dialogue mixed SO QUIET here I have no idea what SP just said. It seems like you're supposed to have heard it.

But that is quickly forgotten when they use the coolest spy gadget of them all - a screen that is placed in a corridor that makes the guy at the other end of the corridor think it’s the corridor, but it's a screen and SP & Ethan are hiding behind it and it is super super neato I love it

Then just when it's cool that that is going well, it's suddenly cool how NOT well it's going because someone is spying on their spycraft! The thing they were going to heist isn't there, and someone deliberately makes their comms thing be heard by the bad guys!

And THEN we see something we really didn't think we'd see and it is kind of mind blowing - Ethan escapes from the Kremlin with a very smooth quick-change of his disguise that we see him do in all one shot… but then the Kremlin totally explodes and it explodes all over Ethan as he's running away! It looks amazing!

Right after that there is some fun with subtitles - Ethan is in the hospital all damaged and concussed and stuff, and the news is talking about the obvious big story, and the subtitles are in Russian. At first I was like, "hey is my home theater tech busted?" but no, the subtitles become gradually more in English as Ethan starts to come out of it. Then we see with subtitles that Ethan is reading lips about the police people that want to be bad guys to Ethan.

After Ethan escapes, we shift to a wholesome-looking Russian family we haven't seen before. The scene is a nice little piece of drama about how the dad sees the Kremlin news and wants to get the family out of there, and very quickly that goes south and thugs have them all at gunpoint, it's nicely done

Ethan is being extracted by two new characters played by accomplished, Oscar-nominated actors Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner… the conversation is dire and I don't want to type during it gahhh gah gah gah I am watching because holy shit this goes south too! TW informs Ethan that the DoD is going to frame him for blowing up the Kremlin and his only choice is to escape. He's telling him HOW to escape in a funny way, but they are attacked and it's visually very interesting and TW is headshot and they are in the water and it is such bad news for Ethan and his new colleague played by Mr. Renner, I probably typoed a lot during that because it was so hard to look away.

So Ethan is on the hook for the terrorist attack of the century and he's being chased by a little battalion of thugs who just shot that important spy boss, and he's in Russia. It is very not good for Ethan.

He's with JR and JR is playing a different character for him. He's a bookish analyst guy who feels very out of place in action-land.

We're learning about the main bad guy, Hendricks, who was the guy that screwed everything up in the Kremlin. He's a super-smart theoretical physicist or something who has big, well-thought-out ideas about destroying the world with nukes, and he took nuke codes from the Kremlin. So things are just really really hairy and it's effective storytelling is what I'm saying.

Also effective is that they met up with SP and PP on a neat secret train car thing that is well appointed with spy gear

And VERY VERY EFFECTIVE is what happens next, which is a series of establishing shots of Dubai which KILL ON MY TV. I am glad I have a 4K panel, kids. This begins what I recall as being an extended sequence of sweet-ass suspense. Ethan has to break into a server room by climbing the outside of the 130th floor of the Burj Khalifa using glove-gadget tech that will hopefully work. There is at least some actual Tom Cruise clinging to the side of that building. It's so cool looking. And to make matters worse, a dust storm approaches! Or should I say "to make matters even cooler looking". Yes I should. Please read that part.

Paula Patton's character seems underdeveloped so far, especially compared to her teammates Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Jeez you guys, if you like suspenseful action scenes about barely surviving climbing a skyscraper this movie is for you.

1:05:34 - In the middle of a tense conversation we see that they were using the maskmaker but it wasn't working. They just don't want us to have mask fun in this movie. They hate mask fun. Why does Brad Bird hate mask fun.

Oh then this scene which is neat - bad guys are meeting with LS… but Ethan and JR are taking their place, and PP is taking LS's place for the real bad guys one floor down. The movie explains it better than me, but it is pretty exciting, the two meetings happening at the same time with opposite trickery.

Hah, SP does a sweet fake-hand trick to get the diamonds from the bad guys so he can get them to Ethan and JN, and JN is doing the thing where he uses the contact lens tech… gosh why are you even reading this, just watch the movie. I really like the tricksy espionage.

It all falls apart because LS spots the contact lens in JR's eye. The plot is moving along in a way that, I'm once again noticing, would normally require more half-assed-ness. It's just a solid spy plot. Which probably makes these notes more boring. Poor you.

LS dies by getting kicked out of the open window of the Burj Khalifa with a brewing sandstorm in the background! Neat looking!

And then a thing where Ethan is in a thick dust cloud and he's tracking the important paper thing with his tracker device, and it starts moving quickly at him and we realize just as it's too late that it's in a car that's gonna run him over! Then that mechanic gets used in a car chase in a dust storm, which we don't see very often outside a Mad Max movie, and that climaxes in a really cool looking collision, followed by the reveal that one of the nuclear code bad guys was Hendricks in a supermask. So we DO like mask fun after all! Except why do we care that it was Hendricks?

A scene where JR is confronted for maybe being a double-crosser has a beautifully choreographed gun-get-grabbity-grab thing that was probably super fun for the actors.

1:27:05 - JR tells a story that at first we think is that family we saw briefly almost scramming, but no, he's talking about Ethan, and what seems to be a story about Ethan's wife (Julia from the last movie) getting killed in Croatia, and Ethan killing six Serbians for revenge, and that's why he was in prison in the beginning? It's still a little mysterious and kind of complicated. It doesn't quite fit with what we think we know.

Dubai imagery is pretty. I have been to Dubai. I am standing by for your marriage proposals now.

I didn't really follow how we got to this point, but Ethan went for a walk and met with some underworld Dubai person and made a deal the ended up with a huge cache of spy gear and a private plane to India. I went to India like right after Dubai. I have my own car and a job kind of so you might need to calm your hormones at this point.

A probing exchange with PP establishes that indeed Ethan's story is that he killed the men who killed his wife. Doesn't really seem legit, though. There's more to the story, clearly.

One of the tech things they play with on the plane is the most magic-seeming one. It is a suit that looks like tight chain-mail, and it floats over a cart, like a magic carpet that you wear.

We're introduced to Brij Nath, whose name I had to look up so I could tell you how it is spelled. He has an access code that they need, which seems like they just kind of simplified the situation, and he's one of those only-kinda-bad bad guys that's really just a pawn, for our heroes as well as for these storytellers.

The wearable magic carpet gadget is fun and funny! SP has to remote control JR wearing the floaty-suit and JR is trying not to freak out too badly, and maybe on purpose it recalls the scene from the first movie where Tom Cruise hovers parallel to the floor.

Hendricks is now in a secret room in the place where they all are, and he has a bad-guy briefcase computer and orders some subordinates to do something with a virus, and I don't actually understand what's really happening but am I to believe that Ethan et al are thwarting literal nuclear terrorism here in Mumbai? Right here at this pleasant party at the palace of an only kinda-bad bad guy?

1:48:30 - Ha, the climax of the wearable magic carpet thing involves JR barely surviving by doing an acrobatic stunt that seems oddly intuitive and satisfying. You'll just have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

The spy-tech car they have is rad.

They fail to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile! We see it come out of the sub and start missiling toward its destination which we have learned is California! Hendricks mutters things about how that should get the ball rolling making world powers hate each other and nuke each other and may there be peace on Earth, he also, yes, says that.

A chase on foot has Ethan and Hendricks suddenly brawling on an exotically elegant robotic parking ramp. Platforms move around mechanically and transfer unmanned cars to different areas, and it is against that video gamey backdrop that Ethan and Hendricks struggle to get that sinister suitcase which is all bouncing around that environment. Unexpectedly, Ethan's hope of grabbing it is thwarted by Hendricks suicide-jumping down several stories! We see it! He definitely does that! Ethan drives a car off a thing to follow him, plummeting down hood-first, and the airbag saves him! He gets the briefcase and barely saves the day in time!

Again a denouement making it very clear that everything is really shockingly okay and tidied up. Even the thing with Ethan revenge-killing Serbians and the thing with his wife is cleaned way up, but with an elegance and sweetness that elevates this movie above the others. She's not dead after all, just fake-dead for her protection. And they're only where they are in Seattle so he can glimpse her lovingly across a marina.

So! I feel strongly that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie! It is an extraordinarily deftly-constructed spy thriller! It's got all the funnest types of things that are in the other movies, and other fun spy thrillers, but with so much less garbage! They did a great job and they should be proud.

[permian-tropos]

Ok, my issue with TLJ is the cynical-ness of it. It's written in a way that pokes fun of SW. Like, "all of this is so silly, isn't it. Wink, wink." I don't like how it took the focus off Rey. Ahch-To was filmed from Luke's POV most of the time. I'm not saying TLJ is a bad movie bc it's not! I just felt like I'd been slapped in the face w the fanboy-ness (the ego-ness) of it all. I know you'll break my whole argument down, but maybe I need that.

Can’t help but feel like I’m some kind of TLJ s&m dominatrix now like “this movie made you feel bad and you should be grateful” lmao 

TL;DR: As I experienced it, the movie is actually super sappy and in love with the sincerity of Star Wars just like TFA but taking its own route to convey it. instead of TFA, it’s framed to first appeal to and then sway the minds of an imagined cynical audience, and that audience might actually be 12 year olds and if so, that’s as it should be.

A point about the cynical-ness – it’s interesting you’re talking about the poking fun at SW, since the other way people have called it cynical would be in its depiction of failures and loss. To that, I would argue that it only seems especially dark because the end of the story hasn’t come yet. Which… the movie actually addresses in its story, the “hope is like the sun” line is kind of nudging the audience like “hey the heroes are in a bad spot but they’ll win in the end, don’t forget that”. 

It would be patronizing but… this movie is meant to be seen by 12 year olds as well as adults so maybe it’s okay that it’s kinda blunt about some things? Star Wars actually draws in a much younger audience than I think other PG-13 level movies do. Hiding all the messages in subtext isn’t fair to them so I think people get tripped up with TLJ thinking that it’s not saying exactly what it seems to be saying, and just communicating that message on a myriad of levels.

Like as someone who has written so many metas about TLJ – a lot of my analysis boils down to “I don’t think the movie is hiding its message very much, it’s kind of all right there, but there’s also a lot of extra layers enhancing it”. 

When the movie goes, “this is so silly, isn’t it?” (and also it doesn’t do that nearly as much as I’ve seen in some franchises) I sort of imagine what a 12 year old, having grown up in this cynical age of deconstruction of sincerity, and also being right at that age where you might look at your younger childhood loves and think “so silly”, would take from it. I don’t see them being so hurt or offended. They aren’t nostalgic for the OT yet. Their nostalgia fodder is being formed as these movies are coming out. Actually I remember being 12 and being oversensitive to people bashing sincerity – because all my peers were 100% in love with cynicism and I was well uhhh neurodivergent and at a different stage of emotional development.

Older people have a very different relationship to their childhood, often longing for the simplicity of it, or cherishing the joys. But you have to have some distance to really see that. Many movies for a pre-teen or young teen audience are about reminding them not to be too cynical, while showing an understanding of their sense of cynicism. They’re about telling kids “hey I get it but don’t rush into adulthood too fast”.

The Last Jedi concludes on sincerity, really bluntly. Rose saving Finn is about rejecting the nihilism of “the only way to prove you care about a cause is to die for it” – this isn’t true, and it’s why Holdo’s sacrifice isn’t the same. Holdo is deliberately trying to save the fleet, but the First Order, when you think about it, has cornered the Resistance on Crait whether they blast open the doors right away or besiege them for days. Finn’s sacrifice would actually just delay the inevitable and that’s not worth dying for. And “saving what we love” is this deeply sincere message.

Poe getting to save the Resistance by noticing the vulptices are leading them towards the exit is super sincere, that’s so freaking corny, it’s unreal. Cute animal friends save the day. 

Rey and Finn’s reunion is CORN HEAVEN it’s literally every run-into-your-beloved’s-arms scene (actually my first association with it is how the movie Madagascar parodies that trope with the zebra and the lion whose names I am not going to bother to remember). Rey lifting all those rocks is sincere, Luke mocks her earlier for claiming the Force is about that but guess what? It is about that! And it looks awesome and it saves everyone’s lives. Leia telling Rey “we have everything we need” is optimistic. It’s saying they’re not going to wallow in their losses. They will keep moving forward, they will take strength from failure, not despair.

Luke starts off the film thinking heroism is meaningless. He ends the film doing exactly what he said would be absurd – walking out with a laser sword and facing down the First Order. He starts off filmed with this shroud of overcast shadow around him, and ends with his face illuminated by nostalgic callback to the twin suns of Tatooine. Yoda even encourages him to remember his youthful dreams and desire for adventure – stop being such a cynic, Young Skywalker, I know you’re still that boy who stares at the horizon. 

And of course, the entire last scene with the slave kids is painfully adoring of Star Wars and its importance to kids. It’s wretchedly corny. I’ve said it elsewhere but the slope of the floor, leading up to a field of stars, actually parallels the slope of the opening crawl. That’s how meta the cinematography went. It went there, it poked that fourth wall. The movie ends with a promise that any little child who loves Star Wars is as special as the saga’s heroes, and that’s actually the most sappy thing in the Whole Entire Saga. 

So the movie basically argues with a hypothetically cynical audience. And if it feels weird, like it’s assuming you’re cynical (which is insulting because no, you unironically adore Star Wars, thank u v much)… I suppose maybe give the movie a fair shake and remember its most important audience is 12 year olds, who have all their little quirks and emotional hangups. No matter what this movie means to you, it will never ever compare to the place it will hold in the hearts of its preteen audience. That’s how Star Wars is supposed to be.

I have no idea the consensus on this film from 12 year olds but I really hope they don’t get overwhelmed by 20-somethings pressuring them to hate it.

Side note on “Ahch-To was filmed from Luke’s POV” – I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite?? people ran into this before where they thought the movie was siding with Kylo and showing his POV when he’s never the POV. Do people just have it backwards? Please okay I feel weird breaking something so simple down but…. the character that is being stared at a lot by the camera is the Object. The character who you presume to be doing the staring is the Subject and POV. Rey is the subject and Luke is the object. Rey is the subject and Kylo is the object.

The fact that the two leading white men of the movie are almost always Object is, I think, actually a point of confusion, because that’s not how it ever is, but it’s how it is in TLJ. They’re not being favored over Rey, we’re seeing her perception of them, so she’s even closer to the audience than they are. Except for the Luke and Yoda scene, nearly everything from Ahch-To is from Rey’s perspective. She seems invisible because she’s actually omnipresent. It is highly unfamiliar to have a woman seem invisible for that reason, but this is a thing I’m super confident about. 

Rey is POV, as she should be of course, and actually she is more POV than in The Force Awakens because Finn gets that role a lot more and he gets that role when he’s with her. We’re probably actually used to Rey-as-Object despite thinking of her as the protagonist because she’s framed like that in TFA. I’m extremely pleased that Episode 9 will have Finn and Rey in an adventure together, but it wasn’t even that bad to have them apart for one movie because it let us get to know Rey on her own terms. 

I could honestly go through the whole sequel trilogy and break down who is POV in what scene and make some kind of infographic lmao would I actually be that extra TM??? who knows

[sabreean]

To start with, plastic-free housekeeping - some of this stuff may eventually warrant posts of their own, I rule out nothing

Paper towels: I have ditched single use tree paper for reusable bamboo paper towels. They can be washed (I wash by hand since I’m not more than arm’s reach from the sink anyway, but they can go in the machine) and reused. I tried cloth towels for a year when the pandemic panic buyers defeated even Amazon but they just aren’t as absorbent as paper, and these maintain absorbency even after being washed and dried multiple times (line or machine). They only get discarded if they are used to pat dry meat or clean up after the dogs. They will probably wear out eventually but there’s no sign of it yet. I use Mavis Miki brand. No, this little mom & pop in British Columbia doesn’t have any of the hippie-charity-ecoactivist bells and whistles of Grove Seedling or others, but I ordered these based on excellent reviews for my first go with reusable bamboo, and I am damned satisfied. Even Grove’s own website has a significant number of poor ratings for consistent reasons that do not apply to the Mavis Miki towels, and I found the same complaints about other brands on Amazon. The towels won’t go back onto a roll after first use of course, but BFD and if that’s a dealbreaker for you, rethink your life choices. Bonus: they are perfectly sized to use on my Swiffer, which their marketing suggests was deliberate. Smart, very smart.

Toilet paper: We are still on our first roll of Cheeky Panda and so far I have no complaints. It’s…toilet paper. I chose this brand because they offered 4 packs (the other big brands in the space didn’t offer less than 10) and their bamboo is sourced so that pandas are not deprived of food. I could also get bamboo Kleenex but since I’m never more than ten steps from the bathroom it’d be kinda dumb, I use the toilet roll. I’ll probably stick with this brand for the same reasons as the bamboo paper towels above; Cheeky Panda also makes them but they are single use. Cheeky Panda is a B Corp that donates part of every pack sold to charities through their Earth, Ocean and People initiative, working towards the UN's Sustainability Goals. Note: I’ve tried bidets and do not like them at all. I don’t feel clean or dry, I feel like I’ve sat on a garden hose. As for washable cloth toilet rolls - are you kidding me? Cloth diapers for the entire household? Yeah, you have fun with that. I even had someone suggest going out and picking leaves or even growing specific plants for toilet leaves, I kid you not. Fucking leaves.

Laundry: Sheets Laundry Club because…well, because they were the first I detergent sheets I heard of but it turns out that other brands make them. The laundry detergent is in sheets in a cardboard box, and they offered a 10 sheet trial pack. I’ve used almost the entire pack and there’s no difference from store bought detergents, so I’m sticking with them. Pro tip: tear them into pieces instead of tossing them in whole, and if you are washing in cold water you can dissolve them in water a bit first. I’d love to wash in cold water but that function is broken on our machine, select it and you still get hot water. I also bought their dryer sheets and again, just as good as store-bought even when it comes to grabbing dog hair and lint, but they are bio-degradable natural fabric with plant-based fabric softeners. Bonus: they work well on the Swiffer. I just learned a couple of weeks ago that you can use dryer sheets instead of the bulkier and more expensive Swiffer sheets because dryer sheets’ whole reason for being is using static to grab lint and dust and hair. I’ve been using Swiffer for almost 10 years and only this month learned this life hack. I am pissed.

Dish soap: Sheets makes dish soap bars so I tried out the starter pack that has one bar and I like it a lot. It doesn’t have the grease-cutting power of Dawn but face it, nothing does no matter what claims other brands make, so I keep a little bottle of Dawn for greasy pans. The bar works great and a little goes a long way. They have unscented as an option and I don’t think we’ve used even half the bar in the four weeks we’ve had it, and we hand-wash everything daily because we have no dishwasher. They also make dishwasher soap. The starter pack came with a coconut scrubber that I knew better than to expect to work at all, I’ve tried coconut scrubbers before. But I bought five more because while they may not scrub, they work great as coasters and trivets and soap dishes and spoon rests. Pro tip: wet your sponge or rag or whatever and run it over the bar a few times instead of running water over it because this stuff suds up a LOT; and don’t use the Sheets soap tray or any wooden soap dish because the bar sticks like glue. They don’t stick to the coconut scrubber so I use that as a soap dish instead.

General cleaning: I’ve been using white vinegar for years; it’s cheap and sold everywhere, it’s multipurpose, it cleans almost anything and you can buy it in glass bottles. I used to keep it in a spray bottle but realized when I moved here that I’d been stupid, just wet a rag or sponge and douse it with vinegar straight from the bottle, duuuhhh. Vinegar & water also works great on a reusable bamboo paper towel for wet Swiffing and I’m just as pissed about only now discovering that hack as I was about the dryer sheet hack, instead buying expensive wet Swiffer pads whose scent I hate. Goddammit. After five weeks of hand washing dishes, my hands are getting dry and itchy so I ordered a pair of If You Care household gloves. These reusable gloves are “…made from FSC Certified latex, i.e. the natural rubber is sourced from a responsibly managed plantation. Furthermore, the rubber tappers, who cut the bark to get the raw material flowing, have received a fair trade premium, and it is their decision how to spend their extra income.” They are also biodegradable if they get worn out, you just scissor them into little bits. I use the bamboo towels for housecleaning but if you really want sponges or scouring pads there are many companies who make such out of a variety of materials: sisal from coconut shells and agave plants, wood pulp, recycled paper fiber, walnut fiber, cellulose, loofah. There are even copper scrubbers out there and some scrap metal recyclers will take them. I will try one when my current steel scrubbers wear out; my partner the trained chef is partial to aluminum skillets and non-metal scrubbers can’t get the job done.

Garbage bags: I have a box of Seventh Generation now but when they run out I’m switching to Unni. 100% compostable but unlike every other biodegradable bag brand on the market, these bags don’t split or tear or soak through. Not at all. Biobags are a great idea but they SUUUUUUCK, you’re lucky to get half the bags off the roll intact and they marinate in the liquid that seeps out into your trash can, and the same was true of every other brand I tried. I found Unni back in Austin when I was collecting food scraps for compost. I wanted to start using biodegradable food waste bags when the city instituted curbside composting, but none of the brands available at Wheatsville Co-Op or Ecowise (OMG I loved Ecowise, please tell me it will be reborn) or Whole Foods were worth the price of a gum wrapper. Then I saw some articles recommending Unni as the real deal, the savior come to redeem us all, so I ordered a box with no hope or expectations. They really worked. They really really work. No tears, no rips, every bag on the roll intact and usable, no soaking through, these things are amazing.

Air freshening: unscented beeswax candles baby! Is your place smelling musty? Can't get that one cooking smell out of the air? Do your dogs fart a lot (our main driver)? Light a candle! It doesn’t need to be scented to consume whatever smell you want to get rid of or whatever room you want to freshen. Real beeswax burns clean, you don’t have to put anything under them to catch dripping wax usually although I don’t know how that works. Note to self: Google that shit cuz now I want to know. Yes, they are significantly more expensive than other candles and if the price is too high, other kinds of candles work just as well for the purpose. I bought mine from a beekeeper here in Hawaii on Etsy and I'm sure that you can find local sellers wherever you are. Or you could buy wax and make your own. Candles are beautiful and calming at night, and I’m one of those freaks who finds joy in looking at flames. Think Milla Jovavich in “Dazed and Confused”, you know the scene.