#not when there's another choice

[forgetriestowrite]

ok ok ok it's 1 am and I should be in bed but listen. i need to talk about this

idk if this has been talked about before but you know how in HTTYD 2 Hiccup's mom is like "you have the heart of a chief and the soul of a dragon" and that's like The Theme of the whole series like bridges crossing and Hiccup and Toothless' bond and creating a peaceful world and Test Drive as a track etc etc

and I know that it's important for Hiccup to be that for, again, The Themes

but i feel like we're sleeping on Astrid.

this woman is fierce and protective. She throws the first punch so her loved ones won't get hurt. She is a warrior, a fighter. She literally mirrors the journey of the dragons in general in the first movie, where she is constantly ready and willing to attack her enemy until she is given absolute, irrevocable proof that they can be trusted. After that, she is ready to protect them and help them. She is loyal, strong, capable, a total badass. She is a shield and a sword for her family. She will do anything for them. She has the soul of a dragon too.

[stompandhollar]

reminding everyone that the in-universe problem with The Doctor and The Master isn’t “ooo horrible nasty enemies who hate each other and don’t get along and fight all the time but are also in love”

the problem is that they get along. the problem is that they can’t stop themselves from falling naturally into a rhythm of riffing off one another and enjoying the other’s company. THAT is the problem. the problem is that it works and that’s the thing that caused all their issues. they like one another. they just click.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Maybe we never had a chance.

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[itsmeimcathy]

faust (1858) by charles gounod | le fantôme de l'opèra (1910) by gaston leroux | wuthering heights (1939) by william wyler | la belle et la bête (1947) by jean cocteau | labyrinth (1986) by jim henson | van helsing (2004) by stephen sommers | the phantom of the opera (2004) by joel schumacher | crimson peak (2014) by guillermo del toro | consumed (2014) by david cronenberg | nosferatu (2024) by robert eggers

[slumbering-shadows]

Underrated bit in Psych is that sometimes for no discernable reason at all the weird old priest that gus is in love with shows up to rescue them from situations

[reunitedinterlude]

phil finally getting his midriff out <3

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.01 "I'm sorry. My dad wants me to go home now. For dinner."

[lokiusmybeloveds]

I love how with every behind the scenes clip and interview that comes out, it is increasingly clear that Jim and Lee showed up to set every day and made a series of incredibly unhinged decisions and everyone else just rolled with it

[atlas-and-the-time]

The greater grief

[shorthaltsjester]

me when the campaign with characters i’ve praised for being essentially pawns/npcs in the greater world is ending by underserving the main characters by [checks notes] highlighting the role those characters have played as quasi-npcs who are nonetheless still the narrators of their destinies within the limits of a world beyond their control

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[time-woods]

Doodle request: I found a hc that Scarab had wings that were removed for fucking up his job somehow and that's part of why he's Like That. What's your take on this hc?

i like to think that he got into a scuffle with some other cosmic entity in the past and in the fight his wing got torn, but cause of that he started wearing the suit exoskeleton thing he does now to prevent it from happening again

in my head hes got 2 exoskeletons- the suit is a false one thats tougher than his true one underneath

i feel like prior to that happening he used to wear more actual clothes but alas being an immortal creature doesnt mean you cant still get hurt

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Rage Form

[bixshits]

so rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead functions on the idea of these guys not having a choice right? and even if they choose to just sit down and not move anywhere they'll probably be moved to where they need to be regardless? and the only choices they have are how they choose to interpret their world, with rosencrantz needing to find and test the boundaries of it and cement their place in it and guildenstern trusting the narrative without question? and guildenstern refuses to allow either of them to decide who they are? and they are so interconnected with each other that they are simply inseparable and indistinguishable, even to themselves? and they cannot define themselves without the other and become lost when they lose each other? and their choice (or lack thereof) in identity (or lack thereof) is mutually decided (or determined) to be in their inherent love and trust and unity in and with each other? and you expect me to be normal about that?

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Fully prepared for this to be a minority position but I am deeply emotionally invested in Paul and Chani not getting back together in Dune Messiah. Not just because I love angst and tragedy (I do) but because I don't think there's a way to do it without undermining the narrative and character arcs that Dune Part Two executed so well.

Paul and Chani's relationship in the Villeneuve films exists on a totally different foundation from what's in the books. It's a political love story and you simply cannot separate out the politics from the romance. Their connection starts with the politics and the love is built on top of that.

It's not just that they happen to fall in love while fighting together in an anti-colonial guerrilla war; that is why she falls in love with him. Because he is willing to take the same risks as her in fighting for her people's liberation. Not by trying to impose himself as a leader (at first) but side by side with her as comrades and equals. Let me fight beside you. That's all I'm asking. He is quite literally willing to put his body on the line for a struggle that's been with her all her life, that she cannot escape, but that he could walk away from if he chose. And in fact he proves himself to be an asset and not a liability in this struggle and they start winning. And yeah that shit's romantic as fuck!! Kudos to whoever on the writing team was like actually direct action solidarity is sexy af because they were right and they should say it! There clearly is some attraction or at least interest in Paul on Chani's part from fairly early on, but it's only after he's proven his political worth, in battle, that she allows herself to trust him on a personal level enough to begin a romantic relationship with him. (And it's only after Paul takes off the Atreides ring, the symbol of the fact that he came there to rule over her, that the narrative permits him to advance to this point.) They could have been comrades but not lovers, but never the other way around, because there's no other version of Paul that this Chani would have fallen in love with.

It's important that they meet in circumstances where Paul has no structural power over her. Chani never would have trusted the Paul who stood in the colonial palace and pledged to "honor" Stilgar by offering him hospitality on his own fucking planet. Because she would have known, just as Stilgar did, that such an offer of fellowship, no matter how genuine and well-intentioned, is not made on equal terms. It's only once Paul has been forcibly separated from his colonial privilege that they have even a chance to approach each other as human beings. (And, in a sort of dark irony, that violence becomes a bridge that connects them. That Paul is driven not by abstract power games among the Great Houses but by real grief and anger over the violent death of people he loves at the hands of the Harkonnens must surely be something Chani understands. And it builds a level of trust and empathy between them, that she doesn't have to explain the stakes of what they're fighting for. He knows it in his bones.)

It's not a coincidence that all their explicitly romantic moments are shot through with politics. Their first kiss is wrapped up in a conversation about what it means to be Fremen and I would very much like to be equal to you. (Yes, he's flirting his ass off with that line, but I do think he is sincere.) Their single post-coital scene has I'm no messiah, I'm a fedaykin of Sietch Tabr--not just a commitment to her people and her home but to her specific form of political struggle in which he is joining her. Throughout their whole relationship, the personal and the political are so interwoven as to be indistinguishable from one another.

This kind of commingling of emotional commitment to a person with political commitment to a culture/people/cause could have very easily slid into something tokenizing or fetishistic, but the writing manages to avoid that by sticking very strongly to a couple of guardrails. One, Chani is not some passive prize to be won, but an active agent of her own liberation, whether Paul is in the picture or not. She is the Fremen liberation struggle within the political allegory of the film; she is its voice and embodiment from the moment we meet her. On a character level, she is doing her thing and it's up to Paul to either follow or get out of the way. Even though we know he is afraid of her dying, he never once suggests she leave the front lines of armed struggle (can you imagine?) because that struggle is such a fundamental part of who she is and what he loves about her.

Two--and this one is important for what comes next--the narrative never trivializes the political side of their relationship in favor of the romantic. The second Paul reaches for any kind of power over the Fremen, over Chani, the trust between them is broken and the romance cannot continue. She might still love him as a person--you don't just turn that off--but she cannot be in love with him as the Lisan al-Gaib, fulfillment of a false prophecy she hates; as the Duke of Arrakis, her colonial overlord; or as the Emperor of the Known Universe, overlord of her overlord. As soon as he pulls that shit he is just another colonizer and she's done with him.

And like, kudos to the narrative for being absolutely uncompromising on that point! That's what makes both the political allegory and the personal tragedy hit so hard! Paul, bro, you fucked that one up good and now you are Experiencing a Consequence! I LOVE that in the end, love isn't enough. All the love in the world isn't enough to keep Chani from walking out at the end of the film, because the foundation that love is built on is broken and cannot be repaired.

(I do believe that by the time he is declaring himself Emperor, Paul thinks he has no choice, that this is the only way to save the people he loves from any number of worse fates. But that, too, is a betrayal, of a kind I don't think Paul fully understands. Because either you think the Fremen are capable of governing their own planet or you don't. Deciding unilaterally that having a "friendly" imperialist in power is the best you can hope for is a profound denial of the agency of the people Paul claims to be doing this in the name of. It's either paternalism or despair, and neither are acceptable modes of thinking for a serious revolutionary. Chani would tell you as much.)

The thing with making a bold writing choice like that is that...you cannot then walk it back in the next film with Chani choosing to forgive Paul or coming around to seeing the world his way and understanding that yes it's politically unsavory and he's manipulating the people he said he was in solidarity with but this was the only way! If you do that then the whole framework of what the first two films are trying to say about power and imperialism and resistance and solidarity collapses into incoherence. On a thematic level Dune Messiah is all about the consequences of Paul taking power the way he did and these are the consequences.

And on a character level...I just don't see any way to come back from such a deep betrayal. Even if some part of Chani still loves him. Even if she's pregnant with his child(ren). (We have like, zero information about how movie Chani feels about family and pregnancy and childrearing that would indicate that she would care one bit about her children's biological father being involved in their lives when he is otherwise busy being a space dictator.)

There are several categories of scenarios I can think of to get Paul and Chani interacting again (she goes back to him as a spy/assassin; she's brought back to the palace under some sort of duress, "for her safety" or even as a political prisoner) but none of them involve them being genuinely together as a couple. I could also see them not interacting at all for most of Dune Messiah. What I cannot see is any scenario in which she genuinely forgives him or ever fucking trusts him again. That shit is over and there's no getting it back.

[imharnaannesta]

Today on 1am Star Wars thoughts, I have a gripe about the fandom’s gripes about Padme’s blue nightgowns.

Every time I see someone talking about them it feels like it’s always based on the assumption that we’re meant to believe that this is her normal sleepwear. That we’re meant to accept the premise of a woman sleeping with styled hair and a full face of makeup and a dress with strands of pearls on it as normal, everyday behavior.

But the thing is, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. (I mean, maybe George thinks like that but there’s a whole team of people behind every costume you see on screen and the director is not the only one with input)

Because the thing is we’ve seen other instances of Padme’s sleepwear.

Twice in Attack of the Clones we get glimpses of her sleepwear but the scene where we get the best look is at the lake house where she is wearing a pretty but fairly normal looking nightgown with a dark blue robe over it. By the time the blue nightgowns come in we’ve already seen her in normal sleepwear. So… what changes between then and when the blue nightgowns appear?

She gets married and her husband goes to war.

I don’t think we’re meant to assume that she’s just suddenly in the last couple years developed a taste for extremely uncomfortable sleepwear. I don’t think those nightgowns are really sleepwear. Padme may fall asleep in them but she’s not putting them on to sleep, she’s putting them on to spend a rare night with her husband who is back from deployment.

It’s “welcome home” lingerie.

It’s quite conservative, this is technically meant to be a family friendly movie and besides they’re dealing with the logistics of Padme’s pregnancy so baring her midriff or back probably weren’t really options and they’d pretty solidly established a language for Padme’s costuming that doesn’t involve cleavage. But I think from an adult perspective we’re supposed to recognize that the married couple who have conceived a child are having sex. And are meant to be able to add up the facts provided and recognize that a young couple spending long stretches of time apart are may be spending the time they have together engaging in activities that sometimes result in Padme falling asleep in sexy, uncomfortable nightwear rather than changing into something more comfortable.

Anyway, that’s my personal opinion/headcanon. Padme does have comfortable nightgowns, we’ve seen them, she’s breaking out the space lingerie because her husband has been away and she’s missed him and she wants to enjoy their alone time before they have kids and that time gets even more limited.