#most importantly the way the show builds the central relationship

[theskyexists]

Sad that theyre now milking the premise: ana is too competitive and literally an idiot for it

Also somehow the dude who doesn't know anything about babies and left the woman he promised to be with forever when an abortion was no longer an option gets to....? Be in the right? 'He's her dad! He gets to do whatever with her!' uh ......... No? He only got to see her bc Mariana wanted the best for Regina and hes so incredibly fucking dumb

It's getting old that Ana is always fucking wrong. Doesn't anybody else get to be wrong sometimes

And now it turns out that Mariana's dad was actually perfectly fine or something it was her mum who decided to keep him out or whatever

Come on....

Are we going to make the endless point that having a career as a woman and also having fun and having a husband and family is simply completely impossible. Jezus Christ.

I thought this was gonna be a pretty feminist show with interesting choices so far but now im like.... Come on

This is getting in the area of: this is too embarrassing.

God. The woman in a man's world shit. I've never seen Ana be actually good at her job. Can we please have Ana do some actual work.

Has anybody looked at that baby in the past hour.

Mariana had the cutest girlfriend who was willing to go all out who supported her when she was pregnant and giving birth and etc etc. and told her she's not alone yet she didn't want to call her a girlfriend. Elena get the HELL OUT LOLOLOL

So you hooked up with your best friend??? And then you were like: eh let's just be friends? Mariana what the FUCK. And then comes crying back for her friend. Ok well. Maybe just, don't date your lesbian friend and be completely unserious maybe.

'i came to realise he'd a good dad' IS HE THOUGH????? IS HE??? COS HE GAVE UP THE WIN ONCE? just because his intentions are good don't make him a good dad.

Huh??? So Ana just took the loss???? Shes not upset about missing the presentation????

Why the fuck didn't Mariana take him to task for breaking his fucking promise again. God he's so fucking dumb. I have no patience for that shit. He broke trust at least four times and horrifically. And yet you'll let him take your kid with him??? Come ON

All I want from this goddamn show is for them to show me Ana beating the fucking competition

Ana's work continues to be: standing around a room looking devastatingly attractive

I don't care about Pablo I don't care about Elena or ceci or the babies ALL I CARE ABOUT IS ANA WINNING. I care a little bit about Tere and Juan Carlos

He shouldn't care if she's just a throwaway woman. Or maybe he cares because it was fucking shitty

Ok so Ana just WON. THANK GOD.

Het ex gf is the front woman of a band???? Jezus Christ Mariana what are you DOING

Oh my god. The sexism at the table is insane. Oh my god. FUCK YEAH somehow it's like Ana won anyway

And fuck yeah! Somebody finally fucking told Mariana that wasn't cool. Girl didn't have to be so mean about it though I guess

Seriously, spying on the girls? Mariana come on....I mean I thought she might play it off as dropping her thing or whatever.

Oh ok. I wouldn't go so far as to equate being called a fake lesbian the same as sitting at a table full of sexist fucking colleagues

Well it's good Mariana got a wake-up call that she needed to be a littleeeee kinder to Elena

It's crazy that she's only 22

They're definitely hiding how ana and Mariana are growing closer and closer very naturally

Ana winning at work!!! Politics!!!!

How in the hell is Ana's mother like ten years older than her at most

If I didn't know that Ana and Mariana end up in a relationship somehow in some way for some time I don't think... I would even catch it? No I would. I mean the salsa dancing is really a step too far. No wait, it isnt. It REMAINS SO SUBTLE. that ana will take instruction from Mariana and NO ONE ELSE. BUT subtle bc no camera angles no nothing that suggest anything. And the narrative is so sincere in cheering on Juan Carlos and Ana

Ana....why r u an idiot

He's like: I love you! And she's like: I've moved on. She should maybe repeat that and say: you LEFT ME PREGNANT AFTER SAYING YOU WANTED TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER.

Ok Mariana is such a fucking idiot. What the fuckkkkk. Poor Pablo oh my GOD. WHAT!!!

Rodrigo said: hey I'll do your homework but you better be my girlfriend. And Paloma did that. What is this weird prostitution plot for grade schoolers

Why does Pablo suddenly have a brain and Mariana doesnt

These people are so unbelievably rich

Damn. Endlessly men misinterpreting shit again and again. Though Mariana and Teresa both have a problem with mixed signals for sure. The men sure like to go from: oh she put a hand on my leg - she must want sex!! despite clear verbal and sometimes years-long rejection or a context of formality.

I guess Juan Carlos and Ana simply want different things.

Elena, despite being thin as a rack, is really hot.

Teresa is such a fucking dick. Truly Mariana and Teresa are Soooooooo Selfish when it comes to people who like them. Oh i need you to do something so fuck your feelings!

Mariana trusting Ana almost without question. They're building this soooooo slow

WHY WOULD YOU SAY 'TERESA NO ONE MUST FIND OUT THAT WE WERE LOVERS' OUT LOUD WITH PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE!!!!

She's literally in the hallway!!!! Sjisodjdkjfkdnd

Jezus everybody doing so much adultery. This show basically normalises it as idk very natural. This sentiment is then verbally proposed.

Ana INSTANTLY tells Mariana that she cheated on her husband. The moment she sees her..dude....

Why would she do this thing with Anuar some more if Mariana already knows

Anyway somehow Pablo was super dumb in the beginning but later hes smart

Oh so they put in an 'i love you' and a kiss and INSTANTLY play it off for the character and the audience. AMAZING. AMAZING!!! I LOVE IT

Fucking sucks that i dont even ship the poly bait of Elena/Mariana/Pablo..because Mariana so clearly is not into them??

Juan Carlos blaming the break on Ana sleeping with someone else when she had the guts to tell him when he didnt is fucked.

Pablo proposes out of the blue. Gets rejected. Just leaves the babies. Losldbfldbfjf..i thought you were doing these things for the BABIES

Ah they're doing some sort of vows in the guise of a maternity ritual. Amazing

They keep putting in a shot to Elena when they have these moments. Like the resident lesbian going: Harold.....

AND NOW MARIANA ACTUALLY LOOKS AT ELENA WHOS LIKE LOL BITCH COME ON

oh no.... Seriously. Did she just pull the 'youre just confused' card on a fellow sapphic??? Or is she trying to protect her?

Pablo is such a selfish bitch. 'ive been trying so hard for something that I threw away like it was shit once already!!' somebody warn Cynthia about this man

Ok so now Ana is being a shit head and not mentioning she also cheated hello

I mean Mariana you've been such a piece of shit to your mother the whole time

Seriously? Doesn't Juan Carlos think to fucking say: this was BEFORE. Jezus Christ. Now its getting stupid. I hate that shit

Seriously. So she's going to ask the question and then Mariana is going to answer without explainin that it was BEFORE

Shut UP

Seriously he didn't tell the kids the reality either? Think this is damn unfeminist for the dude to get blamed now for eveything. Come ON

Hate when seasons end on everything being shit

And I bet next season it all gets spun even more into shit. Hate that

God.

Ana really in one day, instead of making it a good day for her daughters, actually blamed her husband for everything, alienated the whole family, and her bestest friend as well.

What the FUCK

Anyway season 2 really sucks

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Subplots

Subplot - a side story that runs parallel to the main plot.

It has a secondary strand of characters and events that can infuse important information into the main storyline.

Also known as a minor story, a subplot creates a richer, more complex narrative arc in novel writing and other storytelling mediums.

When crafting a narrative, a writer’s job is to create a compelling story.

One way to do that is through subplots—secondary storylines found in novels, plays, television shows, and movies.

In creative writing, a subplot can reveal more about secondary characters, create plot twists, and add another dimension to a story.

Most importantly, a good subplot raises the stakes for a main character.

An Example: Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare weaves several subplots throughout this tragic love story.

The backstory of the long-running feud between rival families, the Capulets and Montagues, creates the central conflict in the play—two young lovers from warring families desperate to find a way to be together.

The subplots involving the warring families create dramatic plot points that escalate the tension, like when Romeo’s best friend Mercutio is killed by Juliet’s cousin Tybalt.

4 Types of Subplots

When coming up with writing ideas to enhance your main plot, think of using one or more subplots. These could include any of the following:

Mirror subplot: A smaller-scale conflict mirrors the main character’s in order to teach them a valuable lesson or illuminate how to resolve the conflict.

Contrasting subplot: A secondary character faces similar circumstances and dilemmas as the main character but makes different decisions with the opposite outcome.

Complicating subplot: A secondary character makes matters worse for the main character.

Romantic subplot: The main character has a love interest, and this relationship complicates the main plot.

6 Tips for Writing Better Subplots

When you’re writing a book, always brainstorm the best subplot ideas that can deepen the tension and make your main character’s scenario more complex.

Try these tips when you craft your next narrative:

Ensure that your subplots play second fiddle.

A subplot exists to support your main storyline but should never overpower it.

Subplots should end before the main plot.

The exception to this rule is a romantic subplot, which often concludes in the final scene.

Give your subplots a narrative arc.

Subplots are stories, too.

Create a narrative framework for each, though on a smaller scale than your main plot.

Use this technique to tell a supporting character’s story that affects the protagonist’s actions.

You might even incorporate flashbacks as a subplot, mirroring a character’s journey with something that happened in their earlier days, like high school.

Write character-driven subplots.

Just like your main story, characters should drive the action in a subplot.

Create foils that can highlight qualities in your main character.

These characters will either help or hinder the protagonist in the story.

Try a new POV.

Your subplot might provide information that your main character is unaware of.

If your main plot is told in first person, try changing the point of view in the subplot to third person.

Figure out how to connect the subplot and the main plot.

There are numerous ways to use subplots.

A parallel subplot runs throughout the entirety of the story, showing different sides of the same plot.

This builds suspense as the reader waits for the two plots to collide (think The Fugitive).

You can also write small, isolated subplots.

Briefly introduce a character who drops in early on, then revisit their journey near the end of the story to shed light on the deeper meaning of your main plot.

Ramp up the tension with a subplot.

Propel your main story with information revealed in your side stories.

Subplots are a strong medium for foreshadowing events, so use them to drop hints and clues.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[mindibindi]

I like the ep. Good acting, writing etc. A good villain, Skinner is good and there are some good M/S fights, intermixed with their usual disregard for e/o's personal space. I love the "I wouldn't change a day" scene (Scully's last line in particular) but obviously disagree intensely with that ^^^ aspect of it. I think most MSR fans do. Certainly the show went on to prove that Mulder's indisputable soulmate is Scully (in this life and any other). At this stage, the writers were still denying the importance of that central relationship though.

More importantly, there are major holes in Mulder's past life regression session, even if Melissa's IS real which is not necessarily established either. Scully makes some pretty good points as to her unreliability but Mulder's supposed pastlife narrative is even more unreliable. His session comes only AFTER he's listened to Melissa's, indicating he may have been prompted by hearing all of her stories and just *wanting* to believe. Interview 101, as Scully points out in "Syzygy", is to interview subjects separately so you can tell if there are any inconsistencies. Someone pointed out years ago that Mulder mentions CSM appearing in a pastlife in WW2 but that character would actually have been alive at the time, even if he was a baby sucking on his first smoke. Also if he's a German woman why is he talking in English, in an American accent? People criticised DD's acting at the time, which is fair. But ALSO the lack of change in Mulder's voice and mannerisms can be taken as a sign that his testimony is unreliable. Melissa's voice and mannerisms change dramatically with each life/personality she inhabits. All we get from Mulder is a slight Southern twang towards the end. The out of universe answer to this discrepancy is that Kristen Kloke (?? actress playing Melissa) is a better actor than DD, but the in universe answer is that Mulder is weaving a tale of lost but enduring love that he wants to believe. This is very much consistent with Mulder's character and the source of his quest (the loss of Samantha). He is a man in search of that ONE person who will provide meaning, healing and completion. BUT keep in mind that "The Red and the Black" also later questions the legitimacy of Mulder's, Scully's and Jeffrey Spender's regression memories, and they are from THIS lifetime so.

Last of all, let's say there is some legitimacy to Mulder's regression memories. (He couldn't tell them where the bunkers were any more than Melissa/Sarah could, which also speaks to their unreliability, but whatevs). Scully was still present in all of Mulder's past lives, whether they were real or fabricated, so she is definitely in his circle of most loved ones. Maybe she was his sister sometimes or his mother sometimes (she sort of acts as both in their current lifetime). My personal headcanon for the Civil War lifetime is that Sarah and Sullivan grew up together. They were childhood sweethearts, even tho he was a little strange and sensitive. He was quiet and brooding and she sort of protected him from society a bit. They got engaged in their late teens because that's what you did. She might have known he was gay or maybe she just thought he was different. When the war starts up, Sullivan enlists like every other good southern boy, even if part of him really just wants to run away from society, from convention, from his engagement to Sarah. He loves her but he knows that love doesn't fulfill him the way it seems to do other men. He starts to understand why when he meets his sergeant. He admires him from afar for a while, distinguishes himself in battle, even as he starts to lose faith in the South's cause. Sullivan and his sergeant share intense experiences, save each other's lives, build a silent trust. In time, they become lovers. Sullivan wants to desert because he knows he's fighting on the wrong side but he can't leave his sergeant who feels bound by his duty to his men. They spend the night before that final battle together in the sergeant's tent. The South is on its knees and they both know they may die the next day. In the heat of battle, Sullivan sees his soulmate go down first. He knows they have lost the battle, the South has/will lose the war and he has nothing left to live for. He commits suicide via Yankee, his childhood friend Sarah finding him wounded before he dies in that bloody field. She tells him she loves him because she does (altho who knows, maybe she's started to fall in love with a hot nurse...). Point is, the white het dudes on TXF writing staff tried to imply that, in that lifetime, Mulder and Scully were fellow soldiers and nothing more because what more could *possibly* exist between two MEN?? Bullshit. Sullivan Biddle was super gay, he ran off to a sucky war cos he was in a gay panic, he fell in love with his brave and gorgeous compatriot, they had lots of gay tent sex then died together, hoping that in the future they'd be able to live their love out in the open, ideally in a slavery-free world. (We're not there yet but ���).

THE END.

“The field where I died” was a good episode, but one thing bugged me . Which was that it eluded to Mulder and Melissa (not Scully’s sister) being eternal soulmates and that Scully always was there to but as other people.

Now maybe it’s the romantic in me but I just think Scully and Mulder are the real soulmates and that if there was really such thing as past lives, they would be together forever.

Did anybody else have this issue? Just curious.

[lynxmuse]

I am a longtime fan of Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers. During the Disney Afternoon era I saw each episode dozens upon dozens of times (since they repeated every 3 months or so). When I discovered them on the French station, I was most excited as it was like watching them anew. I collected the comics and wrote in to the letters page.* Various figurines and plush still grace my shelves. And no question, getting a photo with them in their RR garb made me giddy with delight.

So into that comes the new CDRR movie released on D+. When the first trailers for it dropped, I certainly had my reservations: If they wanted to make Roger Rabbit 2, why don’t they just do that? Will the world building be poor? Aren’t the washed up actors and estranged pals tropes already heavily mined? And haven’t we already passed both peak meta and peak nostalgia pandering? Not to mention this was being made by Walt Disney Pictures, the branch of Disney that has spent the past years producing nothing but retreads, remakes, or retellings of some sort of previous IP that have often ended up being soulless, uninteresting, or even disastrous takes on them.**

That said, I also could see that if the relationship between C&D and their interactions were well handled, it could make for something compelling and powerful. If they could tap into facets of the original series with a spirit that rings true, it could be a great new take with real rescuing and ranger-ing. There could be a path forward. Maybe!

Perhaps strangely… in the end all of the above came to pass. (Potential spoilers ahead!)

I’ve watched the movie twice before writing this, to be sure I was getting the full sense of it. And where I’m left somewhat torn.

To start, there is plenty of potential here, in no small part because they (correctly) realized that it is Chip & Dale’s relationship that lies at the core of all their stories. Right from when they made their first appearance in the Donald Duck cartoons, that best friend / frenemy dynamic is what makes them endearing and such a delight. And it is what drives many of their narratives, including in the TV series. Fortunately, the writers did recognize this and made it central to the story here. There’s a lot of good compelling stuff that could come out of it.

The themes that are broached also hold great potential: notions of fame, of living in the past and/or trying to recapture former glory, insecurities, and the ongoing commodification of art. And while the “washed up actor(s)” bit feels like it’s been already used a bunch of late, it’s still an interesting framing vehicle and is used well here, with Chip and Dale each dealing with the end of the show and their subsequent breakup in a different way, with Chip withdrawn and trying to ignore/forget it while Dale overcompensates and is being maniacally gregarious.

And dovetailing (Ducktailing?) off all those is the ur-theme of the commodification of not just art but the actors themselves, and what happens to them and, even more importantly, how we treat them when they are no longer in the limelight or have gotten stale, lived past their prime, or even pushed out

Throughout Chip & Dale are mostly on-model in terms of their personality and traits and ways of being, and there are interactions throughout between Chip and Dale that ring true.

So, a great starting point with some great material to work with and dive into. Plenty of promise!

However… alas… much of the execution doesn’t live up to that promise. Things are not followed through. The movie comes off in a very rote and paint-by-numbers fashion, with few of the themes truly engaged with in any way, whether to explore them, comment on them, learn from them, make them part of the plot, or whatever. They’re on the periphery like window dressing, but with little to add to the meat and meaningfulness of the story.

Worse, the storytelling is weak and ham-handed enough such that in the end little feels truly earned. All too often the movie relies on the characters describing something rather than doing the work to have it be an integral (and palpable) part of the world/narrative. This is doubly unfortunate when it comes to the characters themselves, with them stating things rather than simply being it (such that we can see their actions and track things without them needing to tell us about it). So many of moments in the movie come off as “they are saying this now because this is the part of the movie where this has to happen”*** rather than it organically coming forth into crowning moments of heartwarming or awesome. All in all, the story and storytelling doesn’t end up having the emotional resonance it could have had.

Which leads to my other prediction/concern that came to pass: There is a constant and relentless attempt at gags that I really think hurt the story. This relentless pursuit often leaves them desperately reaching such that many of the attempted gags feel shallow or threadbare. Often gags don’t land or, at best, elicit a minor chuckle. And then thre’s how they often fixate on a particular gag for Way. Too. Long.

Worse, though, is that many of the gags are isolated and not related to the plot or to the story or to the themes. They come off as gags for the sake of gags, because that’s what they are. And thus they feel hollow and meaningless. But the ultimate nail is how often they feel the need to have the characters directly set up, call attention to, and yes worst of all, explain the gag or joke. That’s… not good. (A clear example of this is the silly putty joke. Yes, we see it. We get it. It’s quite amusing and fits in well with the world! Great! But now you’re explicitly calling attention to it, explaining it and… just why?)

Gags I would totally expect and would even totally want in a movie like this. That’s a core of the “brand”! But the movie goes overboard to a level that detracts from and takes focus away from the actual story being told. Greater development of the narrative and storytelling while relegating many of the gags to the background would create a better balance (while also eliminating the need to reach for those threadbare gags) would have allowed the themes, the characters, and their relationships to be featured, developed, and to fully resonate.

Unfortunately, the caper at the heart of the plot is also lacking. As Rescue Ranger story the caper ought to be… well, OK, to be fair the ones in the TV show were often quite a bit nonsensical. But that was the TV show, which is now a TV show inside of the movie, which means this movie is in the “real world”, and it’s also longer than a TV show… what I’m trying to say is that just as Zootopia’s caper is central to its plot, and just how Zootopia’s caper is the vehicle for all of its amazing philosophical and storytelling goodness, the caper this CDRR movie needed to be equally as solid. But! There are some noticeable holes in it: 1) the toons are preyed upon after falling behind on debts but 2) nothing really about their kidnapping seems to rely on them being in debt? Any ol’ washed up toon would seem ripe for it, even without being in dept. 3) While the bootleg thing is amusing, 4) the fact that Pete is running this operation because he got old is weird both 5) because it doesn’t appear that toon old age is much of a thing for everyone else? And 6) if he has a super machine that can perform cosmetic surgery of all kinds then 7) couldn’t he have just made himself look young again or 8) taken on a new svelte identity and started anew as the boy symbol he wants to be? 9) And, as an aside, if literal erasers are able to remove the mouths of toons then 10) shouldn’t redrawing of said toons also be a thing?

(Also, there’s an aspect to the caper that is unsettling, namely the real-world (as in the real-real-world not the in-movie-real-world – this gets confusing) history of what happened with Peter Pan’s actor, Bobby Driscoll. The short of it is that Bobby, hired at 10, was the darling of the Disney system and appeared in a number of movies plus voice acting roles. But eventually he was unceremoniously dropped by Disney and, reportedly, even banned from re-entering the studio. Things did not go well for him, and he died alone on a park bench at age 31. To make light of this and/or to mine this to create a villain to be defeated is very questionable.)

Lastly, the cameos. As expected for its premise, this movie is rife with them…. and let me say I am genuinely AMAZED and I marvel (pun semi-intended) at just how many cross-IP characters there are, not only from within Disney but from oodles of outside studios. It’s most impressive! My Little Pony! Old Coke commercials! Batman! Lego! Dragon Ball! Voltron! Loony Toons (minorly)! Those other chipmunks… (though, amusingly, Disney kinda owns them now through Fox). And even cameos from Dreamworks, which, if you know the history of Dreamworks & Disney, is an astounding thing indeed. Kudos to the team (and their lawyers) for the effort it took to get all of those. Much like Roger Rabbit (and in a slightly different vein, Wreck It Ralph), it makes for a more believable world/world building where toons are “real” to have this wide swath of characters.

And to that, most of the cameos could be background things and be totally fine. And most are, and it is mostly fine! Except where they turn the cameo into a gag… which often inherits all of the issues I noted above. That said, it would have been nicer to have a few of the cameos try to tie into a theme and/or be something specific about that character. There was an opportunity with Ugly Sonic, where it could have been great to rope in the theme ridicule and when actors/etc are unceremoniously cast out (especially since that’s the supposed theme for the main villain as well) but… no, they instead reached for a gag about his teeth and then fixate on it on not just once, but repeat the same gag a second time, and then use the idea yet a third time because that horse isn’t yet dead enough.

On the whole, the worldbuilding was not bad. The furgonomics and furchitecture aren’t as complete as Zootopia’s (but then again, what is?) but there was still an attempt to make at least some things appropriate for toons of all sizes to live in and among the humans. Yet, oddly, much was also not. Monty’s appt building is a fun and well-done example, but while Chip’s house is small it’s also appears to be on a regular human-sized lot in a human-sized area? So it isn’t complete. But I’m still glad they did put in some effort to make toons and their size difference feel like a real part of the “real” world.

The bits between Chip and his dog Milli are pawsitively adorable!

The animation of C&D is mostly good, and I like the difference in their styles!

It’s really great when C&D are doing chipmunk-y things, like when they casually climb down the outside of Monty’s apartment building.

It’s interesting that half the CDRR episodes they reference are real/released ones, and half were not. Was it done to pad out how long the show had been running in the movie, or were they doing it for self-convenience so they could invent episodes to fit their plot points rather than doing the work to find the elements they needed in the real cartoons?

For all I noted above of what didn’t work when it comes to gags, there are some killer gags that do work exquisitely, mainly because they (properly) remain in the background: the sign that reads “Wrong Side” on the edge of the train tracks, battering rams, the firework joke, “And I regretted it instantly!” (which also fits into Dale’s character), and oh wow, Lego Miserables is totally a movie I would love to see them make.

Though that Wrong Side gag is good, narratively and world-building-ly it’s a bit weird, because C&D go to the wrong side of the tracks and start down this shady bit before emerging onto… a shining happy main street full of people who seem oblivious to the underbelly. If it’s that shiny and popular, wouldn’t it have a more direct and less sketchy access?

There’s a fun cameo of two of Fat Cat’s accomplices hiding blurred in the background on Main St.

For whatever reason, I really loved Lumiere’s performance in this.

It was great that Tress MacNeille got to reprise the voice for both Gadget as well as high-pitched Chip (as she did Chip’s voice in the TV series). Ditto for Corey Burton and Dale, and C&D arguing in their old Donald Duck cartoon style was fun.

Interestingly, Tress’ voice for Gadget here was not exactly the same; I’m not sure if that was intentional (Gadget’s “real” voice vs her TV voice, same as C&D) or if she couldn’t quite get it again.

Also, never forget, that Jim Cummings is a treasure.

Captain Putty’s fight with Ellie is very creative and fun, making good use of his malleable body. Also, the slight twitchiness of his animation to match the stop-motion aesthetic is good.

I really wonder why they call the fake movies bootlegs – that’s not the term I’ve heard associated with it. Mockbusters is generally the term used for the knockoff movies used to hoodwink people at checkout lines. So… why bootleg?

I don’t remember anything in the CDRR cartoon ever being as toony as the cartoon bird trick. One of the neat things about the TV show was that they mostly played it straight, so why deviate from that here? Again, just like inventing new episodes it feels like lazy writing and lack of understanding or respect for the original material.

And to that end I’m surprised that in general there are not more allusions to the TV show. Or maybe I embarrassingly missed them, in which case I’ll need to turn in my RR cred…

While seeing the Ranger Plane was neat, I really wish they’d used the Ranger Wing instead. For no reason other than I think it’s a 100x cooler aircraft.

I am not a fan of the continued BS trope that police can’t do their job because of rules, and if they could just do whatever they want they could solve all the cases. We’ve seen very much real-world examples of just how much police often already run roughshod over rules, people, and communities.

I’ve noted it above, but I have to say it again… The amount of spoken exposition in this movie is downright astounding to me. It is shocking just how the writers seem to feel some odd, contestant, need to have some character or other explain every single plot point that is happening, or explain every single character development, or explain every single damn joke or gag. I’m flummoxed. “Show, don’t tell,” as the adage goes. And absolutely, as with all adages it can be taken too far, but there’s a reason why it exists as an adage.

And as for the jokes… if you need to spend minutes setting up the joke, and/or need to explain the joke, then perhaps you should find a better joke.

The ending credit sequence is pretty cool! And the remix song ain’t all that bad either.

I’m mixed about it all. As a longtime fan who would love to see an actual reboot or continuation, I think the movie’s concept is fine**** and could see some cool stuff coming out of it (including leading to said continuation of a CDRR series). There were plenty of bits and aspects that I enjoyed and seeing the team in action again was a joy. And in those moments where things truly come together, and when the movie remembers where to apply its focus, it can be great and the magic of C&D’s relationship is there.

But those moments are just moments, surrounded by a morass of lessor execution and without a strong throughline that could make them transcendent. It didn’t follow through or fulfill on its promise, and it left me wanting.

And therein lies the rub. While I didn’t mind watching it a second time I don’t foresee myself watching it a third (or more). There’s not enough there to make it worthwhile, and I can savour in my memory the good bits without subjecting myself to the greater amount of lacking bits.

----------

* …and those letters shall forever be an… interesting and visible part of my history.

** As opposed to, and it’s important to emphasize again, Walt Disney Animation, which has produced some amazingly new and fresh and well told work.

*** Not that direct heart-to-heart talks are bad per se, but better storytelling has a mix of showing as well as the H2H talks, and you can see that things are leading to those H2H talks so that when they happen they feel genuine and are impactful.

**** Especially given that C&D’s as the stars of the TV show was already a reinvention of sorts.

[illiteraryopinions]

(Castlevania Season 4 Spoilers)

I watched Castlevania s4 super late and finished it about 10 days ago. Over time, it's become increasingly clear to me what bothered me about what happened, and why I didn't share the overwhelming love for the season that many others had.

Undoubtedly the animation was fantastic, even making me gasp at times. The reunion scene and fights with the central trio were wonderful. But a lot of the story seemed to trip up over itself. Why did Alucard leave most of the humans camping outside when they were clearly in danger? Why did St. Germain explain what a Rebus was 3 times, twice in a single episode? But most importantly, the treatment of four specific characters bothered me: the vampires of Styria.

Season 3 sets up Season 4 wonderfully, and unlike some I really really enjoyed Season 3. It gave us a glimpse into the plans that Carmilla had for the future and how manipulative and cold-hearted Lenore could be, while developing Isaac's motivations and introducing the Infinite Corridor. Then season 4:

1. After spending the entirety of season 3 building up to Carmilla's conquest plan...nothing actually happens. Carmilla's sisters think she's gone mad and either abandon her or don't do anything to help her. Carmilla's anger, born due to a world that mistreats her and has hurt her at every chance, never gets an outlet. She dared to dream bigger than Styria, and for that, Isaac comes in to battle her in a wonderfully animated but thoroughly underwhelming fight.

2. Lenore, who played with Hector throughout season 3, is suddenly lost without purpose. There's no need for a diplomat during war, and she thinks that Carmilla has gone mad, suddenly, because that's the inevitable fate of all vampires. And instead of trying to reason with her, or to bring her back to reality, she leans on her relationship with Hector, which has somehow become her feeling dependent on him as a confidant. Gone is the master manipulator, the expert diplomat - she's a lost woman depending on a man to console her.

3. Striga and Morana never got as much screen time as I wanted them to in season 3, but season 4 was a travesty. For as much as they advertised her incredible armor, Striga only puts it on once, and that's only to beat up regular peasants. They too are worried about Carmilla, but instead never talk to her at all and just abandon her.

The treatment of these four becomes even worse when you think of how their arcs end. Carmilla takes her own life because Isaac rushes in with his undead army, and she refuses to let him kill her. Striga and Morana realize Carmilla is dead and decide to leave, never to be shown again, not even in the conclusion. Lenore continues to be bound to Hector, eventually becoming his prisoner and then killing herself to see what he thought was beautiful.

Contrast these with the arcs that the men get. Isaac, born a slave to a cruel master, willingly becomes a servant to another master, but gets an entire season where he reflects on his humanity and realizes that perhaps killing all humans isn't the way to go. Hector helps St. Germain resurrect Dracula, once again with the goal of killing off all humanity - but he gets to live a resplendent life under King Isaac. Both of them are given the opportunity to redeem themselves (arguably Hector never did) after plotting to kill off humanity. St. Germain killed many and hoped to kill many more to see his love again (because he's horny), but even he gets his redemption by opening the Infinite Corridor for Trevor and helping kill the Rebus.

Meanwhile, Carmilla, a woman whose ambitions were to replace the dying, mad old men who were destroying the world, is afforded no such gift - for daring to step outside her limits, Isaac, the man who had wanted to slaughter all humans, puts her in her place and forces her to kill herself. Striga and Morana talk so much about their bonds of sisterhood, but immediately plan to leave Carmilla, in stark contrast to the reconciliation scene between Hector and Isaac. And Lenore becomes Hector's pet until she commits suicide because life isn't worth living anymore.

There's a clear message here: men are allowed to have depths that women aren't allowed to have. And men can redeem themselves from behavior that's much worse than what women have done. It can be argued that Carmilla and the sisters in Styria were villains who don't deserve redemption, and I would be happy with that - I certainly don't believe all villains need redemption, and enjoy ones that are evil for the sake of being evil - but when you look at which ones are given the chance to develop their character and which ones aren't the pattern becomes clear. To me, it was a disappointing end to a great show. I couldn't care less about St. Germain and his horny escapades. Not to mention bringing back Dracula for no reason at the end. What a mess. Carmilla deserved better.

[riathedreamer]

Zero is Null

A discussion of Zero’s love-hate-relationship with RvB and struggling independence; including a hotdog too big for the bun, tragic backstories, a single bow-chicka-bow-wow, and a cookie at the very end.

Welcome to what will be a lot of text. Basically, it will explore why Zero fails as an RvB (with emphasis on RvB) season. I will not be the first one to bring forth some of the points, and I promise to be fair and civil and fun. This isn’t supposed to be a piece of hate – in fact, I’m writing this because I love Red vs. Blue.

Okay, first of all, to increase your fun – take a guess on just how much of Zero is spent on fight scenes. You see, I’ve calculated the exact amount, and I will reveal it later, but for now, take a guess and remember the number. Maybe you are the winner!

Alright, time to share my thoughts. Wait! Since I suffer from anxiety and have this one annoying voice pretending to be all those critical statements my opinion could be met with, let’s give it an actual voice and address the points throughout this review.

“Why would I care about your opinion, Ria?” – I don’t know, you’re the one who clicked Read More.

“Your opinion doesn’t matter!” – Of course, it doesn’t! Geez. Do you think your opinion matters, though? Listen, we’re on Tumblr, the actual equivalent of screaming into the void. And it’s fun, too!

“If you don’t like it, don’t watch!” - *activates Uno Reverse Card* “You can’t talk about something you haven’t watched!”

“You’re just a Hater” – Actually, this is a point I’ll come back to. Like a cliffhanger. Also, at the end of this, there’ll be a cookie. But this will also include me talking about the stuff I like, because, surprise, Zero is not without talent!

“You just don’t like it because the Reds and Blues aren’t in it!” – Actually, that’s a good point, so instead, this review will start with a sole focus on Zero and discuss the problem that lies within that story. Then we can address why the lack of OG cast is understandable and problematic and weird.

But first! Backstory.

When the first 5 second teaser dropped back in spring (you know, when we were young and innocent and the world didn’t feel like an apocalyptic movie yet), I held onto that one image of what I thought (hoped) to be Grif and Simmons in the sunset, hopefully addressing Grif’s hateglue arc, but boy was I wrong because a) that’s not Simmons, that’s Sarge, and b) the image was from a PSA since the Reds are not in Zero.

Actual face-reveal of me below:

Admittedly, when I heard that the Reds and Blues were not going to be the main characters (or even show up), it felt like a gut punch. However, I actually found myself getting excited due to the creators’ hype. I want to praise them for this. It’s been a while since an RvB season was talked so much ABOUT before its release; it had advertisements, it had creators and voice-actors talking about it. Please. More of that in the future. Their passion rubbed off on me, and that deserves recognition. So it pains me that this was clearly a passion-project, and then when I gave it a try, I didn’t want to touch it again for weeks.

Here’s the thing. I cannot whole-heartedly say that Zero is bad. It’s not gonna melt your eyes. It’s not even so-bad-it’s-good. For me, it’s meh. It’s a Saturday-morning-cartoon aimed for a younger audience with a rushed plot and clichéd characters. The problem is that it calls itself RvB, and with that title comes something to live up to – but more importantly, something to continue.

My main issue is that Zero forces its story into existence by ignoring established content rather than adjusting to it. Let’s call this for the hotdog-too-big-for-the-bun syndrome solely for the sake of the bow-chicka-bow-wow that’s coming now. Bow-chicka-bow-wow. Many of the separate issues I will dive into all add to this hotdog-issue, so I will scream “Hotdog!” whenever this is the case so we can all keep track of my argument.

You can continue the story of Red vs. Blue without the Reds and Blues. While that would personally crush my heart, it can be done. There’s a story of Red vs. Blue that can be continued. The world can be expanded, the previous actions of the Reds and Blues can be explored from another angle.

So.

How does Zero do this? It doesn’t.

I just want to make it clear that new elements can definitely be added when it comes to worldbuilding. That’s literally the point of sequels. But Zero’s settings are presented with so little grace and with no connection to previously established worldbuilding. We get Alliance of Defense and GLASS thrown in our face as very big important organizations – yet we’ve never heard of them before. A big central plot point of RvB is the UNSC and Project Freelancers, and those were introduced naturally with the plot. We already have big established intergalactic organizations. What is AOD’s connection with those? We aren’t told. We are just told they exist and expected to accept it, no questions asked. If this was a whole new world and story – fine. But when you need to build on an already established worldbuilding, you need more grace than this. Chorus was a whole new setting, but it was explained, and it was connected to the previous plot. Same with Iris. Same with Desert Gulch. In Zero, it feels lazy. It feels forced. These organizations are just there because the story is built around them (HOTDOG).

This vagueness when it comes to wordbuilding is also reflected in the settings - we have a desert, a training base, a lab, temples, Tucker’s workplace, and we do not know if all those are set place on the same planet. If that is the case, what is this planet’s relationship with Chorus? Is it Earth? And most importantly, what is the deal with the temples? Why are they connected to Tucker’s sword if it isn’t the same planet. Are they made by the same aliens? Are people okay with this? Why haven’t these temples been explored before? Chorus makes sure to establish this, while Zero doesn’t, adding to a growing amount of confusion.

Okay, so no connection with previous worldbuilding. What about characters? I mean, we got Wash and Carolina and Tucker! So we have RvB characters, it gotta be RvB! Technically – yeah. But it feels dirty. These three characters are not here to be characters. They are here to be props to the new cast. They are not given any development. Their presence isn’t even that important, and if this was a whole new show, they could easily have been replaced with an unknown face. Worst of all, they feel miswritten.

Carolina and Wash are working at a new military organization? Leaving the Reds and Blues behind? To help people? First of all, fucking bad idea, Carolina, the last time you left the Reds and Blues alone, they changed the timeline. But most importantly – Carolina and Wash just joined this new super elite military organization? After being mistreated and manipulated by such an organization in the past?

Carolina is there to introduce the characters. That’s it. We are force-fed their personality by having her literally read out loud their personality. There is no gentle introduction to the new cast. We are not allowed to get to know them naturally. Why show when you can tell, huh? That’s Carolina’s role. That’s why she is there. To introduce the cast and explain their story. That’s it. (HOTDOG).

How about Wash? He is there to get beat up and be a damsel in distress so that the new cast has a reason to explore the plot. Oh, and that brain damage that was the consequence of previous seasons – gone now. The guy who literally has trauma from having an AI explode inside his head is fine with having a computer inserted into it instead. Because that’s needed. To explore his brain damage wouldn’t work now when his role is to be a prop to lure the new cast for one episode and then be put onto the bench for the rest of the runtime (HOTDOG).

And Tucker – he is there to die for a second and have his sword taken from him. That’s literally it. And for the few moments he is there, he feels like old super flirty Tucker, which erases the character development he went through in previous seasons. Okay, so Tucker dies, and then not dies, and then he is put on the bench with Wash where they can sit and talk or whatever (‘cause holy shit, the new cast is not allowed to that), because he isn’t important. The sword is. Tucker is just a prop, even more than his sword is (HOTDOG).

Damn. Wash gets beat up. Tucker gets beat up. Dies. Gets his sword taken away. Almost seems like a Red’s wet dream. Sorry not sorry, Blues, you were done dirty.

So there are miswritten old characters. Even worse is the retconning. The plot needs a “normal” Wash, so, bam, magic computer solution. Never mind Wash’s trauma and character traits. Never mind the logic of the new worldbuilding which also includes a character suffering for years to heal an illness. But the brain damage that was such a big consequence that it became the main part of the plot of the last two seasons – gone. I mean, a gunshot to the head can be healed by CPR. That’s canon. But no one gave Wash CPR so it’s a big thing, okay. It was canonically a big thing, and Zero erased that. This is not me saying that a Cerebral Enhancer couldn’t work in the RvB universe. Imagine it being done right. Wash struggling with the choice of getting used to his disability or accepting the possibility of help - at the cost of reliving his trauma. The struggle between what to choose - what should he choose when he wants to help as many as possible, the sacrifices he thinks he has to make, the way it could have been used as a part of his character growth. But in Zero, the enhancer isn’t a part of Wash’s character. It’s there so the story can work without having to deal with the previous plot’s consequence (HOTDOG).

Same with the sword thing. They sorta explain it by having Tucker flatline, but it’s weak. Honestly, I find it sorta offensive. What about Locus’ sword as well? It’s twisting previous lore to make the new plot work (HOTDOG). (Also, are we not gonna talk about the ultimate power being Spencer Porkensenson’s helmet? Have the writers forgotten Spencer Porkensenson? Have we as a community forgotten Spencer Porkensenson?)

If you have Red vs. Blue in your title, you cannot ignore what you inherit from it. You need to respect the worldbuilding, the established characters, and the previous plot. Zero does not do this.

Let’s talk about the Triplets. No, really, let’s do it. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about them before, because season 14 was a mixed bag for me (that I have now learned to appreciate. Thank you, Zero.) because I have heart at the size of the Grinch and can only love a few characters at a time, and that did not include the Triplets. Can’t even remember their names. Well, I can, but I can’t for the love of me remember which state is which, and my tongue is twisted every time I try to say Ohio, Iowa, and Idaho, and I know it’s on purpose. I know it is. And it got me good. That being said, the fandom actually embraced them really, really well! Seriously, I’ve seen more content for the Triplets than for Zero as a whole.

Why talk about the Triplets? (Was Iowa the lesbian? Or was it Ohio? Fuck.) Because like Zero, they introduced new characters with a story of their own. The Reds and Blues didn’t play a role. But here’s what I feel like the Triplets got right. They didn’t change the settings to force their narrative. They used stuff already established (Project Freelancer), added their own story as a continuation of that. They even included old characters in the beginning (Wash and some other Freelancers) but it felt natural and it didn’t feel like it happened at the expense of the old characters. Wash’s writing felt natural, and his presence wasn’t needed to tell these new character’s stories. He wasn’t a prop to them. He was there to establish the setting and to establish the relationship with these new characters, and then he and the other familiar faces (helmets??) left, and we as the viewers were left with these new characters. And the new characters told their own story by themselves. It felt like, hey, here’s something you know – remember Mother of Invention, and remember Wash’ lower rank, but now, try to imagine being even lower rank than him, aren’t you curious about those fates? Now let’s hear their story! It was new, it was something else, but it didn’t wreck what came before it, and it stayed true to the classic vibes of RvB.

As I said before, the hotdog-issue is my biggest problem with Zero. It infuriates me. I will return to this. But there are more issues, even if we try to look past the title-related problems.

If we try to imagine Zero as its own story and universe (as it should be, in my opinion), it still earns the meh review from me.

These isolated issues include awkwardness, the writing, lack of self-awareness, and pacing. First of all, holy shit, this is a tell, don’t show. Nothing is subtle, nothing is allowed to develop. It’s like the show thinks you are six years old with an attention span of a goldfish. You are not just led by the hand – they have literally pulled off your arm by the end of the show. We are force-fed every bit of information, every bit of personality from these new characters.

The voice-acting is a mixed bag for me. Sometimes it’s pretty good, sometimes it’s not. Some of the problems can definitely be blamed on the dialogue that you can only do so much with. It’s not good. I can’t remember any good jokes (the one joke I really appreciate was the cast on armor, and that was freaking visual humor. That was so RvB. Kudos to that. It was fun. More of that, please.), and RvB is known for having memorably good lines. This is a show built on good, clever, funny dialogue. Zero does not deliver. You have to sit through clichéd lines – “You’re not my dad”, “I trusted you”, “Come with me”, “It can’t be!”, “She’s way too powerful”, and “We have to do this together” – performed unironically. I cringed more than I laughed. Worst thing is that Zero could be a good parody. Sometimes, it feels like it is. One-dimensional characters, a villain wanting ‘the ultimate power’, very overpowered characters, bad one-liners, etc. But Zero takes itself seriously, and I was one of the people rooting for Jax to show up at the end and yell “Cut”. That would have been a funny-as-fuck twist. A spin-off parody. If I can’t have “Sarge the Movie”, I would have taken that and loved it. I would have forgiven everything. “We put so much info into finding that power, but we had no idea what it was” is really a line in the finale, and I cannot believe this is real in a show that somehow still tries to present itself as serious. What a plot.

We have to talk about pacing. God, first of all it should be stated that RvB is a mess when it comes to pacing. I honestly get what they were going for. Sometimes, RvB has come across as a bit boring when you get three episodes stretched over three weeks without much going on. I know season 11 did not have the warmest welcome because it was seen as boring until the finale. But when you see season 11 as a whole, as a movie, as a part of a trilogy, it works so well. Zero is more focused on being episodic. They want something to happen all the time so we will stay tuned. The thing that will happen – a fight. Oh god. The fight scenes.

I have done the math. I have run the numbers. I deserve a freaking cookie for this. Are you ready?

If you put all the episodes together, you have a runtime of 106 minutes. HOWEVER, with the introduction of credits in every episode, you gotta account for this. Removing the credits, this gives us 94 minutes of actual runtime. Out of that, 45 minutes are dedicated to fight scenes. That means 48% of the show is fight scenes.

If I wanted that many fight scenes, I’d watch Death Battle. Except the actual RvB Death Battle episode has a runtime of 20 minutes, and out of that, 5 minutes is dedicated to the actual battle. For the people who hate math – that’s 25% of the actual runtime.

RvB Zero has more fight scenes than a show called Death Battle. Take that in.

The pace suffers from this. Where’s the time to explore the characters? Where’s the time for good dialogue? All I can think of is this:

I get that RvB is a show that’s literally making fun of itself by acknowledging all their characters do is stand around and talk. I get that you want characters to do more than that. But for the love of Church, would it kill the new characters to stand around and talk? For just a minute? Stop fighting, I am begging you, stop fighting! Am I a pacifist now? Am I purple? Have I joined Doc’s team? What has Zero done to me?!

The good thing though is that fight scenes are very good. They’re entertaining. However, they seem to deconstruct themselves when we need to get a fight scene in every episode. Usually, the few fight scenes in an RvB season were in some of the most climatic episodes. In Zero, I can hardly keep up with the pace because they won’t stop moving. Fight scenes aren’t plot. They aren’t character development. You need more than just fight scenes. They entertain, but there’s a limit to that.

Noël Wiggins, the co-writer, stated the inspiration was a Saturday-morning cartoon. They nailed that vibe. If that was their goal, hurray, they have accomplished something! Because of the poor plot and constant fight scenes, it feels like you could just switch on the TV and drop in at any moment and let yourself be entertained by the cool and colorful soldiers punching and kicking each other. I will admit that the fight scenes entertained me. But they don’t make it a good season.

If I were the six-year-old with the attention span of a goldfish that the show believes I am, I honestly would enjoy it. The stiff dialogue and the constant tell-don’t-show makes you feel like an audience that’s not supposed to do anything else but admire the flashy fight scenes. I miss the cleverness of RvB. I miss the characters I get to connect with as I see them grow.

I miss the tone of RvB. Because this isn’t RvB to me.

It’s not that RvB hasn’t changed its tone before. Holy shit, I sorta do want to experience the absolute shock the RvB fandom went through when s6 aired and they were given new characters and serious plot. I would have loved to experience that, but I was too busy being ten years old. The Freelancers seasons also introduced a new tone and more fight scenes with very talented fighters compared to the Blood Gulch gang, but a balance was kept by having half of the season still revolving around the Reds and Blues. But Zero – Zero is so much change. And it’s on purpose. At least this has been made very clear from the beginning.

They constantly seem to appeal to new fans, rather than be directed towards older fans of the show. If you want an entirely new audience with a season with a new cast, new worldbuilding, and new tone, I’m confused as to why they don’t just make a new show. The hotdog-problem begs for this solution. This story and environment and characters feel so out of touch with the original RvB, that with a few rewrites and lack of Halo-armor, it could just be a new show. Problem solved.

If not this, then present it as a spin-off. In all ways, it feels like a spin-off (again, see everything marked HOTDOG). But the creators refuse to do this, and I don’t understand why. I could forgive many of these issues, had they officially separated themselves from canon.

Ah, what’s the idiom? You can’t both swallow and blow? (You can hear the Bow-chicka-bow-wow in the distance). Something about eating cake and having it. Forgive me, English isn’t my native language. POINT IS why are you calling yourself RvB while actively fighting against the core essence of RvB? In my humble opinion, you can’t be both. Marketing it as a spin-off would have granted it some defense when changing, well, literally everything, and I just, would someone please properly describe why it isn’t a spin-off? Isn’t this season marked by its association with the plot of RvB rather than a continuation of it? Zero presenting itself as not a spinoff feels like a toddler clinging to the hem of its mother’s dress while forcefully running away from her, ripping the dress in the process.

When they do connect with the original RvB, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. When they let Carolina, Wash, and Tucker appear for a moment, it feels like luring viewers in with the RvB title. Look at me. Look at me! I’m not saying this is the case. I say that it gives me the annoying vibes of being lured, rather than letting the characters be a part of the show for their own development, rather than having RvB in the title to continue its story. I should not be getting these vibes at all. But I am.

If you want to use RvB in the title, something from the core of RvB needs to be embraced. Things can be changed. They should. Something new should be brought in. But there’s a limit to how much you can change and replace and twist until it would have been better with an original show. As a season of RvB, it should tell the story of Red vs. Blue.

From my perspective, Zero fails to do so.

It pains me that the old cast has been replaced, but as stated earlier, a season could have worked without them. However, I do not like the take that one should be excited about all the new characters. That it isn’t a big thing that the OG cast got replaced. That we should just deal with it. Just, try to imagine another show suddenly replacing the main characters with characters we’ve never met before. Imagine RWBY suddenly only focusing on a new team of huntresses with the previous main characters reduced to an Easter Egg presence, or Camp Camp suddenly being about a new team of campers, no warning given. Can you imagine the outcry? So maybe let’s agree that a replacement of the main cast is a big thing and should be addressed and it’s valid to be upset about this change.

Could Zero have worked? It’s hard to answer this. How can I accept something as RvB if the season actively pushes away the core of RvB aside for an isolated story that could have been told in any other media? As a spinoff, I could have ignored it. To enjoy Zero, I have to fully separate it from RvB in my mind, and then it’s alright. S’not good. But it’s not bad. It’s entertaining enough. I really ended up liking Raymond and Tiny, and there were a few good jokes, and the fight scenes were admirable (but too much) and I love the creators’ passion. But it’s not RvB. I also wish that the new characters had been attached to previous worldbuilding, for example soldiers on Chorus or agents from Project Freelancer. That way we could build on familiar lore which would have decreased the confusion and added a much needed connection with the previous seasons of RvB.

God, the anxious voice is back (by the way, it sounds like Tutter from “Bear in the Blue House”).

“You’re racist” – I hope not. Literally, I do not want to be. Tell me if I’ve ever crossed some lines, because I swear, that is not my intention, I will apologize and most of all, change and do better. I included this because I’ve seen this take thrown around in the big ugly mess that is the fandom clashes regarding Zero. And racism is problem within RT community (this includes AH and RvB, sorry, I just use RT as an umbrella term for the latter), and I’m not saying it hasn’t been a problem with this season. Writers should never be harassed, and never-fucking-ever because of their skin color, and voice actors shouldn’t be treated like they are responsible for the choices of the show. But I was legit nervous to post this review, and I hope it’s been factual without feeling like personal attacks on the creators because that has never been my intention. I was delighted to hear about the diversity behind this project, and Torrian’s passion legit blew me away because it’s been a while since I’ve seen that for an RvB project. I’d hoped for it to be good, and when I feel disappointed, it’s for the reasons stated in this analysis. That said, Zero is made by a diverse cast and it’s made with love, and both of those things are so, so great, but it does not mean that Zero cannot be criticized. It can, and it should. It’s a product, just like all the other seasons, and fans are allowed to discuss it – both what they loved, and both what they found troublesome. And to repeat previous points, and be respectful, always, fuck racists, and never-fucking-ever harass the staff behind a season, what the fuck is wrong with you if you do this.

“Don’t you get it, it’s different because it’s trying something new!” – Hey, remember the philosophical question: if you replace all the parts of a ship one-by-one, is it still the same ship when you’re done? If it doesn’t include the Reds and Blues, if it ignores previous plot, if the old characters feel miswritten, if it values animation over dialogue, if it values fight scenes over comedy, if it wants to be Fast and Furious instead of Red vs. Blue – is it still Red vs. Blue? Because it doesn’t feel like it to me.

“It's been 17 seasons, it’s time to let the Reds and Blues go so someone else can shine!” – I simply do not understand us having been with the Reds and Blues for 17 seasons should be an argument to let them go, rather than be an argument as to why their absence hurt like hell.

“The Reds and Blues ran out of things to do!” – Did- did they, though? I mean, if we were discussing pretty much any other show, I’d probably agree that they were running out of content. But for the Reds and Blues… I think the PSAs nailed it this year! I’m not kidding, I had more fun watching the Reds and Blues discuss how to do laundry than watching Zero. You could literally give me an hour of the Reds and Blues trying to bake a cake or clear a gutter or simply settling down with an ordinary life, and I would trust them to make it worth the watch.

“The flaws were due to the fact it’s only 8 episodes long!” – Look, I can only judge a product the way it’s presented to me. I cannot come up with excuses for it. If they had 8 episodes to work with, they need to come up with a plot that works with this runtime. Seriously, this excuse cannot work when 48% of the season is spent on fight scenes. They could have used more runtime, sure, but the show needs to be able to pace itself and be planned accordingly.

“The OG cast couldn’t be a part of this year, hence Zero!” – That might be true. But. Would one year without RvB kill it? Is Zero necessary? Again, I just can’t judge excuses for the show. But trouble with the cast has been an issue before. Season 15 solves Geoff’s sabbatical by actually making Grif’s absence a part of the plot. Zero’s lack of Reds and Blues just feels like this excuse to tell a story that needn’t be a part of RvB.

Am I a hater? I guess? I greatly dislike Zero for the critique stated above. I do, however, not harass the creators and no one should ever do that. However, I have to admit that I feel there’s been this weird rejection of any critique of Zero where everything’s been brushed off as haters gonna hate, including the critique stated above. And I think that’s a problem because critique, as hard as it can be to hear (and I know this. I’m an author of original works. Weird flex, I know), is valid and necessary and shouldn’t just be shrugged away. As always, both sides of the fandom should always be respectful, but my own opinion is that addressing the flaws of Zero should not be controversial.

Does this super long rant/critique/whatever mean you cannot enjoy Zero? Gods no! I almost envy you if you enjoy this season, but holy shit, feel free to love it and tell the creators that you love it! Me pointing out the issues I have with the season shouldn’t be stopping you. I loved (and still love) s15 when it came out, and it was majorly rejected by the fandom. There were many, many critical posts, people were going on about how RvB should have ended with s13, and it evolved into the writer receiving death threats (me, once again: never ever harass the creators, assholes). But I didn’t tell people to stop being negative. I actually agreed with many of the flaws that were pointed out, and I enjoyed the season despite this, because that is possible. We, as RvB fans, should agree that RvB, is... I mean, it’s not the greatest, most flawless of shows, but we love it nonetheless. So go ahead and love Zero. This is not a stop sign. This is my opinion that you chose to read.

Wait, I promised you a cookie, didn’t I? Well, you’re not getting one. Why? Because I’m a Red and this is my chance to piss off a Blue. As Caboose wisely said: “Well, at least I don't go around... knocking on people's non-doors... and promising them cookies... and then NOT. GIVING. THEM. COOKIES!”

Blue Team sucks.

End speech.

[taraljc]

OK it occurs to me that I'm going to have to build this out a little so that people actually understand what I'm saying. so I'm going to paraphrase what I said on Twitter about Leverage: Redemption.

The way I have always seen OT3s are absolutely love, regardless of whether it's platonic or erotic. For example, my most favoritest OT3 of all time:

Whether you interpret it as Tulio has a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or Tulio has a girlfriend AND a best friend, still an OT3.

Just because canonically we've only seen Parker and Hardison's romantic relationship, Parker assuring Eliot that regardless of who he is dating, she and Hardison will never leave him because nothing can break them up is still love.

Off-screen maybe Parker has two boyfriends. Maybe Hardison has a boyfriend AND a girlfriend. Maybe Eliot's boyfriend has a girlfriend. All the possibilities exist. As fans, we get to play with those missing scenes and inter lives of their last decade since the OG finale.

But by keeping the lid on the box, it Schrodinger's ot3. which means we get to benefit from the potential relationship as well as the canon relationship.

How this applies to my viewing of Loki:

Mobius is quite possibly Loki's first real friend. He is definitely the first person since Frigga to encourage him that he can be anything, that he can choose his own path. He's the first person to treat Loki's skills as an genuine asset with no shade, and to challenge him intellectually with no ulterior motive to humiliate him publicly.

Loki is the first real connection Sylvie has ever made with another person. Since she was 8 years, old she has been running for her life for the crime of not being what HWR needed her to be. She was the first of all the Lokis, and she learned who Loki was supposed to be from stories most likely written by humans, probably Icelandic. from whispers and gossip about Asguardians all over the galaxy, all over the timeline.

She violently rejected who she was supposed to be in every way, and is bound and determined to be herself. Except she doesn't really know who she is because she is never had the luxury of time to find out.

Lamentis 1 is the first time anyone has ever looked at her and saw her--not who she was supposed to be, not some ideal version of the god of mischief, completely divorced from mythology and reality, but her. Sylvie. And they held her hand so she wouldn't be alone at the end. They made her believe that she didn't have to be alone. That she wasn't truly destined to be alone forever.

Mobius made himself an expert on Lokis. He knew every case, he knew every variant--or thought he did. The Loki that Renslayer (then Hunter A-23) lost when she was 8 years old before she ever made it to trial was probably presumed dead and forgotten by everyone--if not deliberately buried so it's not to tarnish Judge Renslayer's reputation a thousand years ago.

Mobius didn't purposely misgender Sylvie--he genuinely had no idea she was AFAB. All of the Loki variants that he shows B-15 in the rest of the team before they go to the Wisconsin Renfaire present as male. The Loki variant created in Avengers Endgame presents as male and and despite his comics counterpart being gender fluid, and all of the Lokis possessing magic which allows them to instinctively shape-shift from jötnar to Asgardian as an infant, none of the variants between the first Loki (Sylvie) and the final Loki (our 2012 Loki, pruned from the Sacred Timeline) were presenting as female. But more importantly, the timeline being curated by He Who Remains required Loki to fill a specific role in history so that he would be born in the future. and to fill that role, Loki had to be Thor's rival.

All of the Lokis in the void were defined by the same central relationship: their sibling rivalry with Thor, which created their gnawying, grasping, all-consuming hunger for a throne.

Sylvie is who she is because she has none of the experiences of the other Lokis. While she does wear male attire in Asgard, and the clothing she chose for herself as an adult is also patterned after male attire and Asgard, there's never any indication that she was raised by Odin and Frigga as a princess of Asgard. There was never any indication that she was Thor's foster sibling. (If anything, she likely would have been raised in fosterage as a hostage specifically to align Jotunheimr and Asgard through marriage.)

Mobius met her and immediately let go of all of his preconceived notions of who he thought she was, and interacted with her honestly and openly, including showing remorse and empathy for what had happened to her. He is the first TVA agent to treat her like a person who deserves better. who unquestioningly deserved to live.

We may not have seen as much of their road trip as we saw of Loki and Sylvie on the train to Chiru, but it clearly affected both of them. Enough so that she observed Mobius caring for Loki and having concern for his safety. enough that he was comfortable winking and teasing about who his favourite Loki variant is (they both are).

(B-15 was also fundamentally changed by her interactions with Sylvie, but that's a post for another day.)

So for me, the OT3 of Mobius/Loki/Sylvie is the heart and soul of the series. They are each catalysts in the others growth into a better version of themselves. They support one another, they genuinely care about one another, and I can't picture any single one of them without the other two. The show just doesn't work for me if you take away the third leg of the tripod; everything goes crashing down.

Without Sylvie, the TVA would never have been forced to change. and season 2 so far seems to be examining exactly how much it will change, how much it can change, and how much it should change.

Like it or not, she drives the plot. But more importantly, she and Loki have something that neither one has ever had before--they see one another, and feel known. They feel worthy of love, which neither believed due to their respective traumas. That bond between them, that bone-deep knowing--it's tenuous and it's fragile and it's adolescent and it's chock full of big feelings they don't have experience dealing with let alone expressing.

Mobius is there to be the grown up in the room, to express the fond exasperation that likely neither has benefited from since early childhood. He's there to remind them it is never too late to change. and he's there because this is his fight too. The TVA is his home, but the TVA is also his prison. He also like Sylvie has no idea who he really is, and he is starting to wonder if he ever knew.

So, yeah. Whether Loki has a girlfriend and a boy friend, or Sylvie has a boyfriend who also has a boyfriend, or Mobius has a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or Loki and Sylvie have their first genuine friend who loves them unconditionally, whatever combination, whatever iteration, I'm here for it.

Let's do this thing.

Reminder: I am all about the OT3, whatever the configuration. If you hate on our girl Sylvie, you know where is the door. This place is not for you.

[babbysquid]

Not A Whiskey Drinker

Author’s Note: Okay weeee I’m super excited about this. I’m really happy with how this first chapter turned out and I already have plans for future chapters. I am such a sucker for Whiskey and I can’t wait to write more.

Warnings: some slight cursing

Length: 1,934 words

------------

For as much as you loved New York City, you absolutely hated its winters. Snow in the countryside was beautiful; white and fluffy, it stayed perfect for days on end. Snow in the concrete jungle however; wet, slushy, and turned disgusting in a matter of hours. Trudging your way through Central Park, the snow and salt crunching beneath your feet, you mind drifted. You had just been let go from you recent job, a personal assistant at a high end marketing office. Sighing to yourself and thinking about the possibility of moving back home your foot slipped. Before you could catch yourself you shut your eyes tight, preparing to land hard on your ass. But that smack never came. Opening one eye you were standing face to face with…

“A cowboy?” you asked, quirking an eyebrow at the man in front of you.

“In the flesh.” came the sweetest accent.

Opening your other eye you realized that the cowboy in front of you had snaked a hand around your waist. No wonder you hadn’t fallen. A beat passed and you realized the cowboy still had his arm around you. You stepped away and out of his hold.

“Thank you.” you said, giving an awkward cough and taking a closer look at you savior.

Not to be a cliché, but he was tall, dark, and handsome. Atop his head was a black Stetson, an odd sight in the middle of New York City. He had a perfectly trimmed mustache, and a small smirk underneath it. You silently thanked the cold for hiding the blush that crept up your face. The redness could easily be passed off as a flush from the biting wind.

“Anytime darlin’.” he said, shooting you a wink with eyes that you felt could swallow you whole. “Anyways, I best be on my way.”

Giving you a dazzling smile, he tipped the end of his hat with a gloved hand and brushed past you. You could’ve sworn that his hand grazed yours, but because of your thick mittens it was hard to tell.

Shivering slightly to yourself, you pulled your coat tighter around you and continued your walk to your apartment.

------------

Unlocking your door and sighing to yourself you looked around your small studio apartment. It wasn’t much, but over the past year it had become your home. Shucking your jacket off you headed to the couch and sat down to pull off your shoes.

‘Guess I won’t be here much longer’ you thought to yourself.

After making yourself a steaming cup of tea you decided you may as well look at your email. Two days ago when you were told of your “dismissal” you had signed up for a couple different job search sites. If you were lucky enough maybe someone would offer you an interview, but your hopes were low.

You crossed your legs underneath you trying to generate as much heat as possible. As much as you loved your tiny apartment, it was an older building so the heating was shit to say the least. You clicked on the mail icon on your desktop and silently prayed to yourself. 10 new emails. Maybe there was hope.

10 Kale Dishes That’ll Be Sure To WOW Your Houseguests!

WARNING — WE HAVE DETECTED MALWARE

Most of the emails were similar to those: junk and spam, until your eyes landed on the last email.

RE: Y/N Y/L/N Job Opportunity FOUND!

Your eyes widened at the subject. Clicking on the email you realized that it wasn’t a scam, it had really come from one of the job search sites. Swallowing hard you hoped that it wasn’t just an offer from one of those salad making chain restaurants. You had your fair share of beginner jobs; barista, Subway, etc. After getting a taste of something more professional, you knew that that’s where you were meant to be. Besides, the pay that Starbucks gave was certainly not enough to live in New York City on your own.

Dear Ms. Y/L/N,

My name is Mr. Daniels and I am writing to inform you of opening at Statesmen Brewery, the New York City branch. I have been in search for a PA since my previous one left. After reading your resume I have become very interested in your skills and talents. Please let me know what days you are free in the coming week.

Jack Daniels

Head of Statesmen NYC Branch

You snorted at the sign off. There was no way someone’s real name was Jack Daniels and worked for a brewery. It was comedic to say the least, but there was no harm in responding to his email and getting an interview. Maybe this was your chance to stay in the city you loved, even if its winter was disgusting. Taking a sip of your tea you started to write out your response.

Mr. Daniels,

Thank you so much for your offer. I am very interested in an interview and am free Monday all day. Please let me know what time is best for you. Is there anything specific I should bring besides a printout of my resume and documents?

Thank you for your consideration,

Y/N Y/L/N

It was currently Friday so you had the whole weekend to prep yourself for the interview. If you were honest, the idea of an interview created a small pit in your stomach. It had been over a year since you’d been interviewed for a job.

May as well do some research on Statesmen.

Pulling open a new browser you typed in ‘Statesmen Brewery’ and clicked on their website. Clearly the company had some tech savvy people working for them as their website was modern and easy to navigate.

Statesmen Brewery has been brewing fine whiskey since 1885 and serving people all across the country and world.

No wonder you never heard of the company, you had never been big on whiskey.

The brewery had its start in a small barn in Kentucky and has since expanded to include two offices in New York, New York and Los Angeles, California. While our reach is wide, we consider every employee and consumer of our alcohol a close family member.

The rest of the front page went on to describe their whiskey and how smooth it was, as well as some fun facts about the company. You closed your laptop and picked up your tea, holding it close to your face and letting go of the tension in your shoulders that you didn’t realize was there. Before you could fully relax you heard your phone buzz on the couch cushion next to you.

It was your best friend Parker. When you first moved to NYC you decided to visit a small bookstore/coffee shop and accidentally grabbed the wrong drink. Turns out that drink belonged to Parker. She had come to the coffee shop to work on a script for an up and coming TV show that was set to be filmed in the city. The two of you became fast friends. You were slightly jealous of the girl as she really had landed her dream job.

Opening the text she had sent it was a photo of her holding a script she had written. Her round face was pulled up into a smile, her auburn hair slightly frizzed from what seemed to be an all nighter. You smiled at the photo and read the text that followed.

Guess who just finished her first script for SVU!

Quickly you typed out a response:

Congrats! Proud of you P. I have some good news too. Landed an interview with a fancy brewery.

Suddenly your phone buzzed nonstop, Parker was calling you.

You pressed the button to answer the phone and before you could say anything a scream hit your ears.

“AHHHHHH I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU!!!!!”

“Haha, thanks Parker. Honestly I’m a bit nervous. I did some research and the company seems to be a pretty big deal.”

“What’s the company?”

“Statesmen Brewery.”

“Oh shit my parents love their stuff.”

“I literally know nothing about whiskey other than the fact that I don’t like it. I feel stressed. The interview is on Monday.”

“I’ll come over tomorrow and help you with prep. Also you know I gotta help pick out the perfect interview outfit.”

“Thanks babe. You’re the best.”

“I know.”

You snorted at her response. Parker was confident, and more importantly confident in you. The thought of having her help you prep eased the knot in your stomach.

------------

The rest of the afternoon was spent talking to Parker over the phone. Eventually the two of you ended your call and you were left to do some random chores around your place. As you mopped the floor you slipped a bit but caught yourself before you fell over. Your mind flashed back to earlier in the day.

At the time you didn’t realize how strong the cowboy’s grip was, but it was not overpowering. You remembered how gentlemanly he was. Looking back on it you tried to remember his face. While it was a short interaction, you couldn’t deny that he was easy on the eyes. Sighing softly you tried to remember the last time you went on a date. It had been several months ago. Your busy PA job never really allowed for romantic relationships. Shaking your head you got on with your day, finishing your chores, eating some leftover Chinese food for dinner, and sinking deep into your bed.

------------

You were awoken by a knock on your door. Grunting as you got out of bed you swung open the door. The only person who would bother to come over without letting you know was Parker. Your suspicions were correct as she walked through the threshold and made herself at home, talking a mile a minute the entire time.

“Okay so first we need to talk about clothing options.” she said dumping her bag on your couch.

“Not prepping for the interview?” you said giving her a confused look.

Parker sighed.

“Look, I already know you have this interview in the bag. Sure, you may not like whiskey, but you are a wonderful person. While you may be stubborn” you frowned at her comment, “that can be super helpful in interviews. You are a go getting Y/N. I have no doubts about that.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Fashion show time!” she said, opening the small closet and rummaging around to find something suitable.

After an hour had passed the two of you finally settled on a suitable outfit. It was professional but still had a touch of you in it. A simple black skirt with a fun silky button down shirt that had a cool pattern on it. As you looked at yourself in the mirror you couldn’t deny that Parker knew what she was doing when it came to fashion.

“Okay finishing touch time.” she said as she unbuttoned the top two buttons of your shirt.

“Parker! This is a job interview, not a date.”

“Ugh. It’s a brewery, they’re gonna be more relaxed about these things. Plus you never know, this Jack Daniels could be a cutie.” she said, giving you a wink.

You chuckled and shook your head. Parker was eccentric but you really did love her. You still had a small bit of anxiety running through your body, but the help of your best friend made you feel more positive about Monday. Maybe you’d be able to stay in New York. Maybe this job might be better than the previous.

[satellitesunset]

There are three characters on Glee who are REALLY constructed around their relationship to masculinity… Other characters get arcs around it, but there are three where it is a very central arc.

One is Spencer, whose story there is VERY explicitly a queer story. He outright talks about needing to be more masculine than anyone else so that people don’t write him off as “the gay one”… I really wish the show had given him more than two conversations about this. And I also get why the show drew his arc against Kurt specifically, but there are other characters who would have made more sense to connect with him… If Sam were canonically queer, maybe him, but I also think there’d have been something interesting in explicitly drawing Spencer against KAROFSKY in S6. If the show had been better about following through its themes.

One is Artie, whose story is about building an identity both incorporating and aside from his disability… I have issues with how the show portrays Artie’s relationship with his body and his masculinity, but I also think that the surface reading there — the disability one — makes enough sense on its own that I don’t think it NEEDS to be queered specifically… HOWEVER, there are certainly facets of my own queerness that I see in Artie, and I am on-board with queer readings of Artie’s arc here…

And then there’s Sam, and I just really feel like a queer reading of Sam’s body image, masculinity, and popularity stuff… It just makes too much sense to me to ignore. It’s not just about the internal stuff in Sam’s character, either… But it’s about who that character is drawn up against in those arcs… In Season 2, Sam’s drawn against Finn, and to a lesser extent Karofsky… In Season 3, it’s against Blaine and Shane…. In Season 4 and 5, he doesn’t really have a foil, but his body image and masculinity stuff is specifically drawn against Artie… but also tied into Blaine… Sam finds himself drawn into self-discovery arcs around every queer major character in the show, pretty much. He dates Santana and Brittany (… and Quinn)… he’s best friends with Blaine… there’s both Duets and Rumours with Kurt… He gets significant screentime with Spencer… He’s Kurt’s biggest defender against Karofsky…

the reply is a bit late, but there are so many great ideas that i wanted to articulate my response properly.

Spencer

Spencer, out of all the s6 newbies, is the biggest lost potential, because as you mentioned, from how Kurt and him, dare I say are opposite halves of the same coin, to how both he and Sam had to prove their own masculinity, but most importantly how his story is parallel to that of David's.

You have Spencer who, despite his surface acceptance of his sexuality, still has a lot of internalized homophobia, ( I rewatched some of his sense, and the line "we have nothing in common", stood out to me, because it reflects how he never sees himself fitting in with the community) and how interacting with David, a gay jock who has also gone through internalized homophobia, could clear up his insecurities.

Artie

Artie, unintentionally, is a very queer-coded character, he makes a lot of' jokes' about finding men/guys attractive (the writer's biophobia is showing), I don't think I'm qualified to expand on how he, as a disabled guy has to prove his own masculinity but another line that pops in my mind is in s3 ep5 the first time (my beloathed) when he talks about hooking up with Brittany, made he feel like a 'real man', which just further proves my point (toxic masculinity yay)

Sam

there's so much to unpack with Sam, what you said is so on point,

A lot of Sam's arcs are inherently queer, no denying that from how he's established to how he evolves, from s2 this well-meaning insecure jock who's going through the conflict of popularity serving as a parallel between him and Finn in S2, and I know from experience how going to a same-sex school influences how you view your identity, like it fucks you up, then into s3, from being a stripper AGE 16!! and feeling like being popular is the only way to get the girl, and how did having dyslexia make him feel lesser and like his worth lies only on his body, especially with, as you mentioned, being pitied against Shane and Blaine, and how he continuously interact with other queer characters.

if were also discussing the topic, we can expand on Puck (a deep dive into the hyper-sexual nature of his character and the deeper reasoning of why he hooked up with older women) Jake (the intersectionality of race and masculinity), and Kurt and Blaine both as gay men and how they affect each other but also individually, (for Kurt, on how he viewed masculinity and how it relates to his sexuality which is a topic I kinda covered the other day, and specifically both his arc in s3 and s5).

[polar534]

Hockey AU

Hi! I wrote an AU... that's not really an AU. Just a bunch of things and scenarios I think would happen in the future for Lumity revolving around one central idea:

Amity in a hockey jersey. (The Feral Brain though that started it all)

Sooooooooooo. Here we go. This first post is mostly about the Hockey Portion of the AU but like I said, it's ended up being alot of different scenarios. It is equally a (short term) future AU as it is a sport AU. I do eventually plan on making all of this into a chapter by chapter fic on Ao3, but if this gets some good reception I'll keep posting updates on here. I've already got multiple scenarios summarized and 4 fully written chapters.

ok but enough of that. Here goes:

Facts and World Building:

- This is about a year and half after the events of the show. (The girls be about 15-16)

- These girls are just dating. There's no drama. They are incredibly happy together. Which they deserve.

- Amity and Luz are living in the human world with Camilla.

- They spend weekends with Eda at the palace.

- Lilith and Eda are currently trying to restructure the entire Boiling Isles coven system. They have overthrown and taken down Belos and the Clawethorn sisters were named to lead in his stead. To the majority of The Owl Fam's surprise.

- Luz and Amity help them in their free time going around and helping everyone adjust and heal from the tyrants rule.

- The portal remains in the castle under protection. The Owl Fam and friends of The Owl Fam are welcome to use it, but any others must go through Luz. (Eda's decree)

- They attend Hexside during the day and homeschool themselves on human subjects before they go to bed.

Hockey Overview:

- Firstly. Amity's team is called the Otter's. She specifically chose that team because she knew the name would make Luz happy.

- Secondly. The entire team adores Luz. She's at almost every practice and is there for every game. So although she's useless on the ice, she is just considered a member of the team.

- Thirdly. Amity is extremely careful to stay within the rules of the game, but she doesn't hold back. Her role on the team is mostly defense. Her job (which she mostly assigned herself) is to keep the path clear for her teammate with the puck. If that means absolutely bodying anyone who comes near, then she does just that. (I mean, let's be honest she played heavy support in the grudgeby match we saw her participate in.) Amity has to really struggle with keeping her competitive/perfectionist side under control and not wrestling the puck away from the strikers every chance she sees an opening that others don't. It's a left over from her time playing Grudgeby.

- Fourthly and most importantly: Amity has tried to teach Luz to skate. Many times. Luz cannot skate. Luz cannot even operate on ice. If she is on the ice, she is clinging to Amity.

Summary/Timeline Thingy (under a read more cut because... oh my god I have a problem):

At first when Luz starts going (purely because she wants to support Amity), she's pretty silent. Just working on either school work, her glyphs or making a meal plan for both Eda and her mother because both are too busy/crazy to seem to take care of themselves. The team doesn't mind, and finds it pretty sweet actually. Especially when Luz will randomly look up and compliment one of them on a shot. Or how the girl seems to just stop mid-work to stare transfixed as the new blood is practicing.

Now that's just cute. Nobody can deny that.

Or that the newbie completely changes demeanor from stone cold and calculating to absolutely flustered and soft as soon as her girlfriend slides clumsily onto the ice to greet her at breaks and after practice.

Also. Cute.

All that slowly changes though because Luz is like... SUPER excited about Amity being on a sports team. Especially Hockey. She stays mostly quiet during practice because this is Amity's thing and she wants to respect that, but as soon as they get off the rink together Luz is excitedly discussing new plays and strategies or the best ways to hit the other players so they stay down longer. It's Amity's favorite way to wind down after practice. She's usually too tired to keep up with Luz's energy but she listens and relaxes into just how excited her girlfriend is.

Amity always takes into account her girlfriend's post practice discussions and will often put them into play at the next practice or game. It's extremely noticeable. Despite being new to the sport, and frankly seemingly still surprised by alot of "normal" customs and rules, Amity is getting really good. Not only is she skilled and strong but she's also catching on to strategies and plays that even the coach doesn't seem to always get. (Rec league because official coaches and team games sound boring honestly)

She starts to get approached by her teammates, asking her for advice or tips. While she can answer some of them, she normally just yells up at Luz (sitting on the bleachers) out of nowhere asking for her opinon, to which Luz somehow always has an immediate response prepared. Most often not even looking up from whatever she was doing to answer it.

Whenever someone asks her about they know so much about sports. Amity usually shrugs and just replies, "We're a team." Sometimes with a quip about how Luz makes them watch too many movies or something about Azura. That's when the team starts approaching Luz equally about stuff, and insist she start sitting on the sidelines with the team rather then the bleachers. Whenever they ask Luz why her and Amity know so much, Luz just gets a huge shit eating grin and waves her hands in front of her face as she says: "It's magic~".

Since keeping Amity's witchiness a secret is one of their biggest priorities, this always makes Amity really nervous. Not to mention she knows Luz is also referring to their relationship as magic which makes her get immediately flustered as well.

Its a win-win for Noceda. She gets to have fun with a secret only they know, and gush about Amity at the same time.

Soon enough, while Luz never actually goes out onto the ice, she's just a part of the team. Amity gets voted team captain, much to the current team captain's relief and while Amity keeps a monitor as to how her team is doing on the ice, Luz keeps a monitor as to how their plays are doing from the sidelines. They work together to switch members out at perfect moments and the Otter's go from a very basic team to being one of the top teams of the area.

Random Facts (read: I have no category for this stuff but it's important):

- Luz will often steal Amity's jersey, because its really baggy and comfortable and because it's Amity's. Amity has a STRUGGLE every time it happens. 1. It's way too cute. And 2. "Luz, I need that." "You going to come and take it Blight?"

- Regardless of how bad she is on the ice, Luz is really good with the hockey stick and surprisingly accurate with her shots. Her and Amity will often practice together in a field, and, when they're sure no one's watching/visiting Eda, they'll add their own magical twist to the game and have a 1v1 witches hockey duel.

- Luz loves it when Amity checks the shit out of players on the ice. She is one of THOSE hockey fans. And her girlfriend is brutal.

- King and Amity have a really good relationship in Hockey AU. They are both vent buddies. While Amity is in much healthier place and doesn't put as much pressure on herself anymore, she still gets easily frustrated. King, being the little dude he is, is also easily frustrated. Every week they get together for a vent session in which they chill out and watch a stupid movie in the background and complain about it to get the night going. It always ends up that they pause the movie before it's over because they're too busy going off about other things bothering them.

- Lilith and Eda share mentoring roles for both girls. It's not an, Eda for purely Luz and Lilith for purely Amity situation.

- Camilla is incredibly proud of her two girls and is incredibly supportive as well... but she can no longer go to any games or practices. The first time Amity got hard checked by an opposing player during a game, Camilla nearly stopped the entire match demanding she go down and look her over and make sure she didn't have any injuries. When Luz and Amity approached her that night, after she was asked to leave the game, she was grateful for the excuse. "You know I love and support you both, but I cannot watch... that. With good conscious. You'll just have to make sure you come to me if you're actually hurt. Ok?" She'll still come to Amity's big games, despite her anxiety.

- Amity has a scar from an injury she received in her first season's Semi-Final game. (I have ALOT of notes on this... it is one of the 'scenarios' I listed at the top.)

[alrightzuko]

Literally can't stop thinking about "You have indeed felt a great loss. But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us. The Air Nomads' love for you has not left this world. It is still inside of your heart, and is reborn in the form of new love" and how much the concept of this quote pretty much applies to the main characters within atla, especially in regards to their development and central arcs throughout the series and how it plays a big role in their journey, either on a large scale or a more subtle one.

Aang's is the most obvious and is the original context of this quote. His love for the Air Nomads and their love for him is reborn in his love for Katara and vice versa. These two develop an instinctual bond as soon as they meet and get along very well, providing each other with support in overcoming the trauma, a listening ear when things are rough or standing up for the other when they encounter obstacles, especially ones related to their bending. They supply each other with the home and understanding that has been lost as a result of the war. Aang's love for Sokka can be interpreted in the same way, who forms one of the first bases for Aang's second family after the loss of his entire culture. It's not just that though, there's also the gradual trust in each other's leadership skills, reaching its zenith in their preparations for the invasion of the Fire Nation capital.

Katara's reborn love is likewise Aang's as well, and I think the best way to demonstrate this example is paralleling Aang's actions in the second episode of book one when Zuko and his crew attacked the South Pole and Kya's in the flashbacks of the Southern Raiders. Both are people who meant a lot for Katara and who at that point helped in shaping her view of the world, since Kya raised her and Aang even in the short span they interacted reminded her of the joy of enjoying her adolescence and having fun. Both did not hesitate to offer themselves up for the Fire Nation when it became clear that Katara and the village was in danger and both made a conscious effort to reassure Katara during those sequence of events. Of course, Aang and Kya didn't have the same outcome but that's not the point.

Zuko's is Ursa's and Iroh's. It's not a reborn love in the literal sense but for all intents and purposes, the result is largely similar. While we know from flashbacks that Zuko was very close to his uncle even prior to Iroh losing his son and events leading up to Zuko's banishment, the fact of the matter is that Ursa is shown to be his primary caregiver, the person who works to do whatever they can to shield him from Ozai's abuse and someone who inspires a lot of his conceptions about his self image, particularly his persistence in the face of adversity and failure. Once Ursa is no longer in a position to continue doing so, that role is then taken up by Iroh who continuously makes every effort he can to support Zuko through the worst period of his life, providing the love and care he needs in order to heal, standing against the harm Azula and Ozai attempt to inflict against him (often literally) as well as teaching him the tools he needs in order to continue building his separate identity outside of the toxic ideals of his family. Whether that is in relation to Zuko's bending and the way he's been branded as the less talented and therefore a disappointment or in relation to the imperialist mindset of their country and the royal family by passing on the ideals that Iroh himself learned through his journey of self-reflection.

Sokka actually has two forms of reborn loves, which I realised upon some extensive thinking. The first is by far the more obvious, which is Yue and Suki. Yes, Sokka met Suki first but the order of events lend my argument some weight. It's not just that both are his primary love interests (which they are) but they are ones who influenced Sokka's relationship to his role as a protector and to another extent they were people who he could enjoy himself around on more equal terms since he more often than not is the 'plan guy' within the gaang. Yue's death and his inability to do anything that prevents it enhances his overprotective tendencies and it's no coincidence that he faces this particular issue with Suki on the serpent's pass by his own admission. He's later able to overcome it and start a relationship with Suki without the shadow of that incident hanging down on them (pardon the pun). The other one, which is more subtler and might puzzle some, is Hakoda and Piandao. Hakoda as Sokka's father is his role model, the ideal of the warrior that he strives to live up to and who reassures him of his worth and his pride in him. This guidance is also, to a degree, the part that Piandao plays as his mentor; he helps Sokka gain the confidence needed in himself and imparts lessons that tie in to skills as a warrior. In each of the episodes "Sokka's Master" and "The Guru", Sokka experiences low faith in his abilities and is reassured by Piandao and Hakoda respectively (although Piandao's was much more... confrontational). In the end, the purpose is served. Hakoda cannot be present with the amount that Sokka needs but the love he has for him is found in a new shape in Piandao's mentorship.

Toph experiences her first unconditional love during her childhood with the badger-moles, they are the creatures who accept her and her blindness and they're the ones with whom she gains faith in her earthbending. That love is carried over when she meets Team Avatar, Aang challenges the double identity she built in her life that is in conflict of the image her parents have of her, "the obedient little helpless blind girl", and she decides later to leave her home behind and take a leap of faith so to speak. This decision leads her to be able to build healthy relationships where she's comfortable and secure. Katara teaches her that expressions of femininity and her tough persona don't have to be at odds with each other, and that she can enjoy being pampered and still at the end of the day resume acting herself. And we have many instances where Sokka leads Toph around in places where she needs someone to help her to and Toph is comfortable doing so. It's a development from the Toph we first meet, who rejects aid because she needs to establish her own personhood. She grows to be okay with relying on others in a way that doesn't lessen her own independence.

Suki admittedly gave me a bit of a brain scratcher until I drew upon her biggest relationships, the Kyoshi Warriors and Sokka. Suki is the leader of the group, she's someone who believes in herself and knows her capabilities very well and it's not hard to understand that it's because of her position as Kyoshi Warrior. But more importantly, her fellow comrades offer her a support net. She can rely on them to have her back, just as they did during the attack on Kyoshi Island and in the Earth Kingdom. And after the run in with Azula, Mai and Ty Lee and getting separated in imprisonment, she lost that. Her confinement was isolated from any familiar faces and probably very traumatic. Until Sokka finds her in the Boiling Rock, and she regains the lost sense of partnership. From there until the finale, Sokka and Suki are shown to interact romantically, socially and on the battlefield. They joke and have ridiculous fun together while enjoying the Boy in the Iceberg play and they fight together seamlessly on the gondola, during training on Ember Island and in the Airship battle. This is a testament to the incredible trust they built and the camaraderie they share.

Note that when I say reborn, I don't necessarily mean in strict terms of life and death, which can be applied to more than one character anyway, or in the literal sense of reincarnation. I mean it more as a metaphor, it's a love that has been lost or can not present right now, either temporarily or in a more permanent sense. And I think that is one of the most profound messages the show can impart to such a wide audience. That love is a form of energy around us and even though the person who provided us with that specific kind of love isn't or can't be around anymore to give it to us, their love is so strong that it changes and comes back in a new love. It's not gone, not forever, it's just... different.

[akimmito]

I’ll still be with you

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Master List

Chapter 4: My Way

If it were any other day of any other month in any other year before that, he would have refused, but it's not any other day, it's the day that Damian Wayne has accepted that he's fed up with being, precisely, Damian Wayne.

His world was shaken a lot since he was ten years old and when the earthquakes under his feet finally stopped, an earthquake destroyed everything he suffered to build. The relationship with Grayson was taken from him, all his efforts were ignored and trampled on as if they meant nothing. His title was a lie, his privileged position a mirage and being of the same blood, a chain that hurt them both.

Maybe we should just go our separate ways.

"Damian?"

"Daemon Rothschild."

"Uh." Drake just turns to the computer and starts working.

Damian, no, Daemon sits on the floor and takes one of the thrown papers, looking at it as if it were an object of real interest. It is a letter written in French, a delicate curved handwriting that says a lot about the lady who wrote it.

CN has not been on patrols for the past two weeks, his father exhibiting erratic behavior near the fifth anniversary of his wife's disappearance, increasingly desperate to get the two prodigies. CN mentioned that N made a successful recovery after four years of illness, a little longer and would have had the same end as E.

P has started an investigation against HM in his civilian identity for child exploitation, psychological abuse and illegal use of military weapons. Your tests and what was rescued from MK's memory were weighty, even if we don't arrest them for their crimes as HM, GA will spend a lot of time in prison and with TK and PG we have talked about the curses, I was even in contact with the man who you mentioned to me, JC turned out to know a lot about prodigies and provided important information to achieve the goal I mentioned you.

I know you will continue to investigate until you remove all the dirt that HM hides, I hope some of that can be used in court. It's been five long years and you don't know how grateful I'm that we met that night.

Come visit me soon, MDC.

The date is of ten months ago. Drake kept this woman, his activities with her, and the whole criminal affair a secret. Only someone with knowledge of the matter could understand whose initials are, but from the things of a certain Gabriel Agreste scattered all over the floor, you can assume that HM and GA are the same person. A type of villain? That is probable. And the chances that this woman is the same in the photographs are very great.

"Entertaining?" Drake turns to him, looking at him with an amused expression. Daemon assumes that he had everything ready just to add whatever name he chose.

Drake never does anything without having everything done beforehand. In those moments it's even reassuring, it means that he took the time to think about whether carrying it was a good idea, that he's not just a dead weight that he decided to drag without knowing what to do with him, that he took the trouble to make it as significant as his own depart.

"Who is MDC?"

"The person we're meeting with. Now, do you want to go back to the mansion or would you rather we go to dinner?"

"You're acting suspicious, Drake."

"I'm not going to risk that your built-in tracker has a damn microphone, mine had one and it was annoying as hell to get rid of it without raising suspicions." He gets up from his chair when the AI ​​is heard, Kolia, deliver a report.

Batman requests a meeting. The Joker has escaped from Arkham an hour ago.

Perfect.

I haven't even gotten a damn message.

Daemon takes out his phone, which only has a message from Jon advising that his things were taken by Alfred. Unsurprisingly, all of Arkham could have escaped, but his father would not revoke his punishment even on his deathbed.

"You will go?"

Drake walks over to a drawer and pulls out a gold ring? Some kind of double ring attached by a wire? Or something like that. He can't see it well.

"My old Red Robin suit will looks good on you, I'm sure. Do you want to disobey his orders? "He gives him a knowing smile and there's a crazy desire in his gaze to spread the chaos he'd only seen in Todd in his best days.

Will life with Drake be like this?

It seems he have made the right decision, there is only one question left to ask.

"What suit will you wear?"

"The one I used in Paris."

Drake leaves the matchbox in an unknown direction, Daemon immediately follows him so as not to lose him. He doesn't know the apartment, if he wants to wear that suit, if he wants to fight on his own terms, he's not in his plans to get lost.

The hidden part that is the main base of Red Robin is as modern as the bell tower, although he has a small suspicion that accessing this place is much more difficult than the cave. He has no proof, but no doubts either.

"From today you will no longer be Robin, take the suit as a simple transition between what you were and what you will be. When I took the old Red Robin costume, I did it because Jason had already worn it and that meant he was no longer Robin, but more importantly, I was no longer bound by the rules that Batman had set me... I was willing to go so far as necessary in my search for Bruce. "

"Makes sense."

Daemon always thought that wearing that suit and calling himself Red Robin only spoke of a lack of originality, of preparation, but it seems that he also spoke a lot about what Drake intended to do from that moment on. It took a year for him to put on a suit again and hit the streets, it took him a month to settle in and then it was only a matter of time before he left for three years.

"Change out. We will go around Gotham and wait for the night. We can find out what B is planning from Jason."

Drake sits down and activates the central computer, Kolia starts asking for identity checks, very interesting questions, but only one catches his attention.

Girl or boy?

"Girl."

Daemon looks at him for a moment before heading to the locker room, intrigued.

Look at the Red Robin suit in his hands, the suit that marked the change of direction Drake took so long ago. And now it will also mark his.

If there is a better version of me.

I will reach it.

Red Robin slides into the back of the motorcycle with Solarhahn, whose colors are predominantly red and gold with a little orange. The costume is magical, it's easy to guess just by looking at his eyes: the yellow sclera and orange eyes with red that stare back at him, surrounded by a red mask that fades into yellow near the edges. His cape simulates wings that start from the arms, those, he identified, can be detached to become (1) arrows and (2) small throwing blades, depending on his intentions. The costume is predominantly dark red with gold parts on the thighs, chest, and arms, the gloves a shade of red that doesn't decide whether to remain red or turn orange. But the most interesting thing is his black hair that melts into red and ends in gold towards the ends, as if it were on fire.

He couldn't help but give him a second glance when he saw it, the gold ring on his right ring finger, almost hidden by the shade of the gloves.

Drake showed him a little summary of the whole situation, the heroes and his role, but it was all too superficial, but enough to capture the significance of the event.

A very dangerous magical matter, too delicate and of which only Wonder Woman was aware outside of Paris, until Drake crashed with the whole thing in his search for Bruce. That sounds like something that would happen to him, he have that kind of luck.

"Don't ask questions. We will answer everything, but later."

Daemon nods and Drake instructs Kolia to report anything to the communications. That's when he gives him a very particular one and the same yellow color that he wears in his suit. He takes it and puts it on before putting on his hood, at which point the older man starts the motorcycle and the doors begin to open.

As they race through the streets of Gotham at dusk, Daemon looks up at the orange sky.

I extend my corrupted hand... towards a heaven that will no longer receive me.

But I know this is the way to save myself.

To find my way.

-------

I liked the name Daemon, it's of Greek origin. So, I was looking for names and I found it, I knew it was that. The other name was Demian, after Demian Sinclair from Hernan Hesse's book, but I decided on the other. Also, Daemon can also mean demon if other meanings are looked up and I see it almost as an inside joke that only he and Tim will know.

It was hard for me to write this chapter, I didn't want to make it sad, but I didn't want it to feel out of place either, I hope I made it.

From here it's only a matter of time before Marinette appears on the scene.

What do you think of how the story unfolds so far?

Tag list: @incredulous-reader @dnsakina

[fuckyeahprodigalson]

Although Prodigal Son was one of many series to shut down production over coronavirus concerns, Monday’s episode actually was the intended finale, due to the order in which episodes were filmed; Episodes 19 and 20, however, could not be completed. Below, series co-creators Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver discuss how the season was impacted by those lost episodes, as well as how that Ainsley twist would play out in Season 2.

TVLINE | This production shutdown put you in an interesting place, given that you were able to film your intended finale but had to scrap Episodes 19 and 20. Did losing those two hours force you to change the episodes that did air? CHRIS FEDAK | Everything was changing very quickly in that last week before production went down. As Sam and I were looking at the situation in New York, we got the very strong impression that we’d be shutting down, and we’d be shutting down for a while. What we did was, we quickly rewrote Episodes 19 and 20 — and those episodes are fantastic, we hope to come back to them at some point — and we turned them into two scenes that became the first two scenes of Episode 21. Essentially, we scrapped those two episodes, and we linked the end of Episode 18 to the beginning of Episode 21. SAM SKLAVER | We were hoping to tell a five-episode story with [Nicholas Endicott]. We would meet him in Episode 18, as we did, and he was a very lovely character, and he was a romantic interest to Jessica. And he would remain a romantic interest for a while, and then we would realize that Nicholas Endicott was a monster. We had a much longer game plan with Dermot, because he’s so fabulous. We wanted to use him as much as possible, and that’s really what we had to cut short.

When we only had a few days left to shoot, we were like, “Oh, shoot, we have to turn Nicholas into a bad guy.” That was [originally] a whole episode, when they realized that. So we had to bring in Anna [Eilinsfeld], who plays Sophie, and have her say, “Nicholas Endicott is a monster.” We were very fortunate, though, in that once we realized all we had to do was turn Nicholas into a bad guy and deal with Eve’s death, somehow it could flow pretty seamlessly from Episode 18 to Episode 21, just with shooting those two scenes. We weren’t able to do everything we wanted, but we were so fortunate in that we got to end the season with the story that we had always wanted to tell since we first sold this show to Fox. It was fortunate for us, and we wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without our post-production team.

TVLINE | Outside of the Nicholas arc, were there other storylines from those two lost episodes that you’d like to fold into Season 2 somehow? FEDAK | Absolutely. We had two very good episodes that allowed us to explore two things that we’d wanted to get into from the beginning of the season: One had to do with exorcism, and the other one had to do with technology. Those were the genres that we were stepping into in those weeks. And the other thing we didn’t get to touch was watching Ainsley do her thing as an investigative reporter. We had some fun stuff that we wanted to do there. SKLAVER | And for the very niche audience who’s a fan, we had a new car for Gil. [Laughs] His LeMans got destroyed by Bright jumping out of a window in Episode 13, and we had a really great thing with Gil finally getting a new car. I know Lou Diamond Phillips was very excited about that, as well. We need to work that story back in, most importantly.

TVLINE | Tell me about the Ainsley twist in this episode. Did the idea of making her a killer come up as you outlined this finale, or had you been building toward this all season? FEDAK | It was something we were intentionally building toward. We always knew this was something we wanted to play with when we started talking about the season, in regards to Ainsley’s psychology as opposed to Bright’s. It’s also a big part of where we’re excited to go next year. SKLAVER | The story that Ainsley always told herself was that she was too young to be affected by her father, but when Chris and I started thinking about these characters, we thought there’s no way she wasn’t affected by her father. She was just dealing with it differently. So we kind of loved the misdirect that all the attention is on Bright, who is older and had a stronger relationship with his father, but of course Ainsley was also affected by it. Trying to find a way to get to that was always the plan, because Halston Sage is such a rockstar, and in exploring this central dynamic of “like father, like son,” we also wanted to see what it would do to his daughter, as well.

TVLINE | I found Martin’s “My girl!” exclamation really interesting. Should we take that to mean Ainsley will be more of the focus in Season 2? FEDAK | Ainsley is still a very big part of the show. We have a lot of fun getting into the psychology of our characters, and she’s as much a mystery now as she was at the beginning of this year. That’s something we’d like to explore, and whenever we’re breaking down our stories, we not only break down the mystery of what people do, but also the mystery of what’s happening inside their minds. It’s definitely going to be a big part of Season 2.

TVLINE | What kind of toll is this going to take on her psyche? It’s not like she seemed to relish killing Nicholas; it was almost like she came out of a fog once it was done. How will we see that manifest? FEDAK | I only want to dip my toe into the story of Season 2, but what you’re seeing in that moment is exactly what we were going for on the page. You’re seeing a very complicated reaction to a very stressful and dynamic situation, and the ramifications of that will be dealt with next year — not only for her, but also for her brother, who’s been dealing with his father for all these years and now has to try and understand his sister and what happened in that moment. But that complexity is our intention. SKLAVER | Luckily, Chris and I have never slit a man’s throat and stabbed him six times like Ainsley does. FEDAK | [Laughs] SKLAVER | But I have to imagine that it does change you. [Laughs] It’s not something you can just tuck away, or if it is something you try to tuck away, as we’ve explored throughout the season, you can’t bury ghosts and trauma. They will always come back to you. So we’re afraid, but we’re not afraid of exploring it.

TVLINE | The Girl in the Box storyline was wrapped up pretty thoroughly in this episode. Looking ahead, do you intend to tell more stories that involve Malcolm investigating his father’s past victims? FEDAK | This is a show about memory, and it’s about what happened in our pasts and how it defines us. In this season, we went back to the Girl in the Box because we were fascinated with who she was and what she meant to Bright, and also with Bright discovering that his father was a killer. There are other parts of Bright’s past that we can’t wait to get into. What was it like being a kid with your father on trial for murder? That was the biggest trial in New York in the 1990s, and that’s a place we want to explore. There are still other revelations for us to get into. SKLAVER | And Martin Whitly killed 23 people that we know of, but there could easily be more. And Martin’s own past is something that we’re very excited to get into. What was Martin’s childhood like? How does someone like Martin get made? The Girl in the Box was a very poignant story to tell because it was a connection that the two of them had, and it was some of Bright’s memories that we could explore. But going back to 1998 and before that, it’s very rich territory.

[aion-rsa]

Critters: The Making of a Comedy Horror Cult Classic

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Rupert Harvey knew he was on to something with Critters after one memorable test screening.  Specifically, it was the scene where the Critters, who had already been terrorizing the Brown family, were standing on the doorstep of the family’s home talking in their guttural language with subtitles translating for the audience…until one of them is blown to gooey bits by a shotgun blast (wielded by none other than E.T. mom Dee Wallace), and the other lets out a subtitled “Fuck.”

“It totally destroyed the audience,” Harvey recalls. “They just howled. We lost the next scene because they were laughing so hard and I thought: ‘Okay, this is probably going to work.’” 

It had already taken a lot of work for Critters to get this far. 

Bringing Critters to Life

Released on April 11, 1986, the horror comedy about a small town and farm-dwelling family under attack from little furry space aliens with a taste for human flesh was unfairly dismissed by some as a Gremlins knock-off. 

But that did a disservice to the unique tone of Critters; a sci-fi comedy featuring belly laughs alongside genuine moments of terror. A film that owed as much to 1950s sci-fi B-movies as it did anything else, with its tale of picturesque Americana under attack from aliens. 

It also overlooks the film’s quirkier narrative aspect like the pair of shapeshifting alien bounty hunters who arrive on Earth to hunt the Critters down, with one of them assuming the form of a popular Jon Bon Jovi-esque rock musician. 

This surreal sci-fi tone, coupled with the copious violence, occasional bad language, and general unpredictability of it all helped give Critters the feel of a rebellious younger brother to the more mature Gremlins.  

To many, it was the cooler, edgier movie and one that boasted underlying themes that remain universal to this day. 

More importantly, the accusation of imitation was incorrect. If the two films were related, it wasn’t by design with screenwriter Brian Dominic Muir first writing the script for Critters back in 1982, two years before Joe Dante’s film hit cinemas.  

“I don’t think I saw Gremlins until we were in post-production,” Harvey, who produced Critters and worked on two of its three original sequels, tells Den of Geek. “It was certainly not something we were thinking about very much at the time, if at all. 

We were dealing with very different creatures and the fact that they were so different in concept meant I wasn’t terribly bothered by it. Gremlins were these mythical, earthbound, magical beings whereas Critters were extraterrestrial. People who say there are similarities are just influenced by the fact Gremlins was such a huge success, but it was a much bigger budget movie.” 

Muir’s script didn’t see the light of day for nearly three years before he showed it to friend and fellow budding filmmaker Stephen Herek who developed it further. That was where Harvey came in. 

The three men met while working on Android, a distinctive low budget sci-fi film Harvey was producing alongside independent movie trailblazer Roger Corman.  

“Brian gave me Critters to read and l loved it,” Harvey recalls. “It was an archetypal American story about foreigners invading the homeland. It’s quite prescient given the current state of politics in America. There was this quintessentially American setup with this almost pioneering family struggling through adversity to come out the other side.” 

35 years on, that notion of protecting the homeland is one Harvey feels is reflected in the inward-looking politics increasingly prominent in America and the UK today. That sentiment was already bubbling under the surface when Critters came out in the Reagan-era of the 1980s.

“It was novel to look at that then through the lens of Critters,” he says. “No one was seeing the film in those terms but that human fear of outsiders coming in has always been there and has been a fundamental part of cinema and drama since forever.” 

Harvey agreed to develop the film under his production company, Sho Films. Though he mulled over an offer to produce a low budget version of Critters with Corman, everything changed when Bob Shaye and New Line Cinema came calling. 

Writing Critters

“New Line was really a mom-and-pop operation at that point. They hadn’t made A Nightmare on Elm Street yet. They weren’t the New Line of today, but Bob offered to double our budget, so I did the deal.” 

Even so, Shaye took some convincing on the choice of director. 

Herek would go on to helm Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and a string of big budget Disney movies in the years that followed but had never directed prior to Critters, having previously worked as an editor. 

“Stephen, to his credit, even though he had no leverage other than a script we wanted to make, absolutely insisted that nobody would direct it but him and if he didn’t it wouldn’t get made,” Harvey says. “He stuck to his guns and there was never any shift in that position on Brian’s side. I had to convince Bob on several occasions to go ahead with us and, even during production, to actually stick with Steve. But we were all very glad that he did.” 

On the writing side, Harvey enlisted Sho Films’ in-house writer Don Opper. A fellow Roger Corman acolyte, Opper had written and starred in Android where he also worked with Herek and Muir. 

He was seen as the ideal candidate to work alongside Herek after Muir became unwell. 

“Brian, unfortunately, became quite ill not long after we started making Critters,” Harvey says. 

Muir was reportedly battling Hodgkin’s disease at the time. Though he recovered, the writer, who often wrote under the pseudonym August White for Full Moon Entertainment later in his career, sadly died from cancer aged 48 in 2010.  

“He was a very sweet, nice man,” Harvey recalls. “In Brian’s absence, Don worked with Stephen on polishing the script. One of the ways was to enhance the family and their relationships.” 

By then the distinctive looking Opper had also been cast in the pivotal role of Charlie McFadden, the town drunk and a conspiracy theorist convinced the fillings in his teeth are picking up signals from outer space.  

Like a cross between Randy Quaid’s deranged pilot from Independence Day and Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, Charlie would eventually emerge as a fan favorite, appearing in each of the three Critters sequels. 

He was one of several quirky locals introduced early on in Critters with much of the first third of the film dedicated to establishing the Brown family, their farm, and the characters of the fictional Kansas town of Grover’s Bend where the Critters land.  

In one picture postcard scene of the perfect nuclear family, the Browns gather round the breakfast table in a primary colored kitchen, blissfully unaware of the approaching danger and disruption to follow. 

That slow build-up may be less commonplace today, but it’s something Harvey believes was crucial to the success of the film. 

“That was one of the things that appealed to me about the script,” he says. “If you set that up properly and the audience is in there with you. They gain an understanding of the family dynamic right away and they are engaged. It helps you then feel for each one of them subsequently…The rules are the same, and they have been since the first Greek dramas; storytelling is still about humans and the human condition. Just making stuff about what the monsters are doing has no appeal.” 

Critters came during a time when horror comedies were commonplace in multiplexes.

“Studios started to notice in test screenings that the audience response was often bigger when you capped a scare or moment of high tension with a bit of wit or humor,” Harvey explains. 

Post-screening surveys bore this out; using humor to emphasize or punctuate a terrifying moment drew a bigger response from the audience. Regardless of the visceral impact of the scare itself. It made it more memorable to viewers.

The Cast of Critters

It helped that Critters boasted an impressive cast to bring the script to life.  

Blade Runner’s M. Emmet Walsh appeared as the grouchy local sheriff while Dee Wallace, who had starred in E.T. only a few years earlier, was also convinced to sign on as the Brown family matriarch Helen. Billy “Green” Bush was cast as the hardworking man of the house Jay Brown with Nadine van der Velde as his high school teen daughter April. 

Despite some impressive names, Harvey ranks the casting of future Party of Five and ER star Scott Grimes in the role of mischievous central teenage protagonist Brad Brown as the most significant. It’s Scott who first discovers the Critters and Scott that begins to fight back against them using his slingshot and potent firecrackers coming off like a hellish Kevin McCallister from Home Alone. 

“Scott was tailor-made for the role,” Harvey says. “He was at the center of the craziness and he had the audience’s sympathy and support because no one was paying attention to him.” 

For all the acting talent on display, however, much of the movie’s success rested on the tiny shoulders of a few hedgehog-like puppets. 

“The biggest challenge was making the Critters appear to be a viable threat as the antagonists,” Harvey says. “We were really fortunate that we found the Chiodo Brothers.” 

A trio of siblings who specialized in stop motion and animatronic work, the Chiodos were relative newcomers to the movie business and would go on to projects like Elf and Team America: World Police. 

“We knew from the script we were dealing with a fur ball that got around fast by rolling around and was all teeth and voracious,” Harvey says. “That was the extent of the design parameters. They came up with the drawings and the details as to how they would work.”

Harvey cites the Critters’ distinctive, almost limbless design as both a blessing and a curse.  

“From a construction and manipulation point of view, they were relatively straightforward,” he says. “But from an action perspective, there was not a lot you could do with them.” 

While other projects, like New Line’s later Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, would struggle with glitchy animatronics, there were no such problems with the Chiodos’ creations with each running impressively well thanks to a crack team behind the scenes.

“Even though the Critters were fairly simple creatures, there were times for some of those shots, when we had 10 guys running different cables and things to them to get them right,” Harvey recalls. “They had eye movement, mouth movement, lip movement even their little arms and legs move because these things needed to look as believable as possible. But it was still tough to make these things that rolled around something scary and frightening rather than cute and laughable.” 

That was where Billy Zane came in. A good horror villain needs a good victim. Cast in the role of April’s unsuspecting boyfriend Steve Eliot, the then unknown Zane ended up falling afoul of the Critters in arguably the film’s standout gory death after encountering the furry fiends while enjoying a makeout session in the family’s barn. 

“It was the first thing he’d ever done. I think he’d arrived in L.A. a week before,” Harvey says, recalling how uncomfortably hot that barn scene was for everyone involved. “It was 100 degrees in the barn. He had little furry creatures stuck to his stomach and was covered in fake blood. It was so hot and sticky. We stayed there for the whole day, getting all the inserts and various other bits and pieces to make the scene…But that setup in the claustrophobic space of the barn helped to make the scene much scarier because we could set it up in a kind of way that made the punchline, the payoff, much more visceral.” 

The Bounty Hunters

For all the machinations of the Critters themselves, it’s their pursuers from outer space, the two faceless bounty hunters, who almost steal the show.

Especially after one decides to take the form of fictional hair metal superstar Johnny Steele, the singer of “Power of the Night” a song so pitch-perfectly cheesy, you had to wonder if Steele is a real artist rather than musical theater actor Terrence Mann. 

“I went to see Terrence who was appearing in Cats on Broadway. He’d been suggested by a friend and was seriously interested in doing the film,” Harvey says. “We had a friend in New York who was in the music business and had a recording studio. He put together some tracks and we created this imaginary band that he stole the identity of the lead singer from.” 

Despite some striking similarities to artists of the time, Harvey insists Johnny Steele wasn’t set up as a deliberate lampooning of any one artist.

“The band was generically inspired by particular bands of the time,” he says. “There wasn’t any one group or individual. We were post punk and before real heavy metal. There was more of a glam goth influence.” 

Teaming up with Charlie and Brad, the bounty hunters eventually destroy the Critters though it comes at a cost to the Browns, with the family home blown-up in the process. It was a powerful symbol of the way these invaders had shattered their lives but not their spirit. Unfortunately, New Line Cinema didn’t like it as an ending. 

“Bob wanted it changed so that the house was rebuilt in the end but I was against it so we had a few arguments about that, but it was Bob’s money, and we did it and it came out very successfully.” 

Shaye and New Line would occasionally prove tricky customers, with Harvey often forced to traverse the familiar pitfalls of independent filmmaking.

“We were in production and things were really tough and there was one point in time when Bob and I sat down in the trailer and he explained to me some things that I won’t go into,” Harvey says.  “Things were very tricky for a week or two financially, but they sorted themselves out. That was a typical attribute of an independent movie. ‘Oh God you’re spending $150,000 dollars a day, can you spend $100,000?’. Not unheard of but no fun at the time.” 

For all the trials and tribulations of the film, cast, and Critters themselves, however, he has fond memories of working on the film.

“We weren’t stuck in Los Angeles in some smoke-filled space,” he said. “The set was built on Newhall Ranch, this huge bucolic area of land outside of L.A and there we were for five weeks shooting in relatively hot temperatures.” 

Critters Sequels and What’s Next

After a quick turnaround in editing, Critters was released in cinemas, proving to be a hit with over $13 million made at the box office off a budget of $3 million. This kind of success made sequels inevitable.

Though Harvey was unavailable for the second film, he returned for the third and fourth movies, which were filmed back-to-back and released direct to video.

“By then video cassettes were a huge component to New Line’s early success and helped finance the Nightmare on Elm Street and Critters sequels and all of the other movies that they then started making in order to become the powerhouse they became,” Harvey says. “I think it funded something like 40 to 40 to 50 percent of New Line production for that period of time.”

Harvey was initially hesitant to get involved, citing Shaye’s wishes to make the sequels for even less money than the first film. However, he ultimately relented after agreeing to film them back-to-back.

Harvey has mixed feelings about the two sequels, particularly the third movie, which he had conceived as being “much darker and much more violent” than what eventually made it to the screen.

“I wanted to do a George Romero homage for the third film,” he says. “I was very much interested in the claustrophobia of the tenement building in New York City, that kind of atmosphere. Boy, did it ever turn out differently.”

Having also agreed to direct the fourth film, which was set in space and wrap up the franchise, he found himself too busy to oversee work on the third movie.

“It was different. I didn’t have as much to do with Critters 3 because I was directing the fourth film. We were shooting back to back. We had a week down in between the two. All the time we were shooting Critters 3 I was prepping Critters 4.”

While the fourth film featured both a young Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif on top scene-chewing form, the third entry has become among the most noted in the years since thanks to the presence of a young Leonardo DiCaprio in the main role.

“It’s the movie that shall remain nameless on Leo DiCaprio’s resume,” Harvey jokes.

He doesn’t have a lot of memories about DiCaprio on set though there was already a sense he was destined for big things.

“One day he told me he needed some time off. He had to go and audition for this movie. After he came back I asked ‘How did it go?’ and he said ‘Robert De Niro is really great’. he’d been off auditioning for This Boy’s Life…And of course, when he did that movie, it was like, ‘Holy shit. Well, where was that actor when we were making Critters 3?’” 

While Leo is unlikely to return to the Critters franchise anytime soon, Harvey, who had no involvement in a recent TV revival, believes that there is life in the old furballs yet.

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“It’s not a franchise that’s going to go away,” he says cryptically. “Whatever comes next needs to be something that is responsive to contemporary sources. I can’t really say too much about it, because nothing is final. All I can tell you is that I don’t think this is the end.”

The post Critters: The Making of a Comedy Horror Cult Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[wild-aloof-rebel]

What do you think about the fact that there has been very little time on the show dedicated to David and Patrick’s wedding? While I have been enjoying the season, these early episodes do feel like filler and they are going to have to shove a lot in the back half of the season.

i don’t at all mean this to be a slight against you personally, anon, but i’m gonna be honest here and say that the use of the word “filler” to refer to these episodes drives me absolutely bananas. i’ve seen so many people say that–and as always, everyone is entitled to feel how they feel about the season and the individual episodes, and if several people feel that way then maybe there is something there after all, idk–but filler, to me, really means that there is no plot advancement happening, and i think that is just patently untrue. 

every single episode this season has pushed things forward for at least one character. we’ve had johnny starting to build a motel empire, roland buying into the business, stevie trying to figure out if and where she belongs in all of that. we’ve got moira getting the opportunity to take control of her own destiny with the streaming release of the crows film and alexis handling all the pr work for it while balancing the demands of her career with her desire to be with ted. and then we have david and patrick working to plan the wedding but also continuing to figure out what their future together is going to look like–do they want kids? are they the kind of couple that has threesomes? etc etc etc. there are LOTS of things happening in these episodes, and just because they perhaps aren’t what people anticipated doesn’t mean there isn’t progress. 

and, if i can be really honest, it feels like a lot of this comes from some kind of expectation that david and patrick be the central focus of the episodes, when it’s always been a show about all four roses, and this season to me has felt no different in that aspect. yes, sometimes different characters or relationships come to the forefront in particular episodes or even seasons, but the last season especially should be about the four of them (and the side characters we’ve come to know and love too) all finding happiness and not just about one particular couple. 

back to your original question though of how i feel about the lack of wedding planning, i’m actually really satisfied with the balance that they’ve given us. for one, i honestly think that if every episode focused on some different aspect of wedding planning–in this one they’re picking a caterer, in that one they’re choosing stationery–i would be bored out of my fucking mind by now. i planned my own wedding. i know what it involves. i don’t need to see every single part of it happen on screen. it’s clear that things ARE still being planned in the bg–like when we find out that david asked stevie off-screen to be his maid of honour–and we just don’t need to see every bit of it to know that it’s happening.

but most importantly, we know from the season synopsis that at some point this all comes to a head in some way, where david and patrick have to figure out how to balance what they want out of a wedding with what they want out of a marriage, and i think their part of this season so far has largely been reflective of that as a theme. they ARE planning a wedding, but they’re also planning a future beyond that, and i think we will continue to see that throughout the rest of the season. 

the last thing i’ll say about it–and this is certainly speculative–is that i still strongly believe that when that discussion comes up, the outcome of that conversation is going to be that they’re going to have a smaller wedding than david had initially intended (whether that’s an actual elopement or just a smaller ceremony/reception), in which case it would have been a huge waste of valuable screen time to have spent 9 or 10 episodes or whatever watching him plan a wedding that he then isn’t going to have. instead we’re only getting the pieces that are, let’s say, transferable. we ruled out the fancy location, so we already know the location is still up for debate. patrick has a tux now. you know david has a tux in his closet somewhere. stevie can be the maid of honour and alexis give him away no matter where or how they get married. those things can apply regardless of how it actually happens, so i think that’s why we’re getting these pieces and largely NOT getting things like picking out floral arrangements or seating charts or whatever. those kinds of very specific details are probably going to change, and so it just wouldn’t make sense to spend all that much time showing it to us to just then turn around and throw it all out. (THAT would ACTUALLY be filler at the end of the day.)

idk, maybe i’m wrong about that, but at the moment that’s where my thoughts on it lie. at the end of the season perhaps i’ll feel differently, but so far i feel like everything we’ve seen fits into the arcs that we know have been loosely outlined for us. and ultimately i trust dan as a writer; he’s proven himself to be a careful and capable showrunner, and even if i can’t see the exact beats of every arc and where they’re going, i trust that he knows what he’s doing and that all of this matters. who knows? maybe it won’t. maybe at the end of the season i’ll have a different opinion on that, but for the time being i just think it’s far more fun and far more interesting to assume that at least most of these plot lines have a purpose and a place they fit into the larger story than it is to assume that they’re all worthless and a waste of time.