#so if there's any analysis of other characters with these songs go ham!!

[domithanasia]

ok. ok. i was at work for nine hours without a break today but this will fix me. mitski lyrics are in green, iwtv lines are in purple.

liquid smooth-kinda works as an antithesis to claudia’s existence. the whole song is mitski lamenting the fact that her youthful beauty will soon begin to wither. but claudia is stuck in her pubescent body forever, which i think is far more horrifying. “how i feel this river rushing through my veins/with nowhere else to go it circles ‘round” and “who am i supposed to love?” and “locked in the emotional storm of puberty,” this really reminds me of season one claudia, after charlie, when she’s beginning to realize there is no one on earth like her, and no one she can really share her love with. the desperation in the lyrics and claudia’s attempts to make her own companion are tonally similar.

wife-reminds me mostly of Louis, but there's a bit of Claudia there too. "for if I am not yours, what am I?" and "if there was no him, and there was no me, who would you be?" and also: "so let me go towards the morning star/with hope it won't disappear," and "I teased the sun that night in Jackson square" and "I walked out into the sun." it's unclear if "the morning star" refers to the sun but I think it's safe to say so. the more obvious comparison is claudia comparing Louis to a housewife. I feel like there are a lot of ways--through both language/dialogue and cinematic framing--that Louis is aligned as the wife/mother in their family dynamic. as well as Louis expressing he wanted a family and he felt that was something he was robbed of once he became lestat's companion. "i''m never gonna have a family of my own, am I? no sons, no daughters." if you analyze this song with the ldpdl lense, its Louis mourning his perceived dependence on his husband, as well as grieving his daughter(my light my Claudia my redemption) and wishing he could be with her, even if it means his own end. in terms of how this song relates more directly to claudia--there's a scene in S1 E6 where she wonders where she'd be if she had lived through the fire as a human. "maybe i'd have a handsome husband, some children of my own." she's understandably angry that Louis robbed her of human love, a human family, and then chose lestat over her again and again.

abbey-so Claudia coded it's insane. "I am hungry/I have been hungry/I was born hungry/what do I need?" and "you got some of your own I can have?" and "hungry? you just ate a man twice your size!" as well as "I was born waiting for that something/just one something," claudia's "just one something" being Madeleine, her immortal companion, the "one thing i get to choose for myself." this whole song is just. aughh. like an ode to claudia's desperate want for genuine, no-strings-attached, love and companionship, her want for freedom, her want for a light in the darkness. "there is a light, I feel it in me/but only, it seems, when the dark surrounds me" and "one dark thing after the next" and "even in between the happy times, there's something broken in me." ALSO!! "there is a dream and it sleeps in me" and "she could dream. thank you."

brand new city-specifically reminds me of the physical trauma Louis has been put through by others/puts himself through. "I think my brain is rotting in places" → "please, help me! I am weak! I wanna die!", "I think my heart is ready to die" → "but I loved Claudia with all my heart, and I loved lestat with a wounded one," "I think my body is falling in pieces" → "a few shattered vertebrae, a punctured lung...blind in one eye for five weeks," "I think my blood is passing me by" → "I gagged myself, tried to throw the blood back up." the one repeating line of the song; "honey, what'd you take, what'd you take? honey, look at me, tell me what you took, what'd you take?" and how, as an attempt to distract himself from his grief, he starts draining young men of their drug-filled blood after having sex with them, and armand just has to witness him doing this. "one hundred and twenty eight boys he's brought back here, consummated and drained."

eric-this is genuinely one of the most subtly disturbing songs i've listened to(I think because of the soundscape mitski creates in the background? you have all of these unsettling scraping sounds, what sounds like a door slamming shut, a belt being undone, etc), honestly pretty much all of the lyrics make me think of multiple of the dynamics we see and I feel like it would be too much if I listed all of them, but a few favorites are: "you like control, well I do too," as to how it relates to armand and louis' relationship. Louis being the more dominant one on the surface ("clothes off, face down in the coffin") but if you actually look under the surface armand clearly has more tangible power in the relationship. armand simultaneously indulges Louis by letting him believe through their sexual dynamic that he has a modicum of power over armand, while reminding Louis that he holds his and claudia's safety in his grasp. the lyrics "this view of you, of the top of your head/makes me forgive you/but how long, how long can we play this way?/ I'm tired, I'm tired of not loving you" bring to mind the brief sex scene between lestat and Louis we get in S1 E6, in which Louis is clearly dissociating, and refers to himself as "a vessel of acceptance, of tortured rationalization." "my heart wants to hold you/but I know the rules" → "you share a heart with him. you're alone with him for an hour and your hearts are beating in sync." "the white of your teeth/as you smile at my trembling shoulders," I think runs parallel to the more obvious examples of sexual violence which are referenced in the show, i.e., claudia with Bruce, and armand with marius.

bag of bones-tbqh, this song doesn't really remind me of any characters/dynamics in particular(which is the case with the last few of these songs). all i'll say is that this is kinda both danlou/devil's minion if it had actually happened in the seventies.

door-i'm not gonna lie, I almost always skip this song when it comes up--the lyrics are actually pretty compelling, it just doesn't sound that good to me. but! this song reminds me of two very specific scenes. the first verse, the scene in episode six(again), in which Louis is sitting on the park bench, watching Claudia walk away to the train station, considering suicide. "I looked out at the dark and wondered, how could I have lost it?" the second verse reminds me of the scene in season two where Louis makes his way to the cruising park in Paris and sees dreamstat. "then, one night at the park, I saw it...a hopeless violence/I named it love." → "kill me again. kill me again! show me the only way you know how to love."

pearl diver-this song is a favorite of mine, and reminds me of how, for Louis, actually being with lestat and admitting that he wanted lestat romantically and sexually was so difficult for him because of all of the shame intrinsic to his identity given the time period and his religious upbringing. "those creatures of your woken mind/don't fear them or their hunger" → "and as for the latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself" and lestat at the trial saying: "how did you not know it was your own voice? speaking your own...unspeakable desires."

real men-i honestly don't think there's any analysis of this song that wasn't already covered by @amvguy's ldpdl real men amv. just go watch it. please. it's so fucking good. (something that did pop into my mind is this lyric/dialogue parallel though: "so little boy say you want me" → "he looked like a boy masquerading as a man" vis a vis both armand and lestat being Louis' "little boys." sickening!)

if i try hard enough i can connect every song on mitski’s 2012 album lush to iwtv

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Winds of Destruction

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Here I am, dirty and faceless Waiting to heed your instruction On my own, invisible warrior I am a Wind of Destruction!

As many of you might now, I’m a huge fan of the Metal Gear series. What you probably don’t know is  that, despite the series having a penchant for squads of quirky bosses, I’m not really a huge fan of many of them. FOXHOUND? I mean I like Mantis and Ocelot. The Sons of Liberty? I guess Vamp is alright. B&B Corps? I barely remember any of them. I love the Cobra Unit, but that’s because all of them are batshit insane and weird. I’m not saying they’re bad boss fights or anything—far from it, they all offer fantastic boss fights—but as characters I’m not really big on many of these villains.

The Winds of Destruction, on the other hand? I fucking love these guys (and girl).

Metal Gear Rising is what happens when you turn the insane anime action of the main series up to 11, and so it should be no shock the squad of bosses is cranked up as well. Each and every one of these guys is nuttier than the last, and the whole lot of them are some of the most memorable and memetic characters in the franchise. Also Khamsin exists.

Motivation/Goals: So besides the obvious way they tie into the plot because they’re working for Armstrong, each of these villains has a theme song which pretty much details what makes them tick, what they’re about, and expands upon them once you get their health low enough during their boss battles.

Mistral’s theme, “A Stranger I Remain,” details how she has come to this land to sate her bloodlust, and how she truly feels most at home on the battlefield; Monsoon’s theme, “Stains of Time,” acts as a reinforcement of his nihilistic outlook; Sundowner’s theme, “Red Sun,” expounds on his nature as a card-carrying villain and how he revels in the violence and bloodshed he causes; Sam’s theme, “The Only Thing I Know for Real,” lays out his desire for a one-on-one duel with Raiden, his foil, to see who is truly worthy to stand up and continue fighting for their ideals; and Khamsin’s song, “The Hot Wind Blowing,” showcases his patriotic nature as well as just generally acting as a badass boast. Most of these songs  act more as thematic seasoning for the characters, adding on to what is already established in their cutscenes, but for some like Khamsin and to a lesser extent Mistral, it’s pretty much the extent of their development.

Performance: Every single one of these actors really brings their all to make these characters memorable.

Sundowner is the ham and cheese of the group, working alongside Armstrong to ensure that all the scenerey is well and truly chewed. And who better to bring on the ham than Crispin Freeman? Salli Saffioti is Mistral, and is it any shock she’s also played Black Widow before? And also Hilda from Fire Emblem, I guess? Then we have Monsoon, played by John “The Crypt Keeper” Kassir, who delivers everything with gusto as always. Phillip-Anthony Rodriguez makes Sam just as smarmy and charming as a rival should be, and Benito Martinez puts in his all to his brief role of Khamsin. Not a weak vocal performance here, I’d say.

Final Fate: Seeing as they are video game bosses, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Raiden slices each and every one of them into confetti. Special mention to the absolutely brutal death of Mistral, where she gets frozen in liquid nitrogen before you get to shatter her.

Best Scene: For most of them, they only get the one scene followed by their boss battle, with the exception of Sundowner and Sam. Mistral and Khamsin’s boss battles are obviously their finest hours, though Mistral’s takes the cake between the two seeing how explosive and exciting it is, living up to the promise of that first battle with Metal Gear RAY, while Khamsin’s is the finale of a DLC featuring the game’s ultimate jobber, Blade Wolf.

Monsoon has a lot more going for him, because before his boss fight he gives off one of the most amazing monologues ever put into a Metal Gear game, as he lectures Raiden on memes (“The DNA of the soul!”) and his nihilistic philosophy. Then you get to have a kickass boss fight where, if you do well enough, you will make this nihilistic bastard beg for his life as you hack him to pieces.

Best Quote: Monsoon has the honor of dropping the most iconic bit of dialogue in the entire game (outside of everything out of Armstrong’s mouth, of course):

"Free will is a myth. Religion is a joke. We are all pawns, controlled by something far greater: Memes. The DNA of the soul. They shape our will. They are the culture — they are everything — we pass on."

Sundowner, being the massive slab of ham that he is, is no slouch in the memetic lines himself. Two stand out, and that’s his battle cry of “I’M FUCKIN’ INVINCIBLE!” and his proclamation that he wants things to go back to the old ways of war, specifically “IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS AFTER 9/11!” This is hilarious because even with confirming that 9/11 happened in the Metal Gear universe, it still is probably only the second worst thing to happen to New York.

Sam doesn’t really have any great quotes that stand out, but this man is a master of reactions, from his shit-eating grin to his rousing applause. I figured I’d highlight that here.

Final Thoughts & Score: Let’s look at them from best to least best; I don’t think any of them are awful, though some are better than others obviously.

Monsoon

Outside of Armstrong and Sundowner, Monsoon is absolutely the best character in the game. I think part of it is because he so thoroughly represents everything the Metal Gear series is summed up in one character; he’s incredibly philosophical and legitimately fascinating while also being hilariously over-the-top and spouting off some of the most ridiculous and cheesy lines you will ever hear, all while being a bright red-and-black cyborg voiced by a guy famous for acting as the emcee of a horror show. Literally everything about him is the pure essence of the franchise, so even without Kojima’s direct involvement we still got a beautiful 10.5/10 character.

Sundowner

As far as the Winds of Destruction go, Sundowner is second only to Monsoon. He’s just over-the-top in ways I never could have even imagined for this series, and the only thing holding him back is he is almost immediately outdone by Armstrong two levels after you kill him. Still, this bloodthirsty butcher just revels so much in being a huge asshole and delivers all his lines with the Southern-fried charm that only an actor like Crispin Freeman could deliver, and you have a character I wish was around in the good old days after 9/11. He’s an easy 10/10.

Also he is literally just this image as a character, and that’s amazing:

Jetstream Sam

Sam is a really great character in the Cyborg Ninja tradition, easily following in the footsteps of characters like Gray Fox and Raiden himself. The sheer badassery of this man, a normal human whose only cyborg trait is a single arm and yet who is still capable of taking down a RAY by himself, cannot be overstated, and I think he gets a big boost from being playable. There’s an underlying tragedy to the character too, with how he’s something of a fallen hero whose sword was once a tool of justice but who became disillusioned due to his inability to make the world a better place all on his own  and losing to Armstrong in a fight. He’s easily the most complex character besides Armstrong, and his boss battle and theme song are both top notch. I really can’t justify anything less than a 10/10.

Mistral

As much as I love Mistral, it’s hard to deny she is really the epitome of a one-scene wonder. She does not get nearly as much characterization as her compatriots and is very vague and ambiguous even after the DLC… but that might be the point. Her image song is “A Stranger I Remain,” and though we know of her bloodthirsty nature from that song, Mistral still remains a mystery to us to the bitter end. But hey, it’s hard to deny that what we do see of her is pretty impressive (and I’m not just talking about her boobs, I promise). She’s not quite as good as her fellow Winds I’d say, but considering she’s a 9.5/10 that’s not really a knock against her.

Khamsin

Despite having one of the best songs in the game to his name, as well as an intriguing personality and motivations, Khamsin really is incredibly forgettable, to the point his comrades  don’t even bother to mention him in the main campaign. This is not something you should ever be saying about a dude who looks like Quaritch in his mech suit at the end of Avatar on steroids, and yet here we are. Of course, he’s certainly not awful by any means and he makes for a great boss fight, but he falls severely short of the main game’s enemies. Mistral managed to score as high as she did with only having one level to her, but Khamsin only manages a 5.5/10 with the same. Maybe it’s because he just feels so inconsequential… Eh, at least he looks cool.

[feralphoenix]

NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

whats UP hk fandom i am back with—“more picante takes?” WOW YES HOW DID YOU KNOW!!!

CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHTS PROGRAM: today we are discussing the hollow knight boss fight, and all that entails for all the characters involved. relatedly this post does not have anything nice to say about the pale king, so if you’re very protective of his character, you may want to skip it.

FURTHERMORE, i would like to iterate that this essay is working from a place of compassion for ghost, hollow, radiance, AND hornet, because every single one of them is miserable at this point in the game and doesn’t want the events of this boss fight to be happening at all. this post is not an appropriate place to dunk on ANY of them. if you want to do that, please do it elsewhere.

thanks for your understanding.

ALSO, AS USUAL: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of radiance and the moth tribe’s backstory is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

A while back @grimmradiance​ made a lovely essay about comparing and contrasting Hollow’s moveset in their Hollow Knight and Pure Vessel boss fights and using what can be gleaned from the differences to speculate about their psychology. (This essay is currently their pinned, but I’ll attach a link in a reblog.) It is extremely good, and it made me want to look at the Hollow Knight boss fight my own self through one of my own areas of expertise, meaning music!

As we are all well aware, Christopher Larkin's soundtrack to Hollow Knight rules ass. There are two specific ways in which it rules ass that are relevant to this essay: Leitmotif, and sound palette.

Quick rundown for folks who aren’t familiar with these terms: A leitmotif is a melody associated with a character or event or mood that's incorporated into songs in different ways based on what's happening in the story. Undertale is an example of a game with an incredibly strong use of leitmotif that’s really only possible because Toby Fox is both the composer and the game creator, so he can synchronize the subtleties of the writing with music and scene scripting too.

The phrase “sound palette” can have a lot of meanings, but in this case I’m using it to refer to specific instruments or groups of instruments that are associated with certain characters. If you’ve watched Steven Universe and seen interviews/production commentary by its composer team Aivi & Surasshu, you’ll hear them talking about part of their approach to scoring episodes being how each main character is represented by certain instruments: Steven with the triangle wave, Pearl with jazz piano, and so on.

Hollow Knight is a small team project rather than a one-person show, so Christopher Larkin can’t go quite AS over-the-top with leitmotif integration as Toby Fox can on simple virtue of Team Cherry having to communicate what they want to him. But Larkin is Hollow Knight's sound designer as well as its composer, so he folds leitmotif and character sound palette together with striking use of stems to create a very immersive and cinematic musical experience that enhances HK’s story and gameplay.

This brings us back to the track Sealed Vessel, which has EXTREMELY tight and cinematic sound design and uses leitmotif and sound palette to not just sock players in the feelings during a charged and dramatic boss fight, but also tell us a lot about what Hollow and Radiance are experiencing emotionally, especially with the gameplay in mind.

So, let’s play the soundtrack version of Sealed Vessel (and some other stuff) and talk about what’s going on in the game during it!

You may want to get out your copy of the OST or visit Christopher Larkin’s Bandcamp page so that you can listen along.

LEITMOTIF & SOUND PALETTE

Before we actually get into analyzing Sealed Vessel, let’s talk about the involved characters’ leitmotifs/sound palettes so we know what we’re listening for.

Both of these things are easiest to identify when characters have a distinct theme song. Ghost does not. However, the main theme of Hollow Knight (see: the title track, Hollow Knight) is used as a leitmotif for the vessels as a whole. Most pieces involved with a vessel character include this leitmotif somewhere. For instance, you can find this leitmotif and variations on it in Broken Vessel’s boss theme. The Vessel leitmotif is led by a cello solo here, so we can identify that the cello is the central part of Broken Vessel’s personal sound palette.

When the Vessel theme is associated with Ghost in specific, it tends to be performed by viola and/or piano, as it is on the title track and in other places like the opening cinematic.

Moving on to Hollow, their specific sound palette is established not in Sealed Vessel but in Pure Vessel, their pantheon boss theme. (Sealed Vessel was composed first, since the Godmaster DLC didn’t drop until over a year after HK’s initial release, meaning Pure Vessel was reverse-engineered/extrapolated from relevant parts of Sealed Vessel. But we’ll get into that later!)

The major instrumental fixtures in Pure Vessel are choir and tubular bells (i.e., those dramatic vertical fellas that sound like church bells or a carillon), with some soft background instrumentation: bass drum, woodwinds (appropriately led by flute in the main melody’s “falling motion” - flute is the centerpiece of TPK’s sound palette), strings, and high/mid brass. Hollow’s overall sound palette has a very Christian choir-esque sound (in the Pure Vessel theme this is very idealized and saintly: soft and slow and tragic) and the beginning of their leitmotif has a very distinctive climbing melody that mirrors their ascent from the Abyss. The Unbearable Vesselness Of Being leitmotif is absent from the Pure Vessel track.

Meanwhile, Radiance’s boss theme is a very fun expression of her character upon which Larkin evidently went ham. Her sound palette is expressed through full orchestra (plus choir and pipe organ) that has a special emphasis on the bass part of the brass section, which does not see much use in the HK soundtrack. Her leitmotif has also got cute and distinctive touches: It’s full of triplets to match her tiara-looking antennae, and also has a repeated “fluttery” pattern of background sixteenth notes as countermelody, often spiraling downwards.

The majority of the piece is loud and bombastic and in a minor key to play up the “resplendent and terrible” wrathful aspect of herself Radi is pushing during this section of gameplay, a very quintessentially moth intimidation tactic: Try to look as scary as possible to keep your enemies from messing with you, since you’re not built for fighting. These blasts of intensity from the brass section match Radiance’s strategy of Overwhelm You With Bullet Hell Spam To Make Up For Lack Of Battle Experience/Poor Aim. But in between said intensity spikes you can hear traces of softer instrumentation and major key, little glimpses of a gentle warmth we can otherwise only infer from her backstory and the implications of Moth Tribe lore.

0:00 - 0:41 - OPENING AMBIANCE

The Sealed Vessel track begins with the ambiance of the Black Egg Temple’s interior: The faint tones of the glowing seals we hear when we pass by them, the only light in a pitch-black world besides the floor lighting up under Ghost’s feet.

Then a slow string tremolo fades in, slowly growing louder. In the track new notes join the tremolo progressively, while in-game a violin joins the anticipatory chord every time you snap one of Hollow’s chains. Which, may I say: A+++++++ sound design!!!!!! Rules ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tremolo reaches a peak in dynamics - all three characters present are extremely tense - and then cuts off to allow for Hollow’s boss battle opening, i.e. Radiance screaming. Team Cherry kindly demarcates each phase of the battle with a Radi yell.

0:43 - 1:39 - PHASE 1: HOLLOW ON AUTOPILOT

Phase 1 opens immediately with Hollow’s leitmotif in bells, but with brass, piano, and percussion backing them up; grand and tragic. In the background the bass section of the orchestra's strings flutter in a repetitive pattern of 16th notes, i.e. Panicky Radi Noises. The violins harmonize with Hollow's leitmotif as it climbs, but then join the rest of the string section in fluttering 16th notes, transmuting what in Pure Vessel is the flute leading Hollow back down (8th notes) to a slightly louder “a” from the backseat.

In actual gameplay, the only attacks Hollow uses are their basic nail skills. Building on grimmradiance’s analysis of the window their attacks provide to their psychology, and pairing that with the Pure Vessel leitmotif booming over the metaphorical loudspeakers, we can tell that this is Hollow reacting automatically to a threat the way that their father trained them to. Their conscious mind might still be making dialup noises at Ghost’s sudden reappearance jumpscaring them with murky childhood guilt and trauma, but that’s only let muscle memory take over. Slash, parry, charge and thrust. Their time spent at bee bootcamp (which we can assume because Hornet was trained at the Hive and Hollow’s form while nail fighting is identical to hers on their shared moves) has served them well.

Radiance, meanwhile, has frozen completely for this combat phase, and contributes nothing here except the anxiety of the string section.

As the strings continue to go “a” the piano (Ghost) and woodwinds harmonize on something between Hollow’s personal leitmotif and the Vessel leitmotif in the backdrop.

However at around 1:29ish, the key changes, building into an overall color change for the Sealed Vessel piece.

1:39 - 2:15 - PHASE 2: SHE’S AS SCARED OF YOU AS YOU ARE OF HER

In actual gameplay, the part of Sealed Vessel used for phases 1 and 2 of the Hollow Knight fight is the Entirety of 0:43 - 2:15, possibly because there’s no easy transition spot like there is between phase 2 and phase 3. But the changes to Hollow’s moveset are clearly tied to this specific part of the piece.

Phase 2 is where Radiance pushes herself past her freeze response and starts trying to hit Ghost. Hollow gains two attacks here, which we can tell are Radi because they’re often accompanied by her crying (a softer and more abbreviated sound than her full scream): These two attacks are the Infection blob blast and the Light/Void pillar attack that hits for a full 2 masks damage (which appear to be Radi’s take on Hollow’s Pure Vessel-exclusive moves, their grabby tentacles & silver knife pillars respectively).

In the Sealed Vessel track, this part of the piece is almost entirely Radiance’s fluttering. The strings start by following the descending motion of Hollow’s leitmotif but in 16th notes, then ratchet up to start spiraling down again while straying further from Hollow’s leitmotif. This section ends in a back and forth between hard blasts in a one-two-(rest)-one-two-three pattern and gasps of fluttering between, with piano and low brass building behind it. Eventually the nervous fluttering of the strings becomes less frequent between the blasts: Radiance is inexperienced with fighting and very very afraid, but she’s also FUCKING PISSED and prepared to defend herself.

The OST version of the piece punctuates the break between the first half of the piece and the second with Radiance’s scream.

2:16 - 4:04 - PHASE 3: “I’M HELPING! :)” SAID HOLLOW; “HOLY SHIT PLEASE DON’T,” SAID LITERALLY EVERYONE

Phase 3 opens with Hollow stabbing themself repeatedly, a movement pattern they repeat throughout the phase. It is shocking the first time you see it, and never stops being horrible and sad no matter how many times you do this part of the fight.

Here, Hollow’s mind has finally come back online after their own freeze response, and they choose to destroy themself and bequeath the duty of sealing Radiance to Ghost. Even if they can’t be the one to make their father proud, they can still make sure their directive gets carried out.

Radiance knows exactly what they’re up to and why, and she reacts to this by completely losing her head and mashing buttons in a panic. This is something we see out of her at the ends of her boss fights too, where she’s feeling too threatened and afraid to do anything but spam optic blasts. In the Hollow Knight boss fight this manifests in two horrifying-looking but easy-to-avoid new attacks: The Infection blob sprinkler and the ragdoll.

Ghost does not react visibly because we're in gameplay, but their horror and grief at their sibling’s choice is echoed in the BGM. The Sealed Vessel piece goes soft and sad, with Ghost’s associated viola leading the bass strings in the Unbearable Vesselness of Being leitmotif. At 2:51 the violin comes in with Hollow’s leitmotif, and gradually the choir appears in the backdrop. The ensemble’s overall dynamics build in a slow crescendo, and at the very end of this segment the other instruments begin to join in.

This segment of the piece is also used in phase 4, which occurs if you don't have Hornet’s help or miss your cue to Dream Nail Hollow. Phase 3 ends when Hollow reaches 0 HP; in phase 4 they are for all purposes already dead. But Radiance manifests an extra 250 HP out of terrified, unadulterated FUCK YOU FUCK THIS!!! even though all she can do is get Hollow to fall on their face trying to slash and ragdoll them around. The BGM continues to play as Ghost absorbs Radiance from Hollow and Hollow’s body loses its shape and dissolves into liquid Void.

And there’s one other place in gameplay Sealed Vessel (Unbearable Vesselness of Being) is used: The Path of Pain, the completely evil kaizo-level obstacle course which presumably featured in Hollow’s childhood training, and behind which the Pale King has hidden his last and most terrible secret—that he had realized on some level that Hollow was a kid with feelings who loved him and wanted to make him proud, and condemned them to death despite it all by using them to imprison and torture Radiance as he’d always planned.

The OST version of Sealed Vessel includes the music for both normal ending cinematics, so we’ll be looking at them too.

4:05 - 4:35: ENDINGS 1/2: NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS

In the BGM for The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings endings, the Vessel leitmotif is played by violin, viola, and choir while the cellos and contrabasses—and then the brass bass section too—play a slower version of Radiance’s downward spiral. But once Ghost is pierced by the Black Egg’s chains and Radiance’s struggle to free herself ends in failure, the soprano and bass sections harmonize. The animation zooms out of the temple and the seal reforms. They are stuck together now until the end of Ghost’s life. Hooray.

The OST version of the track immediately segues into the BGM for Dream No More.

4:36 - 5:45: ENDING 3: THANKS, I HATE IT

Here, Hornet’s associated instrument, the violin, plays one long sustained note with a few notes of Ghost’s piano alongside as she wakes up.

TPK’s goddamn flute comes in at 5:00 with his leitmotif overpowering the backdrop Vessel leitmotif on piano while Hornet surveys the carnage: The temple has been destroyed, Radiance is dead, and what’s left of Ghost’s corpse is smeared across the floor. The Void may have taken umbrage with his horseshit and unceremoniously vored him, but the motherfucker still got what he wanted in the end; the Pale King has ended the Infection by completing his genocide of the moths, using the children he abused and abandoned as his proxies, and wasting two of their lives. Can I get a hearty THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the chat.

Given that Hornet herself is canonically unsure if bringing the fight to Radiance is really a just course of action, one can only imagine how she must feel when she sees the cost of that decision.

Our only real moment of catharsis is in this shit situation comes in at 5:13, where the flute gives way to a solo from Ghost’s associated viola, playing the Vessel leitmotif as the Siblings curl up and sink back into the mountain of their corpses. Goodnight, kiddos. You deserved better, and so did literally everyone involved in this whole stupid boss fight.

This is where the OST version of Sealed Vessel ends. Even without the gameplay and story context it slaps, but now that we’ve taken a look at how this 5:45 piece is wall to wall misery and fear on the part of literally every involved character, hopefully it will have even more impact!

[ducktracy]

187. daffy duck & egghead (1938)

release date: january 1st, 1938

series: merrie melodies

director: tex avery

starring: mel blanc (daffy, turtle, duck), danny webb (egghead)

starting off the new year with a bang—the first cartoon of 1938 is one of my favorites! two tex avery creations, daffy and egghead, make their second appearances paired together.

both characters have gotten a makeover, though egghead’s is more drastic: he now has hair and talks in a dopey drawl courtesy of danny webb. daffy, on the other hand, now has blue irises and a matching ring around his neck—this design would be exclusive to this short only. but, it IS the first cartoon to pen him as daffy duck! he’d appear in a number of looney tunes shorts with porky as the year would go on.

like so many other “hunter vs prey” shorts, egghead is determined to hunt daffy. daffy, however, is prepared to do everything in his power to make egghead miserable.

ben hardaway, who would have been directing his own cartoons at the time of this cartoon’s release, is the writer, and it shows throughout. ben is notable for his more hayseed sense of humor, relying on puns so corny you’ll be flossing your teeth for a week to remove the kernels. his punny touch is noticeable right at the start, with daffy and egghead bursting out of literal nutshells in an odd little introductory sequence. irv spence does some nice animation here: daffy shakes his fists in the glory, soon to be interrupted by the fire of egghead’s gun. egghead chases after a HOOHOOing daffy, the smoke from the gun spelling out to the audience “DUCK SEASON STARTS TODAY”.

the scene is odd, but more so out of uniqueness rather than perplexity. one wonders how tex really would have prefaced the cartoon if he were paired with another writer instead.

in a tradition that would carry out into tex’s MGM days, one of our first impressions of the short is a facetious disclaimer:

a sense of tranquility is established through a soft, sweeping rendition of “morning song” from the william tell overture. various gorgeously painted backgrounds fade into each other to convey the passage of time and rise of the sun, each background absolutely stunning in its own right. in a tex avery cartoon, such peace and harmony can only mean one thing: chaos is soon to follow.

our eponymous hunter creeps onto the screen, remarking aloud on the eerie stillness of his surroundings. “i wonder if there are any more hunters out here this morning.” right on cue, a swarm of hunters pop out of the reeds, reciting a popular catchphrase from the ken murray show reused in many a ‘30s WB cartoon: “whoooooooooa, yeaaaaah!”

the sound of quacks ring out from the recesses of the reeds, turning egghead on the alert. just as he prepares to hunt his prey, a signature avery gag of epic proportions interrupts the scene... literally. 

tedd pierce’s silhouette darkens the screen as he makes his way to his movie seat--a latecomer. egghead spots him and urges him to sit down and not scare away his prey. the latecomer does so, only to rise up again and change seats. our frustrated sportsman urges the silhouette to sit down again, which he does so. the silhouette never utters a word, and that’s the best part. the matter of fact delivery of the gag, the control of it all is what makes the gag so funny. such even temperament from the silhouette juxtaposes starkly with the wild nature of avery cartoons. the normal is now the ridiculous. 

when the silhouette snoops around for a better seat once more, egghead loses all patience and fires his gun straight at the silhouette. tedd pierce’s theatrics are hilarious--he twirls around, clutching his heart, hamming up his injury to the last drop. the anticipatory drum-roll as egghead looks on brings the entire act together. finally, pierce collapses, much to the contentment of egghead. he merely rubs the dust off his hands in a job well done and continues where he left off.

cartoon characters shooting audience members isn’t an alien move in warner bros. cartoons (bugs in rhapsody rabbit, daffy in the ducksters), yet the inclusion of the silhouette and its subsequent dramatics brings a new level of inclusion with the audience. imagine what an uproar this would get in a packed house! it’s a great way to break the barrier between cartoon characters and the audience. WB did a great job of making the audience feel included. hell, a majority of daffy’s character throughout the ‘40s hinges on this! but that’s an analysis for another time.

speaking of daffy, he’s the perpetrator of those quacking sounds in the reeds. egghead parts the plants to see if his prey is still there. he is—daffy gives him a viscious bite on egghead’s bulbous nose before going back into hiding.

“that duck’s craaaa-zy!” daffy pops his head out of the reeds again, shrieking a reply of “you tellin’ me? WOO WOO WOOHOO!”

daffy’s voice is significantly more shrill than his dopey guffaws in porky’s duck hunt. in fact, it’s so shrill that this could easily be considered one of his most annoying cartoons. though his 100% screwy, totally out of his mind personality isn’t my favorite personality for him, it’s still pretty damn great! so if you like obnoxious daffy (like me), this is a short for you. if you can’t stand him being a lunatic, stay away!

with that, daffy takes an exit, whooping and shrieking all the way in a direct throwback to his ecstatic exit in porky’s duck hunt. this is a game-changer for the merrie melodies series—the screwy, lunatic antics were typically reserved for the black and white looney tunes shorts. and here we have daffy, splitting the ears of his patrons and being a royal nuisance in the more expensive, esteemed merrie melodies, typically reserved for song and dance numbers! this ain’t your mother’s merry melody.

when daffy takes refuge within a cluster of reeds positioned in the middle of the lake, egghead uses this as an opportunity to lure out his prey with a decoy. specifically, ONE LOVE-LURE DUCK DECOY.

egghead sends the obnoxiously feminine duck decoy out into the water, quacking in time to the beat of stalling’s “the lady in red” underscore. the decoy disappears into the reeds, and there’s a pause.

a flurry of aggravated, warbled quacking cues us in that daffy is pissed off. the action is all hidden behind the plants, leaving details of their altercation is up to the audience’s interpretation. what we do see is daffy’s physical anger: he pops out of the water at the bank of the lake, throwing the decoy down at egghead’s feet. a makeshift sign cleverly held up by a cattail echoes a beloved catchphrase from the radio show fibber mcgee and molly:

bubbles rippling on the surface indicate daffy’s presence. he pokes his head out to heave a teasing quack at the befuddled hunter before dipping back down again, prompting egghead to stick his rifle in the lake. cue a tried and true gag that was likely much funnier then than now: the ol’ tie-the-gun-into-a-bow trick. 

the next gag is one that tex avery would refurbish in his MGM debut, the early bird dood it!: egghead physically lifts the lake up like a blanket, where daffy appears just in time to give his nose another honk for good measure. cue crazed laughter and intricate water aerobics. daffy halts, addressing the audience directly with a flimsy reassurance: “i’m not crazy, i just don’t give a darn!”

irv spence takes the next showdown between hunter and duck. look at how much more appealing egghead is in his hands! egghead leans down to retrieve his gun he tosses aside, when daffy zooms into frame and fights him for it. daffy’s consistent smile as he and egghead battle for dominance, both trying to reach higher and higher on the gun, is hysterical—he’s absolutely getting a kick out of egghead’s frustration. though it was clear he was reveling in porky’s own anger in porky’s duck hunt, here his enjoyment is much more blatant. he loves being a pest.

daffy slides the rifle beneath his legs and out of sight, bopping egghead on the fist and causing him to slug a haymaker against his own head. signature irv spence grawlixes add a nice level of two dimensional graphic design, like something straight from a comic.

out of nowhere, a random turtle disrupts the altercation. the turtle is a parody of parkykarkus from the chase & sanborn hour, speaking in a thick accent and slightly butchered grammar. he opts to settle daffy and egghead’s fight once and for all, posing as a referee. “just a minute, chums. just a minute!” he supplies the two with pistols, both fitted for their respective sizes. to daffy, “turn around.” to egghead: “now you turn around.”

i love how daffy’s curiosity with the turtle’s interruption is noticeable. so noticeable, in fact, that the turtle grows hostile, getting up in his face and shouting “KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES BUSINESS, AIN’T IT!” it’s rare to see daffy lacking control of the situation, even this early on. 

the two put their backs together per the turtle’s command, walking ten paces backwards in time to the turtle’s countdown. just as the turtle reaches ten, daffy jumps behind egghead, who fires. a potentially gruesome conclusion is avoided as the bullet hits the turtle’s chest instead, causing his head to rocket upward, hit a branch, and shrink back into his shell. in a hardawayian touch, daffy hands egghead a cigar, walking off screen, satisfied.

random as the scene is (hardaway’s influence seems to be particularly strong throughout this whole middle section), irv spence’s timing and appealing animation makes up for it. the switch to another animator entails an inevitable downgrade in draftsmanship.

after egghead realizes he’s been duped, he retrieves his rifle and prepares to shoot daffy. though initially startled, daffy thinks on his feet, and eagerly places an apple on his head for egghead to aim at instead. stalling’s fitting accompaniment of “william tell overture” raises in key each time egghead fires (and subsequently misses), a pattern that sounds almost identical to scott bradley’s scores under the direction of tex at MGM. 

egghead shoots a tree, the lake, a barn, and even straight past daffy, who grows increasingly irritated at the hunter’s incompetence, moving closer to him with each effort. hardaway’s influence is strong with the next gag, matched with tex’s fast pace to prevent it from overstaying its welcome: daffy thrusts pencils, sunglasses, and a sign that says BLIND on it before turning to the audience and tssking. “too bad. too bad!” harsh indeed. i imagine this gag would have been prolonged had hardaway directed this cartoon or wrote it under another director.

if anything, this cartoon certainly displays the importance of the relationship between director and writer. writers have a much bigger influence on the cartoon than one might believe! there’s a reason as to why chuck jones and mike maltese are touted around as a dynamic duo. i wouldn’t call hardaway a bad writer by any means, but his influence is certainly potent. tex is a strong director, and thankfully he could cushion the blows of hardaway’s corniness as much as he could, but it’s also evident that certain decisions were made that tex wouldn’t have made in other circumstances.

decisions such as daffy singing an entire ode to his lunacy as the cartoon’s song number. this is definitely a hardawayian insert--a prototype, hayseed, screwball bugs bunny sings his own nutty anthem in hardaway’s hare-um scare-um just a year later. full song numbers have been making their way out the door in avery’s cartoons, and by either this year or next they’d be absent in total from the merrie melodies series. it’s unlike avery to write a whole song about characters explaining their nuttiness.

that is why i have qualms with the scene. at his zenith, daffy never attempts to explain or justify his screwiness. even in the mid-’40s, when he’s able to think and speak coherently and isn’t a mere caricature of his name, he showed no self awareness for his condition. the “look at me, ain’t i a crazy one?” jokes with him were out the door by 1939. half the fun with him is how unaware he is of his daffiness--he lives in it constantly, always zipping from emotional extremes, but never stops to tell the audience just how crazy and fun he is. here, his self-awareness seems ingenuine and prideful. daffy is my favorite character for his humanity and relatability (even--if not more so--when he’s a total loon). here, he lacks that dynamism. he’s merely a stock reflection of his namesake.

with that said, daffy’s rendition of “the merry go round broke down” is my favorite merrie melody song number, period. i’m certainly biased due to my undying affinity with daffy, but irv spence’s animation is genuinely fun to watch, and mel blanc does a wonderful performance. i know all of the words by heart! essentially, daffy’s justification for his daffiness is because the dizzy pace of the merry go round went to his head and made him nuts. while this sense of bragging is relatively out of character for him, it makes for a contagiously fun song, and also, this is his second film ever. they still had much to explore. 

the scene concludes with daffy shaking hands with his reflection in the water and diving back in. fade out and in to egghead, still furiously attempting to pursue his prey. cue a fun little avery gag where our hunter nonchalantly opens the reeds he’s hiding behind like a pair of blinds. daffy’s carefree quacking and swimming in the lake almost seems to mock him. in a gag that would be reused in avery’s lucky ducky over at MGM to a greater extent, daffy puts on a mask to scare away the oncoming bullets. indeed, the bullets retreat into egghead’s gun, prompting befuddled stares at both the gun and the audience.

daffy engages in another round of spastic water aerobics, HOOHOOing all the way. he only pauses to cling to a cattail, echoing an averyian daffy catchphrase that he would also shriek in daffy duck in hollywood, “ain’t i some cutie? ahah! i think i’ll do it again! HAHAHA!”

a nice, jazzy score of “bob white (whatcha gonna swing tonight?)” accompanies yet another endeavor by egghead. he’s either stupidly bold or boldly stupid to keep up such a tiring charade--or both! egghead loads a pair of gloves tied to a string into the barrel of the rifle, cleverly using a cattail as a bore brush. and, despite the absurdity of his makeshift fishing pole, it works: one gloved hand grabs daffy by the neck, the other konking him on the head and knocking him unconscious. egghead reels in his prize, dumping daffy into a net and letting out a handful of gleeful “WHOOPEE!”s.

avery’s timing is succinct--immediately after egghead snags his duck, the sound of a siren drowns out his celebration. a duck nearly identical to daffy approaches the scene in an “asylum ambulance”. “gee, t’anks a lot for catchin’ dis goof!” duck confiscates his fellow duck comrade. the decision to turn the conversation confidential, complete with the lowering of the voice and shifty-eyed glances is great. “y’know, we been after dis guy for months!”

despite everything that egghead has endured, he seems genuinely shocked at the duck’s claim that daffy is “100% nuts”. “oh YEAH?” he echoes, daring to believe it. duck nods. “yeeeeah!” with that, he gives egghead a honk right on the nose.

daffy, completely unscathed, wastes little time in joining the festivities as both ducks beat the tar out of egghead from both ends, literally kicking him in the arse and honking him on the nose. both ducks head to the lake, HOOHOOing in shrill unison as they bound off into the horizon. egghead only has one more option... to join them. thus, we iris out on our brave hunter HOOHOOing into the horizon himself.

as i said at the beginning of this review, this cartoon is one of my favorites--for this era, anyway. despite its imperfections, it’s still a rather fun and rousing cartoon. it’s exciting to see daffy becoming more recognizable, in terms of voice,  demeanor, and appearance. the same can be said for egghead as well, though i doubt anyone has the same attachment to him as they do other characters. i certainly don’t.

admittedly, porky’s duck hunt is a more solid cartoon. this cartoon feels much more like a string of gags than anything, though i suppose that could be said for many a tex avery cartoon. he wasn’t known for his moving stories. hardaway’s corny, hayseed sense of humor serves as the biggest detriment to the cartoon, but luckily tex is a strong enough director to try and work around those weaknesses as best he could. and even though i disagree with the reasoning behind the song number, the song number will always be my favorite merry melody song. 

i didn’t mention the backgrounds very often, but they’re STELLAR. the colorful, whimsical palette brings a lot of energy and vitality to the table. if you were to describe the cartoon in one word, “energetic” would certainly be it.

so, with that said, go watch it! this is a really fun cartoon that serves as an interesting look into early daffy’s character, obnoxious as he may be.

link!

[shyung-shoes]

hello jill! i have returned after watching dancer ggu!

1) ggu’s execution of that pose before the kick is gorgeous. i really want to say more about move but i kept getting distracted bc ggu is kinda devastatingly handsome in that stage. but i agree that move is great

2) thank you for mentioning runaway ggu bc this made me remember how much i love runaway?--not that I forgot but this reminded me specifically why i love it. but specifically on ggu, it’s interesting because you mentioned grounded movements bc i noticed that he’s lighter on his feet than i would have expected. but it’s weird because at the same time I feel like his steps must be ordained by fate. boy groups will use fast or complex footwork so I’ve seen boys occasionally stutter step or side step into the correct formation spot. I feel like I haven’t seen someone move with the assurance that ggu does. He sticks the landing every single the time. At some point he’s probably been a little off but he commits to every step so completely it looks convincing to me. So it’s a fascinating contrast between him being light on his feet but also completely steady in his steps.

3) ggu really gets to show off his light feet in shintoburi because it’s quite a bouncy choreo. his angles are great it makes the chorus choreo very legible. my favorite part of ggu’s performance is when jinho sings fire and he gets to go a little wild.

4) for the other songs i would watch a multiple videos to see what you said but i watched one fancam for do or not and i realized i really didn’t need to watch anything else to confirm! pentagon are really theatre kids huh. he has such a great performance face! he doesn't drop his performance face even when he’s not the focus. when people talk about great idol expressions it’s usually for really big dramatic expressions but i think ggu has great subtle expressions. he does ham it up more for do or not (as it calls for) but, i noticed his more subtle expressions in shintoburi

5) ggu’s cosmo solo moment is nice! cosmo has some great contrast between fluid and sharp movement too. i esp love that melt he does at the start of wooseok’s rap and his spin in the last prechorus. and he really delivers in the last thirty seconds of the choreo

love rain ggu is so 😍😭😍 i’m ready to watch the musical staring love rain ggu

also... watching all these videos brought me to some concert fancams. i will just say, yeo changgu do you really need to do that much??

-dance anon

ahh dance anon i adore you so

1) ggu is devestatingly handsome there, i understand. like i wanna use my Critical Dance Analysis Brain but... ggu prettyyy....

2) i went back and rewatched runaway and you’re right!! ggu is so light on his feet! i think i may have said grounded where i meant purposeful (but i truthfully cannot remember what i originally wrote). he’s SO confident in his movement and that’s what covers up any little mistake. i remember being a baby dancer and getting ready for my first competition and my teacher told me “if you believe you’re right, even if you’re wrong, the audience will probably not know any different”

3) yes!! the angles!! the chorus choreo could be SUCH a mess but ggu nails it :// oh i agree!! that’s such a good moment. my favorite part i think has to be during wooseok’s verse

4) pentagon are a bunch of theater kids its true :/ i agree!!! ggu’s really great at keeping a consistent character and adjusting it to the whatever he’s performing

5) the! contrast! god it’s what i live for. those moments of “ba ba whoosh” (my favorite dancer vocalization to use while teaching) are really what it’s all about. cosmo ggu does deliver. delivers right to my doorstep with the speed of amazon prime (no idea if that makes sense outside of my own head)

love rain ggu.... the main character of my heart! truly! and i simply think changgu does have to do that much. he is doing it for the people!

[aruviwrote]

[MIRROR] Titillation and perversion: the cis lens of Super Deluxe

Posting a mirror of this: original at http://theworldofapu.com/super-deluxe-critical-analysis/

Super Deluxe (2019), directed by Thiagarajan Kumararaja, has been a polarizing film in my queer circle. To those convinced of its brilliance, it is nothing short of a cinematic revolution. However, to the rest of us, it is difficult even to describe how depraved the moral center of the movie is, surrounded as it is by an aura of big names lauding it as years ahead of its time. This becomes an especially difficult matter when the narrative of the film is praised for being trans-inclusive. Many see it as Tamil cinema’s big favour to transgender folks, which makes it that much harder to argue that the film is transphobic to its core.

Structured as a set of four seemingly disconnected storylines, which eventually converge in unexpected ways, Super Deluxe is a potpourri of things that sound like Really Cool Movie Ideas—shower thought after shower thought thrown at you, plot devices that may well have come from that one college friend obsessed with Quentin Tarantino. The cult success of Aaranya Kaandam (Kumararaja’s previous and first film) led to a breathless build-up around Super Deluxe, and that resulted in a movie so convinced of its own hype, that it never stopped to consider the fact that these Cool Movie Ideas may not fit coherently. The movie is always smugly convinced of its own brilliance, all the way from the titillating title sequence to the ending that featured a bizarre exposition (aliens give you cash! morality is relative!), revealing the film’s sheer contempt for the viewer’s intelligence. Leaving aside the gratuitous violence and the rampant transphobia, Super Deluxe is a drab movie at best.

To begin with, Super Deluxe is not kind to its cis women. It opens with Samantha playing an archetype of a modern woman that has plagued Kollywood since time immemorial. Her character, Vaembu, speaks about sex in a way that is reminiscent of a schoolboy’s fantasy, calling herself an ‘item’ by way of introduction. We see a neat correlation being drawn, between the sexual openness of the character and the trouble she is in. Later on in the movie, a weak attempt is made to subvert this portrayal, along the predictable lines of the How Many Partners Have You Had conversation. By that point, the plot seems to have lost any semblance of life. The less said about Leela, the better—Ramya Krishnan makes a brave attempt to authentically portray one of the most ham-fisted stereotypes of Sex Worker with a Heart of Gold I have seen yet from Mysskin (one of four writers credited on this movie).

However, the violence that registers most is the one that comes disguised as empowerment. The character of Shilpa, a trans woman, is played by actor and cis man Vijay Sethupathi. Shilpa’s story is the detailed recounting of every single way in which trans women can be humiliated. My favourite critical review of the filmmaking on display here comes from the blog The Seventh Art, where Srikanth Srinivasan notes that the camera and the soundtrack share the point of view of the aggressor time and again. We rarely see Shilpa’s plot from her own perspective; it is always the perspective of a condescending observer or a crying wife. One such instance of this voyeuristic framing and subsequent othering is the scene where Shilpa is shown draping a saree. She dresses herself in front of a mirror while her wife stands and watches, sobbing. The soundtrack is giggling out Maasi Maasam Aalana Ponnu, a song from the 1991 film Dharmadurai, mockingly dissonant from the context. The camera zooms into Shilpa smoothening her wig, and she has the slightest moment of genuine euphoria that she looks good for her walk. The camera, of course, makes fun of this vulnerability all along—titillating noises from the sex song still running, it switches over to the sobbing wife who says, “I don’t know what’s harder, having lived so long without a husband or having to live with a husband like this.” This is the point of view the camera wants you, the viewer, to have. It wants you to watch while ‘something like this’ gets humiliated. This is supposed to be the progressive portrayal of a trans woman in this movie, obsessed with her appearance, indifferent to her wife’s pain; a balding sex trafficker who dresses up while her wife watches.

Srikanth goes on to observe: “In the scene at the police station, the only point of view the audience is allowed to recognize is the sleazy cop’s. The cop, of course, is a caricature and the audience is made to feel morally superior to him, while not having anything to do with Shilpa beyond dispensing sympathy for her subhuman status. By making Shilpa the passive object of contempt, the film forestalls even the possibility of the audience’s identification with Shilpa that the casting of Vijay Sethupathi might have offered. There’s a special violence in the fact that the transference of identity that the film demands from its trans viewers for its other characters is not matched with a demand from its cis viewers towards Shilpa.”

It deserves to be said that it is profoundly unethical and transphobic to cast cisgender men to play trans women. Jen Richards put it across wonderfully in the Netflix documentary Disclosure (2020):

“Having cis men play trans women, in my mind, is a direct link to the violence against trans women. And in my mind, part of the reason that men end up killing trans women out of fear that other men will think that they’re gay for having been with trans women, is that the friends, the men whose judgement they fear of, only know trans women from media. And the people who are playing trans women are the men that they know. This doesn’t happen when a trans woman plays a trans woman.”

All the subplots share one thing in common: the setup is fantastically contrived with no aspersions to realism or believability, with the exception of sexual violence, which is gratuitous, uncomfortably real, and never-ending. Don’t get me wrong—I think there can be artistic value in making a viewer squirm in their seat, discomfited by sexual violence, especially if you’ve been a victim of it. However, to do so with no narrative significance and to follow it up by saying “Everything is Meaningless” is the kind of depravity that I could not stomach, in a movie that everyone seems to love. Ostensibly, there seems to be an uplifting and empowering message that is arrived at, but not through any meaningful transformation, or moral discourse, or even the triumph of good over evil. This is the thematic methodology of the movie: it first completely reinforces harmful stereotypes for the entirety of the plot, in excruciating detail, and then says, “I was just joking, a flyaway TV knocks out the sexual predator, isn’t life funny?”

The most egregious of these, to me, is the resolution of Shilpa’s narrative, when she comes back and speaks to her wife and son. “I didn’t think of you or your pain. I didn’t know that I would have a son who loved me and ask me why I left him,” she says.

Raasukutty and Jothi berate and gaslight this sobbing survivor of sexual assault, accusing her of being stone-hearted and plotting to leave her family. And then Raasukutty says reproachfully that although everyone else mocked her, he and his mother accepted Shilpa the way she was. “Did I or mother say a single word to you?” he asks. This is not true; Shilpa was thoroughly humiliated when she returned home, including by Jothi, who responds to her transition by alternating between shock, unveiled disgust, and mourning at lost masculinity. But coming from the mouth of precocious child Raasukutty, it is merely a reflection of cis-fragility that doesn’t even register they drove Shilpa away.

Shilpa sobs a little more. Raasukutty says, “I don’t care, be a man, be a woman, be whatever you want. Never leave us again.” The scene fades into black.

My blood boils.

How could this be the resolution? The movie features a trans woman being mocked in ways that feel like the camera is laughing at her, a trans woman being sexually assaulted, a trans woman who is told that expecting society to accept her is too much to ask, a trans woman who gets driven out of every place she wants to exist in, only for her to be told, “I don’t care who you are.”

“I don’t care who you are” is not acceptance. I might have forgiven it all if Raasukutty had instead said “Why did you leave me, mother?” But what we get instead is a return to square one: Shilpa being berated for not being a father, a father she never wanted to be.

Shilpa is never offered simple acknowledgement of her womanhood, or her personhood even. She is always treated as a thing, never a woman. She is seen as an aberration, something grotesque, and the progressive message seems to be that these grotesque things must be accepted for whatever they are. I keep going back to that scene of Shilpa draping a saree, and the awful cognitive dissonance of it. In the end Shilpa says, “As a woman, I understand what you’re going through.” The irony sends shivers down my spine. If the filmmaker had actually believed that, he would have made a very different movie.

There is a profound cis male perversion in the way Shilpa’s story is told. It takes a cis man to devise a plot where a trans woman takes her young child to a public bathroom and zips him up, in a pose that looks like she is fellating her own son. It takes a cis man to write a plot where a trans woman is a child trafficker who upon losing her child in the market, screams that she’s a sinner who transferred her sin to her son when she touched him. It takes a cis man to gaze so long and unblinkingly at the debasement of trans life, and intercut to jokes about porn. This isn’t progressive thought.

One of the most enduring and harmful transphobic stereotypes in existence is the idea that transgender (and other) alms-seekers are running begging and child trafficking rings. This is a popular idea with very little evidence: Sabina Yasmin Rahman calls it the mafia of middle-class convenience. Having noted that police have run multiple investigations in Delhi which failed to establish the existence of a begging mafia, she concludes that this idea of a begging mafia is perpetrated by popular culture and widely-held beliefs, but in reality is hugely exaggerated. Most beggars just live in debilitating poverty. This harmful myth is reinforced in this movie. And really, the more I recall this movie, the more shocked I am that anybody thinks this is progressive. This is what cis people think trans folks do.

In his article on trans characters in Indian cinema, film critic Baradwaj Rangan (who happens to be cis male) had said, “Had Super Deluxe not been a “mainstream” movie, had it played only in festivals to sympathetic and (dare I say) “evolved” audiences, there might have not been the fear that Shilpa is showing the transgender community in a bad light.” For what it’s worth, I’d like to make it clear that sex trafficking is not a realistic character flaw, and rape is not a humanizing portrayal. I leave it to the reader to ponder how utterly offensive this idea is, that a mainstream portrayal of transgender people should shy away from such esoteric things like human dignity.

Even within the Indian trans community, there are divergences in what is considered problematic within the movie. Some of the criticism leveled at it, such as that of transgender activist Grace Banu’s (in an interview to Vikatan; article in Tamil), has been regressive and homophobic, calling into question the logic of Shilpa transitioning as an adult or being attracted to her wife.

Transgender people of all gender identities have the right to choose when to undergo surgical changes, if at all they want to undergo them, and have the express right to fall in love with or have children with or live with people of any gender. One of the common effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy is infertility—there are plenty of folks within the trans community who live their lives precisely in the way that Grace dismisses as illogical. For a trans woman who wants to father children, the two options are to freeze her sperm before starting HRT (expensive and inaccessible) or have a child before starting HRT (which is what Shilpa has done). Grace’s unnecessary and bigoted detour into Shilpa’s bedroom provides no teeth to her critique, which is otherwise spot-on in terms of the movie bringing back the many indignities that the trans community has finally moved past.

Super Deluxe will have to bear the cross for perpetuating the violent lie that women like Shilpa are men like Vijay Sethupathi in makeup and a dress.

[naivesilver]

31, 56, 19, 78, 20, 16, 11, 12 , 10, 4, 1, 21, 36, 39. Sorry if this is too many 😅

Guys it’s NEVER too many you’re giving me the chance to talk nonstop about Sonic it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in days

also I had planned to answer them in the order you asked for but it was driving me crazy so I sorted them out thematically sorry alfhjkhljshja

I answered 1 here!

100 Sonic Questions

21.) Tell us a funny Sonic-related story.

This one comes from the depths of my very first months as a Sonic fan. Basically, I had watched Sonic X upon its first Italian release as a very very smol bean. By the time I got obsessed again in middle school, though, I had forgotten everything about it except a few shots from the Italian opening theme and ONE scene from a season three episode, where Sonic and Knuckles played chess on a spaceship and then Sonic began running around and fell into space.

The “friend” that had introduced me to the show again (not a nice person and source of about 25% of my trauma, I’m glad to say I haven’t seen her in years) didn’t believe me and accused me of lying. Repeatedly. Unkindly. For months. How could such a stupid scene be in such an amazing cartoon? I must be trying to fuck with her.

Fast forward to the end of the year. I’m minding my business and I see a Facebook message from this friend, and another, and another. I click on it wondering what she’d be going ham over, and BAM. This girl had been watching Sonic AMVs on Youtube and had caught a glimpse of that scene at the beginning of a video and was fucking losing it over the fact that WOW, I HAD BEEN TELLING THE TRUTH ALL ALONG?!

Now, you have to understand that I wasn’t the kind of kid that swore, back then. I had been brought up to think that swear words would send you to hell straight away. And while not a delicate little flower, I was much, much cuter and more proper than I am now because I couldn’t live out my butch dreams quite yet. But I needed to express all the frustration gathered in those months.

So please imagine this baby-faced, straight A student 13yo wait for her friend in front of their school and bellow at the top of her lungs “BITCH, WHAT DID I FUCKING TELL YOU?”

I still remember that scene fondly, though.

31.) Tell us a Sonic-related story that will give us feels.

Related to the experience I just mentioned, the problem I had in my first years in this fandom was that this person who had dragged me into it was obsessed with the thought that people would mock us for it. She said it was for kids, and when she got over it she gave me shit for clinging to my passion while she’d “grown up”, and she had me enjoy Sonic in secret and yelled at me for saying anything even vaguely related out loud where other people could hear us.

It got into my head so much that for a long long time I didn’t dare share anything Sonic-adjacent on any social media, long past when I’d broke away from her. I thought no one would ever take me seriously again. I felt ashamed a lot.

It got better, though. Slowly, I broke out of my shell and started interacting with this amazing fandom, and I found lots of people who didn’t give a damn about what the world thought of their passion. And I know tons of wonderful people outside the fandom, too, friends who encourage me to talk about Sonic even though they don’t know anything about it. Chats where any mention of Sonic has someone saying “wait we must tag naivesilver into this she’ll love it”. It’s - it warms my heart every day. Tumblr is a shithole, but it helped me in feeling free to do what I love in the fandom that I love most.

Thank you. To everyone that got me through that, thank you. You have no idea how helpful you’ve been to me.

19.) Favorite soundtrack

KNOCK KNOCK IT’S FUCKING KNUCKLES

20.) Least favorite soundtrack?

None I think???? There are some I don't listen to much, either because I haven't played the game or I just don't vibe with them, but there isn't any song that I particularly dislike. Almost all of them are genuine bops.

16.) (if you read fanfic) What are some fic tropes you love? Ones you hate?

FOUND FAMILY!!! Adoptive parents, siblings, friends taking care of each other, I want a shitton of fluff in my life. And kid!fic. I could read (and write!) kid!fic every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. That's why I enjoy Chaotix and Sonic Movie fics so much. Let's raise them boys well.

As for hating...I don't like high school AUs lmao I wrote one when I was younger but I never dared touch it again and I haven't read any Sonic one since 2014 at most. And most time travel fics. Sorry, Silver, I love you a fucking lot but time travel shenanigans are only funny in the two or three specific settings my mind lets me enjoy.

11.) Top five stages.

In no particular order:

-Press Garden (Mania)

-Casinopolis (Adventure)

-Casino Forest (Forces)

-Studiopolis (Mania)

Anddddd I haven't played much else so I'll have to get back to you on this ajshfkjfahlljha

12.) Worst five stages.

-IMPERIAL TOWER

-IMPERIAL TOWER

-Jesus Christ I died 78 times in that stage alone

-I'm bad at being fast and not falling off stuff and it required me to do both at the same time

-Also the Shadow DLC levels. Fuck me up a bit more will you

56.) In your opinion, what’s the weirdest thing any character has ever said?

I'm a simple girl, I see this panel and I lose my shit

10.) What do you like best about your favorite animated adaptation?

I only finished my Sonic X rewatch yesterday and I’ve been meaning to make some final comments about it (tho it’d probably be me rambling at thin air bc I doubt I can say anything that hasn’t been already said over and over and over) but the most compelling thing for me is and always will be the music.

Don’t get me wrong, what I’ve seen of the OG Japanese version had wonderful, heartfelt music, but the upbeat themes I grew up with still have me vibing day in and day out. I can dance to the Italian opening sequence at any given moment - no, you know what, here it is. Watch it and feel the serotonin drip into your veins.

(Some people will come at me for this, but I didn’t watch this show in 2019-2020 to make an in-depth analysis about it. I did it to have a dance off while Knuckles beat up some robots.)

78.) Post a scene that always gives you feels.

Sonic 06:

13yo me about to see her first ship torn apart:

4.) The last Sonic game you played is now your life. How awesome is this adventure gonna be?

Sonic Adventure - which means it’s a pretty cool life, unless it runs like SA does on my laptop and it turns slow and glitchy and grinds on my nerves even more

36.) C’mon now. How many ships do you have? :P

A FUCKING LOT my main ones are silvaze, vecpio and sonadow but I have many medium or small ones that I enjoy finding content for, like tikaze or knouge

39.) Which game is your golden standard?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not the greatest game fan as in I’ve only been actively playing for the past 2/3 years. Before that it was just gameplays on Youtube, so you should not take my opinion into any account since it’s not very informed.

However there was something about Sonic and the Black Knight that just felt...new? Peculiar? I know jack shit about the technical side of gaming but I remember being extremely pumped every time I logged in to see more of it. I'd like to feel that again, when a new game drops.

[bandi-mack]

tRaiLeR aNaLySis mAstErpOst here we go

Okay, Episode 1: The Boys Are Back

Alright, so the trailer didn’t give us much on Jonah’s return or Celia’s makeover. But oh is there plentiful Wuffy drama. There’s also Bowie accepting Bex’s proposal.

Okay if you haven’t seen the cute Bex-making-over-Andi montage, here’s that (x).

Adorable

So the montage ends with Andi opening the door, thinking it’s Jonah.

“bOwiE wHat Are yOu dOiNg hEre”

“heck yeah let’s get engaged”

Alright, on to Wuffy.

First, let’s appreciate these looks they’re serving.

Fast forward to The Spoon. Walker walks in (heh)

Makes eye contact with Buffy

Buffy gives that “whyyyyyyyyy are you here” look

Andi turns to see what Buffy’s staring at and turns back around.

*immense concern and confusion*

“He’s here for me.”

*insert random statement about how they started dating or something idk*

Andi is like “Oh.”

Walker asks if Andi would mind sitting with Cyrus so Walker could sit with Buffy.

Andi gets up and is like, “Actually, I have to go,” and rushes out of The Spoon.

They all look back worried.

Okay, so there’s another scene where Walker shows up smiling at Andi’s door. I have no idea if it’s after this scene or after a part in episode three. I think the scene might be him going to talk to Andi to try and convince her to talk to Buffy. Y’know like, “We both know Buffy’s too stubborn to admit it, but she misses you. And I know you miss her. Can you at least think about forgiving her?” Anyway here’s the pictures for that.

sadness

Hey! :)

...hi

*insert conversation about forgiving Buffy*

Andi probably says something like “I don’t know if I can forgive her yet.”

And the picture is Walker giving a defeated sigh looking thing like a “well, I tried”

Oh yeah, and here’s a random image that goes with this episode

Episode 2: Howling at the Moon Festival

There’s a lot of this one in the trailer.

This one isn’t as easy to lay out in order so I’m going to summarize my thoughts first. 

Aaaaah okay so Celia is going to announce that Bex and Bowie are getting married and it’s for real this time! We love a parallel. Jonah’s “mishap” is a panic attack (maybe not full blown). Andi walks in looking for him while Cyrus is helping him. Once Jonah is okay, Jonah gives Andi the full story on his anxiety hence the “heart-to-heart” talk about their relationship. There’s also some scene that I don’t know the importance of, but it has Ham which is all I need to know.

it seems like maybe Ham is just warning Bex about how extra the decor has to be for Celia to be pleased idk

romance

cute father/daughter banter

romance

oh and jandi

aah a panicked boi

bum bum bUuUm

a jandi moment we might not gag at??

Alright, so the two lines of dialogue we get here are a very epiphany-like “You have no idea,” and a sad “Oh.” If this takes place before Jandi’s talk, then it could easily be Jandi drama related. But if it’s the closing scene of the episode, I genuinely have no idea. Bexie is sailing, Jonah opened up to her, everything should be great?? Maybe it’s related to Wuffy??? Or maybe she suddenly visualized this

Episode 3: It’s a Dilemma

There’s nothing about Bowie or Cyrus’s plot line in the trailer, but here’s some speculation. Maybe Bowie’s new student is Millicent’s character and Bowie starts learning sign language for her afghsdagh that would be so great. My only evidence to support this is that, as we see later, Jonah clearly knows her. Maybe he knows her through Bowie. As for Cyrus, let’s continue to pray that TJ helps him.

Here’s the stuff that is in the trailer.

Yep, that’s it. Just your typical group outing in canoes. Again, maybe the Walker and Andi scene happens in this episode??

Episode 4: Hole in the Wall

There is nothing about Bowie’s renovations in the trailer, but based on the title I’m a tad bit worried about his skill level. I also have a feeling the Millicent scene with Jonah might be in this episode which prompts him to apologize via song in front of the whole school yiKes.

dRaMa

oh nO

is it too late now to say sorry

god this is gonna be some song Jonah wrote without Bowie’s help about plaque and quack and I’m not ready for this second hand embarrassment

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

we love a parallel

actually, with jandi, do we?? it just keeps going in circles?? we’ll see

Buffy looks really surprised in this part during the trailer. It seems like she’s in the middle of conducting her tryouts. I’m crossing my fingers that Marty walks through the door and congratulates her or something. It would make sense to parallel Buffy’s mom coming home since they’re also paralleling the jandi “break-up”.

Episode 5: ???

So we no longer have any episode titles or descriptions. However, I strongly believe this is the episode with Amber. Since they really went out of their way to make episode two of season 2 and 3 parallels of each other, I think they’d do the same with episode 5. Episode 5 of season 2 was The Snorpion.

Idk if this is the scene of the invite or some confrontation afterward

off to some high school party they go

Andi loses Amber in the crowd of people (feeling abandoned like last time) and freaks out (probably calls Bowie??)

what confuses me here is that it’s very unlike Bowie to yell, especially if it was Andi who called him to pick her up sooo I hope we get a good explanation

I have nO CLUE what this is about. Andi looks relieved/grateful and Bowie just looks pleasantly surprised?? How did they go from that to this??

Now maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I’m gonna shove the gay drama in this episode too for a double kippen story line

we all know what’s up here and the tag already has theories for days so I’m gonna leave this to you

aAaAaAAAAAAAaaAAAAAAaAAAaAAAH

Episode ???: ???

While this could be a side plot line in another episode, it seems a bit too important, so I’m going to assume it’s a whole other thing. I think we all know Cyrus didn’t do anything, so what’s with the cop?? Based on our remaining info, I would guess this has to do with the funeral episode? adfgshaj I’m concerned for our boi

Random GHC conversation:

And finally, I present: other miscellaneous images!

can I just like,,, steal Andi’s closet?? please?? a fashion queen

AnYwAy thanks for scrolling through! I’m so ready for season 3!!

[torentialtribute]

What stats do not tell Fulham is that Aboubakar Kamara is a total pest

The last song Eddie Cochran recorded before his death was the B-side of his single Three Steps To Heaven. It was called Cut Across Shorty and it is a classic.

There is a beautiful version of Rod Stewart on Gasoline Alley, his band, Faces, used it to cover it live, Freddie and the Dreamers had an attempt, did some fine rural artists. Great song

Cut Across Shorty is just a rework of the story of the turtle and hare, really. It tells about a running race between a rural boy named Shorty and a city boy named Dan. The prize for the winner is the hand in the wedding of a certain Miss Lucy & # 39 ;.

Why? Well, as the lyrics of the song explain: & Now Dan had all the money / And he also had the looks / But Shorty must have had something, boys / That can not be found in books … & # 39 ;

And we know, we get it. Marijohn Wilkin who, along with Wayne P Walker, wrote Cut Across Shorty, reconciled with a universal truth. That there are some human characteristics that defy logic and rational analysis; that can not be found in learning;

Last summer, Fulham became the first club to break the £ 100 million transfer barrier.

And so with Fulham and Roster Improvement Through Analysis (RITA). They were the fourth largest players in the Premier League and in 2018 the 13th largest players in Europe, ahead of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and all Serie A, Juventus and Roma.

Their reward, so Aboubakar Kamara arrested on suspicion of actual physical injury and causing criminal damage.

Kamara joined in 2017, when Fulham & # 39; s RITA system worked very well. Indeed, he is a typical RITA signing. Kamara started in Monaco, did not make it and had an imminent year at Kortrijk in the Belgian League before signing for Amiens, a small club in Ligue 1 of France.

Kamara & # 39; s defects have become increasingly clear this year. Aleksandar Mitrovic

After a single reasonable season, Fulham bought him for compensation in the region of £ 5.3 million

Without doubt his numbers were excellent. Yet there is one aspect of the player's performance that RITA can not accurately include: character.

Kamara & # 39; s defects have become increasingly clear this year.

I argued again with Mitrovic during the yoga session, for which he was removed from the team and skipped training were banned to work with the team under 23.

It seems that Kamara, like Shorty, has something that can not be found in books, or is through an analysis program: he is a maintenance worker.

Also language screens appeared on computer screens, and so Fulham signed two keepers, Fabricio Agosto Ramirez and Sergio Rico, who hardly spoke English.

He started the first two games of the season, has not been seen since, not even in Carabao Cup races with Exeter and Millwall or in the FA Cup with Oldham.

Fabri was a title winner with Besiktas, but also the player who started to cry after he had allowed four first-half goals for the club, en route to the loss of 6-0 against Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League.

& # 39; His scouting profile and data profile are both strong & # 39 ;, Fulham confirmed when Fabri arrived for a ballpark £ 5 mln.

It is clear that recruitment can not just be a series of inspirations. contain. Analysis is an essential part, just like scouting and first-hand knowledge. One of Fabrians previous clubs was Deportivo La Coruna, where he collaborated with Fulham & # 39; s goalkeeper coach Jose Sambade Carreira.

It is possible that the same mistake could be made by going the old-fashioned route of scouting research and recommendation. Yet the analytical division of Fulham also rejected Glenn Murray before going to Brighton and Callum Wilson – now estimated at £ 50 million by Bournemouth – because their number was not right

The same numbers that can not identify any suspicious temperament,

In 1984, when Terry Venables considered bringing Steve Archibald to Barcelona, ​​he asked.

Venables signed Archibald, who was a great success, and they won the first league title of Barcelona in 11 years.

The need for character can not be underestimated.

He clearly admires the capacities of Hazard as a player, but does not see that he has the mentality to be a leader, as he should be in Chelsea.

& # 39; Beautiful, but an individual player & # 39 ;, was his description. & # 39; He is more an individual than a leader.

Sarri does not have everything right this season, but he makes a point here.

He disappears for weeks, sometimes between seasons, when circumstances do not suit him, like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi never does it.

Miss Lucy got the chance to get the chance to win the game, Fulham did not. Oldham must give Paul Scholes time

Oldham can not continue in an endless cycle of looting managers. This inconsistency of strategy and ideas left them in the third layer for decades, until eventually the club went to League Two, where they stay, in 12th place.

Again Oldham tries to persuade Paul Scholes to take over and forces him to drop his interest as a co-owner of Salford City. Would it be the best move for Scholes?

It would certainly be good for Oldham. Having a fan and a good name can finally convince the owners to give a manager a chance to build.

They could not adopt the same short-term thinking with Scholes. Could they?

We have seen this before, Arsenal

It was a nice victory for Arsenal on Chelsea last Saturday and earned a lot. From the first moment they looked on the better side and their midfield was exceptional: zealous, savage, swarming around Chelsea and disturbing their rhythm.

On December 2 we have seen this from Arsenal under Unai Emery and earlier with Arsene Wenger: a performance of presumed meaning, Arsenal beat Tottenham 4-2 and then moved to Manchester United with 2-2. Yet, by the end of the same month, they had lost in Southampton and got five at Liverpool.

It was the same last season. Arsenal defeated Tottenham 2-0 on November 18, 2017, a result that yielded a lot of crowing and triumphant locker room-selfs, but was followed by a 3-1 home defeat by Manchester United and tie with West Ham and Southampton

It is clear that they are an elite club that is poorly served by their owners Stan Kroenke, whose limited ambition and vision have been hidden for many years by Wenger's generosity in accepting responsibility for shortcomings that are not always his.

Emery's announcement that he could only recruit borrowers in January suggests that Kroenke is no longer protected by his manager.

To make Chelsea's victory more than just another, it's a good match for the Chelsea team. false dawn, inflicting Solskjaer's first defeat would be a sign of real change.

[Kan de regels nog niet veranderen] tragedy

the tragic loss of Emiliano Sala, there is no way that Cardiff can get an extra period for the transfer period of January for the signing of players.

Chief executive officer Ken Choo said that the possibility of an extension was discussed with the competition, but was rejected.

That may sound cold, but every addition to the Cardiff team must come from somewhere and with all the British and most European clubs that close for business at the end of this month, it can not be that someone may operate while others do not

Cardiff would not have been able to deal with a club that was bound to dates of transfer periods in January, but even if they went outside Europe, this could cause problems.

Say Neil Warnock watched the competition in China, where the window closes on February 28th. The Chinese club could use Cardiff's money to start the raid on a Premier League rival, at a time when the player could not be replaced.

Some may think that the Premier League is heartless here, but despite this terrible accident they have done the right

Captain of Pakistan

[bewerken] Sarfraz Ahmed apologized for a racist insult aimed at South Africa & # 39; s Andile Phehlukwayo who was picked up by a tree trunk microphone during the one-day international day of this week.

& # 39; I did not mean that my words would be heard, & # 39; Sarfraz said, but that is not true.

[[Handdoek] tantrum ruin fairy tale

Feisty is a word that is often used to describe Danielle Collins; although there are others.

Drop in straight sets to Petra Kvitova on Thursday she repeatedly argued with referee Carlos Ramos, who must get enough of the entitled Americans after his US Open conflict with Serena Williams.

Equipment for courts did not function properly, but I made my decisions with impeccable logic, clearly explained. Collins did not seem pungent in response, but brattish, at a certain point of contemptuously dropping a towel on the field when she returned to her baseline, left for a beam to cross and pick up

That kind of behavior , rude to the youngest helpers of the sport, the violation of the code should be worth.

Eventually the actions of Collins got going again. The more she moaned, the worse her tennis was and she lost the second set 6-0. Collins was the big underdog story of the women's championship at the Australian Open, but it would have been sad to see her.

Danielle Collins has repeatedly argued with umpire Carlos Ramos during the defeat by Petra Kvitova

With Sheffield Wednesday, preparing for the biggest game of their season against Chelsea on Sunday, how wrong does it seem that Steve Bruce can be found in the English test match against West Indies in Barbados?

Bruce was appointed on 2 January but due to holiday commitments it will not be until 1 February. In that period he missed two league matches and three FA Cup matches, including repetitions.

Bruce did not know that Chelsea would be the FA Cup opposition, but even to see him hanging out with the English players while his team is preparing to face Eden Hazard and Gonzalo Higuain is not right.

It belittles Sheffield Wednesday, a club that still attracts 23763 on average, despite being 16th in the championship. Bruce lost both parents in 2018 and deserves his break.

After a year or so, he has every right to feel that family is more important than football. In those circumstances it might have been better to have accepted both sides that the timing was wrong and moved, because this is not right.

Andy Murray may have long since left the Australian Open, but his influence remains.

Do you think Friday's semi-final, Lucas Pouille, would defend Amelie Mauresmo as his coach, was Murray not the first?

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[grimtime]

Analysis of an analysis

The main plot of The Room is very simple and God I wish I lived in the universe in which it weren’t, just to see, what it would’ve been like if the director were allowed to go fucking ham on the script. It reads like something I’d have written when I was like 9, only to go back and remove the more blatantly unrealistic elements (pirates) and insert in a lot of what my 9 year old idea of Adult Drama would be.

Jesus fucking Christ okay gimme an exacto knife and I’ll slice these boxes there is already way too much to unpack.

Why am I drawn to convolution? Why does it matter to me if the director had total creative freedom? Why would my nine year old self write a misogynistic story about betrayal culminating in a suicide and why would that be my nine year old idea of adult drama? Why did I specify I liked pirates when I was nine? Does that matter? 

It’s about a woman (Lisa) who cheats on her fiance (Johnny) with his best friend (Mark), because she’s fallen out of love with him, and the inaction of everyone involved as well as the transgression itself drives Johnny to commit suicide.

Did Tommy Wiseau intend for everyone else to betray Johnny through their inaction, or was that just my understanding of it at the time? I rewatched the film yesterday and actually, a LOT of characters try their best to mitigate the damage and stop it in its tracks. So why did I say they were inactive? 

I kinda wanna make a shittily edited montage with scenes of Mark and Johnny to Even In Death or My Immortal or something like that by Amy Lee but I don’t know how to edit video, so that’s out, for now.

Why do I want to do this? It’s not a competent film, but why do I want to mock it? Also, I like Amy Lee, so why do I want to mock it through that specific medium? And why do I want to focus it on Mark and Johnny? What’s the relevance of that? Why did I choose those two songs specifically as well? Both of which focus on grieving and being haunted by the memory of a dead loved one. 

There are a few unresolved subplots as well which I’ll get to later.

The film introduces the two main characters, Johnny and Lisa, by Johnny giving Lisa a red dress as a gift. If a man got me a sexy red dress as a gift I’d kill him. Fucking dresses and flowers and petals he’s just PERFORMING romance. He performs EVERYTHING with symbolic shorthand “oh, how do people act, men play catch I think? Eeeerrrrr then I will have my men play catch. In SUITS. Yeah this is humanity I fuckin’ nailed it.”

Why do I feel the need to specify that I wouldn’t appreciate a sexy red dress from a man as a gift? It makes sense for a man to gift his fiance a sexy red dress. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Why did I specify that I wouldn’t appreciate it, when my personal distaste has nothing to do with it. Nobody reading this needs to know. I don’t need to tell them that. 

Why so critical about Johnny’s performance of human concepts like male friendship and romance? Why did I mock it? What is wrong about it? 

There’s a running thread throughout this movie, wherein Johnny’s primary mode of affection is incredibly materialistic, and his friends value him primarily for what he can do for them on a financial/material scale. #Crapitalism. Similarly Lisa is only ever valued by other people for her external appearance cuz all the men are thotty creeps.

Is this assertion even accurate? Johnny provides emotional support to his friends throughout the movie. It might be more accurate to say that Johnny values *himself* for what he can provide. But this isn’t about that. Why did I discard his emotional support? Why did I assert that his affection is materialistic only? Why did I say his friends only value him based on that? 

I don’t think I’m wrong about what Lisa is valued for. But why did I pick up on that in the first place?

Blaa blaa fucking blaa dichotomy between realism crossing into surrealism Tommy Wiseau’s a misogynist and I can and will fucking make Lisa an interesting character blaa blaa fucking blaa nobody’s going to read this fuck you.

Why did I mock my own analysis in this paragraph and only very disparagingly allude to the realism -> surrealism? Is it because it’s kind of fucking pretentious? It IS. But why do I give a shit. And why do I simply just not shut the fuck up and not say it at all? Why do I say it? Am I trying to communicate I know it’s inherently kind of ridiculous? Why? For who? What am I hoping to maintain?

Why did I gravitate so strongly to Lisa’s defense despite knowing she has very few, if ANY, redeeming personality traits. I know if she were a real person I wouldn’t like her. Why do I feel the need to impose depth on a character that wasn’t intended to have any? Defiance in response to the inherently misogynic portrayal of women? Why do I feel the need to defy Tommy Wiseau’s original intentions? What am I expecting to accomplish? 

If I posit that I have no audience, who is this for? And WHY do I posit that I have no audience? Why is that important? What purpose does pointing it out serve?

Lisa is the surreal element- every other character is pretty fuckin’ preoccupied in their social status and place in their society and maintaining it, bitch gets what she wants she ain’t about that conformity. I mean she’s also an adulterer but fucking hell I have to impose depth art is interpretive blaa blaa fucking blaa why did I delete my blog I don’t remember anyone’s URL LMAO.

Here I equate surrealism with anti-conformity. Which is kind of strange, because it implies that I think conforming to society, accepting your social status, and maintaining it is realistic. The tone of this paragraph when talking about Lisa’s “surrealism” is pretty positive toward her. Which would also imply that I think realism is bad. 

Why do I HAVE to impose depth and my own ideas onto Lisa specifically? Why do I keep justifying myself with “art is interpretive”? 

I then proceed to dip the fuck out and mock my impulsiveness as if trying to remind an audience (that I supposedly do not have) that I’m self aware of my own pretentious and inherently kind of stupid shortcomings. But if there’s no audience, as I said earlier, who is that directed toward? 

Anyway I guess there’s something to be said for Johnny destroying all his possessions at the climax of the movie. Once he loses his trophy woman to his best friend he has nothing left, does he? He really has nothing going for him. I mean he has his job still but when he loses his already pretty flimsy social life all he has left are his materialistic possessions and they can’t exactly do therapy at him. But his entire life is his job and what he can possess. Destroying the only things he has left is self destruction. SHE TORE HIM APART.

Why would I claim that he has nothing but his material possessions left? I don’t think this is supported by the movie. He has his other friends. He has Denny.  I’m contradicting the source material to impose a certain idea onto Johnny. Why? 

Why did I reference a line in the movie to mock his act of self destruction? 

Ripping Lisa’s red dress at the end is a symbolic murder– because I don’t believe he ever saw Lisa as her own person. He saw her as another thing he could possess. A symbol of status he could dress up. A material. Lisa may as well have been a bit of red fabric. After all the momentum of the film often halts just to have characters comment on her hotness. Supporting this statement is the fact that, although she was lying about physical abuse, he does get pretty physical with her soon after. Foreshadowing? Fuck if I know, this movie wasn’t made competently. Was I written competently? Am I going to spiral before I die? Questions questions! All of them edgy!

I don’t know that I’m correct when I say that Lisa was his trophy, and a status symbol. He killed himself over her unfaithfulness. He stated a few times that she was clever. So why do I assert that she’s no different than any other possession he had? 

Does the momentum of the film REALLY come to a halt to have characters remark on her appearance? Why do I take notice of that? Why is it important to me to say that? 

I support that the tearing of the red dress is symbolic of murder by stating that Lisa’s lies about being physically abused are foreshadowing of that event. Maybe that’s a stretch in the context of the FILM, but I’ve also asserted that joking about having a heart attack was foreshadowing for my heart attack, so even though it’s a stretch when you apply that to the FILM, it’s not a stretch when you apply that to REALITY. Why is foreshadowing important to me in that way? 

I immediately state I don’t know, and that the movie wasn’t made competently, but we all knew it wasn’t. I immediately focus back on real life implications. Was my attempt at comprehending the narrative of The Room an attempt to comprehend the narrative of real life? If so, why did I pick THE ROOM, of all movies? If you’re self deprecating on a blog with no followers and nobody reads your post, does it make a meaning?

I wonder if there are any shitty fanfics written about Tommy Wiseau on wattpad. I’m not looking. But I fucking wonder.

Why the change in topic? Why wattpad, a fiction site known for mostly hosting kids fictions? Why am I drawn to haphazardly made fiction? 

Nevermind I looked and there’s “Trapped On An Island With Tommy Wiseau”. Fucking. Glorious. Why didn’t I pick THAT to over analyse? Holy fucking shit it’s amazing. I want to know where THAT story is going.

Whatever.

Why did I change my mind and look? I immediately contradict myself. Why DIDN’T I analyse that fiction over this one? Why did I like it so much? Why did I want to know where that was going? Why “whatever”? Is not saying something just as important as saying it? Bring up an idea only to dismiss it immediately after. 

So anyway, people repeat themselves when they talk sometimes, and they do it in the movie as well. That’s cool. That’s good. That adds some naturalism to it. That makes it seem like real people talking and not actors. Yeah.

The tone of this paragraph is different to all the other paragraphs. Why? What was I thinking?

EXCEPT IT DIVES ASS OVER TEAKETTLE INTO SURREALISM! When those people repeat themselves in ways that don’t make sense as a shorthand way to progress the scene. It’s just a single step removed from [INSERT SOMETHING TO CHANGE THE SCENE HERE]. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

What’s the purpose of pointing this out? I remember saying this and wondering if I’ve ever heard or said any artificial, fake sounding excuses to progress a plot or scene. Why did I pick “I don’t want to talk about it” as my cited quote over all the other choices? Do I just not want to talk about it anymore? If I didn’t- I wouldn’t. Does the AUTHOR not want me to talk about it? That is after all the same reason Lisa reuses that quote over and over. She wouldn’t bring it up if she didn’t want to. Tommy Wiseau is the one who wants her to stop talking about it. Why can I not focus too hard on this?

It’s something isn’t it. Damn. Yep. I’m chewing gum with the paper still on it just to see what happens. Hope it’s not poisoooooooon.

I unceremoniously change the subject to totally irrelevant bullshit, highlighting my own stupidity, as if to remind somebody of it. What audience? Then the subject of poison. Why? 

Aw hell I had to talk about the subplots. Iuno. INSERT SUBPLOT BLATHERING HERE. Danny took drugs. That was something. Amazingly the movie treats drugs and alcohol as bigger sins than attempted murder and assault! The characters do! Everyone does! Fucking glorious. IT’S NOT WHAT THE ILLICIT SUBSTANCES MAKE YOU DO UNDER THE INFLUENCE, IT’S THAT YA TOOK EM AT ALL! I forget what it means.

I hastily talk about the subplots, only really focusing on the alcohol and drugs/attempted murder and assault, for the purpose of mocking the condemnation of both over murder/domestic abuse. Why so hastily and haphazard, though? “I forget what it means” but I still bring it up? Why?

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, NOCTURNE-DOLCE!!!

Why this joke? Is there significance to putting Nocturne in the role of Lisa? The placement of this joke is odd, too. Why here? Why now? Why out of nowhere? What am I mocking? Why am I mocking it? It’s a total non-sequitur. 

Yeah. I wonder if I could construct a shitty emo poem using only lines of dialogue from The Room.

Why?

Don’t leave I need you, I love you Everything is going wrong

You don’t want to talk to me

They trick me They didn’t keep their promise They betray me, and I don’t care anymore

You are TEARING ME APART

I don’t care

Everything is not okay

Don’t worry about it

It’s definitely shitty.

Why did I pick these specific lines of dialogue? Why did I do this at all? Who benefits from it? What’s it even saying?

The more I think on it the more I realize that Lisa is literally the only character that develops as the movie goes on. I mean her development is basically “HOT ADULTERER IS EVIL WOMAN BITCH” but, yknow, at least she’s not like poor dumb Mark who has sex with her countless times and still manages to be stunned when she proposistions him for sex.

Why did I pick up on this? What significance does it have?  

Arguably she’s also the only character that shows any kind of agency; all the other characters seem to have their patterns. Mark asks her “why are you doing this to me” as if he’s a totally passive, blameless bystander, each scene with Claudette is exactly the same as the last, etc. The only character that really advances the plot is Lisa.

Are there blameless bystanders in our reality? Who have no agency? Are we some of them? Are we Lisa, or are we Mark? Is agency indicative of immorality in the context of this movie and our lives? 

Lisa: agent of chaos and change. I unironically adore the PISS out of her dialogue. Check it the fuck out:  

If so what does my admiration say about me? She is unquestionably the villain of the film? Why do I choose her as the favorite?

You know, I really loved Johnny at first. Everything’s changed. I need more from life than what Johnny can give me. Suddenly my eyes are wide open and I can see everything so clearly. I want it all.

If he can’t give me what I want, somebody else will.

You have to take as much as you can. You have to live, live, live.

I don’t see what the big deal is. Doesn’t everybody look out for number one? Don’t I deserve the best?

There is no baby. I told him that to make it interesting. We’re probably going to have a baby eventually anyway.

I am not responsible for Johnny. I’m through with that. I’m changing. I have the right, don’t I? People are changing all the time. I have to think about my future. What’s it to you?

Do I identify with Lisa? If so, why? Is it because she’s supposed to be representative of all woman and I’m compelled to argue against the really sexist idea of that while still obeying the framework of the movie? Or is it foreshadowing of future villainy? Foreshadowing is after all significant? Is my pursuit of personal agency evil? 

Hot take: Lisa and Lola are the same character except one is a fish from Shark Tale and the other is Lisa from The Room.

This is ominous. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Yzma

I feel like there’s no sense in introducing this one. You know her. I’ve seen all the gif sets, the quotes, the images, the memes… it’s safe to say most every person on the internet is intimately acquainted with The Emperor’s New Groove’s geriatric villainess, Yzma. So, let’s just cut to the chase and talk about why Yzma is a fantastic villain, shall we?

Motivation/Goals: Yzma’s goal is pretty simple and yet also infinitely understandable. She wants to take over the kingdom from Kuzco because, after years of being treated like garbage by the snotty little emperor she likely helped raise, he’s just firing her because she’s old and ugly. Like, it is TRUE, but it’s still incredibly tacky and rude. It’s not hard to empathize with her at least a little bit as she goes to poison the snotty, miserable emperor, though it really does become harder to side with her as the movie goes on and she continues to berate her poor manservant Kronk.

Performance: The legendary Eartha Kitt of Adam West’s Batman and My Life as a Teenage Robot fame gave Yzma exactly the voice she needed to instantly ingrain herself in your memory forever. Kitt was absolutely not afraid to ham it up, and combined with the character design and animation, it makes Yzma a delightfully over-the-top figure that is easy to love to hate. Even better, she has insanely good chemistry with Patrick Warburton as Kronk, and the two play off each other extremely well, leading to Yzma being part of a good 95% of the movie’s funniest scenes. It helps that, while she is definitely very funny, she is more often the straight man reacting to the insanity her compatriot brings to the table, a dark mirror to Kuzco and Pacha’s relationship… well, comparatively dark. These two are a couple of goobers after all. What I think really helps is that, despite being the straight man in a general sense, Yzma is still probably one of the most insane villains in Disney’s filmography, as in literally unhinged, so she is as able to generate laughs as anyone else.

Final Fate: Yzma’s attempts to kill Kuzco backfire spectacularly, and instead of succeeding in any way, shape, or form, she ends up turning herself into a cute little kitty. It’s a marked improvement, honestly. How she changed back to normal for the TV series, who can say? By all accounts it doesn’t make sense. Just don’t think too hard about it, it’s a comedy after all.

Best Scene: Considering how the entire climax of the film is an absolute cavalcade of comedy, we could go with that. Or we could go with her attempts to poison Kuzco at dinner. Or we could go with her interactions with Pacha’s family. The “problem” with Yzma that every scene with her is so great that it’s hard to single out any single one moment as outstanding, because all of them are pretty much on the same level. She’s remarkably consistent with how great she is.

Best Quote: It’s really hard for me to pick just one line (which is something I tend to say a lot, but I mostly talk about good villains on here, so cut me some slack), but I think the combination of the delivery and just how great Kitt’s voice was really helps make her brainstorming ways to kill Kuzco a legendary moment:

“Ah, how should I do it? Oh, I know. I'll turn him into a flea. A harmless little flea. And then I'll put that flea in a box, and then I'll put that box inside of another box, and then I'll mail that box to myself! And when it arrives, AH HA HA HA! I'LL SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!!! It's brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT, I tell you! Genius, I say!”

The laugh is really what sells it, honestly.

Final Thoughts & Score: Yzma is probably the single greatest Disney villain who doesn’t totally follow the Renaissance villain format post-Renaissance, with only Turbo really being a contender for the crown. What I mean is this: the Renaissance set a serious precedent for animated movie villains going forward. They had to be hammy, have huge personalities, and get their own song. Ratigan was something of a prototype, and then Ursula went and set the standard. Sure, there were exceptions in the Renaissance – Hades is great but got no song, and Ratcliffe is… Ratcliffe, and he has a song – but for the most part the best Disney villains had a clear style. Ursula, Gaston, Frollo, Scar, all of them are some of Disney’s best and all of them stick to these rules.

Yzma came early in the post-Renaissance era so it would make sense for her to fit the bill entirely while they were still experimenting with new styles, but because of the tumultuous production of The Emperor’s New Groove, she ended up keeping the ham while having her villain song cut. And yes, this is a damn shame, since Eartha Kitt was a fantastic singer and the song’s not half bad, but I think the movie as a whole and Yzma herself work better without music. She’s just so funny with how she reacts to and interacts with things throughout the movie, I just don’t think she really NEEDS music to really push her over the top in terms of quality. Like, let me put it this way: I think, without “Be Prepared,” Scar would probably not be quite as impressive. I think with a villain song, Jafar would have been even cooler. Yzma? She’s pretty much perfect the way she is.

I debated a long time on what score to give her, but I frankly think she does deserve a 10/10. I almost gave her a 9 on the basis that she didn’t have a song, but her overall performance combined with my realization she didn’t need her song to be great made me decide to reward her with the highest marks. However, there is one criticism I have that I think stands: she would not nearly be s funny if not for the presence of her faithful lackey. So let’s talk about him, shall we?

Psycho Analysis: Kronk

I put this one to a vote, and it turns out that a lot of people consider Kronk a villain. I guess if we’re being technical he is an antagonist, but a villain? Kronk is pretty much the least evil villain out there. Still, it’s pretty impossible to deny that he’s not exactly a good guy when he’s complicit in an assassination attempt. Kronk’s a bit of a morally gray figure for much of the film.

He’s also, without a doubt, the funniest character in the film.

Motivation/Goals: See Yzma above. He’s just her lackey, so he doesn’t have much in terms of goals of his own. He does, however, have a conscience, as well as numerous skills including some serious culinary skills, including knowledge of fry cook lingo.

Performance: This is one of the roles that really put Patrick Warburton on the map, alongside Joe Swanson in Family Guy. And if I’m being honest, this is the definitive Patrick Warburton role in animation. Kronk is just an absolute delight to watch, since he’s basically the lovable idiot character perfected. He’s a ditz, but he does have a lot of skill in some interesting niche areas, he’s not truly good or evil and has a moral code, he’s very quotable and funny in a pretty natural way… Kronk has got it all! And it’s all thanks to Warburton injecting that Patrick Warbuton-ness we’ve all come to love from his performances. 

Final Fate: Of course Kronk gets redeemed in the end. The dude is the biggest softie on the planet. Maybe Yzma should have thought twice before insulting his spinach puffs.

Best Scene: Kronk has a similar problem to Yzma, where every single scene he’s in is incredibly perfect, but unlike Yzma, there is one scene that really narrows things down and gives you the perfect summation of Kronk as a character: the scene where he is attempting to dispose of Kuzco’s body, does his own theme music, argues with his shoulder angel and shoulder devil, and then ends up saving Kuzco, thus allowing the rest of the plot to happen.

Best Quote: Unlike Yzma, there is no way I could possibly narrow down Kronk’s best quote. Whichever one is your favorite, you’re right. That’s the best one. Everything out of his mouth is gold.

Final Thoughts & Score: Kronk is a very interesting lesson when it comes to Psycho Analysis because, while he is certainly antagonistic, and certainly is a great character, he’s not a great villain, which is what these reviews are for. Like, he is easily the best part of the movie, he is hilarious, his chemistry with Yzma is undeniable, and this is Warburton’s definitive vocal performance in animation… but it doesn’t make Kronk a good villain so much as it makes him a good character. Like there’s no way I can give him below an 8/10, because again, still an antagonistic role, but he can’t score much higher because his personality is just so legitimately NICE that calling him a villain seems really weird (which is why I put it to a vote in the first place).

I really can’t stress enough how much I love Kronk; he’s like in my top 10 favorite Disney characters. But when it comes to villains, I really don’t think he’d make the cut, because even when he is doing something bad it comes off more as misguided loyalty to Yzma than an actual desire to do bad. It’s really telling that it’s the most petty of things that makes him drop Yzma like a hot potato: Kronk was never really a villain, he was a good guy who made poor life choices and had a toxic friend influence. He didn’t really have a character arc where he became a better person like Kuzco did, although Kronk’s ultimate turn to the side of good does somewhat mirror Kuzco’s; he simply realized that the friend in his life he devoted his time to was an awful person and decided to leave her behind, and when all is said and done, that just leaves a big, buff nice guy who likes to cook. And that makes Kronk a truly great, funny, and lovable character.

It just doesn’t make him a great villain.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Ernesto de la Cruz

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Disney sure does love their twist villains, huh? Almost every villain in the canon during the 2010s has been some sort of big twist villain who doesn’t really get to act like a villain and instead pretends to be an ally or at least a neutral figure for much of the movie. This has led to notable duds like Hans, Bellwether, and most heinously Evelyn Deavor. King Candy is a notable exception, as is Lotso, but they are obstructive throughout the entire film and reveled to be evil fairly quickly, respectively. So when it comes to twist villains, the long and short of it is that they tend to work better when the twist actually has some major story relevance, doesn’t totally recontextualize the character in ways that don’t necessarily make sense, and maintain some level of continuity in their personality.

Thank god Ernesto De La Cruz is like that.

Coco’s big twist villain is one you can probably see coming from a mile away considering that Disney has utilized the twist so much, but it’s the depths of what he does and the fact that, ultimately, it’s not really the fact that he’s a villain that’s the twist – it’s that he’s such an unrepentant egomaniac that he goes as far as to stick the method he murdered his very best friend with into one of his own movies. This man has cojones, you’ve gotta give him that.

Actor: Benjamin Bratt of Law & Order fame portrays him in English, and frankly, he does a great job as selling Ernesto as a sort of glorious pop star who seems to have a heart of gold. Of course, he continues to sell Ernesto even when it’s revealed that heart isn’t so golden after all.

Motivation/Goals: In short, Ernesto is an attention whore. He’s ambitious, greedy, and selfish, which is what led to him murdering Hector and stealing his songs so that he could achieve fame and fortune. - fame and fortune that got to follow him into the afterlife. The guy is a massive icon to the living and the dead, and in the Land of the Dead he just wants to sit back and bask in the admiration of others – something which becomes a lot more difficult when Miguel shows up and begins to accidentally unravel his carefully constructed persona.

Personality: Interestingly, despite his numerous negative traits, Ernesto does genuinely seem to be an affable, friendly guy. He rescues Miguel from the pool, seems very happy that he has a descendant, and is eager to share his fame and the adoration of the public with Miguel. He even shows genuine worry over Miguel’s curse, so clearly there is at least a shred of good in him somewhere.

The issue, of course, is his ego. As soon as Hector shows up and as soon as Miguel discovers the truth about what Ernestor did to attain his fame, Hector pulls a 180 and decides to get rid of Miguel. While it definitely seems like his earlier actions were genuine, above all Ernesto cares about his image and his fame, and anything that jeopardizes that needs to be taken care of. He did it to Hector in life, and he tried to do it to both Hector and Miguel in death when they set out to reveal his treachery. While this doesn’t make him the most amazing character ever by any means, I do like that there is room to interpret Ernesto as more than just a one-dimensional monster.

Final Fate: In life, he was crushed to death by a big bell in the middle of a performance. In the Land of the Dead, he gets crushed under another giant bell – and he gets left there, presumably forever since it’s doubtful anyone would want to get him out after the truth about him was revealed. And then back in the land of the living the truth about him is revealed as well, leading to the public openly rejecting him and declaring they will forget him, with his tomb being vandalized. Pretty impressive to die three times in a single movie, with each death being progressively worse for him.

Best Scene: His final death, where Pepita knocks him into the second bell he gets crushed under. Such a beautiful, fitting comeuppance, and one that had me in stitches when I first saw the movie.

Best Quote: A lot of his “Seize the moments” quotes become much more chilling after the big reveal, when he says lines like this: “Success doesn't come for free, Miguel. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to... seize your moment. I know you'll understand.” Kinda hard to swallow that whole “seize the moment” thing when the guy saying it seized his moment by committing the premeditated murder of his best friend to plagiarize his music, you know?

Final Thoughts & Score: Ernesto is not quite as good as King Candy, but boy is he up there. Ernesto is the sort of twist villain Disney should really take notes on. He has a great personality, and when the reveal comes around it doesn’t completely botch his personality or change it into something nonsensical like with Hans or Bellwether, but instead puts all of his previous actions in different lights. Ernesto remains remarkably consistent throughout the entire film, and if that wasn’t enough, in true classic Disney villain fashion he’s flashy, he’s a bit over-the-top, and he really loves to hog the spotlight. He’s not a complete ham or anything, but the guy is a celebrity, and he knows how to entertain.

I like that he’s a villain that you can kind of speculate on the actions of, as well as a villain who is just outright appalling for a family film like this. The dude remorselessly poisoned his friend to steal his life’s work, which is awful enough. Then you see Hector dropping dead onscreen, which is worse. And then you get to see that Ernesto literally put the crime he committed into one of his movies, forever immortalizing his murder in some sort of sick, twisted, serial killer-esque way. Ernesto is a man who goes out of his way to come out on top but ultimately ends up screwed over due to his own massive ego. But still, it is interesting to look at his good actions and wonder… At the very least, saving Miguel in the pool was him genuinely wanting to do the right thing, but what else does that extend to? And he did seem to genuinely consider Hector his friend, but he cared about fame and success more. There’s a lot going on with this guy.

This might be controversial, but I’m giving him a 9/10. I was originally going to give him an 8, but I started to like him more and more as I wrote this (this is something that happens quite often, honestly). He’s definitely a lower 9, because I do think he’s not quite on the level of Turbo, and an argument could be made that the story would have been stronger without a villain and with Hector simply dying by accident… but what fun is that? Hector is that rarest of things, a good modern Disney villain, and I think we should appreciate him for what he is, because knowing Disney, we won’t get any more like him for a while.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Sanderson Sisters

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Ah, Hocus Pocus, everyone’s favorite campy Halloween cult classic. Objectively speaking, the movie is probably no better than a made-for-TV cheesy 90s Disney movie – and funnily enough, this film’s director would go on to make plenty more of those, seeing as he would do the High School Musical movies and The Descendants – as it has all the hokey writing, late 80s/early 90s cliches you’d expect, and some truly boring main characters.

But, thankfully, it has three of the most charismatic women you could imagine camping it up and firmly cementing their status as Halloween icons for all time: The Sanderson sisters, Winifred, Sarah, and Mary. These three are the reason this movie is held so near and dear to people’s hearts, and frankly, without them this movie would just plain suck. With them, it still sucks, but in a fun way, elevating it beyond “so bad it’s good” and into the realm of endearing camp alongside such masterpieces as Venom.

But enough of all this; just like when you’re watching the movie, you’re here for the girls, so let’s talk about them.

Actor: The leader of the bunch is Winifred, and she is played by Bette Midler. Bette Midler has called this her favorite role ever, and seeing how she acts in this, it really shows. A running theme with these three is that they just absolutely ham it up, and Bette Midler goes above and beyond with Winifred – she’s not just a ham, she’s the whole damn hog. In fact, in a lot of ways, she hogs the spotlight, what with her hamminess being so magnetic and the fact that she is clearly the brains of the operation. But that’s not to say the others are bad.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays… Sarah. Funny how that worked out. She is the hot and dumb one, and boy oh boy does she play that role to perfection, though of course she does manage to be creepy and sinister when the scene calls for it – that song of hers has become iconic for a reason.

Finally we come to Mary, played by none other than Peggy Hill herself, Kathy Najimy. Najimy does a great job, she plays her role well, but out of the three I feel like she has the most trouble standing out. Which isn’t to say she’s bad, far from it – she doesn’t have the bombastic personality of Winifred nor the complete ditziness of Sarah.

Here’s the thing, though: if any of these three weren’t here, or weren’t portrayed by these specific actresses, they’d fall apart, the movie would fall apart, game over man, game over! The film only works because these three have such great chemistry, such great interactions, and such great weirdness to them that if even one of them were gone or they just weren’t in synch, things would be a lot less fun.

Motivation/Goals: Like most evil witches in fiction, these three want children, specifically so that they can drain their vitality with a magic potion so that they can be young and powerful forever. This gets them hanged 300 years before the main story starts, and when they come back, they reuse this goal with a bit more urgency: they now need to drain the vitality from children before the sun rises and turns them to dust, as their resurrection is set to only last a single night otherwise. Frankly, the fact that their goal is killing and sucking the life out of children is the only thing that’s keeping the audience from rooting for them, because the actual protagonists of this film are so unremarkable and cliché that it’s pretty hard to want to see them stop the funny and charismatic witches,

Personality: Winifred is clearly the one who got all the brains, which makes sense as she is the leader. She’s a lot quicker on the uptake and realizes things more quickly than her ditzier sisters, as well as a lot more proactive and pragmatic in general. She does the spellcasting, she brews the potions, she just inhabits the role of leader naturally. It helps that of the three she has the most outwardly intimidating presence.

Mary is the middle child, and her personality is somewhere between the two sisters: she’s ditzy, but not to Sarah’s level, and she’s got some common sense and wits, but definitely not on Winifred’s level. This is kind of why I said she has a hard time sticking out personality-wise before, as she’s the epitome of the awkward middle child. However, she does excel at her role as a predatory child tracker, able to sniff out their victims with ease. It’s also implied, but not outright stated, that she’s a much bigger eater than her sisters; she is noticeably chunkier than the others, after all. And considering their diet… it’s definitely not a good idea to undersell that Mary is definitely a wicked witch.

Then we come to Sarah, who is an absolute ditz and the epitome of a dumb blonde… and yet, she is also one of the most dangerous, as she has a sort of siren-like power to draw children to her with her singing. In fact, while she does come off as a ditzy goofball for the most part, her interactions with children paint a rather… uncomfortable picture, one that reveals her true nature.

I think it’s worth noting that despite how ditzy both Mary and Sarah are, both of them also have the common sense to point out to Winifred that, when Sarah has called numerous children to their house, they really don’t need to bother with the protagonists anymore. In this moment, Winifred decides to reject common sense and go after them because one of the heroes called her ugly. It sort of highlights just how petty and irrational Winifred can be, and how despite her disdain for her sisters, she’s really not so different from them in the end. It’s also worth noting that Mary and Sarah, while clearly evil due to their association with Winifred, are actually pretty nice and mostly harmless otherwise, to the point where you could make a case that without Winifred around, they’d probably not be villains at all.

But if that were the case, we wouldn’t have a movie, and then we wouldn’t be here, huh?

Final Fate: Of course these three fail to suck out any vitality by sunrise, with Winifred’s stupid little vendetta damning her and her sisters. The rays of the sun turn Winifred to a statue and cause Sarah and Mary to explode, with Mary even getting a moment to wave goodbye in resigned sadness as she bursts into a dust cloud. After her sisters are gone, Winifred’s statue explodes spectacularly.

Best Scene: I don’t think there’s really anything that comes close to the sister’s spellbinding performance of “I Put a Spell On You,” at least in regards to all three of them together. I mean, if you get a singer like Bette Midler to star as a villain in your movie, why would you not have her sing? Only a complete hack who doesn’t know how to properly utilize actors would waste a singer in a role where they don’t sing.

The thing is, these three are together all the time, so there’s not much room for individual moments for them to shine otherwise… or there wouldn’t be, if they didn’t showcase Sarah’s absolutely terrifying power, leading her number “Come Little Children” to being her standout moment, and the moment that really drives home the incredibly uncomfortable undertones she exudes.

Best Quote: I think Winifred gets the best quote in the whole movie, which occurs when her zombified ex Billy Butcherson (played by Doug Jones, who you may remember for his critically acclaimed role as Mac Tonight in the McDonald’s ads). Billy tells her to go to hell, and she retorts with: “Oh! I've been there, thank you. I found it quite lovely.”

Sarah, of course, has her villain song: “Come little children, I'll take thee away / Into a land of enchantment / Come little children, the times come to play / Here in my garden of magic.”

And, unfortunately, in this regard I think Mary gets the shaft. Despite her definitely being funny and entertaining, she just doesn’t have the same level of standout quotes as her sisters.

Final Thoughts & Score: So as I was writing this, I was thinking of what their score could possibly be. I thought I’d probably have to lower their score, because aside from them, this movie is just corny early 90s cheese… but then I thought, what’s wrong with that? And why should these three suffer a lower score due to the rest of the movie’s failings? That isn’t their fault. Hell, these three are the reason to watch the movie. If anything, the movie’s failings are drowned out by just how charismatic and enjoyable they are to watch.

Much like their fellow child-hating hag the Grand High Witch, the Sanderson sisters are blessed with fun, funny, charismatic actors who aren’t afraid to ham things up and know just what kind of move they’re in and absolutely revel in it. They saw they were playing three stereotypical fairy tale witches and decided to have a blast with it, and in doing so they managed to transform an otherwise corny Disney film into the Halloween legend that this film is. I wouldn’t say these three are particularly deep or complex, but they have a very fun dynamic and add a lot of spice to an otherwise bland plot. Between them and Doug Jones, they give you a lot of reasons to come back and watch this film over and over.

Obviously, these three are getting a 9/10, only held back from a perfect score because yes, sometimes the camp can be a bit much, even for me. But I’m just not heterosexual enough to give these three ladies anything lower. I still have to unfortunately say Mary is the weak link here, but it’s only comparatively speaking, and I’d probably bump these three down to a 7 if she wasn’t here. I really can’t stress enough that there dynamic is so utterly important that even one of them not being there would spoil things. They just don’t make evil trios like this anymore.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Grinch

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

What can be said about the Grinch that hasn’t already been said a million times by a million different people? The Grinch is easily one of the most iconic Christmas characters of all time, up there with the likes of Scrooge, and he even has a similar character arc in which he learns the true meaning of Christmas and becomes a better person. The original Chuck Jones animated short has gone down as one of the most beloved Christmas specials of all time as well as one of the best Dr. Seuss adaptations ever (if not THE best), and it gave the Grinch his iconic theme song which every other adaptation has seen fit to use.

The Jim Carrey live action take and the Illumination version which featured Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role both tried to bring a fresh take to the world’s most beloved classic Christmas curmudgeon, but did they succeed in making him entertaining and engaging as a villain is the real question?

Actor: In the original Chuck Jones short, none other than Frankenstein’s monster himself, Boris Karloff, portrayed the Grinch, but this is mostly due to the fact he was the narrator of the story and the Grinch is the only character who really speaks due to the tale being mostly shown from his POV. Still, let’s not pretend like Karloff isn’t the definitive voice here, especially considering his competition.

Carrey and Cumberbatch are both good actors, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they really do the Grinch all too much justice. Carrey, bless his heart, at least comes fairly close, with his Grinch being in line with the original, but at the same time this is a comedic Carrey character coming off of his 90s run as a wacky comic actor. Carrey injects that manic Carrey energy into the performance, and while I think it’s a good performance, I don’t necessarily find it to be a good Grinch,

Cumberbatch faces a similar issue, not helped by his decision to use a weird American accent as opposed to his natural British one, leaving his Grinch sounding like a nasally dork. Again, he doesn’t do a terrible job by any means, but his performance certainly does nothing to convince you the Grinch is a mean, rotten soul.

Motivation/Goals: The Chuck Jones Grinch sticks to the original book to a fault; the Grinch is just a cranky jerk who hates Christmas for some inexplicable reason, and so decides to ruin it for everyone out of petty spite. Yes, it lacks any sort of depth, but the Grinch is a character from a children’s book and he just puts so much darn effort into his plan that it’s really easy to forget he’s just doing this because he is just a miserable bastard.

The two other attempts at the Grinch have gone a long way to giving him some sort of tragic backstory explaining his hatred for Christmas. And… I actually really like that. Yes, yes, villains can just do villainous things because they’re jerks, but I do appreciate the other adaptations attempting to do something interesting with the character and make him a bit more engaging in a feature-length product. In the Jim Carrey film, the Grinch becomes bitter and evil due to a childhood of constant bullying, while the Benedict Cumberbatch Grinch was a lonely orphan who never got to celebrate Christmas. While obviously it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not these backstories add any sort of interesting element to the Grinch’s hatred of Chrtistmas, it’s hard to deny that it makes a bit more sense than the Grinch suddenly and randomly deciding after half a century that this Christmas was going to be the last ever.

Personality: While this section of Psycho Analysis is going to be semi-retired, the three Grinches are actually a perfect example of where examining the personalities of the characters can actually show a lot about the overall quality. Obviously, the original Grinch is exactly what a Grinch should be, at least in my eyes: a bitter, miserable curmudgeon who takes great joy in bringing misery to others with his selfish, senseless acts of holiday thievery. He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

The Carrey Grinch does still have these elements, but it’s a bit outshone by Carrey’s hammy performance. His Grinch is about as wild as Ace Ventura or the Riddler, and while hammy villains are always fun – and there’s no denying the Grinch is – it makes it a lot easier to see him eventually turning to the light side, especially since he’s actually shown to have some redeeming qualities.

These issues are continued into Cumberbatch’s Grinch, and in fact here the problems peak. Cumberbatch’s Grinch from the start comes off as more as mildly irritated jerk, yet one who really doesn’t seem evil at all, and as the story continues he seems far more like a depressed, unhappy man with undiagnosed mental illness who is suffering due to childhood trauma. You don’t want to say this guy has termites in his smile or that he’s slippery as an eel or that you wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole; you just want to give him a hug and tell him that things are going to get better. He just seems like he needs a friend, not a total life-changing epiphany.

Final Fate: We all know how it goes; his heart grows three sizes and he learns the true meaning of Christmas. Each of the adaptations keeps this in, though obviously to diminishing returns as each successive adaptation has made the Grinch nicer from the get-go in some regard due to the tragic backstories and whatnot.

Best Scene: At least for the original, his best moment is, of course, the montage during “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” in which we get to see all of the slippery ways this green meanie is ruining the holidays. Of course, this is matched by the epic moment at the end where the Grinch gains super strength from his heart growing three sizes and lifts the sleigh of stolen goods, which is equally awesome whether it’s te animated one or Jim Carrey doing it.

Cumberbatch’s Grinch manages to have a different moment to call his best: after he has redeemed himself, he gets invited to dinner in Whoville, and the scene where he nervously goes to the house and makes small talk is just very sweet and endearing. It’s easily the best scene in the movie and shows that even watered down there’s still plenty of heart to be mined from this timeless tale.

Final Thoughts & Score: I think that the fact that the Grinch is constantly being reimagined is a sign at how impressive and enduring he is as a character, and he’s easily the greatest Christmas villain of all time (with apologies to Hans Gruber, Mr. Potter, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and Kirk Cameron). The original special is obviously the definitive portrayal of the character, to the point where the Grinch became a household name and got himself two more specials, one in which he once again terrorized Whoville (this time with a wagon filled with nightmarish hallucinations) and one where he faced off against the Cat in the Hat, the latter being especially notable for beating Zack Snyder to the punch at making “Crossover Versus Movie in Which One of the Title Characters Is Redeemed By Mentioning His Mother” by 34 years.

The original Grinch even effected himself; his iconic green, almost goblin-like appearance was a departure from the book, where he sort of resembled a more mischievous Who, and it has ended up sticking for the character ever since. Throw in that iconic villain song about how foul he is sang by Thurl Ravenscroft AKA Tony the Tiger, as well as the fact that “Grinch” is up there with “Scrooge” as shorthand for someone who hates Christmas, and it’s easy to justify letting the Chuck Jones take on the Grinch steal not only Christmas, but an 11/10.

Carrey’s take on the character is different, but not bad. I’m not going to say it’s good either, though; I still think Carrey hammed it up too much and just let loose his manic energy. And it’s really weird, because I have a soft spot for the film and I love the performance, and I think the insane energy of Carrey’s performance is what elevates the film and has helped it become a sort of holiday cult classic, but I think that it kind of misses the point of how the Grinch should be. It really boils down to the usual thing with these adaptations that try and add complexities to characters that just work better when they are simple: Jim Carrey’s Grinch is a great, fun character, but he just isn’t a great Grinch. Still, the makeup and costuming is so amazing that I’d feel like a Grinch myself if I stole too many points, so I think a 6/10 is a solid score for a performance that manages to be a bit above your average villain.

And then we get to Cumberbatch. I’m just going to say it: I barely consider his Grinch a villain. He’s just too nice and sad and cranky to really be evil. Sure he has wacky inventions, sure he is a bit passive aggressive to the Whos, but god this guy is just not mean enough. The fact he can just walk into town and interact with the townsfolk and they don’t even bat an eye says a lot about how watered down and toothless this take on the character is. Not helping is the safe, soft design Illumination gave him, as well as Cumberbatch’s weird American accent. Still, I don’t think this Grinch deserves worse than a 4/10 when it comes right down to it. In this case, it’s more that what’s interesting about him as a character saves him from sinking any lower than just being subpar as opposed to the problem with Carrey being that what made him interesting as a character made him less appealing as a Grinch. This guy does still try and steal Christmas, after all… It’s just that he’s so nice to begin with that you really aren’t too shocked when he does end up turning over a new leaf.

While it’s obvious the Grinch has had his ups and downs over the years, the fact he is such a legendary figure and an enduring cultural icon really says a lot for his staying power, as well as that sometimes a simple villain that lacks any complex motivation beyond “he’s a jerk” can really resonate with people. Maybe all of these other adaptations don’t quite measure up to the original animated special, but they don’t need to; it’s just interesting to see what different visions for the Grinch look like from different creators. Whether it’s good or bad, one thing is for sure: he’s a mean one, that Mr. Grinch, and we all love him for it.

You know what we don’t love him for, though? His dental hygiene. 

Merry Christmas!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Jafar

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

So, Aladdin is one of the most beloved Movies of the Disney Renaissance, and rightfully so. It has some of the most fun and wonderful songs, it has a cool protagonist who undergoes a great deal of character development, it has Iago voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, and most importantly it has Genie, one of Disney’s greatest creations and the big blue heart of the film.

The movie also has Jafar.

Jafar is… odd. For the first two acts of the movie, Jafar is little more than a devil in plain sight for the audience and a character who does nothing but remind us the film has a villain; frankly, for most of the film he’s just underwhelming. But then he gets the lamp, and oh boy all bets are off. With Jafar, it’s really important to ask yourself: Can an incredibly awesome finale make up for an underwhelming showing early on?

Actor: Jonathan Freeman has consistently portrayed Jafar in all of his appearances, which include the movie, the sequel, the video game Nasira’s Revenge, that one weird and anachronistic episode of Hercules, all his appearances on House of Mouse, and of course every time Jafar has shown up in Kingdom Hearts. Quite frankly, Freeman is incredible. Jafar has just the perfect sleazy, oily voice, and when it’s time for him to start cackling or shouting like a madman, Freeman sure delivers. Still, one can’t help but wonder how much more incredible Jafar would have been if Patrick Stewart hadn’t turned down playing him...

Motivation/Goals: Jafar is a bit of a simple villain. He wants the lamp so that he can have power and respect and… that’s it, really. Jafar in this film is bit weakly defined from a motivation standpoint, and this is something the live-action film I think did better with its take on Jafar; the Jafar there had a clear, complex motive as opposed to animated Jafar, who is rather simplistic and cartoonish.

However, the animated Jafar upon getting the lamp definitely is the better Jafar, as he just settles in to constantly escalating his power, going from a mere sultan to the most powerful sorcerer alive and then finally to being the most powerful being in the universe: a genie. From there, he becomes motivated by revenge, as Return of Jafar shows, which is a rather simple motive again and is a bit less impressive. Frankly, Jafar’s best showing when it came to goals was in the final act of the original animated movie, where he just constantly felt the need to be the coolest guy in the room.

Personality: Jafar’s personality for the first two acts is, frankly, nonexistent. He’s just your usual slimy vizier with little going for him in the way of interesting villainy; he’s no Ursula or Frollo, that’s for sure… at least, not until the third act. Once Jafar goes mad with power, he becomes an all-you-can-eat ham buffet, shouting all of his lines in the most wonderfully over-the-top and dramatic fashion, zapping spells left and right, and spouting terrible puns.. Frankly, this Power-mad lunatic makes up for the boring, scummy vizier we’ve had to sit with for most of the film, and shows that Jafar really is at his best when he’s extra. In fact, this is something animated Jafar will always have over his live-action counterpart, as that Jafar never really rose to the occasion and just stayed at adequate villainy levels throughout, never truly rising to the levels of the egomaniacal wizard on a power trip the original film gave us.

Final Fate: In the original film, Jafar is defeated by being outwitted rather than by brute force, something I find very compelling: Aladdin goads him into becoming a genie with his final wish, causing him to become bound to a lamp. It’s such an awesome, brilliant moment for Aladdin. Genie then does his part and flicks the imprisoned Jafar and Iago into the Cave of Wonders.

Of course, Jafar gets out for the poorly disguised pilot to Aladdin’s TV series, but by movie’s end a battered Iago kicks his lamp into molten lava, causing Jafar to painfully die once and for all, and maybe or maybe not encounter Hades on the way to the afterlife.

Best Scene: Obviously when he transforms into a big snake in the finale.

Best Quote: Aladdin asks Jafar what he’s doing when he takes the lamp instead of helping him off the collapsing cliff. Jafar pulls out a dagger and utters this immortal line in response: “Giving you your reward - your eternal reward!” Not many lines can claim they inspired a TF2 weapon.

Final Thoughts & Score: Jafar is a villain I feel generally has way too much praise heaped on him. He’s certainly not a bad villain, far from it, but I think people tend to ignore that for most of his screentime he is just incredibly boring and almost takes you out of the plot with how obviously sinister he is. Again, the live-action remake did this aspect so much better, as that Jafar seemed like someone who it would not be entirely unreasonable to trust. This Jafar, the original, is a snake from day one.

But then When Jafar finally gets a taste of power, we get to see him as he truly should be. Jafar just really gets great in the final act, and while some might say “too little, too late,” I’d almost certainly say that this Jafar more than makes up for his earlier showings, and thankfully even in the sequel and outside appearances like Kingdom Hearts Jafar manages to keep pace with how he is in the final act – most likely because in both of the mentioned cases he’s not really pretending to be a good guy. And I think that’s the core of why Jafar just doesn’t work for most of the movie – he is trying to be a twist villain for the characters in the film, but everything about him on a meta level indicates he’s a villain, making the audience feel like everyone around him is an idiot, hypnosis staff or no.

So even after all of that, I think I’d still give Jafar a 7/10. I definitely think all his shenanigans at the end make up for how lackluster he was earlier, and even earlier he had his moments such as when he betrays Aladdin and tries to give him his “eternal reward” or pretty much any scene in which he banters with Iago. I’d definitely say Jafar leans more towards an 8 than a 6 if that makes you feel any better.

Ultimately, as enjoyable as Jafar can be in his appearances, I think character-wise he’s overshadowed by a lot of the other Renaissance villains, such as Ursula, Hades, Gaston, and Frollo. In fact, I think Frollo did what Jafar tried to do a lot better – while Frollo is obviously evil to us, he’s also obviously evil to everyone in the movie except himself. Still, there’s nothing wrong with being a lower-mid-tier Renaissance villain, because it still makes you cooler than most animated villains. And if nothing else, Jafar is really cool.

UPDATE: After reviewing the remake Jafar, I am bumping This Jafar’s score up to an 8/10. Read that Psycho Analysis for the reasons why.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Mojo Jojo

A superhero is only as impressive as their archenemy. Batman is great, but with the Joker fighting him he’s even more awesome; Superman without Lex Luthor just doesn’t feel right; and would Danny Phantom be quite as entertaining to watch if Vlad wasn’t always outmaneuvering him? The point is, no matter how good your superheroes are, they really do need an impressive archenemy to stand out. And the Powerpuff Girls have perhaps one of the coolest archenemies in all of western animation: Mojo Jojo.

Mojo Jojo is one of the more personal foes in the rogues gallery of the Powerpuffs, seeing as he indirectly had a hand in creating them and, as the movie showed, an incredibly direct role in getting them to the position they are in now as the saviors of the city of Townsville. And on top of that, he is just filled to the brim with insane schemes, colorful personality, and enjoyable and memorable moments that help make him a true villain for the ages.

Also, he’s a monkey. And everything’s better with monkeys!

...Okay, he’s technically a chimpanzee, but don’t tell that to Devo.

Actor: Mojo Jojo is voiced by Roger L. Jackson, a voice actor who aside from this iconic role has also played the voice of of Ghostface in every single Scream film to date. Interestingly, Jackson also voiced none other than Hol Horse in the Stardust Crusaders OVA from the early 90s, meaning that Mojo Jojo and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure are closer than anyone could have guessed. Jackson, of course, does a fantastic job, delivering Mojo’s ridiculously redundant speech patterns, in which he tends to repeat what he says, reiterating his points over and over, with great gusto. He’s also able to, in-character, sing an amazing rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” so there’s that too.

Motivation/Goals: Mojo Jojo has a very simple goal: he wants to take over the world. Now, simple goals in the wrong hands lead to boring villains; look at Malekith for proof of that. But the thing with Mojo is that he never has the same evil scheme twice (except for the one time he did have the same evil scheme twice, which ended about as well for him as you’d expect seeing as he failed the first time). He’s always at it again with some crazy new scheme, whether it be forming a bad guy group that spoofs the Beatles or turning everyone into dogs or just building some cray evil machine. And sometimes when he shows up, he’s not doing anything particularly bad; he’s just out shopping, or enjoying a day off. What he lacks in brilliant motivation he more than makes up for in variety.

Personality: Mojo Jojo is well known for his amusing speech patterns and his extreme levels of ham, but beyond the typical trappings of his Saturday morning cartoon villain exterior is something a little bit more. Mojo is perfectly friendly and affable when he wants to be, on occasion even helping out the girls (though it’s almost always with ulterior motives). It can also be inferred that much of Mojo’s hammy, villainous personality is little more than a mask to hide an incredible inferiority complex, which is definitely hinted at in episodes such as the one where an alien conqueror steals all of his ideas, and even a bit in the movie. Such a complex likely stems from his origin as the Professor’s lab monkey; Mojo definitely feels rejected, underappreciated, and in the shadow of the Powerpuff Girls. Of course, considering who he is, he’d never admit it.

Final Fate: Mojo is never defeated, but once he actually did achieve his goal of world domination… and he then proceeded to make the world into a utopia rid of disease, war, and global warming. It’s just a shame that he eventually got bored with his victory and went back to committing crimes; it’s likely he’s just going to be fighting the girls forever, or at least until he finds a better hobby.

Best Scene: In the episode “Forced Kin,” Mojo sees an alien conqueror use every single idea he wanted to use to conquer Townsville and so he, if you’ll pardon the pun, goes apeshit and beats the towering galactic conqueror into submission with nothing but his fists and a baguette. And so the day is saved… by Mojo Jojo!

Best Quote: “I do not talk like that! The way I communicate is much different. I do not reiterate, repeat, reinstate the same thing over and over again. I am clear, concise, to the point!” Sure Mojo, keep telling yourself that.

Final Thoughts & Score: Mojo Jojo is easily the best villain in one of the best non-comic book superhero rogues galleries ever conceived. I think a lot of the reason really does boil down to his ham-tastic personality and the fact he is a cackling chimpanzee mad scientist; over-the-top mad scientists always do well in animation it seems (just ask Jack Spicer and Dr. Doofenshmirtz). Add on top of that a speech pattern that was inspired by the The Super Dictionary (which you likely know as the book that showcased  Lex Luthor committing the crime of stealing forty cakes. That’s as many as four tens! And that’s terrible) and you have one of the most unique and charming supervillains out there despite him being a mashup of all sorts of classic villain tropes.

If you thought Mojo Jojo would be getting anything less than a perfect 10/10, you’d be wrong. Mojo may not be the deepest villain out there, but he serves his function as a fun and funny bad guy for a cool superhero cartoon. And even saying he’s not that deep is selling him a bit short; he actually has a pretty interesting background and the fact he continuously ties himself into the existence of the Powerpuff Girls in every aspect, from his time-traveling escapades inspiring the young Professor to take up science to literally causing the accident that created the girls, Mojo is a villain so utterly doomed to failure that on some level you can’t help but root for him, even though you know he can’t possibly succeed. It certainly helps that for all the times he’s shown to be ruthless and cunning, he’s also shown to be pleasant, charming, and even a loving father to the Rowdyruff Boys.

Mojo Jojo is really what any great superhero cartoon villain should aspire to be, especially ones not based on preexisting works. Mojo Jojo, an original supervillain creation, easily deserves to be held up alongside Joker, Green Goblin, and Lex Luthor. I’m not joking. When you’ve gotten your own theme song performed by Devo, you know you’re in the big leagues and worthy of respect.