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argentdandelion · 6 years ago

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Why You Should Read: The Anomaly

Introduction & Disclaimers

The Anomaly, by Coffeelemental, is simultaneously the "Saturday Morning Cartoon of Undertale sequels" and the Sistine Chapel of Undertale fan comics in its tone, dedication, polish and detail.

(In this work, Frisk is referred to as “she”. As such, the review will refer to Frisk with corresponding pronouns. The comic also has a major character death, in case one really, really dislikes that. The following review may contain minor spoilers.)

Art

Few other comics compare to its consistent precision, polish, and detail. That said, The Anomaly's sheer amount of content (128 pages, five playable segments, several lore posts and a few animations) and dedication over the years (it started on June 19, 2016) makes the work incredible even among those few.

Its great attention to detail and polish is especially obvious because of all its human characters. Many find humans hard to draw properly: there are so many ways they can look “off”. Yet, even in the comic's relatively crude early pages, humans have perfect proportions and poses. More impressive still is how Coffeelemental draws perfect humanlike anatomy (e.g., humanlike hands) even for characters where she could easily dodge the challenge.

What the Sistine Chapel does not have: a before-and-after (left and right) comparison of turtles in business suits.

In short, The Anomaly is basically the Sistine Chapel of long-form Undertale comics. As Coffelemental points out herself, in the first fourteen pages quality and style varies. But she improves very quickly: there's a jump in quality at Page 9, and it just keeps getting better.

As per its realism/detail, characters look somewhat more biologically plausible and, for lack of a better word, more monstrous or bestial. Undyne has scales in some places, as well as (this may come as a shock) a nose, though in most shots her face is largely flat with slit-like nostrils like Lord Voldemort. (well, some fish do have tiny nostrils.)

Indeed, as impressive as it is, its stylistic approach is so unique it takes some time to get used to. Furthermore, it seems the sheer dedication to precision and detail has its downsides. In Coffeelemental’s first animation attempt, she had to slightly simplify and adjust the antagonists' designs just to make animation possible, and then she could only do it in choppy 15 FPS (frames per second).

While its overall quality is rather consistent, the style/format shifts in tone. Akin to the original Teen Titans' anime-like exaggerations, characters are drawn in a simple style for comic effect a few times.

One particularly stylish element is how Coffeelemental blends in-game mechanics (such as literal buttons) with a somewhat more realistic style and tone. Referencing how battles in Undertale are in black-and-white, the pages are monochrome when Frisk resolves conflicts. Indeed, as it’s revealed later, Frisk can only see in black-and-white ever since falling into the Underground.

Plot & Themes

“Frisk is using her personal control of the timeline to ensure monsters have a peaceful return to the surface world – but the seven who sealed them underground in the first place have some problems with this.” - The Anomaly’s About page

It's clear The Anomaly's plot is carefully planned out, as is suitable for a work of its length. That most of the work takes place after an eight-year time skip, its mentions of other timelines, and its timeline-jumping might seem like risks to a simple, comprehensible plot: it's certainly complicated other works' plots. Nonetheless, in The Anomaly these are kept balanced, leading to a plot that's the perfect blend of simplicity and complexity.

(Pre-game foreshadowing, from this page. If one looks closely, the brown goat has barely visible pink blush stickers...just like Chara. Art by Coffeelemental)

In the comic itself as well as the game, there's foreshadowing aplenty---even for the events of the game itself. One of the playable segments is even an entertaining flashback sequence in itself.

Sometimes consequences are delayed across pages; characters make plans to deal with other characters later. Given the antagonists are immune to reload-related memory loss just like Frisk, they must resort to stealth, trickery and subterfuge when interacting with her.

As befitting a work with several immortal characters, it has extensive historical lore, contextualizing the human-monster conflict and immortal characters' motives. One piece of lore even neatly resolves one big problem in the game’s background: if humans can’t use magic, how did “humanity’s seven greatest magicians” create the Barrier?

The story brings up intriguing questions and mysteries. Why are monsters losing access to their magic? What is the mysterious thing connected to Frisk? Some have been resolved at time of writing, and others have been resolved in a fascinating way that just leads to more intrigue.

While some of The Anomaly's themes (e.g., "With great power [over time] comes great responsibility") are pretty common in Undertale works with a Frisk-based, Post-Pacifist timeline premise, The Anomaly nonetheless deals with those themes in an interesting way. Its biggest theme is "Are you [Frisk] strong enough to protect humanity?"

The theme is manifold. Frisk feels obligated to protect monsters (and humans) from human-monster conflicts, but a secret confidant worries the pressure of her role is mentally running her ragged. Then there's moral strength: as the antagonists fear, despite her goody-two-shoes persona Frisk has used her power for evil, selfish, frivolous or just silly ends a few times. (e.g., flirts and jokes backfiring and leaving others aghast)

Characterization

The characterization is so widespread, so outstanding, that the reviewer figuratively can’t say enough good things about it. (But, literally, will have to do so, or this post will get awfully long)

From the first playable part. Note Undyne's higher LV. Also note she eventually joined the U.S. Coast Guard (which is technically military) here sometime eight years after the Pacifist ending, so whether she gained the LV then or earlier is ambiguous.

Characters from the game itself hew closely to their original, nuanced personalities. (This is especially remarkable for Sans, given how often his character is distorted or misinterpreted in the fandom.) It pays attention to even tiny, easily-missed quirks and variations, such as the fact Sans always takes Frisk out to eat before a serious talk (Genocide Route aside) and Undyne’s military(-esque) background and combative nature. Like in-game, characters have “portraits” when talking in the playable segments, but these ones are small full-color digital paintings with a wide array of expressions.

Many works give Frisk an undefined or pretty bland personality and background. That's easy to do, given Frisk's ever-neutral expression, rare and indirect dialogue, and only faint hints of personal preferences. Yet, in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental made the rare choice of giving Frisk a particular ethnicity and background, vague it is. (Her entire pre-Underground backstory is told within two pages) It contextualizes why Frisk was such a goody two-shoes pacifist from an early age, that one (spoilers) timeline deviation aside.

Speaking of Frisk's friendly and pacifistic ways, while Frisk is indeed as described, it's not her whole personality. Though playful, flirty and, well, “frisky”, she feels responsible for the safety and happiness of a people she brought above-ground, and has kept her role as a “time-space hero” secret. Her duty has made her something of a control freak; after a major character death she rewinds time to prevent the most minor of conflicts. But that absolute control over the timeline may yet corrupt her: she selfishly reloaded just to fix a bad grade on a test.

The Anomaly is impressive not only for its seven antagonists at once working together, but for them all having distinct personalities, approaches, and relationships with each other. Though they broadly agree on particular courses of actions, their motives and level of monster sympathy differ. Regardless of their species, it's remarkable just how humanized they are as villains.

Playable Sections

At a few points in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental chooses to convey the story in a way that is “hopefully more fun and more practical than using a comic format”. Namely, in playable downloadable games.

At time of writing, it has five playable sections. While the reviewer, unfortunately, cannot play the playable sections (the reviewer's computer is rather old), I’ve seen playthroughs on YouTube. The level of characterization, worldbuilding and general atmosphere in this playable segments are excellent. It adds lovely details that simply wouldn’t fit into a comic within a playable narrative.

The author says she’s chosen speed over polish for the sake of regular updates; nonetheless, they are impressive. Four of these sections even have a turn-based battle system, and two are so in-depth they take an hour to fully explore.

Coffeelemental says she tried really hard to emulate Toby Fox’s style and sense of humor...and she succeeded. The quirks and jokes in things like item descriptions would fit right in. Indeed, when looking out the window in the first playable section, one gets the famous phrase “It’s beautiful day outside”, in a non-threatening context, long before Toby Fox did the same thing in Deltarune.

While Coffeelemental didn’t make the music for these segments, she nonetheless curated the music for the playable segments well. Often music from Undertale is used, but for situations where Toby Fox’s music doesn’t suit the situation, she’s contacted composers.

Conclusion

This gem of a multimedia work seems rather under-appreciated on Tumblr itself, or even its dedicated YouTube channel. Truly, it boggles the mind to wonder how a long-running work of such quality could stay obscure.

#Undertale #Undertale Comic #The Anomaly #Coffeelemental

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thebibliomancer · 5 years ago

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Dark Crystal Age of Resistance ep 5 liveblog

“She Knows All the Secrets”

Just a stream of thoughts.

I can’t believe I have to print a retraction on a liveblog but I’ve been apparently assuming that the General was just a younger, less fashionable SkekUng and this is not the case. The General is another Skeksis entirely so needs to go on the list of new Skeksis. I also made a lot of comments about the Chamberlain and the General fighting like ‘oh these two are always like that’ but the Chamberlain is just always like that with a lot of people apparently.

Anyway.

So Rian’s dad died and Rian was captured by the hunter. And now she’s been hung upside down like the Hunter is a Wampa but like a temperate zone Wampa.

The Hunter: 'Cool, you’re awake now I can skin you alive'

You’re creepy, Hunter.

And of all things, Chamberlain shows up to temporarily save Rian. Because he needs to drag Rian back to the castle to rub in the General’s face so the Emperor will like him again. And so he can get his chair back. Standing up at dinner time is so hard.

The Hunter: “Pathetic, you hunt a chair!”

Chamberlain: “No! I hunt power!”

Hunter begrudgingly lets Chamberlain take Rian but warns of pointy reckoning if he doesn’t get his trophy in the end.

And then Chamberlain frisks Rian and drinks his girlfriend in front of him. Very rude.

Its probably not supposed to be funny when Rian dramatically cries out NOOOOOO when Chamberlain smashes the empty bottle. But the bottle was empty. It was just a minor dick move compared to, y’know, drinking your dead girlfriend.

And the Chamberlain cackles like its the funniest dick move he ever done did.

Hey, Chamberlain is taking Rian to the castle where cool sister Tavra and Naia are heading possibly with Kylan. To rescue Gurjin. That will probably come into play.

So the All-Maudra now believes in the Blight because a Landstrider herd went crazy and busted out of its pen. Before she thought it was people lying to get away with a small tithe because she’s a jerk who didn’t follow up on that until now.

Wow Tavra, Naia, and Kylan got to the castle fast.

Cool Sister Tavra happens upon the Emperor….. I don’t know, freebasing the planet? Absorbing evil energy into his emperor staff?

DEET! I forget where in her quest she’s at at this point.

Oh, she’s heading to Vapran city Ha’ra but Hup, The First Podling Paladin, asks her not to go. He’s afraid for her and wants to protect her. Aww. And he’s feeling insecure because his sword is a spoon.

Hup is valid.

I guess Paladins are like the All-Maudra’s royal guard or something.

Deet: “You’re on your way to Ha’ra to become a paladin but if you ask me you already are.”

Aww. You have no power to grant that but lets go with it.

Pfft, I half knew it had to happen at some point but a Skeksis complaining about how low Gelfling ceilings are still cracked me up.

You bastards are just too tall, you tall bastards.

General: ‘Hey whats this?’

All-Maudra: “That’s a unomoth chrysalis, General. The sigil of the Vapra clan.”

General: -immediately eats it-

Skeksis really don’t have any impulse control…

He doesn’t even likes it and spits it out like its broccoli which makes the whole ‘let me eat something i was just told is symbolically important’ even worse.

Ritual Master: -shakes head, wonders if its too late to pretend he doesn’t know the General-

Geez, the General really is just a SkekUng stand in. He’s just doing Garthim-Master stuff and having the dynamics that Garthim-Master do. I don’t mind new Skeksis but why’d they make him so much like an existant one?

So the Arathim, those spider people, are apparently agitating and the Skeksis….. Require….. The seven strongest Gelfling from each clan?

Ritual Master: “Of course we cannot guarantee the volunteers’ safe return.”

Is this the best thing you could come up with to disappear the fifty Gelfing a trine you need to drink? I mean, its almost smart. War with spider people. Casualties are bound to happen and bodies are bound to disappear. Its a good cover. But this murder plan could be handled better.

Also what could be handled better is not sending the General to ever talk with people.

All-Maudra: ‘Maybe the spider people are pissed off by the Blight’

General: ‘THERE IS NO BLIGHT GIVE VOLUNTEERS’

And then when the All-Maudra leaves he goes and grabs another chrysalis and the Ritual Master pleads “Don’t” and then he cronches it anyway and the Ritual Master just shakes his head and sighs.

Oh I guess Chamberlain didn’t walk all the way into the woods to intercept the Hunter. He took a carriage. Wonder who’s driving.

But he needs Rian to ‘confess’ that he was ‘lying’ about the Skeksis

Rian: “I’ll make sure all of Thra knows what you are!”

Chamberlain: “And what are Skeksis, hmm?”

Rian: “Evil!”

Chamberlain: -giggles- “Delightful!”

Chamberlain: “How are Skeksis evil? Please, you tell”

Rian: “You killed Mira!”

Chamberlain: “All things kill”

Rian thought this was a carriage ride but its really Philosophy 101 with Professor Chamberlain. Moralllllll relativismmm.

Sometimes animals eat animals so therefore its okay to drink soul goo. Just the circle of life.

Rian: “There was nothing natural about what you did to Mira!”

Chamberlain: -pet peeved- “Death is unnatural! Death is cruel joke! Death mocks, life, mocks Skeksis!”

Rian touched a nerve there, huh?

Also Chamberlain: ‘Hey you’re as bad as us. You just watched as we drank your girlfriend. And left your friend behind. And let your dad die for you!’

Wow, I’ve never thought Chamberlain could break someone by talking because I figured that people would either go ‘you’re full of bullshit’ or literally just hit him. I guess with a captive audience he can talk long enough that he manages to say some pretty crushing Sounds Like Truth Bombs.

And now: Court Drama, Gelfling Style. Seladon is mad at Brea and Brea is mad at Seladon and there’s a giant animatronic rock monster who is also a part-time phonograph for Yodas.

Seladon: “What happens to the Gelflings if the Skeksis fall?”

About the same as now except the All-Maudra takes all the tithes instead of just skimming off the top? The Gelflings are very able to be fucked up on their own.

So now mom is maaaad.

If nothing else the All-Maudra should be incredibly curious that someone built a secret room under her throne. Like, logistically.

And then All-Momdra sends Seladon off to check on livestock for Blight. And Seladon is kind of Catraesque and pins all her emotional state on the positive reinforcement that mom just won’t give without immediately undercutting it. Poor Not Cool Sister.

So Chamberlain’s argument is that if Rian doesn’t silence the whisperings of rebellion, there’s going to be a rebellion and a bunch of Gelflings are going to die. Honestly, he’s just looking out for Gelflings’ best interests! He’s a friend, honest!

Chamberlain: “Is Gelfling slave if Gelfing not know it is slave?”

Slave is a bit much. Livestock maybe. BECAUSE THEY’RE DRINKING THEM.

But Chamberlain still being philosophy class.

At least, Chamberlain’s carriage ride of philosophical wonderment is very much like a philosophy class I had in college.

Rian: “We aren’t your pets”

Chamberlain: “False”

Based on difference in lifespan. “The choice is pets or enemies. Choose wisely.”

Rian: “And if I say what you want, will you stop draining Gelfling?”

Chamberlain: “Cannot promise.”

Heck of a time to be honest about things, SkekSil.

Rian: “Then I refuse.”

Chamberlain: “ALL GELFLING LOSE OR FEW GELFING LOSE ALL! WAR IS END!”

Its like the trolly problem, except with genocide. Yay?

Chamberlain is like that bad parent that catches a kid smoking and makes them smoke the whole pack or eat the whole cake. Rian defiantly says that war won’t be the end of the Gelfling if Gelfling win so Chamberlain cuts his bonds and goes ‘then do it bitch’

The Hunter is going to kick Chamberlain’s ass.

Oh, no. Chamberlain got into his head earlier and made him ashamed of running from his problems so now Rian won’t run out of the carriage. Damn, SkekSil, you actually managed to manipulate someone holy shit

Chamberlain: “Is difficult being voice of reason in such crazed world.”

You endearingly smug prick.

Aughra time.

Aughra: “Stones are no help, bah! Leaves have nothing to say! NO HELP! Bah! No help! Smoke is no help! Mystic ways don’t work! Aughra ways don’t work! Old ways don’t work!”

Thank goodness for this sequence of Aughra failing at augury.

Now she’s talking about her personal problems to an uncomprehending and uncaring animal. Aka the Thurma ways. (Which also don’t work)

And now she’s talking to a tree!

Thankfully trees do talk, even if only to dunk on people. And the tree heals the small animal she’s been ranting to.

I guess Sanctuary Trees can Just Do That. But only if you ask nicely?

SOCIAL LINK GO. Aughra is now friends with A Tree.

Little Deet in a Big City.

Time for more racisms!

So the Vapran gelflings of Ha’ra are kind of like the Hunger Games Capitol? They look like ambulatory cakes.

Deet: “I guess I could take a bath?”

Hup: -does crimes-

Deet: “How do I look?”

Hup: “Deet Always Beautiful.”

Hup, you’re too good for this sinful Thra.

Hup: -says things-

Vapran Guard: “.......... Yeah okay”

Persuasion roll 20

All-Maudra: ‘oh neat a giant rock man’

Annnd the General and Ritual Master doing an inspection of the war volunteers slash drinking victim candidates.

General: “This volunteer’s teeth are very disappointing.”

Ritual Master: “Weak haunches too”

General: “Whats wrong with that one’s face?”

Ritual Master: “I think it’s just old.”

General: “Well, I don’t like it. Get it out of here!”

Weirdly humorous scene about two lizard monsters deciding who to literally drink…

Gelfing: “I’m not that old…”

Oh cool I thought it couldn’t get creepier but the Ritual Master is literally licking his chops and talking about vigor.

Holy crap, Naia rescued Gurjin off-screen, somehow found out that Rian had been captured and then rescued him!

(Where the hell is Tavra then?)

But, like, Rian had decided not to run when he had that chance so why is he doing it now?

This is all very perplexing.

I guess it gives us an exciting action sequence on top of a racing pillbug carriage but. What's his motivation here??

Gurjin: “Join the guard they said! Nothing ever goes wrong in the Castle they said!”

Cool, Gurjin is ready to be a Warcraft unit.

EXCITING ACTION SCENE DISCONNECT PILLBUG WHEELS FROM CARRIAGE

Chamberlain: ‘Huh this sure is terrifying. I’d better speed up MORE’

-Carriage flips-

EXCITING NONSENSICAL ACTION SCENEEEEEEE

Lets whoop triumphantly even though nothing made any sense!

Oh, hey Kylan. God, he’s so forgettable. He was the first person willing to dreamfast with Rian but he’s had like nothing to do since then and no real interactions so he’s just kinda There in some scenes. Gurjin and Naia even left him at camp instead of bringing him to the EXCITING ACTION SCENE’

I have to scroll up and relearn his name every time he shows up.

Kylan: “Oh you’ve returned!”

Rian: -panicking internally thinking who dis guy-

Kylan: “AND I MADE BROTH!”

Seladon is going to have Deet and Hup thrown out for, y’know, blatant impersonation, but Deet mentions the Blight and the Darkening and hell, Seladon is supposed to be investigating that and its easier to have exposition come to you.

But even though she’ll listen to them doesn’t mean she won’t be incredibly racist.

Seladon: “You spin quite a tale, Grottan. But do you offer any proof?”

Deet: “Dreamfast with me!” You know, that thing that should solve roughly half the problems in this plot?

Seladon: “Ugh when was the last time you washed your hands?”

Deet: “Why would I ever wash my hands?”

Aughra is also just sitting and waiting for the plot to come to her. Its good protagonisting if you can get it.

Rian: -spilling his sad story about his dad dying-

Kylan: -nodding, yes I am part of this conversation I am-

Oh, after nobody wanting to dreamfast everyone is dreamfasting at the same time at the slightest provocation.

Rian’s group dreamfasting around the campfire. Brea dreamfasting with her mom to show how she found Lore, and Seladon getting over herself to dreamfast with Deet.

And Aughra like. Accidentally broke into the same dreamfast channel? Because Rian finds himself, Deet, and Aughra in Dream Space with the Dream Space Dark Crystal.

And Aughra starts dancing.

Oh, its not just them. Its all the protagonists.

Brea: “The crystal! Its cracked, its missing a shard”

Aughra: “QUIET I’M NOT DONE”

Geez, Brea. Advance the plot on your own time.

Aughra gives everyone adjectives. Mighty nice.

Clever Brea. Proud All-Maudra. Fierce Naia. Wise Kylan and Gurjin.

Wait, Gurjin doesn’t even get his own adjective? He has to share one with the guy who has done one (1) thing so far??

No, he doesn’t even get to share. Its just Gurjin. Wow, Aughra. Wow. Not even like… Loyal Gurjin? Trusting Gurjin? Pretty good bro Gurjin?

Can’t he get no respect?

Aughra: “Dream Space is a spirit realm. The source of magic and prophecy.”

I’m going to crap myself if Yusuke Urameshi shows up.

Kylan, wanting to contribute: “The world within our world”

Oh. So thats why Gujin doesn’t get to be Loyal Gurjin.

Seladon is Loyal Seladon. Except she’s getting annoyed about all these people talking shit about the Skeksis.

Seladon: “This isn’t the will of Thra. This is a sordid plot of a power-hungry witch!”

All this emotional neglect has finally come to bear.

So Aughra just catapults her out of the dream.

And now Seladon is having Hup and Deet arrested and is going to warn the Skeksis.

WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST TELL YOUR DAUGHTER YOU LOVED HER UNCRITICALLY ALL-MAUDRA

Aughra is using Dream Recapping to share all the exposition with everyone so people don’t need to talk or whatever. I guess that IS what dreamfasting is for.

So Rian is being sent to Ha’ra to join up with Brea and Deet and follow Lore to the Circle of the Suns to find a Plot Coupon.

And everyone else has to go and unite the clans.

I was going to say that dreamfasting sure makes it easy to convince people to age of resistance but hey Seladon is staying Team Skeksis.

Maybe instead of ejecting her from the dream, you should have let her see the big shared dreamfast memory recap with everyone else so she’d have more information about what the Skeksis are up to?

I was kind of hoping that Bad Mom All-Maudra would remain unconvinced and lead to a kind of civil war within the Gelfling but dreamfasting just makes it so hard to do this plot. You have to work around it in so many ways.

Seladon: “My lords, pardon the interruption but I must speak with you!”

Ritual Master, smoothly: “You are always welcome, princess”

General: “Which princess is this?”

Ritual Master: “Haven’t got a clue. They all look the same to me.”

All-Maudra, make Hup an official paladin dammit

All-Maudra: “No time for ceremony right now, podling. Innocent lives are at risk. Stand and prove the strength of your spoon by my side.”

Wow. You’re pretty cool when you want to be, All-Maudra.

Annnnd the All-Maudra, Deet, Hup, and Brea walk in RIGHT AFTER Seladon spills the beans to the Skeksis.

All-Maudra: “I am All-Maudra”

General: “You are All-Maudra because we allow you to be All-Maudra.”

Oh daaaaang. Is the show going to be like this? Make the bad parents barely likeable right before killing them off so they don’t have to address that they were kinda bad parents?

All-Maudra: “I have allowed you to buy my loyalty with cheap trinkets!” Yeah. You kinda were just dipping your fingers into the greed pool weren’t you? Do you want to maybe give some of that back to your people? I mean, you’re probably dead now but what were your long term plans about this?

All-Maudra is good at authoritatively telling the Skeksis to gtfo when she’s like not even a third of their height.

I mean, talking shit to a giant lizard crocodile man with a short temper who is barely able to be diplomatic and has a vested interest in keeping you silent goes about as well as you’d expect.

What a sworded end for an All-Maudra…

YOU GOT YOUR MOM KILLED SELADON.

She must be dead, she’s so still and lifeless. Wait, thats just puppet stuff.

Seladon, who is totally at fault, to Brea: “This is all your fault!”

Oh god dammit, Seladon is swiveling her desperate need for affirmation onto the Skeksis and having Deet, Hup, and Brea arrested as traitors.

Who would have thought sibling rivalry could go so bad. And after Cool Sister Tavra tried so hard to ease things between them.

And now Seladon is All-Maudra. Cue Everything You Ever.

“Here lies everything

The world I wanted at my feet

My victorys complete

So hail to the All-Maudra” doesn’t rhyyyyme.

We’re halfway through Age of Resistance so I guess some Age of Resisty had to start. Feels a bit sudden. Dreamfasting really does take out some of the busy work. But I guess Seladon is a big enough wrench that its not going to be just the Gelflings sitting up and kicking the Skeksis.

Team Ha’ra is all caught. Team Rian’s Friends I Guess are still oot and aboot but the Hunter is going to be peeved about not getting to cut out his tongue. So he presumably be coming. All vaguely shitty parents are now off the board. Just some emotionally complicated teens and some lizard crocodile men left. Also Aughra.

So. Hey. Maybe its not the time. But if Seladon doesn’t want to be in the Resisty can Gurjin have her title? Loyal Gurjin?

#dark crystal #dark crystal age of resistance #episode 5 #liveblog

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bushybeardedbear · 6 years ago

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Season 8 of Saltron: Laughable Disappointment

What follows is a stream of consciousness as I watched the series.

The TLDR? I am glad it's finally over and will always miss what it should have been.

It's another long one. But, I think it's the last one on this topic...

Maybe I can finally get back to writing fics. Who knows...?

I use the word mess a lot.

So, episode one. Months have passed as usual. And somehow the population of Earth, all crammed into a single base on the planet have somehow been able to produce an animated series. Earth is devastated, but there's still the ability to make cartoons. Somehow. It's as though the writers needed to tick off a “reference to the old series” and have only just been able to cram it in. Global devastation, billions dead. But hey. Cartoons. Yet another example of Voltron not knowing what the hell it's own tone is. Are we a happy silly space adventure, or are we supposed to be a bleak look at the horrors of war? Are we selling kids books and toys or are we forcing our characters to deal with global devastation and the loss of their lovers? Let's be both and excel as neither.

And for a show that isn't about shipping? Gosh they've already dedicated a lot of time to it, haven't they? Allura, Lance and Lotor, all major focuses of the plot. Oh and it's nice to see Romelle doing what Romelle does. Info dumping about the colony. “Before the Galra can reorganize.” Well, sorry Keith but it's been Five Years. Remember that time skip? If at least one group of Galra hasn't reorganized in five years, that would be absurd. If only there was some hint that the Galra HAD reorganized. Like a giant robot. Using the same magitech as the druids and Honerva. I know that as the viewer we're privy to more information, but sometimes they make the characters painfully stupid as to what's going on in their own reality.

Oh boy. An entire episode devoted to finding Allura a date outfit. For Lance. The boy with a lifespan of 80-100 years max. Whilst she could live to be 800+. We going to cover that? I mean, we had time to emphasize Pidge's age. We going to touch Allura's age? No? Ok, fine. We'll ignore it shall we? Do the writers assume people are too stupid to remember the show's own lore...? And look. More references to the old show. Remember the old show? Nostalgia points. Hey Pidge, having some fun being yourself? Well, make sure you give up something you love to make the popular girl happy. Arguably again but, doesn't seem like anything previously established or hinted matters. Nice. And I guess we know the names of Lance's family. Along with a nice bit of tell don't show. Lance is all talk and bravado. It's good of you to tell us that. Can't expect people to figure it out organically through storytelling.

And the only way they could figure out Honerva was behind a robeast...was via a cheesy death scene. Well, at least they didn't make the cast even more bloated and unwieldy. As for all the issues I've mentioned with Allurance before? Doubled down on here. Allura's not the strong capable leader we were shown, she was weak and in need of man to complete her. What a great 180 from powerful character to prize for toxic masculinity. And if you don't like the idea that pursuing a woman aggressively and jealously, even swooping in after a break up is toxic...? I don't know what to tell you. If you think this relationship happened organically and wasn't rushed? I don't know what to tell you. I don't think we were watching the same show.

However. I know me foreshadowing. Allura gives life. Allura and Lance photo. The flowers at her bedside last season that symbolize death. Let's see if they pull another “oh look, their relationship failed.” Because on screen romance is the kiss of death in this series. Also, the fact that so far nothing has even been hinted at Pidge's obvious crush on Lance... Yeah, can't say I'm surprised. I think maybe the writers forgot their own lore...

Oh, and off they go to space. What a great first episode. I'm so pumped to see the train wreck continue...

Is it just me... Or have they now made Honerva nothing more than defined by the men in her life...? So far her entire episode has been about how she serves no purpose without Lotor. Months she spent without purpose. This despite having knowledge of both Oriande and The Altean Colony via her mind link with Kuron... But suddenly, this fiercely intelligent multi-millenia old right hand of the empire...falls into a depression because her son is missing...? The most driven character in the whole series is just wandering aimlessly without the son that, let us not forget... She forgot even was her child for the majority of the show... I appreciate that they're attempting yet again to give the bad guys a little more humanity, but...There's a difference between a nuanced and rounded character and simply writing them to act differently at the drop of a hat. So, I get that they're pushing for her regretting that she had no connection with Lotor, that the act of coming back from the dead robbed her of motherhood...but in so doing, they're yet again doubling down on the fact that Lotor was always a victim of his upbringing. Or lack thereof. It feels almost like these sequences were written at a point before they realised they were going to make Lotor into Space Hitler. This screams redemption arc for a lost little boy being set up. Not the genesis of a heartless monster. Even their own backstory doesn't seem to gel with the show...

Well, I guess they answer the question of how the hell did a single nanny exist across multiple millennia. Dayak is a title, it seems. Not a name. That was a useful retcon I suppose. Maybe they should have thought more about their own continuity And yes, it seems everything Honerva is now doing she's doing for the sake of Lotor. Not out of her own capacity or desire. And Lotor, somehow bathing in pure life energy, is dead. And now, we have further proof that Lotor's story about being an essentially good person who had to watch a planet of his friends and allies burn. Again, this whole thing screams redemption arc. Where and how, after this entire process of being exiled due to his pragmatism, in being in reverence of Altea...did he suddenly turn Space Vampire feeding upon the very people he revered...? This episode gave the opportunity to make the Altean colony and Lotor using them as a vampire make sense. Instead it just raises more questions. It makes it seem even more likely that at one point Honerva was the one harvesting to make druids. That at one point Lotor was supposed to be redeemed. Then changes were forced. Or maybe a half baked redemption is still coming? Willing suspension of disbelief is utterly gone. The story is plainly a patchwork of mistakes piled upon mistakes.

A beautifully animated, beautifully scored and beautifully voice acted incoherent mess.

Still got time for that transformation sequence in the middle of an inconsequential battle that doesn't further the main plot and further doubles down on the problems caused by the five year gap. Do we really have time to rebuild the Voltron coalition and bring stability in seven episodes...? And what part of this actually benefits from the five year gap? “The Galra Empire is at war with itself” this scenario could have played out perfectly well during a civil war cause by Lotor's 'death' and Sendak creating a splinter faction. The five year gap was in no way necessary, as I mentioned in previous posts. And...do we really have time for an episode that's one long reference to Alien...? Even now at the half way point of the episode, it seems clear they're either going to find something that mildly advances the plot or else is utterly pointless. Do we have the time to waste on this when there are so many other plot threads that need tying up? Pidge and Lance's lion moments for one. Lance needs to use his sword. Ever again. Probably to save Allura, just to really hammer home that she's weak and incapable without him now. Whatever's going on with Keith is another. Maybe Axca will just info-dump an explanation. Or not. Are we just going to get a bunch of things unsolved? A bunch of things forgotten? Are they going to make this a to be continued in a new season...?

Well, there we go. The secret weapon made with distilled Altean quintessence. Now we know where it went. So it devours quintessence, slaughters Galra but just...pushes aside Paladins of Voltron...? Ok, so it's probably engineered to hunt Galra. Which makes sense, right? A Galra super weapon. That only hunts Galra. Ok, so now comes the info-dump retcon. Whereas previously it was created by the Galra base they were infiltrating using the Distilled quintessence... It was now found in the Quantum Abyss... And trained and engineered by Lotor to hunt Galra...? Sure. Whatever. It makes no sense and feels shoehorned into the plot. But sure. Rather than being pragmatically working toward an empire that didn't rely on using other races for Quintessence, Lotor was actually secretly making monsters to kill only Galra for the sake of genocide...? Nonsense.

“How do you know so much about it?” Good question Lance. And guess what? It's not actually answered in the show. Go back and watch the episode where Keith and Krolia found this thing. Any hint of it being a weapon Lotor created...? Any hint of it being anything except built or engineered on that base? I think you'll find not because they just forced this into the plot now. Who knows what purpose the creature was supposed to originally serve, if any, but this is obviously nonsense. And Lance is quite rightly asking, “How does Keith know so much about it...?” And it's because the writers needed to info-dump another retcon.

And just a small aside... Lance not knowing the difference between an Altean Hour and an Altean Minute literally contradicts what was established about his grasp of the time system seasons ago. He wasn't born yester-quintant. But now he's too dumb to remember time units. Because who gives a damn about continuity or character progression when you can just have characters regress...?

And why are they acting surprised that Honerva can build more than one robeast...? I'm so tired of seeing them all written as complete idiots. If Honerva has access to Altean Alchemy, and they know she does and access to the infrastructure and resources to build one robeast then it stands to reason she can build more than one... That doesn't even need a genius like Pidge to figure out. That's just common sense. That they've all now written to be bereft of.

And split up? Ok, so with so few episodes to go that likely means splitting focus from the Paladins and the Atlas on an episode by episode basis, most likely. Plus the obligatory “comedy” episode to waste yet more time that could be spent telling the actual story. Then everything needs at least an episode to wrap up...? Guess we're not getting the endings and tied up threads we were expecting. Or if we do it will be brushed aside. Like Keith's explanation of how he knew so much about the Not-A-Xenomorph.

Still, on the bright side? Only a few more episodes to go...

Oh wow. If the ongoing saga of the girl that used to be Allura who will live for millennia and the boy who will live for decades that used to be a character developing wasn't cringeworthy enough, now we have the characters just arbitrarily deciding to go to the one place in the entire Voltron coalition that the Robeast arrived at. Such a lazy plot contrivance. Lance is right. Why couldn't there have been some means of tracking a quintessence signature or some kind of magical anomaly intrinsic to the Robeasts that Honerva is creating? A magical element would have given Allura something to do other than pout. What they needed was something to give them a CLUE as to where they next need to go. Seconds, literally seconds after Pidge has pointed out the vastness of the universe and how unlikely it would be to find the robeast with not a single clue... They just arbitrarily decide to go to the planet it landed on!? What the actual hell, writers? Can I have a crate or two of whatever you were high on when you wrote this, please?

Transformation sequence. Because we need that eating up the run time don't we...? Yeah, it's a nitpick, so what?

Oh boy. Another planet massacred. Another group of allies lost. Cheap emotional tugging at the last hurdle when it's largely irrelevant. Not that I suppose it really matters. After a few months they'll be back on their feet and making cartoons again, just like Earth. After all, they probably all escapedor mostly did. It seems absurd that they couldn't have. They're one of the most technologically advanced species in the universe. Escape pods wouldn't be beyond them. Makes a damn sight more sense than last season where we're supposed to believe the entire multi billion population of Earth fit into those prisons. Billions are dead on Earth, remember? So, 'dead' Olkarion yet another example of the Paladins being given almost no hope of a happy ending short of a deus ex machina that will somehow undo all the damage. Or it just gets ignored. Because who cares about Billions dead on Earth? Or across the rest of the coalition...? Which raises another point... Why did nothing happen to Olkarion during the five year gap...? Did they even try to contact Olkarion when they emerged from the quintessence field...? Because it sure didn't look like it was devastated in their absence. It looked, until the robeast, pristine.

Continuity? What's that? At this point it wouldn't even shock me if they had Pidge wake up and say “wow, what a wild dream...” As the last second of the series.

How can Hunk still not be good under pressure, after he's shown multiple times...to be good under pressure...? To have developed as a character...? You know what, never mind... So wait, this whole episode was just to establish... That Honerva has access to a Teludav...? Is that really information that couldn't have already been inferred? An energy detected on the Robeast for example? Or just, I dunno, putting two and two together? What thematically was gained by Pidge's vision quest that couldn't have been delivered by some survivors? I know they're going for a noble sacrifice on a planetary scale, but... When the noble sacrifice is to deliver information that realistically could have been gathered in countless other ways... It just feels, like a lot of the plot now, forced.

Well, escape pods. Who could have guessed that? And the episode ends with them gaining a tracker. Something that was probably necessary at least on some level to make the episode make sense. Would it have been so hard to say that between Pidge and Allura they made a magi-tech tracker that just about detects the Robeasts and then the Olkari data makes it work perfectly? Nah. Let's just have them find the aftermath of a robeast attack randomly a split second after saying how absurd that would be...

Unique Energy Signatures Interesting. An energy signature that's unique.

And the robeasts have them. Huh.

You know what's really easy to spot in a set of data...?

S O M E T H I N G U N I Q U E

See, if you take the text so far as an example of background cosmic radiation and all the other stuff one might detect around Earth, the above two words would be a unique energy signature. Something not usually found in nature. Something outside the norm. Make's one wonder why there was no way to track these unique energy signatures before now. Say, with the Atlas or the established satellite networks around Earth. Makes one wonder why over months this data wasn't analysed. Of course, I'm assuming that anyone even turned on a scanner. Or remembered they had hands. Why would anyone think to scan space when a new an unknown enemy showed up. From Space. Don't be silly. That would require the application of logic.

And, I really don't care for the continued loss of time fixating on the MFEs and their wacky lunchtime with Axca... Or indeed all Axca's angst. Considering how much we still have to happen for The Paladins I'm not really feeling the need to develop a last second former general to be a half formed love interest for Keith. Basically following the same plot of learning to be more human and less angst ridden that Keith did. Well, this episode sure feels like filler. Random trap, with a bunch of old enemies. I mean, at least they remembered Alteans can change skin tone, I guess...? Just about the only thing that impressed me about this episode so far.

Well, that fight scene happened. Wait...left you...? The last we saw the two of them had blown up. And half of Zethrid's face is burned. Indicating surviving the explosion. Her entire crusade of gathering mercenaries, hunting Keith, the name of the episode being The Grudge... It all adds up to dead partner. But now Axca's saying... Ezor left Zethrid...? What the hell kind of absurdity is that...? She'll never take me back...? That has to be the biggest dumbest cop out... What could have been a really emotionally compelling look at a “bad guy” having more nuanced motivations... Made Zethrid look like she was having a tantrum.

And still, nothing of the wider plot advances. More filler.

Gosh, this mostly static series of shots of Allura telling us what's happening at Oriande sure is engaging. Thank goodness this isn't in a visual medium or we might have been shown this rather than told... And another big rousing speech about end the war. That will result in the war not ending, if any of the previous times were anything to go by. Except this is the last season, so... This time doing the same thing has to work.

Well, I'm surprised we didn't get two transformation sequences in a row. I would have thought that would be the best use of their time. Also, whilst I see the thematic necessity of Allura in charge, I'm not sure how the plot really justified it. And is it just me, or did Ezor always seem a bit...pasted in place and static...? Not even sure the voice was the same, maybe it's just me... Still no Lance and Pidge Lion connection. Just an aside really. Not sure if we'll ever see it at this stage.

And again, maybe this is just me... But surely we can only feel like every reality is under threat is a big deal once in the same show, right? One also has to wonder that given access to the same alchemical ability and greater knowledge, that Honerva could have retrieved the Sincline with... Another similar mech...? Seems like an unnecessarily massive ritual just to bring probably not Lotor back. Or was bringing him back just part of it and the majority was to collapse the white hole...? She's just controlling him...? Because why not. All this guilt and need to save her son, this massive magical ritual was just... To get a puppet Lotor and to kill the White Lion...? And damage reality in the process? Or is this just the classic trope of screw you all I'm destroying everything?

I mean, I know that these episodes want to keep you guessing, but... Maybe just a touch of explaining what all the bright beams of light and particle effects are would be good...? And preferably not sat at a conference table telling us but through the story showing us. At least the plot has advanced. I guess it's now time for the comedy episode to destroy the flow...?

Well, seems like another filler episode. I really wanted an entire episode dedicated to a secondary character when there's already plenty of Paladin's stories left to tell. And the interview format is still more excuses for tell don't show as people talk at the screen to deliver information without it seeming artificial. The absurd necessities to make the found footage format work always bugs me. There's no difference here. I'm just not feeling Cloverfield but Voltron. I can't deny that it's been animated well, but, I'm tired of filler. And this season so far has been the vast majority filler.

If you want to do dramatic framing and filming, keeping one character in shot and then another, then swapping back... Then clearly your camera has a dramatically appropriate setting that works in micro gravity. If you're going to do found footage, don't also drop the ball and include impossible camera movements.

Honestly, Coran retelling the whole series would have been more entertaining than what it has been so far. But for what it's worth, the world building, finding out Colleen Holt is a biologist / geneticist of some considerable skill? Yeah. Interesting. But...how late in the game are we to be finding all this out...? Doesn't world building usually happen throughout, dotted about organically? This all just feels like... Here's some stuff we never got to mention before now. All delivered in a really artificial seeming way...

Adjusting for long range parameters...?

You're in orbit. Your ship can communicate over light years with no signal delay. Orbit is not long range for The Atlas. Just say you're adjusting for interference...

Also, they are finding new and creative ways to have meetings around a big table. The most riveting part of this show. Watch in wonder as three static characters hover over an action scene interspersed with static. Wonder if next time we'll get to see someone make coffee for the meeting. Puzzle over the filler to plot ratio. Thank characters talking directly to the screen telling us the status of questioning prisoners of war that could have been delivered in countless other ways. Wouldn't that conversation with the Altean have been more interesting if delivered in the interrogation room rather than through two cameras...?

Still not going to touch the lifespan gap? Ok.

And holy crap use Hunk more. That desert part? Brilliant. An actual stand out moment that shows his compassion and his intellect. Not just being a big worrying goof who eats. Finally, something I can genuinely praise in this whole mess. They haven't ignored Hunk. That was a wonderful moment, breaking barriers with cookies. And so far, in terms of writing, 100% the best part of the whole series. One diamond in all the rough... Or maybe something of more value than a diamond. Like a good writer on the Voltron team...

“Winning prizes is my speciality.” Uhuh. Once someone has been rendered a prize I guess.

And now it's time for yet another filler episode interspersed with a little plot. Sorry, by plot I mean an info dump. This time from “Lotor” or a vision of him at least. Lecturing us about the void creatures. It's about time they got brought up again. But thanks writers for yet again delivering that information and story in the least engaging possible way.

It's nice seeing the characters have a little fun. I won't deny it. I personally don't buy how eager Pidge is to help Lance out on his shiny thing for Allura quest... But, at this stage I think I should just cast aside anything that might have previously been established about the characters and just assume stuff will happen at the writer's whims. If I'm lucky, it will be entertaining. Maybe the inconsistency comes from writing? Or animators not being given clear direction by writers? Or executive meddling. Maybe I also think it's cheating to use a robot arm that has no resistance in an arm wrestling contest. Shiro's body provides no leverage. It's all down to the hand unit, but nobody brings that up in the show. Even though they should.

Also not digging the using both the men in her life to tempt Allura. It kinda draws even more attention to how flighty they made her. How sudden and how jarring her reciprocating Lance's feelings was when they first seeded it at the Omega Shield. One big gesture to win his prize. It's all so skin crawling. So diminishing for both her and for Lance. Honerva, through the void creature, can presumably see this in her mind. Why else would she shift between the two men? It's almost as though the show itself is acknowledging they made Allura indecisive, flighty, weak to temptation and easily manipulated. And then she puts her hand to the glass. Then takes what is effectively a demon into her, that she knows allows Honerva to kill a host at will. I mean, at least they included her Mother, rather than Alfor. That's something I suppose, to indicate that her entire character isn't solely defined by the men in her life now. Though, it's small comfort. I mean, I get that she's being manipulated. I get that she's being tempted. But she's not Allura any longer. Allura was the incredibly strong willed last daughter of a dead world. A genocide survivor who came out fighting. The princess who gave up her last vestiges of her royal office for her friend to have an arm. The woman who killed the last remnants of her own Father's uploaded mind. Allura is strong willed. Stronger willed than any of us could dream of being. Or at least she was. Much as they now try to devalue her in the show... She united two thirds of the Universe under the Voltron coalition. Now what is she...? A damsel in distress who's going to need to be saved from her own weakness and a prize to the nice boy. And I'd put money on Lance using his Altean Broadsword to save her, just to hammer that home.

Of all the awful choices the writers have made, destroying Allura is probably the worst. You'd think I'd say Plance, but you'd be wrong. As I've always said, I'd rather not have it be canon at all than have it be badly written crap. So even if somehow Plance is super late end game, it will be just a shoddily written piece of crap on top of a giant shitty cake. So I wanted to take my victories where I could. I wanted to hope that maybe Allura could be Allura again at the last hurdle. Nope. Destroyed.

And credit where it's due? That overly bombastic anime-as-fuck arm wrestle, complete with foe with a heart of gold trope played for laughs? Yeah. That was fun. It's not like they can't do moments. I will admit that. They have some among the writing staff who make wonderful moments. It's just a shame those moments are mired in so much dross...

That touch of self awareness about the robot arm from Iverson I appreciated. Again. Moments. The entire concept of using a void creature combined with Voltron's joining of minds seems like the worst idea ever. It puts them all in jeopardy. Lance is being the only sensible one there. Which is rare to say. It also doesn't feel like he's doing it purely out of his feelings for her. Just common sense. Also, I feel like the Astral Lions moment would have carried a little more oomph if... Lance and Pidge had had their Lion Bond moment. I'm going to keep coming back to that. Because it feels very present in it's absence. It feels as if it has been either removed or else forgotten.

The battle with their alternate selves was fascinating. One of the few fight scenes that acutally wasn't boring this season. Though, Allura inevitably giving in to and using the darkness... What did I say before...? They've made her so weak. It took her lion intervening to stay her hand. And was it just me or was Lance using his broadsword...? With no fanfare...? No dramatically appropriate moment for it to materialise in a meaningful way...? It's just... There...? They establish he can summon it only under intense need, then never use it and now suddenly it's just... There...? Wow. I was giving them far too much credit when I assumed it was foreshadowing some dramatically appropriate moment. Sorry to anyone out there I said as much to. They just forgot about it.

This may be bad of me, but there's something distinctly Freudian about Lance wielding Allura's Father's Broad Sword... That just me?

So... They're continuing together on life's journey now...? And we're still not going to even touch on relative human to Altean life spans...? Really...? Ok...

And this is just another aside...

Their minds are all connected. So, Pidge doesn't need to explain anything except for the sake of the audience. That's fine and dandy. I'm used to Voltron relying on prodigious amounts of exposition. But why is Alfor surprised at the knowledge of Allura being possessed...? Angry? Sure. Concerned? Sure. Trying to convince her it's a bad idea? Sure. But...surprised...? How...? The plot would have you believe they're all profoundly connected on a far deeper level than ever before... And yet, somehow he's surprised at this knowledge...? Whatever. Plot right? Who cares. It's not like a team of writers have been paid a large sum for this to be a coherent story...

Should I just rename myself Bitter Bitching Bear?

Probably... I guess palaces in the mind would make a Voltron and Persona 5 crossover possible. Not that I would want to lessen Persona 5 in that way. Just an idle observation. And again, despite the mind connection, Allura is revealing things to Alfor that surprise him. I know it'd make conversations pointless and thus the whole show would be a hard watch... But still, why even pretend there is a mind connection if they don't even pay it lip service?

If I was taking a shot every time there was an unnecessary transformation sequence... In fairness I'd probably just be a little merry. But still, for a show that's being so rushed, they seem to have all the time in the world for transformation sequences and filler episodes. And really lousy looking CGI corridors. That was jarring. Also, Lance and Alfor being one and the same in the cockpit. Freudian symbolism intensifies.

Now, I'm just going to spitball for a moment. Allura is filled with an evil tennis ball from the void. She needs the evil ball to find Honerva. Yet we've seen she can remove the entities from Alteans. Admittedly, a dead one but, what's to say it's not possible on a living Altean? It's not like anyone tried.

Take the entity. Sever their connection. Ask the Alteans where Honerva is. Literally no need to put her sanity at risk. No need to have her willingly being possessed by a spooky space demon. Would it be as visually impressive? No. But it was an alternative that wasn't even discussed. Or considered. And it makes a great deal more sense. It also allows Allura to remain at least partially her incredibly strong willed self and not give in to the easy dark path. Yes, at this stage she's resisting. But let's be real. She's going to fall to the darkness. At least for a time. You don't foreshadow this hard about how bad the spooky space demon is unless you're going somewhere with it. Mind you, I've been wrong before about the writers doing something they're obviously building toward...

And now Lotor has gone from compelling conflicted character, to vampire space Hitler to a pile of gloop in a chair. Just one screw you after the next... Guess there's no redemption arc for him that doesn't involve a spatula...

Also, it suddenly strikes me that there's a whole lot of lazy asset reuse thanks to this episode's memory stuff going on. I'm also pretty sure I saw Lance's crazy gunning face against Alfor used elsewhere. Have the animators also given up? Well, with what they've been given to write, I wouldn't blame them. And...why is Zarkon's colour palette off...? His skin is literally the wrong colour... Come on guys, this isn't even funny... Why would Honerva remember her own Husband as the wrong colour...? Why would, what I assume is Zarkon's soul, be the wrong colour...?

Honerva's plan... So... Let me get this straight...

Honerva has Zarkon's soul in her mind. Possibly Lotor's somewhere as well, but that's just a guess.

She's made cloned bodies before. You see where I'm going with this?

Why destroy every single other reality, just to find the right one when she could just... Replace their souls in cloned bodies...? Or at the very least bring Zarkon back to aid her...? If Allura could do it it would be child's play to Honerva. Her motivation makes sense, but her method is utterly stupid. It makes her look stupid when she can't even use the tools at her own disposal.

What even is this daft speech and argument from Keith...?

Voltron is gone? Voltron is within us...?

Bollocks to your pseudo-deep emotional prattle. Just be sensible for once. The lions were never there to begin with. They were astral constructs. The lions aren't literally there so they aren't literally gone. You don't need a rousing speech about reaching for the lion inside you, because it's all in your heads as much as it's in hers... So stupid.

Also, pretty sure the entire blazing sword sequence was reused...

And something bad happened to Allura because she used the bad thing that was bad. Did we mention it was bad enough?

Well, here it is. The Big Robot they have to beat this season. Complete with seraphic imagery and form. That sure as hell hasn't been done to death, has it? And it's the board room of exposition again. Woohoo. And yet more Lance angst. And another Lance and Keith bonding moment. We get it, they're friends now. Ok, apparently removing the entity didn't kill the Altean...? So she could literally have just used their help...? Or even traced Honerva using one of the other's entity. And again, nothing was even suggested to do that.

I'm honestly not sure what would have been worse right now. The fact that Allura has been rendered bed bound and unable to do anything or if she'd been made a damsel in distress to be literally saved. Then again, I suppose there's still time for that. And in a sense, she is still in distress. Waiting to be saved by the plot. Oh, here it is. Lance going to awaken her with his love. Hooray. The damsel in distress is saved by the Nice Guy.

And the whole first part of the episode was literally just padding and wasting time. Are we any closer to finding out why Keith can do what he does...? Will we ever find out? Nah, I'll scratch that off along with Lance and Pidge ever getting their lion moments that everyone else got last season. But thank goodness we had time for all the pointless filler.

Ok... So, to be clear... At no point before going into the Astral Plane, did Allura think to remove the entities from the Alteans they have onboard...? I mean, yeah, sure, Allura getting controlled is one thing, she's just a plot device to be used these days and lacks any agency of her own any longer. But to have the irrelevant side characters not have their spooky space ghost taken out... When they know it directly connects them to Honerva... Even if they couldn't predict Honerva could control them, leaving them bonded with the entities was a stupid risk... Everyone is written like an idiot.

And, I'm not even sure how you can classify these void creatures as entities. They don't seem to have any will or agency of their own. They just seem to serve as brain bluetooth for Honerva and nothing else. Feels like they were supposed to be more than they ended up being. You can pretty much sum up the whole series as such. It was supposed to be so much more than it ended up being.

Now, I'm sure someone will point out that the Balmera we know is near Earth, so it shouldn't be here. Which is why they found a random new Balmera and new Balmerans. But, wouldn't it be more satisfying to have Shay and her formerly enslaved people being part of this final battle...? Wouldn't it be more compelling than watching New Balmera and the New Balmerans to see Shay and her long downtrodden people fighting back...? To just introduce a new Balmera with no previous stakes in the conflict is...mind boggling...

Mother and Son combined huh...? Freudian Symbology 3 – The Freudianing

Two episodes and then it's all over. Thankfully over.

And still time for another transformation sequence. We get it. Lions go click. I never thought I'd get bored watching a giant robot form... And at this stage, repetition seems to be a good topic. They're battling to save all realities. Again. There's a big space wobbly hole. Again. Only Coran with the power of breaking stuff can stop it. Again. I mean, I get this is based on a formulaic Japanese super robot show from the 80's, but it's current year argument... Can we maybe have something new in the season arc formula that isn't beat the big bad robot...? Right up until season 6 this show had so much potential and we've watched it all get squandered.

So...suddenly Balmera... That can travel at speeds at least as quick as Teludav...? Ok, sure. Whatever. And calling the other Balmera here...? Wow, wouldn't that have been more compelling if Shay, on her own Balmera previously wounded by Honerva, called out to the others? Wouldn't that have made this suddenly Balmera moment make more sense...? Nah. Screw sense. New Balmera and the New Balmerans happened. Then a whole bunch happened... It's like, they're missing all these obvious ways to tie things together using all they have in place... How can one writer never mind a whole damn team of writers miss something so elementary so repeatedly...?

At this stage, I genuinely think they stopped caring.

Deus Ex Balmera made Voltron and The Atlas fuse into a derpy generic looking Gundam.

You've got the rights to Voltron one of the most iconic combiner robots in history. Why the hell would you, for the final battle, turn it into yet another generic looking super robot in high heels!? Why!? Even that daft looking toy covered in blue bits was better than this...

Again, I can't understand how seeing two robots form a bigger robot is somehow boring... But they managed it... Makes me worry that the Voltron writers are apparently going on to do Spider Verse films... Somehow they might make multiple reality spider people boring...

And a big silly looking sword as well. Why not just cover it in belt buckles while you're at it?

And given this Alt-Reality Lotor and Alt-Reality Allura, they had the perfect chance to have them both be adorable little munchkins together. Couldn't even do that... And can we just stop with this? We get it, even if she wins she loses cause it's not really her world and not really her Zarkon and her plan was always doomed to fail... Yes, we get it. Hubris. Can we please just hurry up and end the series before I start listing all of the many plot threads you've overlooked...?

Ok, now the over-designed purple mess can fight the over-designed mess with a vaguely Voltron head. Then some shoddy deus ex machina will happen, probably.

Yup. Voltron just turns into a giant set of wings before ending up in the nexus of all realities. And Allura makes it all better with her magic. And predictably Allura makes the ultimate sacrifice because of course she does. Who didn't see this coming? And did she just magically make Lance Altean...? Man, I preferred Allura when she wasn't just a walking plot device. Though, now I think back, was she ever anything else...? How bad it's gotten makes me re-evaluate what it was... And finally we get everything tied up with a few sentences under some still images with the exception of Shiro's kiss, which was fine, but hardly the soul surging uplifting thing it wanted to be.

And that's that.

Previously, I was angry, I will admit that. And it was shameful. Now though...? I'm obviously bitter and sarcastic about it, but mostly a combination of relief and disappointment. Glad it's over. Disappointed at what it ultimately devolved into. Ironic as this may be, coming from a writer of shitty Voltron fanfiction... From season six onwards, this show has felt like shitty Voltron fanfiction. In essence, that's what it was. There are so many of you here on tumblr. who could have done a better job. A much better job. Maybe some of you will in future.

At least now, I can move on from the mess that the canon became. I won't waste my time hoping they'll make it better or wondering if they'll resolve every plot thread. Because I know they don't. I know they forget whole swathes of things they set up. And I'm sure people will point out more. I won't be writing fics trying to make them fit into the canon. If anything, I'll want to rewrite everything that went wrong from season six onwards. I will probably at least finish off some Plance pieces that I think The Garden needs now more than ever. Set in some of the alternate realities that didn't turn into this...utter mess... See you later, Space Cowboys. Sorry about the space dysentery.

Also, as one comment points out? That's not a gundam in my gif. But just a robot that looks silly dancing. pretty sure it's from a gundam series...but I only really know wing and beargguys. ...Here's a jolly thought. Altean Lance? He will live for centuries. Allura's last "gift" condemns him to spend nearly 1000 years watching his friends, his family over several generations, probably his entire lineage die and rot. All the while mourning her and never moving on. Fuck. This. Season.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron season 8 #voltron spoilers #voltron season 8 spoilers #spoilers voltron #vld spoilers #vld #bear is salty

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animebw · 6 years ago

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“How foolish can one man get?”

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how FMAB’s story is about breaking out of cycles. Breaking cycles of despair, breaking cycles of violence, breaking cycles of failure, and above all else, breaking cycles of hatred. It’s a story about humanity ability to push through its limitations and build a better world than the one they were born into. Which is exactly what makes episode 54 so utterly wrenching: because after so long pushing back against that cycle, we’re suddenly right on the brink of plunging back into it.

Let’s be real: Roy’s anger at Envy is completely justified. Envy is the literal worst. He destroys with glee and lives to torment, taking every opportunity to make miserable the lives of innocent people. He is a complete and utter monster who also happened to kill Mustang’s best friend. He deserves to die. He deserves to be destroyed.

But Mustang doesn’t deserve to destroy himself doing so.

The Envy Beatdown sequence that stretches across the tail end of episode 53 into 54 is the most viscerally upsetting sequence in the entire fucking show. The animation rips and tears with the force of Mustang’s flame, every taunt by Envy cut off by another immolating surge. It’s relentless and furious and unhinged, an explosion of pure, unadulterated rage. And the further it goes on, the more the utter glee you’re experiencing at watching this absolute shitstain get his comeuppance gets replaced with horror at just how much of himself Mustang is willing to sacrifice in the process. Like I mentioned a while back, Mustang represents the pursuit of power, and how even pursuing it for the right reasons can go astray. And that becomes crystal clear here, as his desire for revenge starts to consume the good intentions that first spurred him to try and take the Furher’s place. It’s not fun. It’s not even really exciting after a while. It’s just... horrifying. It’s ugly and gut-twisting and you can’t look away. By the end, you’re just left wheezing in shock. Yes, Envy has been taken down once again. But the cycle of hatred we’ve fought so hard to escape, that Winry put so much effort into proving the futility of, is suddenly staring at us in the face once again. As the former embodiment of that hatred himself, Scar, remarks, would an Amestris under the heel of a Mustang twisted by this hatred, however justified, truly be able to escape its broken history? Or in all likelihood, would it just collapse into more bloodshed and death, endlessly repeating the same mistakes into infinity?

And that’s why it’s so important that Mustang doesn’t get the final shot. At that point, Envy was already beaten. There was no more chance of him causing harm. To insist on personally finishing him off at that point would be vengeance, pure and simple. It would be a perversion of everything Mustang started that quest for. And, perhaps most importantly, it would be a betrayal of every ounce of trust Hawkeye put in him. These two have been at each other’s backs ever since Ishval, trusting each other, helping each other, staying the course for each other, under the promise that they would never repeat the desolation of that awful war. So when Hawkeye sees Mustang about to break that trust, she doesn’t hesitate to follow the order he gave her so long ago: she raises her gun, ready and willing to put an end to the monster her loved one was so close to becoming. That’s how much they mean to each other. That’s how important their bond is. And ultimately, that’s what forces Mustang to stand down: he can’t keep hurting her. Not after he used the secrets of Flame Alchemy she entrusted him with to genocide an entire people. Not after everything they’ve been through. For her sake... for the country’s sake... he needs to be better.

Which leads to the final piece in this whole damn puzzle: Envy himself. Envy has always looked down on humans, believing them to be weak and foolish, unworthy of any respect. But as Ed finally realizes, that disdain belies the true reason behind why he gets to be called Envy; he’s jealous of humanity. Because unlike him, a being fixed in place and bound to his nature, humans can change. Like I said up above, that’s the entire damn point of the show. Humans can improve. They can keep getting better. They can say, “no, I won’t spread hatred anymore, even if I would very much personally like to by killing this monster myself”. They can take the hatred of years of discrimination and purging and turn it into a force for change, like Scar. If envy is the sin of thinking, “they’re all so much better than me, so I will hate them forever”, then the flipside of that is thinking “they’re all so much better than me, so I will work to be as good as them someday”. Humanity has the capacity for that second ethos. But Envy? Envy only has, well, envy. All he can do is hate. All he can do is scream and wail, unable to stretch beyond the confines of his sin. In the end, it is he who is weak. It is he who was always looking up at humans, unable to imagine ever attaining their capacity for glory.

And when that realization truly sets in... when he realizes how useless and helpless he truly is... he sees no other option than to permanently remove himself from the playing field. And for all the horrible things he’s done, all the cruelty he’s exhibited, all the evil and hatred he’s spread across this world, when that pitiful little shrimp, sobbing his eyes out, pulls out his core and crushes it with his own stubby hands, unable to live with the alternative anymore... yeah, it hurts. It really hurts. Against all odds, this utterly irredeemable monster elects real, honest-to-god sympathy from you in the end. Because at last, you see what all that darkness truly was: a pathetic coping mechanism for a self-hating weakling who could only lash out against the pain of knowing he was never going to be anything but weak. It’s an end befitting a Greek tragedy, a grand figure brought low by his own moral failings, unable to do anything in the end but accept his fate and vanish into the dark voids of history. I cried the first time I watched this episode, and I came pretty damn close upon re-watch here. A monster like Envy shouldn’t be able to hurt me like this. But he does all the same.

Episode 54 is still one of the best episodes in the series. The animation on Mustang’s furious alchemy is some of the most intense, hard-hitting sakuga out there. The emotions it brings up in every character hit with the force of a two-ton wrecking ball. And the thematic power of Mustang rejecting hatred is the best non-Winry exploration of that idea in the entire show. In the end, envy always sinks into the muck; humanity, meanwhile, keeps climbing higher, leaving their failures and mistakes further behind all the way. If we are ever to surpass ourselves, that’s the kind of determination we need.

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #fullmetal alchemsit brotherhood #fma #fullmetal alchemist #fmab #fmab rw #edward elric #alphonse elric #winry rockbell #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #fma envy #royai #scar

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wilma-flintstones-mother · 6 years ago

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In Memorium of ALL that was lost 17 years ago and Also Intentionally Slotted Here This Evening Most Thoughtfully to Act as Motivational Fuel for the Fires that will Rage from Within the Very Core of the hearts and minds and conscience of the soon-to-be in Revolt citizenry of these United States of America in one Final, bloody, intense and all too necessary Shoot-em-up Stand-Off to the death against the Evil Spectres of World Domination and specifically to thwart and completely overpower them before they are able to initiate the communications, media, finances, military, government shutdown and beginning of an unspeakably brutal, inhumane, uber-violent and nightmarish new era of civil war, revolution, mass execution, starvation and instantaneously unleash mass catastrophic casualties not only to the populace but also to the environment, the animal kingdom in it’s entirety, the planned destruction of entire continents through previously un-imagined and practically instantaneous destruction of the planet’s protective ozone layer, resulting in the immediate genocide of all of Earth’s indigenous carbon-based life, it’s plentiful flora, wide variety of fauna and also contaminate what hadn’t already evaporated upon impact the small remaining amounts of precious life-sustaining water, through their perfected secret mastery of previously undiscovered directed energy weaponry that is some form of combined nuclear energy, microwave technology, anti-gravitational frequencies, pure dark anti-matter (!!!seriously!!!NO SHIT!!!), weather, climate and tectonic plate manipulated modification turned up to astronomically dangerous, unstable and very likely mass extinction level event status catastrophic disasters and result in essentially prematurely creating and ejaculating another end of the world as we know it holocaust to end all previous civilizations falls and final death knells (but this time, intentionally caused by the control-freakish political, financial, industrial and military combined governing lords over mankind itself) all inclusive planetary die-off and single, solitary jumping off and into the bottomless abyss, resulting in a.) spill over into the pan-dimensional multiverse (which WAS previously thought to have been theoretically an absolute impossibility!) into the ninth, tenth and twelfth dimensions, respectively, but simultaneously also extinguishing out every last vestige of life-force on the planet in less than a tenth of a second and managed to obliterate each and every one of us from a dimension of sight, sound and mind directly into a (imminently far, far greater than simply a mere) other dimensional plane, consisting of layer upon layer upon layer (infinitude) of vehemently dangerous couplings of essentially MATTER and ANTI-MATTER coming in and back out of direct contact with one another, frequently, shockingly silently co-mingling into and between and surrounding and even bridging and exchanging protons and atoms and black matter as well as sub-atomic particles and potentially even communications, emotions, entanglements, relationships, births, deaths, momentary sharing and exchanging one another’s very fundamental opposite identities and dimensional realities and physics, with the identifying forces of one’s positive matter actually momentarily embracing and becoming the other’s negative anti-matter in a unproven but most undeniably sexual and familiarly interpersonal most extremely noticeably peculiar and identifiable fashion of cosmic similitude and the commonly shared consciousness of which we all are, have been or one day will be a consciously living, breathing and existing extension of and only temporarily branched out from, as we and every other pattern of energy and cosmic memory perpetually re-emerge from as brand new energy patterns of a dangerously unstable and eventually formidably destructive and destroying on all levels of all layers of all dimensions and each and every one of the millions of universes, galaxies, solar systems, planets, continents, countries, cities, neighborhoods, square blocks, autonomous buildings and personal dwellings, individual living spaces with identifying names defining what activity or necessity of everyday life is executed within each specified room and it’s functional purpose, personal effects, family heirlooms, furniture, keepsakes, entertainments, elemental nourishment preparatory appliances and implements,unique individual life forms laying in bed, tossing and turning back and forth, unable to achieve sound sleep, the myriad cacophony of inner voices, fleeting thoughts, obsessions, scheduling of things to accomplish the following day, what they were going to wear, weather or not so-and-so was interested in dating them, worrying that their car might break down again and having to shell out another $500 out of their laughably inconsequential savings account, the linear dream state of human beings, as it continues to develop and move forward and shift from reality to reality and from moment to moment, never actually ceasing in it’s eternal clockworks, weather the unconscious host dreamer is currently wide awake and existing, thinking, acting and forgetting all about what they had experienced within it’s hyper-reality surrealism and meditative, curative phantasmagoria just a few hours previously when they were still fully immersed in it’s calm and collected, REM-activated trappings and grasp, and even then, the dream they had suddenly woken up from unexpectedly as their alarm clock went off at 8:30 am sharp and they ever so slowly, lackadaisically began to forget all about the wild, memourable, erotic, funny, exciting, evocative dream they had been enjoying just prior to waking up, in which they even got to hang out and experience many different kinds of abstractly disjointed variations and totally irrational and illogical combinations of being in their parent’s house/but also at Disneyland/which was also a Bob’s Big Boy Restaurant/and the hospital corridors you would endless walk through at a time when your grandmother was a patient and died there/which was also your place of employment (probably several jobs ago, the one you really liked but that you really did self-sabotage your being able to remain at) / which also had a little hidden rumpus room on the other side of the wall from your high school cafeteria, where you and another kid you had a crush on disappeared into so you could smoke a bowl together and then engage in sloppy, failed attempt at performing oral sex upon/which also had a really cool roller coaster right outside the main entrance that you could ride for free/ that would also just so happen to make a stop halfway through just outside of your very own bedroom door/ just as you hear the voice of your little brother who died when he was 10 calling your name as if he were lost somewhere and couldn’t find his way/but that’s stupid, because I KNOW and I REMEMBER that HE DIED YEARS AGO, but I’m glad he’s home and I wonder if he’ll want to go see STAR WARS with me and Jill and Kessie later on tonight at the Rialto in South Pas, that is, if I we can find each other... I hope he doesn’t get too scared/so just as you open your bedroom door and are about to walk in/suddenly you are startled by an annoying loud buzz which you can’t comprehend at first but then you/suddenly open up your sleepy eyes and it’s your alarm clock right on buzz-killing schedule as always, and your bedroom ceiling is awash in vibrant hues of yellowish-orange morning sunlight and all of that provocative zaniness was all just a dream...as always....except you never realize it fully until you have wake up and have emerged out of it’s hypnotic and compelling desire-answering and mood-fulfilling magick theatre-isms, it’s so obvious now that that was all only a dream, even though I remember dreaming that I knew it was all just a dream, even though it always more-than suffices as an even-better alternative to waking life and this reality in lieu of living in it... and those faceless character-actor-ish phantasms who you were never privy to the common knowledge of realizing or even imagining that those people and those images of people you know and knew in real waking life actually do just continue on about within the reality and time frame and space and time curvature of which their usually entertaining, carefree, monstrous hybrid of all things, real, imaginary, past, present and future, entertainment fiction real life trauma as experienced from the top hill of a b&w animated roller coaster originally drawn way back in the late 1920′s just as it begins to spill over the rather substantial incline just as the maximum momentum and locomotion has achieved it’s hand-drawn cell-animated maximum velocity, you notice the entire back half of the train of cars is literally lifting feet above the noisy pencil-drawn wooden tracks they’re allegedly connected to, a few of the people in the last two cars even fly out of their seats at the top of the hill, safely settling back into their chosen seats on the coaster by the time it reaches the bottom of the first hill.... the Fleischer Brothers ain’t got nothin’ on the power and limitless freedom of movement, imagination, unlikelihood, a human animals natural-born connected-ness with the psychic and telekinetic energies, patterns and the Earthen natural resources of magnetism and magnitude, unyielding and unrecoverable decimation, the violently opposing layers and volumes and channels and dimensions and and conflicting reams of liquid space, psychic vibratory beings consisting of nothing but pure energy, shadow and darkness ; abject, complete and unimaginable total non-existence, sequencing which would begin the intention of their callously chickenshit and much, much too prematurely arriving at that moment to end all other moments throughout the nights of time, as they safely secure themselves and their self-importance and their loved ones, pets, favourite records, movies and books, computers and internet connectivity, porn, King James versions of the Bible, all of their very favourite processed, GMO and cloned foodstuffs, wellspring library of alcohols, sodas, sundry recreational drugs, nibbles, snacks, more cases of bottled water than anyone has ever seen in reality EVER and aperitifs... But they also DIDN’T forget to bring along all of their unnecessary baggage and dirty laundry and bad, bad, bad, bad, and I’m talking... fucking detestable, shameful-ass as-a-mother-fucker bad-bad-ass karma (that is so sullied and so soiled and so unrecognizable as still actually being legally able to be referred to tastefully and realistically as `karma’) Oh, as well as their wealth of compassionate and trustworthy and still gainfully much, much better, handsomer and more worthy, deserving and overall just plain better than you, and all of the expected limited intelligence and tunnel vision perceptions, ever having been able to just kick the fuck back worry-free and enjoy life, goddammit, being born into old, white, American money and profitably living his life day to day, year to year, lost decade to shitty new world-ordered decade, far too privileged for far too long and all the while having succeeded in incontestably lying, deceiving, murdering, littering, poisoning, manipulating, cheating, raping, pillaging, warring, creating unnecessary tensions and divisions out of friends and neighbours, guilty by treason for a lifetime consisting of literally absolute and complete incompetency, crimes against humanity coupled with a competently inhumane disregard for any and all creatures and beings and families and communities, ever able to not just survive but perpetrate every last conceivable attribute of nihilism, misanthropy, xenophobia, sexism, conservative republicanism, needlessly controlling power freak and (just short of legally being able to qualify as tangibly having lived your life and carried out your position of power over all others) just two-steps short of having followed closely in the same footsteps as Hitler, Mussolini, the George W. Bush Dynasty and Justin Bieber himself... having acted upon on all of the very worst and lowest common denominational rhetoric, politics of never more than dirty fucking pool at it’s very lowest n-word notches and, now, safely watching the pandemonium and fiery, avalanche of unprecedented 9.4 earthquakes, tsunami that stay quite far inland wracking up even more unbelievable devastation for weeks at a time, volcanic overflows overtake the Hawaiian island which are now nothing but molten lava and bodies and beaches covered in sizzling, razor-sharp newly born land, otherwise, the rest of the whole of the planet’s surface remains awash in uncontrollable fiery flames that give any imaginings of Hell a sincere run for it’s money, all of the major continents, now broken up and in disarray and many no longer connected to any other large square mile footage of land any longer quickly become one endless, suffocating, inferno of unprecedented loss of resources, life, and destruction so thorough in it’s willful desire of finally claiming and bringing to a halt the previous relative peace, tranquility and beauty of all that had been and thrived there for so long, 200 mph winds signalling the arrival of onslaughts of level 5 hurricanes, tornadoes and the tallest, most ominous and terrifying sight of 300 foot tall rogue tidal waves approaching, one after the other after the other, wiping out any and all previous beach and harbour communities ; scary, violent new chunks of Earth shooting up from far beneath the surface, destroying everything in it’s wake and ripping-to-shreds the very land masses underneath our feet which had been home to our beloved communities, estuaries, park lands, national monuments, farm lands. rivers, forests, family homesteads, hills and valleys ; molten lava spewing forth robustly, shooting fiery liquid fumes into the air three miles up and then landing hundreds of miles away, volcanic rock, magma, tectonic plates, mountains, hills, valleys, grasslands, rain forests, beaches, deserts, all cities of the world finally united in one overwhelmingly epic fireball burning every last shelter, building and domicile unmercifully to the ground - As the still-believing-themselves-to-be ever-privileged, special, deserving and just higher-class one per-centers, who just minutes previously inherited the title of and factually became THE REPRESENTATIVE ENTIRETY OF HUMAN BEINGS ALIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH (or more accurately, deep within the labyrinthine caves and tunnelled out miles and miles of underground civilized word, accommodations, diversionary things like big slides, swings, swimming pools and mineral springs, bowling alleys and skating rinks, exacting replicas of their favourite four star eateries of the previous civilized world, subterranean jungles, arboretums and gardens, a n amusement park with all of the most insane and exciting thrill rides and roller coasters anybody could ever wish for, exacting duplicate versions (all stolen, of course) from Disneyland’s Matterhorn, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Enchanted Tiki Room and Jungle Cruise rides (poetically, they DID have the taste and intuition to not consider also having their own water flume it’s a small world ride, too! I mean... that was the VERY LEAST they could have NOT done!) Anyway, with them all together having drinks and a small, five-course light luncheon being served to them by their staff (they DID allow a hundred or so select few of the rest of us to survive the pandemic `natural’ wave of cataclysmic destruction that the Earth and it’s surface and it’s 99% of the rest of the civilized populace, as we knew it, had suffered) and they were all assembled in their single most comfortable, cushy, oversized and simply plush movie theatre/dinner theatre/five star restaurant/full bar and pharmaceutical store/hamburger stand/coffee house/art gallery/television stations and they all watched over CCTV which played out, mechanically filming and panning back and forth and then shifting to another CCTV location and the not-so-surprisingly total loss and unrecognizable current appearance of many previously magnificently beautiful famous and beloved locations of historical and personal significance, all of the destruction and decimation on the planets surface miles above them playing out unashamedly just as unapologetically as it had happened in the first place, for all of them to see with their own eyes the trivial, trifling, megalomaniac spoiled conservative republican, unnecessarily one-sided results of their well-planned escape and future subterranean survivalist underground civilization and continuation of the human animal (or, more accurately, of the most minutely small, inconsequential, minor, petty, self-obsessed and inbred of any and all possible cliques of individuals who might ever have possibly been the few select `lucky ones’ to have actually been the only living representatives of all human life on the planet, 99% of which had just recently been violently killed in one freakish manner due to one or another of the extinction level event cataclysmic disasters that had simultaneously murdered off the entire planet itself! They sat in surprising silence as they interestingly took in all of the devastation they witnessed live on the very large 70mm cinerama dome-like vinyl motion picture screen and, for the very first time, I believe it may have actually been the single only time ever that a group of fascistic, right wing republican conservative born again Christians ever sat together in such an immense and comfortable entertainment center, and did not open their retarded mouths to say not one fucking snide little comment about all of those unlucky one’s above who had just perished... I believe that even if it may just have been a trick of the light or something, that I may possibly have just witnessed a conservative republican shedding a tear or two over somebody who was neither himself, a member of his family and actually who had been one of those bleeding-heart liberal democrats who ruined our country so thoroughly and ran that shit right into the ground before we did the right thing and saw to it that they finally got WTF they deserved, those stupid fucking N-word M*%%# F&@#%$......

#extinction event level

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Birds of Prey movie review: Margot Robbie soars in vibrantly violent DCEU gem - hollywood

Birds of Prey Director - Cathy Yan Cast - Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Ewan McGregor Combining all the ingredients that make comic book bros break out in hives, Birds of Prey is a candy-coloured curveball of a movie that doubles as a feminist fable and an apology for the poorly received Suicide Squad. It does away with that film’s convoluted tone and embraces the nuttier aspects of the monumentally mishandled DCEU, a series with which Birds of Prey has barely any connection — tonally and narratively. In fact, it spends its opening minutes literally cutting any ties it has to Suicide Squad, and, metaphorically, to its toxic legacy. Watch the Birds of Prey trailer here I liked Suicide Squad. It reminded me of Batman: The Animated Series, a show that I watched obsessively growing up. Harley Quinn was created specifically for that show by writer Paul Dini. He’d be happy with what director Cathy Yan has done with her in Birds of Prey. Once again played by Margot Robbie, Harley is having a difficult time getting over the Joker, with whom she has broken up sometime between the events of this film and Suicide Squad. But she hasn’t told anyone yet — partly because she’s still in denial, but more importantly, being the Joker’s girlfriend afforded her a certain immunity in the seedier corners of Gotham City, immunity that Harley is convinced she’ll lose the second she announces that she is no longer under Mr J’s protection. Birds of Prey is essentially the story of Harley emerging from under the Joker’s shadow. Much has been written about the emotional abuse Harley has had to suffer as the Joker’s partner in crime over the years — in comics, video games and cartoon shows. But by removing the Clown Prince of Crime (the Harlequin of Hate, the Jester of Genocide) entirely from the narrative, Yan and her writer, Christina Hodson avoid confronting some of the more interesting aspects of their relationship. It’s a missed opportunity, because despite never appearing in the flesh, the Joker haunts her like a particularly stubborn wart — unshakable and irritating. His face is visible on a dart board on Harley’s bedroom wall and his name is mentioned by dozens of characters throughout the movie. Curiously, however, Jared Leto’s likeness is never used; the Joker in Birds of Prey appears to be a campy composite of sorts.

Margot Robbie in a still from Birds of Prey. He looks like the Joker of the ‘90s; a mixture of Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill’s versions. This is also a good indication of the film’s tone. It’s interesting to note how, in the span of just over a decade, the pendulum has swung from Joel Schumacher’s lurid Batman films to the gritty realism of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and back again. Designed by KK Barrett and vibrantly shot by cinematographer Matty Libatique, Birds of Prey has more in common with Schumacher’s kitschy aesthetic than the grounded tone of Nolan’s films. But the similarities are limited to the visuals, thankfully; Birds of Prey is infinitely better written than both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin combined. Hodson’s screenplay channels the early films of Guy Ritchie, complete with a valuable MacGuffin, snazzy visual graphics, and an overly complicated, non-linear structure. She even has Robbie serve as a relatively reliable narrator, and our guide in this densely populated world. The trio of women charged with spearheading the film — Yan, the director; Hodson, the writer; and Robbie, the producer — inject the film with a spirit of pride. It’s the sort of film in which one character, sensing another’s discomfort during a fight, offers her a scrunchie to keep the hair out of her eyes. In another scene, a character admires a cohort’s ability to fight in tight pants. But it takes a while for the gang to get together. For the most part, Birds of Prey is a Harley Quinn movie. And that is its biggest flaw. Because we know so little about the character — barring a hasty narration that hints at a troubled childhood, Harley’s life is a mystery — it is difficult to stick with her as she goes on the run from Gotham’s criminals, tracks down an elusive diamond, and tries her best to be a ‘not so terrible person’.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Margot Robbie and Jurnee Smollett-Bell in a still from Birds of Prey. The ethics of rooting for a villain aside, Robbie brings an inherent likability to the character, but it’s Ewan McGregor who delivers the film’s standout performance as the flamboyant gangster Roman Sionis (Black Mask). Yan, despite her relative inexperience — this is her first studio film, and her second feature ever — appears to have a decent grasp of tone, although most of the action sequences seem to be the handiwork of John Wick director Chad Stahelski, who was roped in at the last minute to oversee reshoots. A warehouse brawl and a climactic car chase, in particular, are trademark Stahelski — intricately choreographed and edited with patience. Birds of Prey has virtually no bearing on the larger DCEU; it’s baffling to me why Warner Bros. wants to insist on it even being part of the franchise at all. But as a standalone adventure, it’s a terrific showcase for Robbie’s talents as an actor. Her performance here is better than the one she’s currently nominated at the Oscars for. (Hindustan Times doesn’t use star-rating system in its movie reviews.) Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar Read the full article

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dwestfieldblog · 6 years ago

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LIE BACK AND THINK OF...ENGLAND

Hello...Back once more from a jolly jaunt to the motherland, various weeks of mental and physical bad health interspersed with bursts of good humour and rabid hypo-mania. So nice to be trapped in my mind when alcohol free. So of course started smoking because I need some kind of pacifier. Back to Prague for blood tests again. Another temporary reprieve today, collapsing into coherence as all good systems should. Augmented chords are mysterious, the diminished are tension...unlike some sequences I could mention. Shame the owners of this site have used an algorithm to delete various pictures on my blog which involve nipples, regardless of whether they are actually from classical paintings. Art is being censored...Anyway...enjoying my middle aged adolescence, planning ahead for obsolescence...greetings to the readers from Canes Ventaci, why so Sirius? Smiling is healthy...

Who is the one who is living me now? Da Free John

Religious news/olds...The pope says the church must never again hush up any abuse from its priests (in 2019, that's about (count them) one thousand, nine hundred and something days since the Church was founded with the help of a corrupt Emperor Constantine. Seems like a long time for a Christian group to get to show actual kindness, openness and morality huh? )Well Spotlight fans, it's a start eh? Compassion for your enemies and redemption for all. Or not.

Only found out last month that the word Guru literally means heavy. As in serious. Hmm...or OM AH HUM if you prefer. Well Buddha looks quite hefty eh?

Asshat in Syria appears to have won and sees no shame in having started a war in which hundreds of thousands of his own people have been murdered and/or 'vanished', all for the sake of putting shopkeepers and students who protested for more freedom in their place. Chemical weapons, mass genocide and now a puppet state of Iran and Russia. Well, otherwise it would have been beholden to the USA and that is never a good thing either, ask Britain. Perhaps we can leave America after Europe and become the proud third world prison island to which we have been heading for the last few decades. Oh I am in a good mood this evening.

WOOL..a nice little village in England...received a letter from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) politely suggesting/demanding that they change their name, as the way in which wool is sheared from sheep is aggressive and cruel. Etc. As if being under attack from the Far Left and Right is not enough, the vegans and snowflakes are rising fast to destroy the last vestigial tails of sanity. 1984 meets the Matrix and Kafka and Huxley have a love/hate-child. For the record, I despise tally ho 'good sport' fox hunting as much as I do animal liberation maniacs. (Yes, I do like animals,...wolves, hawks, black panthers, butterflies, intelligent dogs and dolphins. And Krtek.) Wool will keep their name. So far. Amen. Oh Man...

Gender neutral EU parliament...most words with 'man' in them have all been replaced with less 'specific' terms. When I was a boy and I heard the term Mankind, I never thought of men, I thought of people all over the world. Shame so many adults cannot do this too...but wait, the EU...they have substituted mankind with Humanity. (Doesn't that have man in it too?) I would LOVE to be present at one of these meetings where such semantically diseased people meet to waste life with such pointless new guidelines and turn a psychic death ray on them.

At some point, one hopes that folk will swing back away from these extremes and find the middle path of balance. But I don't think it is likely. People will always have ideas because they have brains of varying types and according to nature or nurture and their egos, can make the most mind screwingly dumb thoughts into reality...but for this to happen in a widespread way, requires someone at the end of the process, who, when presented with such, has to approve of, validate, wave it on as a new legally accepted norm. These are some of the people with whom I would most like to have 'a word'. Know what I mean?

Meanwhile new buzz phrases abound...'I self identify as a'...fill in the blank. Choose your gender, you don't even have to have an operation or hormone replacement, just announce it to the universe and be free. However, an opinion is not a truth. (of course I include my own writings in this) If you KNOW you are in the wrong body, CHANGE your body. Hands up (in the air) all those who can remember a time when 'Gender fluid' just meant... fill in the blank again.

Reminds me that Israel is still trying to push the fallacy (into a new globally accepted law) that criticising its government or latest in a line of corrupt leaders equates with racist anti Semitism. It isn't. No more than saying something critical of Angela Merkel for her immigration policy would mean the speaker is a sexist/misogynist. Or a hater of Germans. Same way that mentioning a self identifying sportswoman with a penis who has not yet had the op or hormone therapy is still a man until they commit fully to the sex they feel and know they are and is perhaps not ok to compete with other women while testosterone is in their blood...is not 'transphobic', just stating the obvious. And...

Lesbians who refuse to sleep with a self identifying woman with a penis are also not transphobic, they are making a choice about who and what they will sleep with. If one is not turned on by another human being, then they are not turned on by them. Of course, this is just an opinion and therefore quite possibly not a truth. But it seems reasonable and inoffensive eh? Unless you are a radical transpansexual. In which case my truthful opinion is that all radicals are mentally unstable dangerous lunatics to be avoided. Or try beetroot and carrot juice to eliminate the free radicals....

(That all said, I recall reading some years ago that one of the ultimate forms of humanity/was to be both sexes as one. So who knows? Not me, I never lost control, ha ha. Face to face with the womb man who sold the world. Would bring a whole new meaning to 'go f yourself'. Hermaphrodites come together in the end, alpha/ omega...)

'Nine months to get out, he said, and the rest of our fool lives trying to get back in'.

Perhaps this could be wonderful, with all identities blending into one understanding of life on this planet, were it not for the surplus of those types who will use every opportunity to mislead and manipulate for profit and power. At a school in Brighton (of course) in England, plans have been approved to teach children that all genders can menstruate. Yes, really. Why should 'girls' have all the fun eh? This is where we seem to be heading at greater and greater speed. Absolute bollocks/ovaries being taught as factual lessons. (Hmmm...a brief look with a third eye at history and stories accepted as fact and it can be seen that this is not all that new.)

Putin's evil genius plan to continue being president after his term runs out (under current constitutional rules) is to absorb Belorusssia. Russia thus becoming a new federation which will need a new constitution and to hold an election which he will win. When that runs out, no doubt he will take over/invade/absorb Ukraine etc totally and go on until he is dead. Or everyone else is. Alpha males, huh?

Speaking of which...More hours of CNN and their seemingly accurate reportage of all the utter, dreadful bullcrap from the useful idiot (for Moscow) Trump. Gleefully dissecting every nonsense statement from the blonde succubus's poison mouth. January 23rd, America remains in shutdown as he plays chicken with his entire country. Who will blink first? Reptiles can go for a long time without this. 'Waves of inquiries' look set to begin against the madman. 'Impeach the mother......' indeed. But after such a concentrated amount of watching and reading the news and the colossal amount of negative light, ah do believe I have had enuff again.

'I am He that was and is and shall be'. Apparently, Beethoven had this written down by his own hand on his desk from Egyptian Book of the Dead. 'Serenity is a problem when you've been this close to Heaven.'

('....thus, while the tangible has advantages, it is the intangible that makes it useful' Tao te Ching. Perhaps I will (or should) leave more blanks in this. Does every void need to be filled? China is now on the dark side of the moon, that just asks for a song to be written. Feel safe? Huawei, ha ha ha to everyone who bought their stuff.)

The Czech Republic (while still Czechoslovakia) had a Velvet Revolution, Russia has Pussy Riot and Britain has...? The old cliché true for the greater part was that in the First World War, the common soldiery were 'lions led by donkeys'. These days the majority of the 'common' folk seem like donkeys being led by the greedy into a knackers yard to be slaughtered for meat and glue. Here comes Brexit on a wave of misplaced expectation of regaining control over our destiny. Seems unlikely when the group mind of my country has sunk so deep into entropy, but that is just an opinion. Arf. 'Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way'.Roger Waters.

The young are still in favour of Corbybn and his highly dubious vision, regardless of the radical Momentum behind him who are very likely being supported financially by the Kremlin. Goddess bless our proud snowflake youth! Not going to be many 'safe spaces' available kids if he wins...Socialism with an inhuman face. Students in the West have yet to learn how evil this stuff is. For decades they have demonstrated against fascists real and imaginary, Conservative Thatcher policy, Republican reactionary hogwash etc. Perhaps they need to experience at first hand just what their student brethren in the East did from the end of the second world war to 1989. And beyond. The far Left sucks as hard as the far Right. Not all revolutionaries are as cool as Che Guevara. Kids, study China, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and other Socialist paradises, (if only for one hot hour) their governments kill a considerable amount more of their own people than do the democratic Western governments. There is a reason for this. All governments seek to control the narrative of what is taught in schools but not all of them kill you for questioning the story.

Perhaps we deserve it, Britain has been coasting along, running on empty for a very long time now. The two faced 'civilised' Christian moral vacuum is being filled with many other equally unpleasant qualities. Optimism becomes a serious challenge when you are aware that some times various fires must run their course in order to burn out. Like Man. Just hope that the scorched earth policy of most of the global mode of thinking allows a spring to appear in the future. Or get the world leaders to an Alice in Wonderland party for mushroom tea. That might very well speed up the process of illumination before the Rubicon is crossed. Perhaps it has been.

'Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently.' So how well are we all doing as a race? Call Pleaides 666 023 093...

True communication only possible between equals....all on different circuits...

Meow she said. Woof, he replied.

Love from the dog star.

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