#so technically. looking for this silly line from [character] ( <- foreshadowing?) THEN going back to writing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silver-wield · 4 years

Note

I want to know what your thoughts are on the optional Aerith resolution scene? Particularly around the time where Aerith says the "love" line?

Awww man, you're gonna make me watch that? Lol

Ok let's do this then.

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be reasonably long.

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone’s interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis)

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog)

Tifa character analysis

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory – I should probably update this since I’ve had other ideas since then)

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti)

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis

Cloti reunion analysis

The Promise Analysis

Andrea’s approval (Cloti ask response)

Leslie analysis (not mine, but a good read)

Cloti action touching

Aerti friendship analysis

Cloti body language chapter 3

Cloti healthy disagreement

Cloti post heliboss battle (chapter 15)

Clerith playground scene

Cloti body language plate fall

Cloud and Barret friendship

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

Recap time!

So, Aerith's been taken by Shinra and the group is still feeling the after effects of the plate fall. Everyone's pretty demoralised and after they visit deep ground and Cloud gets the aborted flashback of himself inside a chamber being experimented on, he says to Elmyra they should go save Aerith before the same fate befalls her.

Elmyra asks they sleep on it.

During the night Cloud “wakes up” to see a ghostly Aerith heading downstairs. He follows her outside and they talk on the hill top where the lifestream can be seen glowing in the background.

It’s important to note that Cloud has literally just gone through both the train graveyard and seen a bunch of ghosts and the plate collapse where he’s seen a load of people he cares about die.

Cloud looks surprised. Hmm I wonder why....

Yeah, this is a no brainer opening. Aerith shouldn't be there and he doesn't think he's asleep at this moment. He looks around and figures out it's a dream, but isn't totally sure because how often does anyone have cognisant dreams?

You can see the doubt about if she’s a ghost or not and she doesn’t clear that up, so Cloud’s left wondering if Aerith’s dead already. The following conversation doesn’t reassure him.

Aerith's “Maybe. You tell me,” doesn't actually help here. If Cloud's having doubts about how real it is – and she's aware of his fake persona and wants to know the real him – then causing further doubt in his mind seems counterproductive. It's like she's implying an illusory nature to their relationship. It also feels like foreshadowing the moment Cloud thinks he’s not real.

She's also not looking at him when she says it, so even if it was a teasing moment between them, she's automatically set a distance between them. Because eye contact matters, remember? When someone can't meet your eye it's for a reason, whether they're uncomfortable or hiding something or whatever. Eye contact is a conscious connection between two people. Deliberately not making eye contact has meaning too.

Aerith exposition. Lots of fidgeting. No eye contact. She seems like she's making small talk to avoid something. Even when Cloud faces her head on she quickly turns away again to stare off into the distance. Cloud remains in her peripheral vision only. When Aerith does turn to reassure Cloud, he looks away.

And after is the immortal line “Don't be silly” in response to Cloud's sarcasm. I mean, isn't she supposed to be the sweet one? So wouldn't her saying silly fit with her vocabulary? Or should she have said something like “Cloud, don't be a fucking moron” because she swore that one time and everyone erupted into cheers over it? Let's say it is a callback to Claudia, who somehow had a prophetic vision of Aerith being “the one”. Aerith didn't say “silly goose” which was the exact line Claudia said, so technically Aerith's only half of what Claudia suggested. If Tifa says “goose” at some point does that validate her being in the running too?

Yes, I'm being facetious. Point is, unlike the promise between Cloud and Tifa when it was Tifa reusing her own words, this relies on Aerith having meta knowledge of what Claudia said to Cloud when he was 16 and Aerith was with Zack. So, with that in mind, why would Aerith care what Claudia had to say about some other guy she doesn't even know when she's already got a boyfriend? The implication of this is that Aerith already knew everything that would happen to Zack and she'd already moved on from him to Cloud before they ever met and yet she kept writing letters to Zack the whole time.

But then after meeting Cloud she decided to take him up on the slide and talk about her dead boyfriend...as a way to let him know she's single?

This is Cloud's face when Aerith says in a perky voice “You worried about me?” This is the bit where he says “Of course.” It's a very neutral expression tbf. There's not anything being given away and the way he says the line is very simple too. Nothing suggests he's revealing a big secret to her or that he's embarrassed by his concern. I'd say it's SOLDIER!Cloud at rest since we know from the devs that Cloud still puts on a front with Aerith because he doesn't know how to deal with her. Which is typical for Cloud since he's emotionally 16 and never dealt with girls.

That perky persona visibly drains from Aerith's face and body language. Her posture sags, she breaks eye contact, she looks sad. This is the image of someone who isn't happy to hear that Cloud's worried about her. Now, if she was into the whole ship wouldn't she be happier to hear that line from him? She's regretful and turns away again, using her body as a barrier to any possible intimacy.

I'm sure people disagree, so imma explain. If she'd turned her back that would be an outright rejection. She'd be fully closing herself off. By turning away, she's indicating the conversation isn't over, but her degree of attention on Cloud is less than if she'd face him head on. If she stayed facing him, then that builds intimacy since face to face is open body language which can have several interpretations – some of which I've mentioned before like confrontational when Cloud steps up to Rude. When it's between a couple, it's suggestive of building intimacy and trust.

And when Cloud takes a step towards Aerith, she steps away again, towards the lifestream in the distance. Not permitting the closing of distance is a sign she doesn't want to encourage intimacy with him. That she walks towards where the lifestream is means that's where her attention and focus is. Whether that's an overarching plot reason or from a “Zack is there” reason is up to your interpretation.

Another immortal line. Considering Aerith just stepped towards where we can see the lifestream and that she's taking up her priestess pose we can reasonably assume she's thinking of Zack, unless you're once again subscribing to the theory that she's meta!Aerith aware of her own death and speaking of that. In which case, yall need to make up your minds whether she's one or the other because you can't swap between the two when it suits you just to justify your arguments.

When Cloud says “I'll remember that” in response to Aerith's advice that “every moment matters” it definitely comes across as one of those character building life lessons that Cloud's had over the course of the game. He got one from Barret about how not everyone has a choice to run away, one from Marle about listening to others and caring and now he's got one from Aerith about making the time they have count. These are mentor moments.

But more importantly, look who Aerith's looking at when she says that line. It's not Cloud, not the lifestream. Us. The players. She is talking to us. This isn't just wisdom for Cloud, it's for us, too.

After a 9 second pause from Aerith, in which she looks at the ground, Cloud offers a suggestion of what she wants to say next. She seems very lost in thought during this time, and almost reluctant to speak. Considering she always seems to know what to say in any given situation, this is off. This very long pause is the longest she's been silent in the whole game. It's notable. She almost seems to be warring with herself as her eyes narrow and she subtly shifts from side to side.

I may well be wrong about the length of time she’s silent. It could be 7 seconds in a callback to the 7 seconds it took for Sephiroth to drop and kill her in OG.

I'm one of those who does subscribe to the whole OG!Aerith vs meta!Aerith theories – which I stick to throughout every scene involving her so don't even try and @ me and say I'm a liar – and to me, this looks like OG Aerith trying to assert dominance over the situation, while meta Aerith wants to refuse.

When Cloud speaks, Aerith looks grateful for the cut in. It pulls her out of that warring state, while he's trying to look cool and mature still lol (dork)

Okay, so that whole speech she gives about thanking him is definitely coming off like she's aware of things she shouldn't know yet. This may be what OG!Aerith was trying to prevent her from saying. This isn’t something that Cloud should know yet, after all.

After some physical humming and hawing, eyes downcast, then glancing away and we get a shot of her feet – remember all of this is intentional to build a story here – she looks up and we get this line that's making certain people freak out with joy.

Quick lesson on intonation.

Intonation is the rise and fall – the pitch – of how you say certain words. The way you say them gives them their meaning. You can say the same words in many different ways to convey different meanings and/or emotions.

I've previously focused on Aerith's choice of the word “can't” here because this is the key word in the phrase.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how certain people are interpreting this line to turn it into a positive. The word “can't” is synonymous with an impossibility. It means “there are specific reasons why this isn't possible.”

Aerith didn't say “Don't” as in “you shouldn't”. She said “can't” as in “not able to”. She is telling Cloud that he's not able to love her. The specific intonation on the word “can't” supports this evidence. If yall wanna examine it more closely then I suggest you turn the sound down slightly so it's actually harder to hear the whole sentence and see which words have more emphasis. Can't has specific emphasis, which wouldn't be there if she wasn't stressing the word.

As for her facial expression. I mean, this doesn't look like the earlier one where she's sad or regretful. This is matter of fact. She's telling him this as a kindness because he's not yet aware of the reasons that she is.

(Note: I didn't say which specific reasons because some of yall say it's her death and others say it's Tifa, so that's up to you. There's reasons, is my point).

So up until she said that, Cloud was actually looking at her. But this made him turn away in dismissal. Not with embarrassment. He's not caught out and flustered. He's SOLDIER!Cloud, remember? He's all front and super cool facade.

This isn't the first time a girl has thrown herself at him. Jessie did it too, only more ott. Cloud's used to brushing off girls and does it without effort.

I'm sure up to this point some people have been screaming about how biased I've been and unfair and this is so cloti (excuse me while I roll my eyes).

So, if I'm biased why am I about to point out that the above screen is real!Cloud popping in for a visit? This is him overriding the SOLDIER persona to question if Aerith might have a point. But not about her. About Tifa. Because within the previous few hours, Cloud and Tifa shared an intimate moment. And it wasn’t soldier Cloud who did that. It was real Cloud. Aerith is calling attention to real Cloud’s feelings for Tifa, which makes him look to the house where Tifa is sleeping. He gets soft eyed and starts to smile, but then seems to want to question himself, which we know isn’t a good idea. Real Cloud and Soldier Cloud aren’t ready to meet yet.

And while real!Cloud is busy debating with SOLDIER!Cloud about Aerith's words, she's approached completely silently – because, ykno, she's not actually there – and he's caught sight of her hand in his peripheral vision. The second she touches him he jerks back looking surprised. This wasn't a telegraphed move where he saw it coming from 10 feet away and chose to do nothing.

I also question that if he can feel her hand here then it's solid, but when he goes to grab her it's not? So, she chose to let him feel the first touch, but then rejected him grabbing her? Or is it more likely that having caught sight of her hand in his peripheral vision he didn't actually feel her touch his face then or the time after because Aerith's not there. There's no actual physical interaction between them.

This is pity. Not much else to say about it. Meta!Aerith knows Cloud's future and that by introducing these future concepts to him, she's causing confusion ahead of the time it should happen. She feels bad about that and probably about her OG behaviour that she had no control over thanks to the Whispers forcing her to go against her real nature.

Well, I was going to say that Cloud going to grab her wrist – not her hand – is just further proof of her intangible presence. She isn't someone he can hold onto. But having grabbed this screen it's clear he wouldn't have grabbed her wrist at all either. His hand is open and aimed at her forearm and already passing through her well before he tries to close it.

And the reason why goes back to the ghost thing. Cloud thought she wasn’t there in person, that she might be dead or it’s a dream, but then she touched him. So he wants to grab her the same way he did Jessie in the pillar, to try and keep her alive. But his hand goes through her and he’s left looking confused again.

“Do I get a say in all this?”

Well now. That's a bit different. I'm sure like everyone else we've all been convinced that Cloud said “Don't I get a say in this?” like he's arguing with Aerith's decision. That he's admitting he's already in love with her.

“Do I get a say in all this?” is a totally different kettle of fish.

Don't connotates a confrontational tone. It's argumentative. It's rejecting whatever previous statement was made.

Do is a question. It's inquisitive. Placid. Neutral. It's neither confirming, nor denying the previous statement. It's merely asking for more information.

Funny how those little word replacements some people use end up twisting the narrative.

Cloud’s not just speaking about Aerith’s most recent statement either. He’s talking about the whole conversation they just had. The possibility that she’s dead or dying and he doesn’t get any choice about it. This is a throwback to the OG theme of life and death and how the dying get to say goodbye and decide how to leave, while the living don’t and have to figure out how to move on from it afterwards.

Anyway, Cloud has his back to us, so we don't even know if that's coming from SOLDIER!Cloud or real!Cloud, so that's up for debate and I won't even bother since he's got his back to us and we can't see either way.

And then we've got the cool SOLDIER!Cloud (screen) telling Aerith he's gonna save her. We already know that Cloud does his best to sound cool and confident when talking to Aerith because he doesn't know how to be himself around her. This is the kind of line you'd expect to hear from him.

She replies, “If that's what you want.” which is also very non-specific. It's a neutral statement that leaves things up to Cloud. It could imply an answer to the previous question he asked, since the two do stand beside each other and make sense. However, the interjected “It's almost morning” line breaks this up and makes it less of an impactful statement from her. She's done her upmost to neutralise any romantic context from this scene.

Conclusion

If yall saw romance then okay, you must be right.

I sure af didn't. I saw a regretful Aerith telling Cloud things he shouldn't be aware of yet, feeling more regretful for confusing someone who's already suffering from mental illness and then making non-committal statements that neither reject or encourage his attention.

Maybe she's regretful for her own sake as well, knowing what she does about him and still doing this to push some future narrative only she's aware of, but I wouldn't say this is romantic. It's clearly some kind of goodbye from her. Cloud, for his part, looks confused and guarded through most of the scene. There's one moment when his real self peeks out to question Aerith's meaning, but then he's gone again. We can't say for any certainty that his question was asked by his true self or his SOLDIER persona and without visual context I won't speculate.

#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers #final fantasy 7 remake analysis #Chapter 14 resolution A #Cloti #Zerith #Tagging you guys cause you might find it interesting #Not gonna tag the other guys

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slightlyobsessedwithstories · 4 years

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I Can't Believe It's Over

Summary: Steven watches his favorite series come to an end and talks to Connie about it.

Notes: Look it's fluff. That's it it's just some comfort that's still very much needed even if it has been over a week now. Also it's around 1800 words.

Steven was fixated on the screen before him, dark circles under his eyes from the lack of sleep. The first rays of sunlight shined through the window as one of multiple alarms rang.

'It's almost here! It's almost here!' he thought as he turned off almost all of the 10 alarms. It was the final episode of his favorite series, Crying Breakfast Friends!

Well, technically CBF! ended a few years ago and this was its epilogue series, but still, it was practically the sixth season of the show.

He usually woke up at this time, but he's been up all night, theorizing how Spilled Milk could solve all of their problems, especially with Glum Glass (who he shipped them with.)

He was just so excited that he stayed up all night. He kept floating anyway, so it's not like he could sleep on the ceiling. He was up all night, sharing his theories and headcanons while looking through some of the fanart that have come from the episode that was released last week.

He still couldn't believe it was the last episode, it's been running for years. He can still remember the first episode like it was yesterday.

One last alarm rang as he opened a streaming app that made him watch with fellow fans, whatever happens next he's sure it would be good.

An hour and many, many tears later, Connie was calling him for their bi-weekly breakfast together. However Steven was still in bed, a river of tears streaming down his face as the credits rolled.

He was literally crying over Spilled Milk, but that really isn't important right now.

He wiped his tears on the sleeves of his pajamas and went downstairs to wash his face. His eyes were still a bit puffy, but maybe Connie wouldn't notice.

Steven went back toward the bed, sinking a bit. He took a few deep breaths, and finally answered her call.

"Good morning, Steven!" Connie greeted. She was in a diner, judging by the tables and chairs behind her. It was close to full and people were having different conversations, but it wasn't too loud that he couldn't hear her.

"Morning, Connie," he yawned right after greeting her, hoping to mask his sadness with tiredness.

It didn't work. Connie has started to be concerned, "Steven? Are you alright?"

"Yeah I'm fi—"

The universe has a cruel sense of irony, it seems. As he was only midsentence as he saw the glass of milk and the plate filled with fried eggs and crispy bacon and started to sob again.

"I-I can't believe it's over!"

He shuts his mouth, was that too loud? He covers his face with the pillows until he hears Connie talking. She's awkwardly explaining to the people around her; he wipes some of the tears with his sleeve while he apologizes for shouting.

Connie goes back to her seat, visibly relieved. Whether it's because she doesn't have to talk to another stranger or because she knows what's happening with him, it's unknown to him. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

She turns to Steven and asks one question with a knowing look in her eye, "Your favorite series just ended, didn't it?"

"Wait... how- how did you know?"

"I know how that feels," she ate some of her bacon and continued, "I've read so many novels, The Spirit Morph Saga was just one of many books I've obsessed for years!"

Steven listened to her every word as she gushes about some of her favorite books. It's been years since he heard of it, he still remembered Connie introducing him to the saga. He still loves the ending to this day, though he doesn't know if she still feels the same about the ending years later.

"Oh, sorry I got into a tangent there."

"It's okay, I love hearing you being so passionate."

There was a slight blush on her cheeks; she proceeded to drink the milk to hide it. "So..Anyways, what was the name of the series that just left you in tears today?"

Now it was his turn to be embarrassed, how exactly is he going to explain that he's been watching a cartoon for the past six years? He doesn't know what kind of shows she's watched!

But she wouldn't judge him for that, so might as well just say it, "It's Crying Breakfast Friends."

"I thought that show ended years ago?"

"Well, yes, but technically no, so the original show, Crying Breakfast Friends did end a few years ago, but its epilogue series, Bawling Brunch Friends ended today."

"So... were you satisfied with the ending?"

She was answered with more tears, "It was so bittersweet!"

Okay, now she needed to be there with him. "I'm going to finish up here, okay? I'll be there in a minute!"

Connie ended the call, finished her breakfast, tipped the waitress, and ran outside to Lion all under one minute.

A portal opened up in the beach house's living room with Connie and Lion going out from it.

"Thanks, Lion," she said while giving his mane a few pats. He gave a cute little smile and proceeded to sleep near the sofa.

Of course she had to give him some pets, besides it was only a few seconds till a full minute passes and she ran up the stairs.

She knows the feeling, sure she wasn't as sentimental when some of her favorite series ended, but she knows how empty it feels at first.

She wonders how Steven's handling it.

...

Just the sight of his bed tells it all.

It's a bit messy and tear-stained, the impression of Steven has been there for a while making the teen that was on the bed sink even further into it. Near the pillows were some toys and old plushies of the characters in the show, Steven himself holding two of them in his arms while under his comforter.

He was clutching the plushies of a carton of milk and a glass, keeping them close together. He hasn't noticed that she's here, but to be fair she hasn't spoken a word since she came up.

"Hi, Steven." He freezed up for a second, but he was still silent. "Mind if I join you in there?"

She saw his head nodding and making some space for her; she joined him under the covers.

He was looking at some fanart of all the characters together, waving goodbye at the audience as the words, "Thank you Samantha Pepper!" appear above them.

"So.. I remembered seeing a few episodes." Connie shifted closer to Steven, "It looked like a fun, silly cartoon from some of the episodes I've seen."

He chuckled at that, a bit too much judging by Connie's confused reaction.

"It was a fun, silly show at first. I rewatched the whole series preparing for this, and wow, there was a lot of stuff that went over my head."

"Just how serious this show is after the first season, all of the foreshadowing, each character's arc and how much they've changed compared to now!"

"I want to tell you everything, but at the same time I don't want to spoil stuff." Steven's started to float while he was talking and he hasn't noticed yet. "There's just so much that's better appreciated when it hasn't been spoiled and I haven't even talked about—"

"Steven, the ceiling!"

He looks up and floats in place, just inches away from hitting his head. "Thanks Connie." Steven starts to float down.

"No problem."

"Why didn't you stop me when I was starting to float?"

Now it's her turn to fluster him, she gave a shy smile and said, "Sorry Steven, I was distracted with how cute you are when you're passionate."

He was so flustered that his powers failed him at that moment and he fell on the bed, bouncing both him and Connie a few times.

They were both giggling as they laid together on the bed. Steven teasing Connie about using the line he used earlier... until they notice the mess that was made and cleaned it up.

"This show means a lot to you, huh?" she says as she collects the toys that fell onto the floor.

"Yeah... I miss it," Steven helps in collecting the plushies. He grabs the Spilled Milk and Glum Glass plushies and keeps them together.

They both help each other in fixing the comforter on the bed and laid back on it.

Connie can hear him sniffling right next ro her. Guess he's skipped the other stages of grief and went headfirst to depression.

"Why did it only sink in now? I'll never see these characters again!"

Okay, that's it. She needs to tell him this. She turns Steven around, looking him in the eyes.

"You can always rewatch the show, right?" A nod.

"You can always make your own fanart, right?" Another nod.

"And there's also other people's fan creations. Sure, the show's over, but people would still create more stories and art with these characters." Tears have stopped.

"You can love and appreciate all of the content creators in that fandom and their creations, right?" A small smile. She's getting to him.

"And even if it's over, you know that the show would always be with you, right?"

"Connie, I thought you didn't like being saccharine?"

"Steeeven," she was teasing him, and she knows he is too, "I'm trying to comfort you."

"I know, just wanted to hear you say it, because you like me." They were giggling again, but when they were finished he was staring at her with a smile, "Thanks Connie."

"You know I'll always help you, Steven," she smiled back at him.

"Yeah, even with your college prep, you still—"

"Wait, don't you have more stuff to do?" Steven asked, looking a bit worried.

"Today's Saturday, Steven." Connie reminded him.

"Oh... yeah," he rubbed his eyes, "thought it was still Friday."

"You stayed up all night, didn't you?"

"Can't blame me for being excited, besides I'm not that tired."

A yawn escapes him at the end and he settles at the bed.

"Ok maybe I'm a little bit tired. Talk to you later?"

"You know the usual time," she gives him a kiss on the forehead, "see you later, Steven."

"I'll see you soon, Connie."

And she goes down to Lion, who just woke up.

As Steven hears the roar of Lion's portal go out, he opens his phone and looks back on the picture of everyone in the show again.

Connie's right, it's a part of him now. Every memory, every laugh, and especially every tear that's shed—of sorrow and of joy.

"Thanks for giving me tears to the very end."

#steven universe #connie maheswaran #su fics #connverse #what do you mean it's only been a week?#it's over isn't it is playing in the background #what do you mean I'm projecting onto these characters

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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years

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Acorn Symbolism: Romance, Promises, and Peter Pan!

Morning Everyone! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this posted. As I keep saying, cray week. So, I said before that I thought they represented romantic love And I stand by that. For one thing, there are both a male and female component in the germination of acorn seeds. Hence, the romantic love symbol.

But let me mention a few other important acorn references as well.

@frangipanilove pointed out Daryl’s line to Carol last season about Ezekiel being “corny.” A play on the word acorn, perhaps? Now, maybe that’s a silly word play, but given the Serious/Sirius references and “Del Arno Foods,” it’s obvious that the TWD writers don’t mind silly word plays.

Now, @frangipanilove is working on a “nut” theory that will probably be much more comprehensive than this one. She has other “corn” references that are specifically around Ezekiel. I’ll leave that to her. But I suppose you could argue that this is a Carzekiel thing, rather than a Bethyl thing.

Or is it?

I would argue that it might simply be…a romantic love thing. After all, people in love tend to wax a little corny, right?

But there’s something else @wdway thought of that kinda proves the acorn reference is tied to Beth. I’d completely forgotten about this acorn reference in the show, so kudos to her for her awesome memory.

Do you remember there being acorns in the show before? Think about it for a minute. I will say it’s pretty subtle.

Okay, so take a stroll down memory lane to 5x11, The Distance. That’s two episodes after Coda and the one directly after 5x10, where the music box woke up. TF brings Aaron into the barn, Rick knocks him out, and they spend the episode trying to figure out whether he’s trustworthy or not, and also driving to Alexandria for the first time.

At one point, Rick sends everyone out of the barn to hide in various places and keep watch in case Aaron is part of a larger group that might be a threat to them. Then Judith starts crying because she’s hungry, and Aaron offers the applesauce in his bag, right?

But just before that, Rick tries to mash up acorns for her to eat. Voila! Acorn reference!

Why is that important? Because this scene has almost every major TD symbol in it, sitting in that barn. We have the flare gun (fire), a bottle of water with "Greendale springs” written on it, the music box itself, bullets, toilet paper, the applesauce, and even a dog reference (Fido) on top of the applesauce jar.

And this is the barn from 5x10, outside of which the music box has just awakened.

So, the acorns are most definitely a Beth reference.

Where do we take it from there? I’m not sure. I do think it’s significant that we saw acorns around Aaron right after the music box woke up, and we’re seeing them again now, right when something is happening with Aaron and the Whisperers. To me, that says Beth is about to appear.

Also, I won’t go into all the details now, but 5x11, The Distance, is another episode you should go back and watch if you can. There are SO many amazing references in that episode that we had no way of identifying the first time through. Eugene makes a “copulating dogs” reference. Rosita says, “we’re halfway there,” which I can’t help but see as S5 being half way to S10, suggesting the “dog” will return in S10. Tons of stuff like that all through it. Go watch! 😝

If you look up acorn symbolism, they can represent strength, much like the oak tree (which I’ll talk about in a minute). But that could also represent Beth’s strength. They can tell the future, so yes, they definitely portend something Daryl’s future, and are kind of the ultimate foreshadowing symbol. They suggest looking deep within ourselves (Daryl feelings for Beth) and that if something is nurtured in the right way, it can become powerful. Again, Beth nurtured Daryl like no one ever has.

@frangipanilove and I researched the phrase Carol uses, “double capper.” It doesn’t seem to be a real thing. I just figured it was slang, but it’s not coming up in online searches as even that. So I don’t think it means anything by itself. It’s just something mean to draw our attention to the acorn and its symbolism.

Also, the “double” part (2) might represent that we’ve hit the second phase. This hearkens back to retellings and the fact that carrots take two seasons to grow into maturity. It’s something I haven’t mentioned for a while, but we always figured there would be, symbolically, two stages or two times around for Beth and Daryl. The first was S4/S5, and they, as characters, hadn’t matured all the way at that point. We always saw it as Beth returning as stronger, more mature in her character and survival skills, etc. But it’s true of Daryl as well, at least emotionally. This is something I have touched on recently, about how he does understand his own feelings now and will be able to communicate them. So again, the “double” part might represent that we’ve entered phase 2, which is just a fancy way of saying we’re in the part where Beth will return.

Oak Trees

Let’s talk about oak trees, which produce acorns. You might even call acorns the offspring of the oak tree.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what kind of trees we’re seeing, because we don’t get close up shots of the leaves. But we think all the trees in Fear, on which we’ve seen ladders painted, and Alicia is now painting Phoenixes, are oak trees. (Ladder Theory, Phoenix Theory).

We also talked about the tree in the opening credits—the one the plate glass windows hang from—and whether it might be an oak or not. We also looked up biblical symbolism because we all know biblical symbols are big in TWD, and they’re a big deal in the bible as well.

There are several cases of the holy men of the bible (including Abraham, Jacob, and Joshua) making sacred vows under oak trees. Sometimes they bury things in token of these oaths. Jacob’s is very significant, especially as it is entangled with the story of Jacob’s ladder, and remember that in FTWD, we’ve seen ladders painted on oak trees.

One story that stood out to me was that of Joshua. Reading it, I became convinced that the tree we see in the opening credits is, indeed, an oak tree. Let me explain.

In the story, Joshua utters the famous line, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” He then asks if the people will do the same. They make a solemn oath to always serve the Lord, and they do it under an oak tree. Joshua puts a rock under the tree (which represents Christ, btw) and says if they break their promise, the rock will testify against them in judgement.

So, the oak tree = a solemn promise. It occurred to me that’s pretty much what Rick did under the tree with the plate glass pictures hanging on it at the end of S8. He made an oath to honor Carl’s last wishes and not kill Negan. (“My mercy overcame my wrath.) And if that was an oak, then the one in the opening credits must be as well. (Bc of the plate glass pictures.)

And the more I think about it, the more significant that becomes. I don’t want to go into all the details of this today (because this post is about acorns), but I’ve said before that I think Negan will lead to Beth in some way (hence all the bats we saw around her). And the only reason Negan is still alive is because of Rick’s “oath” to let him live in order to honor Carl’s last wishes.

Remember the Phoenix near Carl at his death? (Alicia is painting phoenixes on trees in FTWD.) Well, if Carl hadn’t died, I absolutely think Rick would have simply executed him at the end of AOW. And if Negan is as instrumental in Beth’s return as I think he’ll be, then that’s super important. You could argue that but for Carl’s death, Beth wouldn’t have ever returned. Which explains the phoenix we saw just before Carl’s death.

Also, these new opening credits that start and kind of center around the oak tree began in S9, after AOW ended. Which says to me that Rick’s oath (keeping Negan alive, etc) is what’s driving this part of the story, now. So, this really is all beautifully and intricately connected.

And how do we go from the oath under the oak tree to an acorn symbol? How should we interpret that?

Well, this may become more specific as we learn more, but for now, here’s how I think of it. Just as the acorn is the offspring—or offshoot, if you will—of the oak tree, so Beth’s return (and Daryl’s happiness) will be a result or offshoot of Carl’s death and Rick’s oath.

Peter Pan:

All right, I’m going to switch gears and talk about one more possibility for this acorn reference that the lovely @weapon13whitefang.

She said between the acorn in this scene with Carol and Daryl, and the “kiss” reference, she was immediately reminded of Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, there are tokens of kisses exchanged. Like thimbles. Peter didn’t know what a kiss was, so Wendy gave him a thimble, which was a token of a kiss.

In return, Peter actually gives Wendy an acorn button. Now, technically, this is not an actual acorn (though many PP interpretations use actual acorns). Rather this was a term for a button made of wood, which in slang, was known as an “acorn button.” (Source) In symbol of their friendship, Peter and Wendy wore their gifts for one another around their necks on necklaces. Wendy’s acorn button even saved her life when the Lost Boys (on Tinkerbell’s angry lie) shot her out of the sky. The button stopped the arrow from piercing her heart and killing her.

This has SO many promising implications.

But first thing’s first. My first thought was about what this meant for the question of romance. You all know I don’t think this signifies romance between Carol and Daryl—I know it doesn’t—but I need to be able to explain why.

So, Wendy and Peter exchanged tokens, much like Carol giving Daryl an acorn in this past episode. The question is, was there ever romance between Wendy and Peter?

Meh…a little bit. Wendy was definitely crushing on Peter when she first met him, though it was as much the prospect of adventure as anything else. (Which might have also been true of Carol early on, especially as Daryl helped her search for Sophia.)

But think about it in the long term. Things don’t work out romantically between Wendy and Peter. Wendy leaves Neverland, grows up, gets married and has kids, where Peter doesn’t. They always have a deep and abiding friendship—and even love—for one another. They wear their token necklaces for decades after their adventures together. But romance? No, it’s not really part of the story.

In fact, if you want to get REALLY detailed, why did Wendy first become disillusioned with Neverland? Because she came to understand that Peter brought her there, not as a girlfriend or companion, but to be a MOTHER to the Lost Boys. (Daryl and Carol have a mother/son relationship, as confirmed by Norman in S7.)

You could also argue that Carol finally putting the tragedy of Sophia behind her and marrying Ezekiel and finding happiness represents Wendy moving on from Neverland and getting married and having kids. Daryl is still Peter Pan in Neverland who’s never sustained a real relationship before. Of course, we think he will, when Beth returns. But for now, the Peter and Wendy analogy is very apt.

And it opens up a lot of possibilities for me. I’m super intrigued as to what will happen with this acorn. He put it in the pocket of his vest. Will it save his life? Deflect a bullet or something? Or is this less literal than that? If it represents Beth or his relationship with her, maybe it foreshadows that she’ll save his life in some way. (Something we’ve all theorized about for a LONG time.)

I also think it’s interesting that Wendy was flying when she was shot out of the sky and the acorn button saved her. They even called her the Wendy-Bird. Now, granted, in this analogy, Carol, more than Beth is Wendy. But still.

1) We saw a plane crash this past season on FTWD, and we’ve seen several helicopter crashes, including one on the roof of Big Spot in 4x01 (Beth) and one when Merle returned in 3x01 (resurrection of character).

These are representations of birds falling out of the sky. You MIGHT even be able to lump the satellite in with that. I don’t know if satellites are ever referred to as birds, but it did fall out of the sky, after all.

2) How many birds have been used around Beth as symbolism? Blue Heron. Yellow Wagtail. Phoenix. Songbird.

3) And of course there’s a major precedent for the writers using children’s stories as symbolic templates in the show. The Wizard of Oz. Little Red Riding Hood. The Little Prince (FTWD). Why not Peter Pan?

So yeah. I gotta stop now, but let’s just say I’m still loving the acorn symbol and the acorn scene. They portend great things for TD and Bethyl. 🎉

Which acorn interpretation is your favorite and why?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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ahouseoflies · 5 years

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The Best Films of 2019, Part VI

Yes, I know that it’s almost March. Thanks for taking the ride. GREAT MOVIES

22. Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)- To disrespect this movie is to disrespect the moon landing itself so... I do like listening to the Walter Cronkite snippets about "the burdens and dreams of all mankind" and smirking at the idiots who talk about "back when people just read the news without editorializing." 21. Waves (Trey Edward Shults)- I could have done with five fewer shots of people holding each other, and the foreshadowing could be more subtle, but, man, Shults takes some huge swings here, for a more powerful effect than either of his previous films had. It isn't often that a colorist gets a single card in the opening credits, but it makes sense for a film that stands out as much as this loud, woozy piece does. I don't think there's anything as present-tense this year as a character drunk-driving to Kanye West's "I Am a God." 20. Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi)- The dissenters of Jojo Rabbit have been pretty uniform in their negativity, and I think their stance has to do with not wanting to be told what to think or feel. (Putting "an anti-hate satire" on the poster has to fire up those haters.) This movie is not subtle or ambiguous, but you know what? Casablanca is a pretty didactic movie too. Let me back up from the C-word. For me, the film's emotional scenes are better than its comedic scenes, but in either form, Waititi directly engages with a ten-year-old in a way that neither romanticizes him nor condescends to him. That's such an imperfect, transformative age in a boy, and not enough movies are willing to wrestle with how ugly it can be. Roman Griffin Davis is pretty good, but he's spotted by sincere, compassionate performances by Thomasin McKenzie and Scarlett Johansson. It's possible that Johansson has never been better. I totally understand why someone with her sex symbol baggage would resist playing mothers; if I've done my homework, this is the first time she has done it, even though she's a parent in real life. But her maternal scenes here are heartbreaking in their patience, particularly in a scene for which her character "plays" herself and her absent husband. Besides uncorking a more vulnerable part of herself, Johansson nails the performative aspect of being a parent, resisting the urge to make everything a lesson but wanting so desperately to be a positive example for a kid who needs one. 19. Honeyland (Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska)- I greatly prefer the term "non-professional actor" or "first-time actor" to "non-actor" because it's only human nature to act differently when being filmed. The second even a camera filming a birthday party captures you, you start to perform. But in handmade stone houses in rural Macedonia, the subjects are true non-actors. They have no affect because, in all likelihood, they have not seen a movie before. So the way that Hatidze lived over the course of the three years of this project--with purpose, focus, and wisdom--seemed new to me. Honeyland is the gift that I always hope for from documentary and (especially) foreign documentary: a slice of life that I never knew I needed. 18. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)- Andrew Garfield's Sam spends a lot of time on his balcony surveying his apartment complex, staring at a topless woman in a way that recalls Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, one reference point among hundreds. Sometimes he watches through binoculars, sometimes he watches through blinds--blind imagery that shows up over and over again in a movie about voyeurism. Anyway, this neighbor keeps parrots, who we're told as kids can "talk." Not that the animals have any conscious intention with their mimicking, but they replicate what they hear or are taught. The words are signified without any signifiers, so it's hard to even classify the noises as speech. Maybe those noises are everything--a tie to our species that reveals impressive intelligence--but maybe they're nothing--a silly hope of a world that seems less alone. And that subjective interpretation of code is the clearest metaphor in an otherwise elliptical, bizarre, sprawling, sui generis film. It's messy alright. Some of the threads lead nowhere, but in a movie about order and chaos, that's obviously the point. The scene with The Songwriter--barely any of the characters have names--is over ten minutes and might not have any narrative consequence. But in the moment it's earth-shattering and urgent. And maybe I'm the obvious audience, but I'm not going to complain about anyone taking a dance break for "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" 17. 1917 (Sam Mendes)- Weirdly enough, a Lauryn Hill line kept bouncing around in my head as I was nervously tapping my foot: "It could all be so simple, / But you had to make it hard." This is a direct story told with impossible technical aptitude. 1917 isn't saying anything new, but have you ever seen a plane crash ten feet away from the camera forty-five minutes into an unbroken take? No offense, but do you remember when we were all impressed that Creed had a five-minute fight in one take? Blimey. 16. American Factory (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)- It's a rare documentary that makes its case so gracefully and so forcefully at the same time. The film ends so conclusively that it could be considered labor activism, but it's so fair that the union-busting schmucks are willing to joke around with the filmmakers without obfuscating at all. The obvious forebearer for this sort of boots-on-the-ground snapshot of American labor is Harlan County U.S.A., but American Factory is more staid and less concerned with setting because, you know, this could be anywhere.The Chairman is the best villain since Thanos, and as he looked back on his life while walking around his empty cabana, I had to squint a bit to make sure he wasn't purple.

15. Ad Astra (James Gray)- Ad Astra declares so that it can suggest. The opening crawl says that the near future is a "time of hope and conflict," but all we see is the conflict: the pirates on a borderless moon that we've ruined with Applebee'ses, the neglected wife leaving her ring on a table, the voiceover that declares, "I always wanted to be an astronaut...for all mankind and all." This film will take place in four parts--Earth, Moon, Mars, Neptune--and each part will offer unique obstacles to challenge our phlegmatic but confused hero. But all of that table-setting allows James Gray to explore. There's a scene in which the Roy character uses a belt to pull himself, one tug at a time, deeper into the unknown, and we see the action through the reflection in his helmet as we're watching his face. We're seeing through his eyes but at a remove, and in this moment we're watching him heave himself into emptiness, thinking that the more distant and lonely and absent he gets, the more of a man he becomes. We know that's not true, but we kind of think it is from the movies, and Ad Astra has a happy ending if only because it wants to disprove that notion. Lots of artistes talk about how they could, without compromise, make grand, big-budget entertainments if they only wanted to. James Gray did. 14. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)- In a train on the way to her hometown, the protagonist Xiao casually tells a fellow passenger that she has seen a UFO. Although it comes up later in a sort of magic realism flourish, her statement seemed like a character moment for me. People who see UFOs are either guileless rubes or attention-seeking hucksters, and that's the dance of Tao Zhao's performance. Even after seeing the movie, I can't tell which one Xiao is. Often it changes in the course of a scene. The time when she shows the most agency, firing off her boyfriend's illegal gun to ward off his attackers, results in the time when she is the most helpless, being ordered around in jail. She might confess her ex-con status in a moment of vulnerability, then flake out at the next train stop in an attempt to seize her power back. (It's worth mentioning that there are lots of movies about flaky drifters who don't pay the tab, but few of them are about women.) Even the way that she holds her backpack--frontways--is street-smart and child-like at the same time. This is the second film that Jia has made with a triptych setting, (Mountains May Depart is slightly superior.) and he doesn't make the flash forwards obvious. He invites the performance's same sort of healthy confusion upon the viewer with the formal elements. I, for one, am willing to get probed by these foreign objects. 13. Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley)- I questioned a late moment in the film, one of the plottier ones in which Woody goes back to save another toy one more laborious time. When I sighed, my wife reminded me, "He never leaves a toy behind." Toy Story 4 is a dazzling upgrade in the series from a visual standpoint, (I gasped again at Woody lying in a damp, sunny patch of concrete.) but it's more of a reminder of the consistent character development and weight that have been blanketing us for twenty-three years. Pixar isn't reinventing the wheel because it is the wheel. Sure, the characters are too numerous and separate now. I miss the OG's Rex and Hamm. But for one thing, that rogue's gallery makes it funnier when, say, Buttercup pops up with a joke out of nowhere. And the new characters, particularly Forky the Nihilist, are so lovable that I wouldn't know who to trade. Toy Story 4 is probably the worst of the franchise, but that franchise--especially when its subtext seems to be questioning people who want to stop intellectual property from evolving--might be the best we have. 12. Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu)- In discussing the aftermath of an execution, Alfre Woodard's warden character Bernadine mentions the mother who will claim a prisoner's body, who will follow through with plans for burial. And I realized, to be honest, that I had never thought about how executed bodies are claimed and laid to rest, though obviously those sad practicalities persist. This whole film is a reminder of the numerous costs that arise from a system that is out of time and out of reason. To that end, every character is fully drawn with empathy. For example, the assistant warden, which could have been a nothing part, has ambitions and fears that give him an arc that shades the protagonist. The Richard Schiff and Wendell Pierce characters make the film about the compromised promises of retirement, but the assistant warden is there to tug us back into law enforcement. Neon ended up putting this movie on the awards circuit back burner, but Aldis Hodge deserves the world. Although the film piles on one indignity too many for my taste, drifting into miserableism, Hodge's performance has a rare possessive quality. Catatonic in his most crestfallen moments and antic when he clings to hope, Hodge drags the audience along with him. The character is quiet, but every word counts. 11. The Farewell (Lulu Wang)- I was not been more thoroughly charmed all year, especially by Awkwafina, who is a revelation in a tricky role. There are a few scenes that get comedic effect through repetition, and it's telling that the subtitles stop by the third or fourth run-through of a line. The movie assumes you're smart, which goes even further than its piercing emotion. Shout-out to Mr. Li, who made me crack up every time I saw him. The elderly sort-of-boyfriend is such a common figure in real life, but I'm not sure I've ever seen that character type on screen. I'm not sure I've seen any of this on-screen, and that's the reason the film exists.

10. Avengers: End Game (Joe Russo and Anthony Russo)- For a guy who grew up in the '30s, Captain America is pretty cool with gay people. 9. Gloria (Sebastian Lelio)- I saw Lelio's original Gloria, the one that he's remaking here, and it didn't do much for me, even though it hit some of the same beats as this one. I wonder what the difference could be...do you think the total commitment of one of the greatest actresses in the world matters? Lelio documents who this woman is to her children, to her mother, to her ex-husband, to her lover, to her co-workers, and it's by tracking the tiny compromises of those relationships that the viewer gets to see the fully realized her. The cyclical editing of those pieces--sing a disco song to herself in the car, rinse, repeat--ends up lulling the viewer into his role of seeing the complete Gloria. It ends up being a fun, absorbing process. I yelled out loud at Turturro for disrespecting my girl. Moore, who is in every scene, sells us on these different versions of the character through complete control of her instrument. She lets headphones slump along her body at work. She kneels down toward a street performer in a more maternal way than she ever presents with her actual daughter. She sits cross-legged with her best friend, as if they're little girls. I won't spoil what she does at the end, when she is at her most empowered. 8. Midsommar (Ari Aster)- I love this movie, but, boy, is it a friendship killer if you recommend it to the wrong person. Whether you liked Hereditary or not is a good predictor for your taste, but I think Ari Aster's follow-up is much better: Whereas the unpredictability of Hereditary makes the mysticism of its final fourth seem like a leap that you either accept or don't, Midsommar is driving so hard in one direction that its dread is even more pronounced. (The prologue is so masterfully deliberate and gloomy that it takes a long time for the film to get back to those depths.) For comparison's sake again, Aster was painting in the colors of hysteria and fractured relationships before, but the new film seems much more biting and vital in the way it depicts modern men and women. I'm thinking of the way Dani excuses herself at the risk of compromising her safety or rationalizes her boyfriend's forgetting her birthday with "Well, I didn't remind him." All of the characters become victims of a misinformed, selfish brand of multicultural tolerance that makes them rationalize evil instead of speaking up, and that acceptance serves the plot way better than the average horror movie's running up the stairs instead of out the door. For his part, Christian, who seems sympathetic at first, takes ideas, drugs, and even women for himself with impunity. (It's important that he's an anthropology student, and it's more important that his name is Christian.) When he colonizes his Black friend's thesis topic, it might seem like a tipping point, but he was one step ahead in using rules and approval for his purposes. None of the Americans bother to stop him, but that doesn't mean that no one stops him. 7. A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)- "The sun shines on good and evil the same." In the baggy second hour of what might be Terrence Malick's most direct and linear film, martyr Franz Jagerstatter tosses off that line with grace and aplomb, at a time when most of us would have neither to spare. His captors are confused when he denies that his conscientious objection will make any difference in the war or when he doubts that he is more morally evolved than his countrymen. His refusal to pledge an oath to Hitler is a state with no outcome in mind, which the results-obsessed Nazis cannot understand. In that way he is the perfect Malickian hero, which means he is the perfect Heideggerian hero: a man who sees all planes of existence as equal--or at least equally unknowable to him. As a farmer, Franz observes and acts upon cycles, but he is smaller than Nature and the communion he finds with God there. So when he's torn from his family and daily life to be stuck in a prison, he is separated from that concord further and further. The key, however, is that he is no more or less powerful than before, and that knowledge is what gives him transcendental perspective. He is indifferent in the way that only a saint can be. Of course, what I'm describing also makes for a passive protagonist, which is why the cross-cutting to his wife Fani is so effective. She is the one who has to shoulder the burden of his ideals, and Valerie Pachner's stolid performance sells that sacrifice. The overall balance comes from the jagged but precise editing, and the production is all the more impressive for retaining the Malick style despite the absence of most of his regular collaborators. (This is the first time since The Thin Red Line that he hasn't worked with Jack Fisk, but there the production design is, crafting a 1940 Austrian town out of nothing and building a network of water symbolism that I don't understand yet.) In fact, the whirling steadicam and the avoidance of artificial light have more of a thematic purpose than ever if "the sun shines on good and evil all the same." Perhaps the greatest achievement of this film about unjust war is that it made me pray for Donald Trump today. Because if I want to be like Franz Jagerstatter, then I have to believe the light of God shines on him too. 6. Knives Out (Rian Johnson)- A third of the way into this imaginative, absorbing whodunit, I started to talk myself into the surface pleasures of cinema. "So what if it doesn't have much to say; look at these stars going for it with this spicy dialogue and these gleeful twists." Then the subtext asserts itself through a radiant Ana de Armas, and the subtext becomes the text in the final shot. Knives Out is the best of all worlds. Rian Johnson might be the first filmmaker for whom a Star Wars movie ends up being a footnote. 5. Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi)- There's a photograph hanging in the library (yes, the stately library) of the patrician family of my childhood best friend, and I'm in that picture. There I am, dressed a bit sloppier than everyone else, near the edge of the frame. Because I was there, as usual, and because they are kind. Everybody Knows is about one of those family friend outsiders, perhaps in a way that no other movie has been. When it's at its best, it's about what those marginal figures can and can't say, can and can't do. The film dips into soap opera territory, but only to sell its message of how secrets beget other secrets. For me, it's another Farhadi hit of approachable, modest conflict that bakes itself into an experience. 4. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)- The best divorce movie ever made--by the guy who wrote and directed the former belt holder of the best divorce movie ever made. These luminous lead performances aren't just about saying cutting, hurtful things or reacting to their child's preference for the other parent (or at least the other parent's toys). They're about the internal devastation of realizing you can never take back something you've said. Driver and Johansson each get a chance to sink into one of those moments, and they're joined by a head-tilting, blustery Laura Dern, who gets a Virgin Mary speech that won her an Oscar. And there are jokes! Underrated aspect of the movie: The son is kind of a dipshit. I like that he just hates math and wants to eat candy, as opposed to the cute prodigies we've seen before in this type of movie. They're fighting over a kid only a parent could love. INSTANT CLASSICS

3. Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie)- Howard the jeweler lives somewhere in upstate New York, but he has an apartment in the city. It's an apartment that is close enough for him to cab over to his mistress who lives there, but it's far enough away that his family wouldn't bother popping in for a visit. That sort of gap is present throughout Uncut Gems: Family members act differently in the Diamond District than they do at seder, and we first see Howard from the literally vulnerable inside of a colonoscopy, not the animated brio of his tightrope-walking exterior. Of course, the gem of the title is the ultimate division: something pure that the characters are searching for, untouched by the process that Howard, by definition, does. And the film is about how little he can abide by purity. Until now, The Gambler (1974) was probably the best film of this type, a snapshot of a cursed man who seems to be gambling with forces way beyond the game in question. But Uncut Gems is more pathological, more authentic, more intense, and more decisively realized. By focusing more on character than the Safdie Brothers' other work, it offers a unique depiction of compulsive behavior and implicates the audience in rooting for Howard's (technically unrealistic) parlay. By doubling down on his bets or re-uniting with his girlfriend, Howard thinks that he can reinvent himself and start anew. But like the legacy of the Chosen People the film depicts, like the lines on all of these great New York faces, some things are permanent.

2. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)- "It's what it is." You wouldn't blame someone if he saw the logline and lineup of The Irishman and expected GoodFellas. In fact, this one quotes Scorsese's signature film continually. Instead of slicing onions with a razorblade, old convicts pitch bocce balls. Instead of tracking sumptuously through the Copa, Scorsese's camera wanders through a nursing home. Instead of pistol-whipping Karen's neighbor for getting handsy, our protagonist curb-stomps a grocery owner for shoving his daughter. But there's a GoodFellas staple that is missing. The first fourth of that crime saga closes as Young Henry, played by Christopher Serrone, gets rewarded for staying mum in court. All of his partners in crime cheer him, and he is told that he learned a valuable lesson (in protecting the family and subverting the law). Then we cut to Adult Henry, played by Ray Liotta now, because Young Henry has learned everything he has to know. The Irishman has no such moment of elevation or revelation. Frank is, crucially, played by Robert De Niro over the course of decades because his fall from grace--if there ever was grace--is too imperceptible for any before-and-after divide. The lessons that he learns are just as corrupting as what Henry discovers: Power comes from insularity. Having power means you don't have to prove it. Organized crime, organized labor, and the political process are all the same thing. A code is all a man has, but all codes have limits. However, Frank's corruption, the selling of his soul, doesn't even bring an Asian-inspired chiffonier or a Janice Rossi sidepiece. Frank doesn't get rich; he jams his hands into a plastic ice bucket at the bar next to his couch. He doesn't get powerful; he has to kill because Russell is too prominent to be in the same town as a hit. He doesn't get glory; even a celebration held in his honor is just an excuse for more influential men to do business. Frank is a tool, and he is trapped in a fruitless silence, at best an accessory at meetings. (De Niro is doing quoting of his own. There's a lot of Jackie Brown's Louis in his shrugs and smirks.) As boisterous as Scorsese's films can be, he also knows how to use silence. Robbie Robertson's score is weak, but luckily the film goes without for long stretches, including a suspenseful car ride that begins with a treacherous hug and ends with a malignant secret. The best performance comes from Joe Pesci, probably because his stolid stillness matches the overall atmosphere. Of course, the quietest moments correlate to the loneliest moments: Frank touring a cemetery or sitting with a door half-cracked to a complicit viewer. It's the silence of deliberate toil. Like the mobster ripping up carpet in the lake house, Scorsese is on his hands and knees destroying his own myths.

1. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)- Parasite is Bong Joon-Ho's masterpiece because it distills the worldview and passions that he previously flirted with into a condensed but elaborate statement. In the same way that Mean Streets is perfectly good but feels like a rehearsal for the slow boil of encircling gangster life in GoodFellas. In the same way that Hitchcock played with the impotent everyman voyeur in a confined setting but didn't perfect it until Rear Window. Like the examples above, Parasite, a true ensemble, is a case of the subtext becoming text. Back in his native country and language, working more or less with realism, Bong is free to take aim at class in a more direct but still wacky way. In all of its crowd provocation--there's so much pleasure in just a suspenseful winding down stairs--the film is destined to be a foreign film gateway drug. But really it just makes we want to take a half-star off my Snowpiercer review since I know Bong can do better now.

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mimicofmodes · 5 years

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Sanditon, episode 4 part i

I was thinking a bit earlier this morning about Sanditon continuations ... the only other one I’ve consumed is the 1975 one by “another lady”, and while I don’t remember many details, it struck me as very much in the Georgette Heyer vein. At the time, Heyer’s characterization/plot tendencies were the predominant way of interpreting the Regency, so it was normal to have, for instance, the climax of the story be an attempted, kind of silly abduction of the heroine which she foils through being sensible and the abductor coincidentally taking her by her home. Now the predominant way of interpreting the early nineteenth century stress depictions of “realistic” dirt, the rules of society being highly flexible, and (admirably) recognizing that the world didn’t consist solely of white upper-middle-class English people - so a mainstream continuation of our time looks very different from both how Austen would have written the story and how an author of the 1970s would do it.

Also, I may have been comparing some of the earlier parts of the show with the 1975 continuation? D: I thought the original fragment ended a few chapters later than it actually does. Very bad me. I will have to go back and edit out some of the mean things I said about changes that were actually just original work. (Original work that didn’t convince me! But not weird changes. Actually, it appears that the scene where Sidney tells Charlotte off for criticizing his family is more likely a deliberate response to the continuation, quite interesting.) Sorry about that.

Anyway, on with the plot.

Arthur and Diana are headed off to Dr. Fuchs for their daily (!) appointment, looking very Regency. Charlotte, on the other hand, is wearing a more 1820s pelisse - the full sleeves, the broad collar, the lowered waistline - in a very Georgiana-ish bright pink. She picks up her post, just ahead of Georgiana’s maid in line. Georgiana has received a response from her secret lover!

The letter Charlotte received from home looks like it’s written with the paper having been filled up, turned 90 degrees, and written on some more - an actual period practice, if you were wondering.

Ah, the jumper dress style. It goes through periods of popularity in Regency films and costuming. This is, IMO, an example that does it right - the habit shirt underneath doesn’t look like a modern top, and the gown itself just looks right. Mr. and Mrs. Parker rib her a bit about only just coming to like Sidney, and when Tom says that he’s “altogether habit-forming” on greater acquaintance, Charlotte has a consternated look on her face that spells foreshadowing.

Clara’s pelisse-ish dress looks a bit 1820s to me, but Lady Denham’s gown is sheer 1750s-1760s, with the robings and bows down the front, taking the “older lady wears older styles” meme way too far. Lady Denham is working at her job of trying to marry off the Denhams well, which bothers Clara. Lady Denham then goes on to say that Clara’s prospects are pretty bad, which is true, but ... you have it entirely in your power to do something about that? So they’re not “beyond repair”. She also has no more sympathy left for Clara’s horrible burn. :(

Clara visits the Stringer home, which she says reminds her of her own, reminding me of the ambiguity/confusion in the beginning of the series - is this politeness or really a signal that she’s not really part of the gentry? Her blue spencer is lovely, but the gown underneath has an extremely full skirt - more like something from the 1790s, at least 20 years out of date.

While much of the dwelling seems accurate to me, this huge leather armchair is very much a modernism. Upholstered armchairs, and upholstery in general, were signs of wealth. It looks like a worn-out Laz-E Boy recliner, especially with the china mug resting on the arm.

He’s so sweet! Look at his face! Charlotte takes a look at his architectural plans, which his father disapproves of since he’s just a working-class foreman. She likes them and supports his desire to improve his situation. It’s awkward, though, and she leaves. Beautiful Stringer looks longingly after her from the door.

Charlotte is taken to Georgiana, also in a lovely jumper-style dress (technically, this may have been called a “Russian gown”, but I think we don’t have enough evidence about that) in a very G bright sky blue, who has a plan for them to hang out together - a picnic! Mrs. Griffiths doesn’t approve because for some reason she considers them declassé (they weren’t), but Georgiana pretends that the Parkers will be there as well, which soothes her and worries Charlotte.

A very excellent, if dowdy, gown on Mrs. Griffiths. I feel like I’ve seen it in another production, but not sure which. Any thoughts?

Over at Denham House, Esther is also in a jumper dress! Hers is also in a signature color, dark red/purple, and it’s worn only over her corset (which honestly looks chilly).

Sir Edward’s deshabille takes the form of a silk banyan/dressing gown in a similar shade. He’s settling in to read Babington’s letter to Esther, so it makes sense to visually link them. She distracts him by asking him to lace her corset tighter, and he kisses her neck after doing so, which Clara sees when she comes by with a letter from Lady Denham. Esther realizes that Clara was there, while Sir Edward dismisses the noise as one of their own servants. (So their servants are aware of their incestry? And they haven’t spread it all over town? Okay.)

Please note the accurate spiral lacing for the corset! Esther also interests me further by seeming to have partly turned the conversation from Babington and her face away from her brother because she’s not completely, entirely, 100% certain that she’s so uninterested in the former.

Georgiana takes Charlotte to a little architectural folly deep in the woods, where she runs into the arms of a handsome man. Charlotte gets this really disgusted/upset look on her face that Charlotte you look like a racist stop stop is way out of proportion to what’s happening, given the overall tone of this show toward proper early-19th-century behavior. Even after Georgiana introduces Mr. Otis Molyneux, Charlotte is extremely concerned about him in such a way that it definitely seems like she finds black men especially threatening, even when you take into account Sidney’s asking her to watch over his ward.

They’re so cute!

Georgiana explains that Sidney is keeping them apart, which makes Charlotte pensive. Otis suggests she leave the two of them but Charlotte refuses to let them be unchaperoned, and G is pissed when she finds out that she’s been set to spy on her.

Dr. Fuchs finally gives the Parkers the bad news that they aren’t sick, telling Diana that she has hysteria and Arthur that he needs to lose some weight. Um, writers? You know that “hysteria” as a proposed condition was a meaningless and often dismissive label for various physical and mental symptoms? It’s the kind of thing one can take in a production where characters are actually of-their-time, but when you show an individual as previously being modern-minded it’s a deeply strange inclusion (as with Charlotte above). Fuchs also suggests that they ride on the beach to help, which seems like would have very little effect on Arthur’s not-actually-corpulent physique or Diana’s “hysteria”.

Charlotte gooseberries it up in a field of bluebells. She’s trying to be a hard-nosed chaperone, but it’s clear that the two love each other, and when they tell the story of how they met - Otis mistook Georgiana for a servant at a ball, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given the difference between ball dress and a maid’s outfit, but whatever - they’re so sweet that she visibly thaws. Their story is also an obvious parallel for Charlotte and Sidney: “I found him to be rude and sanctimonious.” “I found her to be spoilt and petulant”. I know C/S is going to be endgame but I don’t have to like it. Charlotte tries to defend Sidney, but they say that he doesn’t have her best interests at heart. She’s not sure who to believe.

Stringer goes to show Tom the plans he stayed up late to draw, only to be told that they won’t be needed after all. He’s devastated - proving his ability to be an architect was going to be the means of making his career. And Tom doesn’t even appear to understand that he might have put Stringer to a lot of trouble even apart from his ambitions. He also fails to follow through on the promised additional workers needed to keep the pace he demands. Tom!!

The Denhams turn up, each making a strong contrast with the Parker they’re next to in terms of color. When you think about it, these are the only two pairs of siblings on the show that are always shown as pairs. Esther’s spencer is a bit 1820s, but her hat is ... 1940s? Sir Edward is confident that Clara will be sent off very soon to leave them as their aunt’s sole heirs.

Just after we see Tom Parker going into a shop to buy an expensive necklace for his wife, Stringer goes home and burns his architectural plans. :(

Charlotte is still trying to be an annoying chaperone, but she’s on much friendlier terms. As Otis suggests they borrow a boat and go for a little sail, he and Georgiana’s relative undress compared to Charlotte (Georgiana taking her spencer off outside isn’t too big of a deal, but Otis losing his coat and waistcoat and opening up his shirt is ... a lot of stripping for the 1810s) parallels their willingness to shed the rules. It’s not like Sidney’s going to find them as he’s in London, Georgiana points out ... but then we cut to Sidney riding into Sanditon, and talking to Mrs. Parker about how he’s going to go visit Georgiana. So it’s clear what’s going to happen.

Otis sings a lovely rendition of “The Water is Wide” and then proposes to Georgiana. Wait, what?! They’re not already engaged? Dear writers’ room, have you ever read or at least watched Sense and Sensibility? And when she refuses him, it’s because she can’t get married yet without her guardian’s consent, but she could surely accept him and just wait on getting married ... ? Anyway, he throws himself into the water as he said he would and they all laugh again.

#sanditon #austen #jane austen #1810s #19th century #regency

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pmiller1 · 5 years

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Kairi’s Fate Debunk

Hello everyone. And welcome to another debunking of the Sleeping Realm Theory. And oddly it the 1st one that see you and is the most problematic. So to how that there de-characterized a curtain Heroine. As if she have more disrespected push on her.

And Wild I do love Kairi as a Character. I can agreed that she was under played and was damsel in distress yet again. But hey, there how the story want and she did good for what she did and how deep there relationship with Sora want.

But from this seem like Kairi is not only her but also seem like she was a antagonist. Something to do for “Why a Dream?”

Witch by the way, I don’t buy it. But I getting ahead of myself.

The Intro is predictive

I can just say that what intro are we talking about? Are we talking the open where Young Xehanort playing Chess in a storming night the “Face My Fears” one, Or the one in the day where Young Xehanort and Young Eraqus. And we see flashback of curtain action, talking it as part of the Chess.

Because the Ladder, show what Kingdom Hearts story up to KH3.

In Fact here: https://youtu.be/PYAlnhy88Y4 that is the link to Kingdom Hearts 3 - Title screen opening. Note that it have Chain of Memories (with Namine), Re:Coded and Dream Drop Distance. Even the end of 0.2. So in away, The Opening doesn’t need to, do the the Title screen opening does it better then any other.

In Fact we see that the Title screen opening have the counterplayed, Like hello there Lil Eraqus.

The Face My Fears opening part only show that what Xehanort have done, the darkness have done to drive apart of Wayfinder, Destiny, And Seasalt Trio. Sora being the bring them free from the darkness and the battle of keyblade war 2. With Sora in his KH3 gear in the final world.

Personally. I can forgive them for missing Title screen opening, Like you can skip it. But it is fishy that there fail to mention Title screen opening.

Xehanort’s plan

You know can I talk about the oddity of how the people seem to fail that Kairi chess pieces is white. I mean, say what you will with Xehanort being a Chess Mastermind here, I mean, being a skill in Chess show that there are a skill manipulated. However by that logic Eraqus is a manipulated to. Just on the side of good and light. The White pieces are his to controlled.

But to borrowed a line from @bluerosesburnblue (For real this time)

It couldn’t possibly be because she’s the Light in the Darkness or anything!

She Princesses of the Heart. Her Heart is Pure.

As for the Ansem Report 11 (KH1). Yeah he talking about how the gummi blocks are made and how losking the keyhole of the world hearts, making it safe for that world to fall into the darkness. As for the highlighted part. Dude, Ansem, the Some Other Dude. Was lucky that Kairi was a princesses. He may not know that Kairi was a princesses. He heck, we don’t even know if it was Kairi, All we know it would be subject X that he chosen. But every way. I should point out that it was 10 year ago!

Next there implying that Ansem was there because of Kairi. Like I said that Kairi end up in Destiny Island for 10 year. Thank to the Light the Aqua give her. And it not like Ansem follow her. He still carry his Report.

Ansem Report 12

The body is gone; the heart should have returned to the Heartless. And yet, nothing. This one is unlike any other. Its memories remain and it has yet to take the form of a Heartless. A close eye must be kept on the situation. Much is still unknown. To get to the realm of Darkness, one must go through the doors of Kingdom Hearts, the place where the world's hearts connect. Beyond this world is a place in which darkness reigns. (Details shall be archived in a separate report.) There are many worlds in existence, some of which we know nothing about. The world in which we live. The realm of Darkness. The realm of Light. And the world in between. Wherein lies true nirvana?

I don’t think he was carrying his Report in Destiny Island. He was ponder the body from a heartless. Foreshadowing the “Nobody.” in his Report 13.

However I will say that yeah is part of this plan, Along with every other that Xehanort have met. It not really a big deal.

But however I will say. That “The cave drawing” and “Leading Sora out of the darkness” are stupid if there are Xehanort’s plan. 1st of, why would he care how the feeling of Sora and Kairi, why would he want there bond stronger, how he able to make Sora and Kairi draw Paopu Fruit on there the drawing of their face when there was 4 year old! Yes. Xehanort know that the two bond are strong, why else did he kill Kairi to make Sora give him the last strake that he so need.

As for “Leading Sora out of the darkness“ why would even want Sora out of Darkness. Sure he was missguided and want Light and Darkness to be balance. But Sora is the guy that almost foil your heartless plan. Heck, he doesn’t need there Soul. Just the heart to get what he wanted. Given you claiming that Kairi saving him and rewriting the fate. Witch by the way, isn’t what Xehanort have in mind.

Even the “The Final battle“ is silly if you think about it. So Xehanort have instead use Kairi to trap Sora and Kairi, surrounding them two. Failing to see the other player stepping in to defend the King and Queen of this chass metaness. Would he also set them up a trap or block them off, to prevent then from saving them too. Or even killing the other chess pieces. You know, Xeha is a sitty class player. That you was lucky Eraqus was as bad before he “cheated.”

Star Crossed

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nononono. NO! That is not what Star Crossed mean, Wild sure it does mean that the two love are unable to get togethers by outside forces

That outside forces Xehanort. If anything fate, or the light itself are trying to get the two together. It just darkness, Xehanort and maybe Master of Mastery that are trying to keep them apart. Also technically Kairi’s heart was inside Sora for mostly of KH1, the two must have some time together when there was living home when Coded happen. And also there been living together destiny islands for 10 year to the point that Kairi see that as her home world!

Also I google “star crossed lovers symbol” and I don’t see the cave drawing in it. There is this lovely drawing:

By Sarah Airhardt

And wild there no defalt symbol for a star crossed lovers. It doesn’t mean that the cave drawing is a symbol of a star crossed, I mean, who know, maybe it two person given the other there star or something like that.

The Paopu Fruit

Speaking of. Let talk about this. I will not say that weather Kairi did taken a bit or not. Nor that she didn’t want to have the bad fate she have.

Because Kairi offer Sora the Fruit. She made the call. And Sora only allow himself to share it, because he want too. He would be glad that she made to move for him, As he was too shy (well more like he didn’t know what Love is and that he was in love to her. Thank @qazawsxs2 to remind me of that) and unsure of himself to share it with her. In Fact he was glad that Kairi draw her given him a Paopu Fruit when he saw it. Just as Kairi saw it herself. Show that the two know how there feel for each other.

And you have to ball to say Kairi not only offer to share, but didn’t taken a bite herself? As if Sora was the one that offer it? That is some BS right there.

KH3 Logo

Have nothing to do with Kairi fate. Even if Kairi was on the right,where “incomplete” I is. You’re just looking to deep. Moving on.

Kairi’s Death

You know I do have to ask, Is Strelitzia death normal? I mean it kind surreal if it is. After all we see Strelitzia walking outside with her Chirithy. And then we see the heart flying of the door. Something tell me it not normal.

And you said that is also resembles Xion’s death. Witch could mean that she a replica, that Xehanort just kill a copy of Kairi. Witch I get to say, I have to debunk that too. After all, why would Xehanort make a copy of Kairi after she was taken. And where did you put her the real Kairi too? Yeah... I think that is real deal, More so that Namine did able to her own replica to live outside of Kairi, Who was able to be to do so (and how she was in final world in the 1st place) when Kairi was strage down.

And no. Kairi heart wasn’t missing. She was able to awaken herself in the darkness, waiting for Sora outside of the Keyblade Graveyard.

Worldline Hopping

DARKSIDE ISN’T KAIRI HEARTLESS! SHE HAVE NO DARKNESS TO EVEN HAVE A DARKSIDE. Sorry, Sorry. I don’t know what make me allcap there.

But yeah... I don’t think that can be Kairi. I mean how can some who was a sleeping body when she lost her heart have a Darkside in the Final World?

Personally. I like to think this is Sora inner darkness here. Given that Data Sora face Sora Heartless who was Darkside in his 1st from.

The Chirithy Ears

Like with Darkside, I don’t think she can be a Chirithy too, Given there are dream eater and there are made out of darkness.

Also Chirithy Ears have white fluff inside wild Kairi hoodly ears does not.

She doesn’t even have a Dream Eater Symbol on her back too. She doesn’t even have a cape as Chirithy have to hide it.

And you know the funny thing even if she is a Chirithy. That would contradict Kairi being a Darkside on the top. I mean Kairi would not only help Sora, that mean that she always with Sora, witch given how that keep getting separated that is impossible.

If Kairi is a Chirithy, she will always be there with Sora, Just like with KH1, But having the awareness that that Kairi is there, even if she somehow become Sora’s Chirithy. She wouldn’t be with Lea, training with Merlin to be combat ready with a keyblade.

All I’m saying that, it would make them be closer than before and nothing would keep them apart.

There also the oddity how Kairi able to retainer her human form, even if she dress like differently. She still the red hair cute woman, then you know... a Gray Cat... em... dog... Fluff-ball Dream Eater. And where is her cape?

(And @qazawsxs2 have also point out that, Kairi and Riku lack a Dream Eater Symbol and that there didn’t changed into those new wear, it was a give to YenSid and the Fairies. The fact there don’t have a symbol in those new clothes and Kairi doesn’t have a cape and bag, mean that she and Riku are not Dream Eater.)

Also is this Xehanort plan to turn Kairi into Chirithy? HOW?! How did the heck did he do that and did he know about the Chirithy. I mean I guess Luxu told him about it if he was his master. Even if, what the benefits for making a Princesses of the Heart and Guardian of Light, devold of Light, Fill her with Darkness and make her be a Chirithy? I mean come on, what the plan here?

Or did you want like this. Kairi Death -> No Heart -> Heartless -> Water Darkside -> Water is Dark. -> Chirithy!!! Is that what you want us to think here.

And say it with me.

What do this have to with “Why a Dream?” part? In fact it the only thing that is under.

You see what I mean, there turn Kairi into a Darkness Pawn that also Darkside and Chirithy. Implying that Kairi isn’t Kairi. All for what, to make it easy to ship Sora and Riku. Who also a Dream Eater by your logic. So it doesn’t mean anything. I could say that Riku isn’t Riku and turn your Theory agent you.

Well I think that all from me. Feel free to repay or reblog if you like to add more.

#Anti Sleeping Realm Theory #kingdom hearts #Kingdom Hearts III #Psi Debunk part

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slothcritic · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 4 Review

Hit-or-miss introduction makes way for some golden moments.

The opening skit for Snakeway to Heaven has a satisfactory comedic weight to it, though upon re-watching it for this review, I noticed an editing mistake I had never noticed before, despite becoming a fan of the series in 2012. When Goku falls off Snake Way, the scene actually freezes on that frame. It wouldn't be noticeable if the truck itself hadn't frozen as well. Small gripe but I thought it was an interesting observation to share.

[Title Sequence]

Goku's scream carries over into the first few seconds of the intro and resumes near the last few seconds, which I found to be a well played editing decision.

Once Goku has stopped falling, we're treated to an amusing take on the filler ogres from hell. The blue one is given the Swedish Hansel-und-Gretel accent while the red one speaks like a German or Austrian. And puritan as ever, KaiserNeko made sure to use the original, unedited footage. It would’ve been funny to see them maybe have a scene or two with the ogres wearing their different HFIL shirts, or maybe a bit more fun poked at the Ocean Dub, but no such luck in this scene.

TFS doesn't spend too much time on this scene at all, really. It’s filler, and so nothing here really matters to the story aside from laugh-factor. The comedic nature of this first scene is that it’s rushed. Goku swindles the two ogres out of a fight, like he’s trying to swindle the show into skipping this filler arc, as he immediately guns it for the exit... and then stops?

It would've been a much more emphatic punchline if the scene had changed right here. Instead we have an awkward stop-and-go motion to the scene they're trying to orchestrate and it feels stilted. A lot of this scene after Goku finds the exit I find to be entirely unneeded. Raditz has already been established as being in Other World so the callback here wasn't necessary, the special King Yemma fruit could be argued for having no plot relevance as it never existed in the manga, and we didn't really need that post-Goku scene to get the hint that these ogres were very chummy with each other when it came to subjects like oil wrestling and speedos.

But then, where would they put that great joke about the Blood Fountain? And the small dialogue about Dabura I did find risible as a fan of the original DBZ, despite my usual curmudgeonly take on yet-to-be-established jokes. Like many things, this does get much better as the series continues, eventually turning some moments of sequence-breaking into moments of well-crafted foreshadowing. This is just a funny pointless joke, and a nod to fans of DBZ, that has no impact on the actual story of DBZA itself.

Again, this isn't too much of a big deal. Just a whole work-with-what-you've-got bizarre scenario likely due to bizarre source material. Yet this was all deemed funny enough to edit, voice and keep in the episode instead of trimming it out like the other 90% of this mini-arc. I'm not convinced the presentation was done to par, but I do feel that the inclusion of "Goku in Hell" is necessary for the sake of tying loose ends together. Also, it would've been a far more egregious decision to have that cold open end in a do-nothing cliff hanger. So, a goofy scene and perhaps iffy writing, but not terrible.

We then return to the person who has so far been the breadwinner of the series, and Piccolo hasn't let up on either the humor or Gohan. Kind of a contrast to how somber he is in the show. It's not whack-a-doodle humor, it's exaggerated frustration and exasperation, which lands almost dead-center on my humor nexus.

But even better than Piccolo has to be this next scene - Debatably the first "meme" or seriously quotable moment in the show's history: Popo's Pecking Order.

On paper this doesn't look like it'd be necessarily funny, but when you attach to it a very do-nothing character like Mr Popo and turn him into a sadistic dictator, combined with the special emphasis and excellent delivery of the line, it's simply outstanding, and raises the bar for this entire episode.

Now I've said before that the source material of Z shouldn't factor into the end product that is DBZA. If I were to show this episode to my mother, I shouldn't have to show her all 291 episodes of Z so she can understand it. The show should be able stand on its own. That's not to say parody should have zero factor in the writing of this, or that there should be zero references at all, ever. By god what a silly thing to imply. But people can still enjoy Spaceballs even if they haven't seen Star Wars.

However, in the case of Mr Popo, DBZA does a good job of setting up Popo in the same way Z does. He initially speaks in a low, subdued tone, and is spoken of by Kami as some kind of adviser, or perhaps a respected peer, but as someone who is indirectly and respectfully implied to be below him. After all, it's called Kami's Lookout, not Popo's Lookout, and Kami is literally regarded as "The Guardian of Earth" while Popo just appears to be... there.

That all changes the second Kami leaves the outdoor area and Popo is entrusted with the reigns of the new Z Fighters. LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS!

The Krillin Owned Count also chimes three in this scene, and shows its first signs of picking up momentum.

Back on Snake Way, Goku gets eaten by the head of snake way, which leads into Jadoshin's palace. This is such a quick, cheesy, quirky but funny edit that I'm not sure what to say beyond I enjoyed it. It just hits you and then boom, you're in her castle.

The joke of Jadoshin being voiced by Solid Snake (Princess Snake, Solid Snake, on Snake Way) seems like a bold strategy but I think it's one of the better jokes they've committed to that ended up being really good, at least this early on. The voice even lends itself to the awkward dialogue that would've simply lost its charm or fallen flat otherwise.

Unrelated, but one of my favorite lines from the dub happens in this scene, where Jadoshin's attendant simply says "I've got something to show you. And it's my gun.", and then kills herself with it. I didn't expect to see that in this scene, but a small part of me did hope.

When Goku finishes up in the hot springs (with a Metal Gear Solid box gag to boot) and tries to leave, Jadoshin then states that she wants Goku inside her. Goku is confused, of course, and smash cut to Goku flying for his life from a massive green fire-breathing snake trying to eat him.

Jadoshin however still has the voice of Solid Snake even in this form, complete with periodic grunts as they maneuver through the air. This eventually transitions into Jadoshin saying waka-waka, and the backdrop changes into a Pac-Man map. The Pac-Man skit was perhaps a bit overdone, with Goku finding meat instead of the normal fruit, but on the whole this was a very "solid" scene.

During the Ozaru scene, I feel like Piccolo just screaming "MOOOOOOOON!" in the DBZA Kai version is funnier than the "Stop mocking me!" we got in DBZA proper. Also, donkey kong barrel, really? It's not bad, but it's an "oh, brother" moment, like hearing a very bad pun.

When Gohan transforms back into his human (or Half-Saiyan technically) form, his junk is censored with a Dragon Ball. This is an interesting contrast in philosophy over the years, as KaiserNeko explained the decision "to not censor baby dicks" in a Episode Breakdown livestream on the Broly Abdridged movie, where Broly's baby wiener can be seen uncensored in a few scenes of that movie.

The episode ends with Goku continuing down Snake Way, having tied Jadoshin up into a tangled ball, prompted the GAME OVER screen and someone yelling "Princess Snaaaaaake!"

Conclusion

Despite my lackluster thoughts on how Hell was handled, this episode had a lot going for it compared to it's predecessors! Most of the episode was spent on two strong scenes, and while I didn't think the Ozaru scene was anything special, it didn't feel out of place or off-kilter, but provided more insight and I suppose world-building into the relationship between Piccolo and Gohan and the constant reminder that they're training to eventually face off against the Saiyans. This is further reinforced by Stinger #2 with Nappa and Vegeta en route to Earth.

This was almost opposite to Episode 3, which I felt had strong bookends. While I didn't find the end of this episode to be bad, it was simply "alright" when compared to the Popo and Jadoshin scenes. Characters are starting to have stronger internal identities instead of simply being parodies of their original counterparts. Though it is noteworthy, and rather obvious, that this only applies to characters with speaking lines. Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu made their first appearances but had nothing to say. Maybe it would have been cluttered or detracted from the pacing of the Popo scene, but it may prove challenging to properly attach sentimentality to these characters in the short few episodes they have before the inevitable happens.

Because y'know, nobody watched Dragon Ball.

Score: 73

Passing Thoughts

I liked that Stinger #1 dealt with the actual ramifications of DESTROYING THE MOON unlike the series proper did. I guess it was just no diff for the Dragon Ball world?

"He made a horrible mess of the blood fountain." "Looks fine to me." "IT USED TO BE WATER!"

"I killed everything here with my bare hands. Including the bear hands." -Pictured in the top left of the frame are actual bear hands.

"Stop grunting, it's creepy!"

"CLOTHES BEAM!" and “That is easily my most metro attack.”

#slothcritic #dbz #Dragon Ball Z Abridged #tfs #teamfourstar

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spaceorphan18 · 6 years

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Finding Kurt Hummel: Transitioning

Masterpost

6x07: Transitioning

It’s not really a surprise that an episode called Transitioning is in the smack middle of this shortened season. It certainly makes much more sense than Swan Song being in the middle of the season, lol.

So, we get a lot about Beiste, and Trans rights, and a whole lot of stuff I’m happy not to touch. And we get a, well, sort of awkward Kurt and Blaine story. Truth time - I was really disappointed by this episode first time around, because I wanted it to do more. It’s grown on me a lot, but I still have a few minor nitpicks about it. But - the two things that really stand out to me in retrospect are a) this particular story line is more about Blaine than Kurt -- Blaine’s the one going through a transitional period back to Kurt and b) the pacing of their story is fine through the episode - it’s really, unfortunately, the wedding episode the botches the ending.

Growing Up

It’s nine minutes into the episode before we see our dear Kurt. A quarter of the episode! Ug!!

And - it’s Sam who’s carrying Rachel’s emotional baggage this week and dragging Kurt with him. So, Rachel’s dads are selling the house (which is the reason they got a divorce - so that Rachel is forced to move out and grow up. Good lord the lengths these writers go to - to teach Rachel a lesson). Sam goes on about how Rachel’s making a difficult transition into adulthood - one that they’re all going through, but the rest of the characters don’t matter - just Rachel. She’ll carry this theme for all of them, lol.

I also love how Glee’s like - okay, bam, Rachel is now dealing with adulthood, as if the past few years haven’t really counted. But - you know, it’s the end of the series, and that’s when these big life changes actually happen.

Anyway - anyone up for meta’ing the giant spider on Kurt’s shoulder?

Wheel of Destiny

So - they interrupt the weekly lesson of Ohio artists (sorry Kitty, no Marilyn Manson for you), so they weekly theme can be transitioning. Kurt says that sometimes life throws you a curveball and sometimes you just have to go with it. Huh. Foreshadowing? I think so...

Blaine then goes on this long thing about Rachel having trouble facing adulthood, and how are they going to help her deal? Why - throwing a party because that’s what adults do, lol.

So. Picking names out of a hat for duet partners is boring, so Artie constructed a giant wheel of names! I mean, why not - it’s fun. And it’s Kurt turn! The wheel /almost/ lands on Artie, but Kurt gives destiny a little push and makes it go to Blaine. And -- just look how shocked he is for that to have happened, lol. I love this Kurt - manipulating things to turn out how he wants them. I haven’t seen him pull this kinda thing in a long time, and it’s hilarious and adorable. You go sing that duet with your sweetheart, Kurt!

After the meeting - Kurt catches up to Blaine (who is kinda secretly thrilled with Kurt’s meddling). However - Blaine’s concerned about the whole thing - cause Karofsky might just get jealous. Kurt thinks that’s silly -- and there’s a little bit of frustration there - cause I mean, Karofsky already has him as a boyfriend, he can’t keep them from being friends, too...

Blaine states that Karofsky might think there’s something still between them. And Blaine wants Kurt to say -- why yes, yes there is. But he doesn’t - cause he feels like Blaine’s made his choice, so really, Kurt needs a sign from Blaine that there isn’t... Hmmm, I wonder if that’ll happen.

And then we get this whole awkward hug thing, which Kurt isn’t really sure what to do with. And I’m not really sure what to do with Kurt’s final reaction here that’s a little -- oh, well, huh, that just happened. I would have Kurt smile a little at the end of it - but I guess the director wanted to go for ambiguous?

Which leads me to say this -- this episode I found difficult and unsatisfying the first time I watched it. It’s grown on me a lot since then, but I think one of the things I was jarred by was that up until this point, we’ve had mainly Kurt’s POV on the whole break up thing - but this episode is nearly all Blaine’s POV. And I get it, we needed to get him to the point of breaking it off with Karofsky. But seeing everything through Blaine’s eyes when we’ve been with Kurt so much this season feels like a strange switch up in a few places. This, I think, is one of them.

Everyone’s Favorite Gays

So -- Rachel’s party has started, and it must be a different day because Kurt has changed his clothes. Also - Sam mentions he’s slipped a little something in Kurt’s drink - which is a nod to the fact that he’s over 21 now. I mean, we were all waiting for that top happen, this is just confirmation.

I’m also slightly uncomfortable that a group of college students who are acting as teachers and mentors have invited a bunch of high schoolers to a party with alcohol at it - but Glee doesn’t seem to care, so I’ll just look away. It’s not like it’s a plot point. Though, man, who wouldn’t want to see Drunk!Kurt - that would have been fun.

Anyway - Mercedes and Roderick sing All About That Bass - and it’s super fun and light. Kurt’s not in it very much - but he’s bopping along right with Mercedes. And one point Blaine shuffles over towards him, and they dance together for a hot second - but then Kurt’s mysteriously absent for the last minute or so of the song. Not sure what happened there.

So - after a scene of Rachel and Sam hooking up because Rachel’s afraid to leave her childhood behind (um, okay fine) - we get Kurt and Blaine’s duet, which is Somebody Loves You. And I just love every iota of this song. The last time either of them sang was that dreary and depressing Carole King song back in Jagged Little Tapestry - now they have a fun, upbeat, song about being there for the person you’re in love with.

I could pretty much quote all of the lyrics here, oh and here I will...

Who’s around when the days feel long Who’s around when you can’t be strong Who’s around when you’re losing your mind Who cares that you get home safe Who knows you can’t be replaced Who thinks that you’re one of a kind

Somebody misses you when you’re away They wanna wake up with you everyday Somebody wants to hear you say Ooh somebody loves you Ooh somebody loves you Ooh somebody loves you Ooh somebody loves you Ooh somebody loves you

I’m around when your head is heavy I’m around when your hands aren’t steady I’m around when your day’s gone all wrong I care that you feel at home 'Cause I know that you feel alone I think you’re going to miss me when I’m gone

Somebody misses you when you’re away They wanna wake up with you everyday Somebody wants…

So - the thing I love about this song is that Kurt and Blaine pretty much trade off on all the lines. But the point is - this song is about both of them, and how they feel about each other. I love the message of - hey, someone loves you - and they’re going to be there for you when life sucks. I think especially, I enjoy the part where it says - somebody misses you when you’re away. Cause I have to wonder if they are back at the point where they miss each other when they’re not around.

I’d also love to know how they decided this would be a good song to sing. Cause, seriously boys, serious overtones here, lol. Plus - I want all the texts and conversations they had about doing the song -- more reconnecting!!

While this song is one of my favorite Klaine duets - I’m not sure it’s one of my favorite performances. It’s kinda reminds me of Just Can’t Get Enough - when there’s a ton of other things going on taking away from the Klaine time, lol!

But importantly - Kurt’s just having a fun time, sing his little heart out, wearing an astronaut costume, and playing with a blue feather boa. (Oh, the boas are their proposal colors - nice touch props.)

And of course, during the song -- Blaine is zeroed in on. He’s getting his heart eyes back - because as Kurt just kind of bops around in (sorta) his own little world - Blaine’s noticing, and falling in love again. We’re almost there, guys... almost.

After the show’s over - Blaine decides to get outta there - because the feelings are too much!! But he claims it’s because of a Karofsky reason. Feeling guilty, Blaine - uh, yeah something like that.

Anyway, Kurt is a little bummed he has to go. He had a ton of fun dueting with Blaine, and he’s missed it because they haven’t done it in a while. (Also a metaphor, people!! okay maybe not - but I’m making it into one.) Anyway - all this talk brings them back to Baby, It’s Cold Outside - yes, the time they did sound the greatest. And Kurt admits that way back when - all he wanted was to make out with Blaine.

It’s a sweet little moment at they remember - and Blaine wonders why he just didn’t kiss him - and Kurt throws out the whole Jeremiah thing (god - you guys remember that??) Well, Kurt and Blaine barely remember that - because Kurt doesn’t remember the dude’s name, and Blaine totally forgot the guy existed. Because in this moment, they’ve both only got heart eyes for each other.

Kurt then starts in on how crazy it is that some people mean a lot to you at some point in time -- and then stops.... because Blaine’s lips come crashing to his. But.. I kind of love this little moment, where - it’s sorta like saying, oh hey, we meant so much to each other, and then you move on, but nope - sometimes some people mean so much to you -- and they still do after all the time that’s passed, and after all the stupid things you’ve done.

So, um, yeah, Blaine and Kurt are kissing again. See - the kiss in the elevator? That was a forced thing - and yeah, they felt something, but it wasn’t of their own volition. This kiss is mostly for Blaine - a chance for him to figure out if what he felt in the elevator was real, or if it was just the heat and the manipulation. Turns out - oops, yeah, totally still has feelings for Kurt... And thus, he jets outta there, cause he still, technically, has a boyfriend waiting at home for him - and he really doesn’t need to add another cheating incident.

Meanwhile - Kurt’s just stunned. Blaine not reciprocating back is something he was beginning to get used to. Blaine turned him down when Kurt came back for him. Blaine was the one that insisted that the elevator kiss meant nothing. Kurt’s happy that their friendship is back, and all the rest of it he can compartmentalize. But this? This is confirmation that Blaine still has feelings, and that’s something huge!

Kurt’s left kinda stunned - what does all that mean? Why did he do that? Does he want more? Why’d he run off? Just a lot of things swimming through Kurt’s head as Blaine pretty much runs away.

I’m okay that Kurt doesn’t run back after him -- this moment is for Blaine to realize his feelings. Kurt already knows his, and he’s not going to push at Blaine any further than he already has.

But -- I will say this is where the narrative gets a little clunky heading into the wedding episode. Blaine’s still got some stuff to do -- mainly break up with Karofsky. But really, this is the point where Kurt needed to ditch Walter and have a conversation with Blaine about feelings - because clearly feelings are still being had. Unfortunately, this is not what we get (because Glee needs it’s third party drama). But I’ll get more into that when it’s more relevant.

Time After Time

Klaine time is cut short by Rachel and Sam needing to sing 80s love ballads to each other. And then there’s a whole montage where they all help Rachel take down her memory wall - and this is the closet we get to a clip episode, lol (which is fine - clip episodes are dumb).

I don’t know what picture Kurt takes down! But, you know, it’s one of those moments where you look back at the old memory and smile, but it’s fine because growing up isn’t a bad thing. It’s just... different.

Also Kurt (and Blaine) are helping Rachel move -- I kind of wonder what awkward conversations happened that day that we didn’t get to see, cause we know from Karofsky it’s been a few days since the party before they break up. Ug, Glee, all these untapped things...

The Break-Up

Obviously, Kurt’s not in this scene, but I feel the need to go over it, because it does, in part, pertain to Kurt. And because I think it’s a nice scene. I’m going to give Karofsky a little bit of credit here, and say he isn’t entirely dumb. He knows Blaine’s been acting weird, and he’s known that since Kurt’s been back in town, their relationship wouldn’t last that much longer. (So then why did you move in with him, weirdo?)

Blaine’s been feeling guilty - because Karofsky turned out to be an okay guy, and Blaine had convinced himself that he really had moved on past Kurt. Well, no, everyone and Karofsky could see otherwise. And Karofsky is pretty nice about the whole thing (which I think is to show just how much Karofsky has grown, too, over the years). He’s got a whole bunch of guys ready and willing to date him. It’ll suck - but Blaine can’t change his heart and more than Kurt can. So Karofsky let’s him go.

I think one of the interesting things in this conversation, is that Karofsky tells Blaine to just tell Kurt, not sing it. And I feel like that goes with the whole growing up theme. A lot of the time, these boys have sung their emotions through song - and that’s fine, but it’s also been part of the fantasy -- but part of the Klaine narrative has been a shift from fantasy to reality, and this is one of the last parts. And Blaine’s ready to take that step - to grow up and be a real boy, and be okay in his not-ever-changing feelings towards Kurt.

So - Blaine gets running and goes for Kurt. How does he know Kurt’s there? Is this just after school? Why is Walter meeting him there of all places? Idk - the set up of this scene is a little awkward when you thinking about it too much, but I’m really not supposed to.

The point is -- Blaine is ready to confess his love to Kurt -- again. He even wears the bowtie he wore at the proposal (do you think Kurt didn’t notice that? He did). But --- one awkward little thing. Kurt’s about to go on a double date with Walter, Rachel, and Sam.

So Blaine -- doesn’t say anything. And actually -- this is a good thing for Blaine! Honestly, it is -- it shows growth. He let his life be dictated by his relationship with Kurt once, and he’s going to do what he didn’t before -- let go and let it be. It’s not an appropriate time for Blaine to tell Kurt that he and Karofsky broke up. But even more so, it’s also not his place to intervene in Kurt’s dating life and more than it was Kurt’s to intervene in his relationship with Karofsky. Blaine’s trying to give Kurt the space he hadn’t given Kurt before.

Kurt lingers just a little as they all head out. He knows Blaine’s lying about being there for Rachel. There’s a little bit of longing there, and a lot of concern. And oh the angst is hard core in this moment, as Blaine just stands their alone.

Kurt knows and is aware that Blaine’s feeling something. He’s ready for Blaine to say something. Look, Walter does not matter (and by the sound of it, Kurt’s been talking to Walter a lot about Blaine - since Walter clearly knows who he is, and is slightly feigning politeness when Blaine shows up). But Kurt’s ditched both Chandler and Adam pretty quickly for Blaine, and he’ll do it again with Walter.

Just this scene -- isn’t the right time.

This scene, actually, works for me pretty well - and I’m not frustrated with this episode like I was when I first saw it, because this is the transition episode, it’s supposed to end on this angsty note. My issues are really with the beginning of the wedding episode. It’s clear they wanted them both to have a run to the other moment - and sure, Kurt will do that -- but Kurt lacks a defining catalyst for him to do that, which makes it feel a bit awkward and weird. But, I’ll dig into that in the next episode.

Turning the Corner

I am not going to comment about the Beiste story line - because I don’t have an opinion on it, nor do I think it’s my place to have an opinion on it. But it’s nice that the trans choir had a chance in the spotlight on this show - and it really is a lovely moment. Kurt and Co are off to the side cheering them along.

Hey! It’s Kurt and a piano - I kinda like that that’s still a thing.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this scene - I feel like Will coming back to McKinley marks the beginning of the end for the narrative focus on Kurt this season. Even this scene is really more about the dynamic of Will and Rachel - Kurt just kinda happens to be there.

But, I mean, part of the whole transition theme is to get these guys in position to wrap up their story. Will is going to be back at McKinley, while Kurt and Rachel go off to do what they’re supposed to do.

The best part of this little ending scene, however, is the last bit. First of all, Kurt can’t call Will ‘Will’ - because that would be weird. (Just the way Chris says it cracks me up). And then Kurt wants to do a Britney 3.0 week? Really Kurt? Really? And then Will asks if the kids have emotional issues, and Kurt’s like - yeah, I don’t get involved in that. BECAUSE SERIOUSLY HAVE SOME DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR KIDS WILL!!

But yeah - it’s a little bittersweet of a moment as we wrap up a lot of what I liked about the season to move on to things I’m not as fond of. Ah well. :)

#finding kh #kurt hummel

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gascon-en-exil · 6 years

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I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Revelation Part 3

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Revelation Part 1

Revelation Part 2

Chapters 20-Endgame, in which the Fire Emblem is a chainsaw.

Chapter 20 + 21

I bet this scene looks wonderfully silly if Takumi is promoted to kinshi knight.

I’m going to be combining many of the chapters in this post, because even though they take a while to play through there’s not much to them in terms of story. Of course Anthony is evil and Corrin has to kill him, although not before Anankos turns him into a Faceless (or was he one all along?). I think I would have preferred the humor of fighting him as a village with ludicrous stats over the sympathy grab they go for with him. It’s also worth pointing out that it’s the three older Nohrians who call out Corrin for trusting Anthony first, putting some of that healthy distrust they show off in Conquest to work again. I don’t like that we’re apparently meant to find Corrin’s endlessly trusting nature endearing because it’s what brought this group together and not, you know, self-insert narrative privilege, but whatever. None of FE14′s routes could go forward at certain points if Corrin didn’t occasionally grab the idiot ball, and at least this time they had the foresight to come up with a backup plan.

And I am actually glad that they did so with Anthony, because while Chapter 20 is more standard Valla fare the trap they fall into in 21 comes with a clever premise that’s fun to play around. I dislike how the chapters continue to be loaded down with entirely too many drops and chests as I mentioned last time, but I find that as long as you plot out routes for your units before you start the size of these maps isn’t a problem.

One final question, since I didn’t bring it up in Birthright: why is the S rank naginata, which is obtained in Chapter 20 in Revelation, called a Waterwheel? Just...why? I have never found an explanation for this.

Chapter 22 + 23

Well of course she has, just look at those growths.

I find Arete intriguing as a character, though not so much either version that appears on screen - the brainwashed servant of Anankos or the sentimental dying mother - but rather the idea of her as she existed against the backdrop of the volatile Nohrian court. That element of her has to pieced together from inferences and bits of information in supports, but it’s clearly there. I fully understand why Revelation includes characters like Arete and Anthony. They have to convey over only a few chapters the nature of Anankos’s rule over Valla and its dominated subjects as well as make for credible threats to Corrin as they trek through the kingdom. This is the main reason why Arete’s real characterization is, much like Garon’s, extremely minimal, because the pain it inflicts on Azura is meant to demonstrate how Anankos operates. It’s a natural lead-in to the antagonists inside Gyges, certainly.

Kind of a shame though that the most lasting impression Arete leaves on the player is that of a boss who just will not give up, seeing as you have to fight her three times. I can’t think of another antagonist in the series who’s fought so often over such a short span of chapters. What’s worse, neither of these maps is very engaging; the first borrows the forest-burning Dragon Veins from Midori’s paralogue without the gimmick of chasing down the boss, while the second demonstrates something everyone already knew, that turn-based platforming is not fun. Scarlet’s return as an enemy leaves no impact unless Corrin or Ryoma fights her, so that’s not working too well either.

Chapter 24 + 25

Chapter 24’s gimmick may not be original, but an optional stealth mission works substantially better here than it does in Path of Radiance’s earlygame since Revelation is already well-established at this point as being one long experiment with gimmicks. I also like how the door mechanic plays into Corrin’s desire to trust Mikoto - and that the last door rewards players willing to go against the desperately trusting personality of their self-insert. Plus, it’s not a complete cheat; one of the first things Mikoto tells Corrin in the chapter is the blue doors are the correct ones, so her contradiction at the ends rings false even on the level of a simple puzzle. For what it’s worth mentioning I never bother with the stealth option here just as I don’t in FE9, because it’s tedious and requires a very specific setup and execution for a reward that’s not really worth it.

I find Mikoto difficult to engage with on an emotional level however, for much the same reason that her death didn’t resonate very strongly with me. It helps this time that all of the Hoshidan royals verbally react to seeing her again, but for Corrin this feels like a less substantial meeting than Azura’s reunion with Arete. Azura and the Hoshidans have memories of these women and the positive influence they played in their lives, whereas Corrin has, what, a few days’ worth of interactions with their mother and some very hazy memories from before their capture? I do like how Mikoto reveals at the end that Corrin is Vallite royalty, not because it adds even more to the super special Avatar status or because it establishes that Corrin and Azura are cousins (surprise sort-of incest, yay!) but because it re-contextualizes their place in the world both connected to and apart from the other royal families. It does absolutely do those two other things and is rather awkward on that basis, of course, but Vallite Corirn is able to comfortably exist in between their two families while still having a place to call their own. A ruined, empty place, but that’s for the epilogue.

At first I was planning on doing Chapter 25 as a separate entry, but then I played through it and realized that it’s just more moving platforms and hard enemies with another family reunion boss that’s nowhere near as emotionally affecting as the previous two. We see nothing of Sumeragi prior to this chapter aside from his brief death scene flashback, and unlike Arete his role as a parental figure overlaps significantly with someone else’s. I don’t get a strong sense of how important this reunion is to anyone except maybe Ryoma, and half of that comes from remembering their one-on-one back in Chapter 5. Come to think of it, the disguised Sumeragi has that quick cameo on the Birthright ship map, right? I suppose that’s technically the only appearance of anything from Valla on that route, although in retrospect it’s even more random for him to have shown up there. So, yeah, harder chapter, but can’t really compare to what came just before as a story moment.

Chapter 26

Betrayed by a Jagen! Who’d have thought we’d ever see the day...unless you consider Orson in FE8 a Jagen, that is.

As big twists in FE go Gunter’s doesn’t quite measure up to some others, like the Belhalla barbecue or Nasir in FE9, but it took me some thinking to properly parse out why this isn’t as effective a climactic reveal despite adequate use of foreshadowing and setting. It actually ties into one of the overall problems I have with Revelation and another time it compares unfavorably to Radiant Dawn (and I’m sorry to keep bringing it up if you hate FE10 or haven’t played it, but the parallels really are apt). One of the biggest genuine criticisms of that game’s plot, particularly near the end, is that the story gets too big for itself and spends all of its final chapters throwing at the player numerous major reveals about the plot and setting, many of them not directly related to each other and only immediately involving some dozen or so of a cast of playable and/or named characters about ten times that size. Like Revelation the pacing is utterly frantic, and moreover it gives the player the impression that in order to understand the Tellius setting as a whole and what themes the developers of that duology were aiming for you have to be intimately familiar with the content of Radiant Dawn’s endgame specifically, which...yeah, you kind of do. How that could have been better handled would be a subject for another post, but suffice it to say that the apparent conclusion that Sephiran did every bad thing (except racism) ever in Tellius as a means of tying everything together rings hollow even in-universe.

The narrative approach of the Valla chapters is similar, but most of its big moments are clearly aiming to be character-driven, fueled by the relationships between the royals and their loved ones forced into fighting them. As I brought up earlier in this post however not many of those moments land because of another major problem Revelation shares with Radiant Dawn, that there’s been almost no time to develop any of those relationships with the plot moving at such a speed. You’d have to have seen Gunter’s supports - which aren’t even accessible on this route - to be able to appreciate at all his history with Corrin, since from the story text of Revelation and Conquest too for that matter there’s little to suggest anything beyond a straightforward master-servant relationship until the very moment when Corrin is pleading with Gunter to resist Anankos’s possession. Without that context the most relatable emotional moment of this chapter comes from Ryoma’s anger at learning the identity of Scarlet’s murderer, which we’re clearly not meant to dwell on much because that might imply Ryoma is capable of holding a grudge. It doesn’t help either that Gunter’s genuine hatred of Garon gets muddied by the Anankos possession angle, something that didn’t come into play until years after he began grooming Corrin as an instrument of his revenge. At least Takumi didn’t go off the deep end until after being possessed.

As for the chapter...ugh, I’m just so tired of this route. Mikoto’s ward actively discourages you from splitting up your forces to go after the absurd number of chests that line this map, and this late in the game there’s almost no reason not to just rush Gunter. Funny that’s he’s pretty underwhelming for an endgame boss - that’s a Jagen for you.

Chapter 27 + Endgame

A question I’ve never seen anyone else ask before: why is Anankos wearing a Buddha mask anyway? It’s apparently just a wall fixture in the castle that he’s hiding behind, and while I get that they wanted to conceal his true size and cosmic horror features for Endgame in the fashion of JRPG bosses with multiple phases the mask is entirely unexplained. Is it meant to be ironic that a dragon styling himself as a god is wearing the face of the major figure of a religion/philosophy with no deities?

I will say that the mechanics of the final battle match the concept of Revelation perfectly. You’re strongly encouraged to split up your forces into three groups to attack all of Anankos’s weak points quickly, which matches up well with the route’s theme of Corrin (and Azura) + Hoshido + Nohr. It’s also not one of those final bosses that’s easier than what came immediately before, so additional kudos for that. Also, Garon’s death on this route is mercifully swift, ripe for even more trauma for the Nohrian royals that no one’s got any time to dwell on.

Aside from those remarks...bleh. The story may conclude faster thanks to lacking the near-death sequences of Birthright and Conquest, but that pace just pushes forward to the very end with Corrin being crowned ruler of a kingdom with no people...except Hoshido and Nohr both cede territory to Valla so that they can have some citizens, because that’s reasonable and won’t cause any confusion or hard feelings. I even took the trouble to S rank Azura, believing incorrectly that it would in some way be reflected in the ending as the only instance of supports in Fates affecting the main plot. Nope, Azura still rejects the rule of Valla and passes it off to her husband as if nothing were different. Then everyone hugs and it’s a little bit gay and the series main theme plays and oh God I’m just glad this route is over. But hey, a chainsaw Fire Emblem is bizarrely badass if you’re into that kind of thing.

PS: Chapter 10 is still The Worst.

Next time: ending and final thoughts on Revelation

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #Fire Emblem Revelation #FE14

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bunnyinatree · 6 years

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photo album and wardrobe? :)

Thank you so much for sending me these!! :DD Okie, I’m going to answer for the characters in the story I am most set on finishing in the near future. I’ll put the answers under a cut, in case things get kind of long! (Spoiler alert: They do.)

photo album: describe one of your OCs’ favorite memories.

Two of my OCs, Orfeo and Fortuna, are twins, and I would like to think they look back fondly on the ways in which they helped each other through various identity crises. For a while, Fortuna thought she was the lone person in her family who wasn’t straight, but then Orfeo came out as trans and also gay. But since he’s such a mess 98% of the time, the whole situation was probably something like that comic where one character–in this case, Orfeo–psyches themself up in front of a mirror, saying, “Okay, just tell them the truth. You’re gay.” And then it cuts to that character announcing to the other, “You’re gay!” And the other character, who is also gay, is very confused. So Orfeo probably said something like that to Fortuna, and she very carefully said, “Yes, I am. Technically bi, but still.” And Orfeo tried to recover from that and say, “No, I mean I’M gay!” Which led Fortuna to ask, “You like girls, too?” And Orfeo had to scramble to say, “No! I like boys, and I’m gay because I am one!” But any single event aside, they are each other’s number one support systems, so their favorite memories would definitely be something along these lines. Also Fortuna loves laughing at the obliviousness of her younger stuff, while Orfeo is still very embarrassed about the whole thing. Fortuna tries to cheer him up by saying she thought the whole mess was very endearing and just like him.

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

wardrobe: what’s your OC(s) style like?

Re-reading this question, I’m wondering if it refers to my own style for creating OCs. In which case, it’s: very ace, very trans, and very gay. Also, the color combination of green-and-orange comes up a lot?? I guess I just sub-consciously love pumpkins. And carrots.

But anyway, I DID answer this question thinking it refers to what certain OCs’ wardrobes are like, in terms of clothing and fashion. So, here’s what I came up with for the four characters of this particular story!

Echo: Echo is nonbinary, but unlike me, they don’t shy away from feminine clothing. In fact, I think they’d be very comfortable in cute skirts and dresses! But their favorite outfit is probably a pair of comfy overalls, matched with sneakers and some sort of bold-patterned-shirt. They usually wear glasses, and I know they’ll have some sort of definitive pair, but I haven’t discovered it yet. They are also very fond of cool colors, so I usually envision them in greens and blues, with maybe some accent yellows, for a splash of warmth!

Fortuna: Fortuna loves dresses and long, flowy skirts! I don’t quite have the fashion vocabulary to explain it perfectly, but I could totally picture her in one of those dresses where the neckline cuts straight across to the sleeves, and the sleeves kind of puff out a bit before pinching a little bit lower down. The fabric of the top would be that kind with very thin ruffles, where the whole thing has a sort of scrunchy texture to it. Her favorite color is pink, so she probably has a very pastel selection of clothes.

Orfeo: Orfeo probably has Fortuna to thank for the majority of his wardrobe. She gives him fashion tips a lot, and then she’ll shriek when he attempts to cover up all her hard work with the same beaten-up jacket he’s owned for nearly a decade. Overall, Orfeo is too timid to give off an air of charisma and confidence, but when people look more closely at him, they realize he looks shockingly put-together. Oh, and he probably owns a bunch of punny t-shirts that relate to music–stuff like “Mandolin Players Fret a Lot,” “I’m Always in Treble,” and “Without My Mandolin, Life Would B Flat.” And he definitely has a “I Pick My Mandolin, Not Fights” shirt. (There are so many silly music puns out there, and I am in love with all of them!) Fortuna low-key thinks the designs are all horrendous, but you would have to pry these shirts out of Orfeo’s cold, dead hands–which is actually foreshadowing for the story, but don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds!

Kwame: Because he doesn’t have an amazing, fashion-forward sibling like Fortuna to act as his stylist, Kwame’s style is pretty basic and unremarkable. It usually involves whatever’s most comfy, like sweatpants and baseball caps, mostly in neutral colors. He can definitely clean up well, though, and I’m sure his friendship with the twins will inspire him to be more outgoing with his wardrobe! (And hopefully also inspire me to come up with a more solid fashion for him!)

#thank you so much again for the ask aaaaaaa i had a great time answering them!!#and also tysm for being patient--i got distracted while answering these by drawing the characters instead :P #bunny babbles #asks #aroacejeanvaljean #fortuna #orfeo #kwame #echo

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spicynbachili1 · 6 years

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Unknown Pleasures: 20% seasonal | Rock Paper Shotgun

Boo!

Haha, Halloween is very easy. Though I’ve by no means understood the principles when it falls on a weekday, and like all depressing British whingers I resent its bizarre enlargement from a number of hours of hiding from disagreeable infants into a whole sodding month of pumpkins and garbage horror. So with that in thoughts, let’s have a spooooky Unknown Pleasures!

Threatening however then being too British to really ‘trick’ anybody this week: barely interactive fiction, a multiplayer indie with precise gamers, and a stick on the moon.

Vox Machinae £19.49 / 20.99€ / $24.99, Early Entry

A mech shooter is such an apparent match for VR that I’m somewhat shocked we’re not inundated with them. Even should you accurately have little interest in VR although, Vox Machinae is value contemplating. It primarily does what you in all probability already assumed: gamers pilot completely different courses of mech (the distinction being their steadiness of mobility, firepower and armour – there aren’t any help roles), decide their lasers/rockets/cannons, and exit in groups to robo-kick every others’ computo-faces in. Though there’s bot help (which unusually I haven’t examined, as I used to be having loads of enjoyable with – ugh – people) it’s primarily multiplayer, and actually relatively spectacular. The sport modes are effective – occupy bases on the map, race to a randomly showing salvage spot and struggle over it. The degrees are very vertical due to inbuilt jet boosters, and the feeling of ponderous, weighty motion is already there. There’s even a devoted ramming mech, and the weapons and modular destruction of limbs and hardpoints put some previous entries within the style to disgrace (sorry Hawken. You weren’t a nasty recreation however you had been a nasty mech recreation).

The non-VR participant will cope effective, however that is an space that wants work. I couldn’t discover a record of keyboard instructions (although there are some respectably succinct tutorials that can type you out quick), nor discover out the that means of varied beeps and warnings. Extra severely, with out voice (as a result of go to hell) I had no method of speaking with different gamers in any respect, which was a disgrace as I’d have preferred to thank the right nearly-full server I discovered at 4am for a good time. Significantly the American man who I mistook for voice performing when the very first thing I heard was a delightfully droll “Name me Stella, ’trigger I obtained my groove again”.

LoveChoice 拣爱 £1.69 / 1.59€ / $1.99, Early Entry

Lovechoice 拣爱 (Chinese language for “(a backing refrain going ‘love! Alternative! Ah-aaaah!’)”) is by far the shortest recreation to outlive the brutal trials of UP. Will probably be over for you in a couple of minutes. Even a second playthrough will in all probability not outlive your contemplative sandwich. However it’s candy. It’s a heat, light micro-tale about relationship, whereby the same old aim of “unlock the puzzle field that’s some girl” is changed with “she type of likes you so it’ll nearly positively occur no matter you do”. The vital half will not be second-guessing the proper sequence of phrases to cross her exams, nor accumulating Seduced Factors to unlock A Girlfriend, however contemplating what it takes to kind a very good relationship.

Its classes are usually not revolutionary, however then elementary truths about how lovers intertwine seldom are. Vulnerable to spoiling (truthfully, in case your curiosity is piqued, skip to the following paragraph till you’ve performed it), I recognize that the subtext is a critique of our perspective to each video games and romance – the trail of the connection parallels your actions as a participant, and is dictated by not simply what the participant character says, however how a lot you assume and take as a right in regards to the recreation.

It’s tiny, so tiny, nevertheless it’s doing one thing completely different, and one other IF recreation – a courting one, no much less – tipping the scales of the style away from the sweating, lecherous mire it’s notorious for, and for that I believe it’s value recommending.

Ship Us The Moon: Fortuna £19.99 / 19.99€ / $19.99

At any time when one thing goes improper IN SPACE, the protagonist should clomp forwards and backwards fixing doorways and rebooting engines and getting the entry code from that man’s desk (which is infuriatingly bulletproof as a result of folks do it in actual life on a regular basis). And it’s in all probability aliens, and it’ll be closely foreshadowed instantly. Ship Us The Moon has each an fascinating premise and a real thriller. These dozy Earth folks have tousled the planet once more, this time by working out of gasoline, but in addition found a option to generate tonnes of unpolluted (I believe?) vitality from a helium isotope which occurs to be plentiful on That Moon. A colony is constructed, it smelts the helium or no matter and beams the vitality again to Earth through microwaves (theoretically doable – house nerds had been already bouncing the concept round once I was at school, however then EVE On-line got here alongside and distracted them so it by no means took off). However then it out of the blue stops, and Earth is hosed once more.

So, you and a few rogue astro-boffs have scraped collectively a rocket and launched a determined solo flight to the colony to search out out what occurred and repair it. I wouldn’t usually relate a plot in such element however Ship Us The Moon is one among only a few video games to make practical fashionable house shuttle stuff fascinating and approachable to me, and I’m actually curious to search out out what occurred as a result of it could possibly be something. It’s principally about floating in regards to the moonbase reducing cables, listening to audio logs, and changing gubbinses, and it’s not notably taxing. However it appears to be like good, has a good environment, and it’s all somewhat bit understated. I need to discover out what occurred, and for as soon as it appears like I’ll wind up serving to to repair it relatively than blundering right into a face-eating house mutant.

[John has extra ideas on the sport in his Ship Us The Moon: Fortuna overview. –Ed]

Neighbor £11.39 / 12.49€ / $14.99

The one recreation that truly matches the theme this week. Oops. Neighbor is a couple of girl who strikes right into a flat the place she’s continuously afraid and suspicious and laid low with ghostly sights and intrusive, threatening noises, and unable to go away due to extortionate rents, all of which her landlady coldly shrugs off. Much less a horror story than a barely beneath common week in any houseshare within the Southeast, then.

This too is a little bit of a file, for stretching the definition of “interactive” to its close to restrict – Neighbor is as passive because it will get, with nothing to do however click on for the following line, and never even the phantasm of selection that many visible novels current. However it does the job. Ghost tales are of virtually no curiosity to me, however this one’s financial narration and assured pacing had me intrigued all through, and very similar to Ship Us the Moon, I actually loved the supply of the clues and foreshadowing. It’s not tremendous scary, and positively not the boring startle-you-up most horror is, nor does it invoke a very sturdy dread. However I preferred the narratagonist’s perspective – she sees sufficient to be each be rightly scared and really feel silly and uncertain about being scared. She additionally acts remarkably rationally for a personality in a horror story, touchdown the tone extra in supernatural thriller than frightfest. Quite than mark herself as a madwoman by insisting that you simply have to belieeeve me, or creeping across the lair of the monster going “hellooo?” like a lemming with a vore fetish, she units about following up leads on the historical past of the flat and what might presumably have gone on there. She’s a fairly good cookie, and the consequence would possibly invoke the fury of the It’s Not A Sport militia, however should you like a basic thriller with only a little bit of a scare in, you should do nicely right here.

Reignfall £7.19 / eight.19€ / $ 9.99, Early Entry

Although technically a city builder, Reinfall’s constructing is all in help of elevating defences and armies to struggle incoming waves of monsters (which could technically make it a type of tower defence, nevertheless it didn’t really feel that method so I’m saving it from that condemnation). Putting homes and woodcutters and roads carries that delicate satisfaction of growth and enlargement, however there’s no actual administration to talk of moreover rising output by periodically upgrading a farm or plonking a market down by some homes to extend their gold output.

Defending them is the enjoyable bit, and regardless that it too is extra streamlined than a ‘pure’ manstab or RTS, you possibly can at any second take management of your Lord and run round proper alongside your militia and trusty knights. I’ve talked earlier than about what an enormous distinction this will make. Your items could also be nameless, however you’ll nonetheless rush over to rescure a lone peasant when he’s separated from the herd and cornered by skellies (and never simply because surviving ones accumulate stat boosts), and swinging your sword into two or three bandits directly, or simply distracting them for a little bit of crowd management makes an enormous distinction.

There are ranges to achieve and attributes to unlock too, bringing welcome replayability. I just like the artwork model, low tech although it could be, and I’m at all times up for a recreation that channels only a trace of Mount and Blade. And a punny title, too? Alert! Somebody is courting us.

Decide of the Week: Tough, tough resolution. I might nicely look again and need I’d gone for LoveChoice. However it’s going to Vox Machinae.

Early Entry or not, this can be a sturdy mech recreation, and with the suitable growth might have a protracted tail. The place most on-line video games that cross by means of the column are unattainable to guage for lack of gamers, I obtained into Vox instantly, had a grand previous time, and wished to maintain going. Mastering motion and the angles wanted to trace and intention, particularly vertically – assaults from above have a giant benefit since you’re proper there within the cockpit and have big blind spots due to your individual mech, simply correctly – supply that sensation even once you get shot down of getting tangibly higher by means of observe.

And but I additionally felt helpful, battling the large lads however quickly favouring a zippy bot with twin miniguns, harassing and distracting opponents with low, however fixed harm and stress. I notably respect the best way the ‘scope’ extends a feed from a high-zoom digicam, helpful however very tough and dangerous to make use of. This one deserves to take off, and should you’re into having video games sellotaped to your head, you’d be mad to cross it up.

Oh, proper, the theme factor. Uh… I vaaant to suck your blood, mwahaha, and so on.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/unknown-pleasures-20-seasonal-rock-paper-shotgun/

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years

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Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 3: Bakemonogatari [Suruga Monkey]

I’m doing it, I’m finally continuing this. It’s not like it’s been that long, but I’m definitely gonna need to hurry up if I’m gonna want to catch up before Owari S2 starts. Oh well.

I’m gonna try and write this out in real time as I finish each part, and see if that feels better than watching the whole arc and then posting my thoughts on it.

I’m debating whether or not I should try and write up actual reviews of each season/TV special as I finish them completely, to compose my thoughts in a more organized and precise way, but it might take too long and I care a bit more about catching up on this as fast as possible. We’ll see.

Anyway, this time on Monogatari, it’s that one time the story got super duper violent! More ramblings under the cut.

PART ONE:

-It’s still super amusing to me, for some reason, how stuff like Araragi’s really standard internal monologue about his perspective on Kanbaru as the basketball team ace is presented in such a dramatic, fast-paced, almost unnerving way, near the start of the episode. I dunno why, I just like it. Especially now that I’ve read the LN and know just how not at all dramatic or fast-paced these parts are.

-I really like how the start of the episode establishes that the whole Araragi/Hachikuji friendship dynamic is going to just be an ongoing thing now. It’s great. Their interactions are always hilarious [other than the sorta uncomfortable parts, I guess, but I just look past them]. I love that Araragi just takes it in stride that he’s now friends with this ten year old ghost girl that knows how to troll the hell out of him.

-Here she is! Kanbaru! My wonderful sporty monkey-armed anger management issue-ridden carefree lesbian daughter! Kanbaru’s so great. I’m so happy to see her again. I mean I just read this arc in LN form not that long ago but STILL. She really is one of my favourite characters in the series. If only because her interactions with Araragi are just so, so great to watch. Sadly they only have like one conversation in this specific episode, but still. I love how, after spending a while gushing about his witty responses, she immediately asks him for his opinion on Russian politics. She just kinda does her own thing and doesn’t really think about how Araragi feels. For the most part. In general she just knows how to completely throw him off balance when they talk and it’s the best thing ever.

-My memory of this arc is slightly fuzzy since it’s technically been like a month since I actually read it in LN form, but she’s following him around at this stage because she’s already aware that he might become the next victim of her monkey hand, right? And she wants to basically monitor him because of it? I forget. Either way I’m pretty sure it’s to do with her hand, and she’s being intentionally deflective about it and not explaining why she’s following him. It makes these early conversations slightly unnerving, when you know that she’s already dealing with these conflicting feelings and is worried she might hurt him. I think. Again, my memory about this is fuzzy.

-I really like getting this glimpse of Senjougahara’s sweet and thoughtful side, and her ‘I am literally willing and able to murder people in cold blood’ side, all in one conversation. She’s such an awkward person who doesn’t really know how to express her love. Though it’s interesting reading her ‘I’ll kill whoever kills you’ line, knowing that it’s actually really direct foreshadowing of how this arc resolves.

-It’s almost silly how much Araragi’s immediate response to new events in his life is ‘let’s call Hanekawa about it and get her to explain stuff to me’. I don’t dislike it or anything, it’s just kinda funny. I don’t know if I realized early on just how much he does it. From what I remember it’s particularly noticeable in the Koyomimonogatari season. I think. Also it’s kinda distressing to see her just wandering empty city streets at night, all by herself. It really helps set up the idea that she avoids being at her house at all costs.

-It’s worth noting that I really, really relate to the whole thing Hanekawa talks about, in regards to the idea of people all having a sense of personal space, and that personal space becoming so rigidly fortified in people like Araragi and Senjougahara that it becomes something hostile. Yep I can definitely feel that pretty heavily. Not to mention the idea of specifically ‘making exceptions’ for people who can get closer to you. I’m definitely the sort of person who, like she said, feels uncomfortable just being around people. I think that’s how she said it. Either way, it’s one of the aspects where I can see myself in Araragi. It’s probably a big part of why I like him so much as a character.

-The fact that Senjougahara really did earn the money to repay her debt to Oshino is pretty interesting, and helps show that she can be a lot more true to her word than she lets on, even if she clearly dislikes him. Which I guess makes her commitment to keeping her promise even more admirable. And then the episode ends with her standing over Araragi when he’s lying there, covered in blood, near-dead, and she just hands him the envelope with the money in it because he forgot it. Lol.

-Speaking of Araragi being covered in blood and near-dead, we get our first glimpse at how violent this arc is going to get. I like how the animation in these scenes feels notably different in how it flows compared to everything else. It makes it really jarring and unnerving. It helps that the whole Rainy Devil design is really creepy.

PART TWO:

-I kinda love how Senjougahara is totally aware of how completely implausible Araragi’s story is, and is just like ‘whatever’, and just stands over his head to let him see her panties for a while so he’ll feel better. Man, these two are such dorks.

-I forgot to comment on it above, but I really love the OP of this arc. I don’t really have the time to do any actual analyses of any of these OPs in any depth, even though the version I’m watching even has subs for them, but this one’s still really nice. I still love the pastel colour scheme, and all the green/purple contrast. It’s unconventional, but it works well. I also still have to laugh at the really blunt lily symbolism. Something about it always cracks me up when it shows up in anime/manga as lesbian symbolism. I feel like I see it in a surprising amount of stuff, and I haven’t even touched Yuri Kuma Arashi yet, haha. I’m certainly not complaining or anything. Flowers are basically #aesthetic goals to me. As evidenced by me blog header.

-You kinda have to give props to Araragi for visiting Kanbaru and confronting her about the monkey’s paw so soon after that whole thing happened. I guess it speaks a lot to his personality that he wanted to figure things out, and didn’t necessarily consider the potential risk, at least not to the point of being swayed away by it. It’s a kinda interesting parallel to how he could have chosen to leave Senjougahara alone when she violently pushed him away, but he didn’t. Which has a fair bit of relevance to this whole scene.

-The whole aesthetic of Kanbaru’s house, and her room, is still really cool. It somehow feels hard to imagine her living in such a traditional Japanese house, though. The stacks of red books in her room are always neat to look at, especially in later story arcs. They’re a neat framing device. The fact that they’re read is meant to be a reference to how the JP light novels look when you take them out of the slip case, right? Since they’re all plain red as well.

-It’s still pretty fucked up that Kanbaru’s mother just left her daughter a goddamn monkey’s paw as part of the inheritance. Like, wow. I know that the end of the arc gives a fairly sympathetic explanation for it, but still. [Also, in hindsight, is it actually a monkey’s paw, technically? I forget. This series really likes to have twists about the nature of the oddities being different to how they first seem. I vaguely remember this arc in particular being kinda twist-y with how it keeps unveiling new sides to the scenario at hand.

-Also the whole live action hand animation going on when they were discussing the hand was creepy as hell. Basically all of the live action elements are kinda creepy. It’s pretty damn effective, though.

-I just remembered that the Vertical translation of the LN had Kanbaru continually refer to Araragi as ‘my senior’ in a way that I just never quite got used to. I know that even in the JP version she’s meant to in general sound like she’s being almost pushy with how respectful and idolizing she’s being when talking to him, but something about that translation feels like it comes across too strongly. I don’t quite know how to explain it. It’s probably mostly just that it’s not something people in high school say at all in English, even if they’re being polite. For the most part.

-I still love how completely blunt and casual and self-assured Kanbaru is in identifying as a lesbian. It’s such a nice change of pace from how Japanese media tends to be with this kinda thing. I guess I technically have some specific issues with how it’s handled in Kanbaru’s case, but that’d take too long to go over, and it’s stuff that I basically ignore and interpret in my own way anyway. Either way, I just really like this conversation, and what it says about Kanbaru as a person. I haven’t ever been in the exact position she was in with regards to Senjougahara, but I can understand her feelings, and how she acted in that scenario. I can completely understand her desire to back off for Senjougahara’s sake, only to later berate herself for her ego and hypocrisy when she ended up seeing her and Araragi happily together. And hoo boy can I understand all too well the feeling of shameful bitterness and jealousy toward couples like that, toward someone of the opposite sex interacting with and even dating your crush like it’s the most natural thing in the world, as you wonder why it couldn’t just be you in that position, even as you’re fully aware of how rude and selfish all of that is of you to feel. I really have to respect Kanbaru for being so open about this with Araragi. It takes a lot of effort to be open like that.

-I just relate to Kanbaru a lot [even though so many parts of her personality and mannerisms are kinda the opposite of my own, lol], and completely understand how her feelings of jealousy became such a big, violent thing. It’s a good thing that my own feelings never got to the point of me going around in a trance at night, violently assaulting people with my creepy monkey arm. Hahaha.

-I really like how openly sexual she is around him with what she talks about. It’s great. I just adore how much it completely throws Araragi off course and she just talks around him in circles. Even though the whole ‘I can be a replacement for Senjougahara if you want’ scene kinda . . . gets into some of my vague issues with how it reflects upon her. But that’s it’s own thing.

-Also, as a side note, this whole scene as they enter the abandoned cram school just reminds me how it’s always slightly mystified me why lesbians seem to so commonly explore and express their sexualities through stuff like BL, and gay romances/erotica in general. I’ve heard about it from enough queer women to know that it’s an actual thing, but even after having read about it, it’s still kinda baffling. But in a kind of fascinating way, I guess.

-It’s super weird seeing Shinobu just be this unmoving, unspeaking background feature. She doesn’t even have any proper lines until Nise, right? It’s really jarring after how much of a regular, talkative, reoccuring character she becomes after that point. I keep forgetting that she’s like this in Bake.

-OK yeah I was right, it’s not a monkey’s paw. I wasn’t sure for a second. I’ll probably hold off on talking about this in detail until it comes up in the third episode of the arc.

-By the way, the talk of devils and whatnot just got me remembering that Hanamonogatari exists. Man, I love that arc. I can’t wait to rewatch it. Even if it’ll take a while to get there. Ugh. [[On this general note, this is part of why I’m really happy that Vertical has made it clear that they’re going to license at least most of the series. There’s so many arcs later on, like Hana, that I really want to own physically in LN form. It helps that the JP cover of Hana is really beautiful, and it’s presumably what they’ll be using for the ENG release. There’s a lot of other covers in the series like Tsuki’s that I love, but that’s another topic for another post]]

PART THREE:

-Yep, here’s where we get more deeply into Kanbaru’s experience with the rainy devil. The whole idea of it’s always kinda terrified me. Especially in the LN when you have more time to take it all in at your own pace and really think about it. It’s pretty messed up. Still a pretty weird thing to leave behind for your only child, even if I understand the intention. Either way, there’s definitely something disturbing about the concept of Kanbaru basically becoming chained down by a vague and violently enforced wish like ‘I want to be faster than the others’, constantly fearing that any competitive running situation could lead to her unwittingly hurting someone.

-Aaaand here’s the part that gets into the real root of the situation at hand. The fact that Kanbaru’s desires to be faster, to be by Senjougahara’s side, also have an equally valid, important, and influential back side. That she wanted to kill the people in her school who were bullying and ostracizing her. That she wants to kill the person who took away the girl she loved. This sure is a thing, all right. I kinda mentioned it before, but this is another aspect of her character that I relate to a lot. Even though I’ve never actually lashed out at anyone in a physical way. It’s the sorta thing where this is just a more . . . extreme, yet still relatable, version of what a lot of people feel. Because it’s pretty normal to feel such things. To have issues with anger and jealousy. As this whole story makes clear, the issue is when you act upon those feelings, and give into them. But I do think it’s worth reiterating that Kanbaru really did want to become faster, and she really does love Senjougahara. There’s just always two sides to the coin, I suppose. I totally understand how a desire for something can become inherently tied to destructive urges. How you can desire something through destructive means. It can be pretty alluring, the prospect of taking out everything that stands between you and happiness. Of gaining happiness by getting rid of everything else, and removing the competition. And a lot of the time when you feel that way, especially when it’s in conjunction with more pure desires, it’s easy to look away from the parts of what you want that are too disturbing and shameful. But yeah, again, the issue is when you act upon any of that. The whole point with this is that it’s better to earnestly work toward a goal you want, than to try and gain something through violence. Like in a lot of these sorts of relatively fantastical, fictional stories, Kanbaru is there to show us what it looks like to go down that dark path. But thankfully she got intervention, one way or another, before it got to the point of absolutely no return. Even if she still shoulders the consequences of it, which we’ll get to later.

-The whole idea that Araragi has to win in a fight against the Rainy Devil to prove that he’s ‘unkillable by it’, thus voiding Kanbaru’s contract with it, is a really neat concept, while also being really distressing. Like, damn does this guy have low self-esteem and a huge hero complex, to relatively happily accept that sort of a proposition. Especially when the person he’s trying to save literally tried to murder him, and basically admitted to wishing, deep down, that he were dead. Wow. It’s kinda easy to forget the gravity of what Kanbaru nearly did, when he takes it in pretty good stride like this.

-Man it hurts to see Kanbaru more or less accept the idea of cutting her arm off as penance for her crimes, and to see her talk about not caring about any of it anymore, not even Senjougahara. I know that she’s obviously guilty of a lot of things, but still. Damn. Especially when you contrast it to the big fight scene where it becomes immediately obvious that some part of her still can’t feel that way, and still wants to kill Araragi in order to get what she wants. [[Also the entire ‘I don’t need an arm like this’ scene reminds me SO MUCH of that one part in Pandora Hearts that still gets me all emotional but that’s a whole other story altogether]]

-The entire fight scene, short as it is, is still one of the most memorable moments of Bake by far. I just love the visual presentation of it. It always manages to surprise me with how graphic it is in it’s gore, with the censorship mostly amounting to using neon and pastel colours and not realistic ones.

-But of course I also love how the fight ACTUALLY resolves, with Senjougahara coming in to dramatically save the day by berating Araragi for his unhealthily self-sacrificial nature, and by making it clear to Kanbaru and her Rainy Devil that she would genuinely murder her if she killed him. I guess that’s one way of forcing the devil to accept that killing him is impossible. The whole part where Kanbaru tearfully confesses her feelings to Senjougahara, gets shot down yet again, and then accepts the idea of continuing to stay by her side, one way or another, even if her feelings will never be returned, always makes me sad. I just feel so bad for her :C Especially when I realized how much the physical positioning going on there reminded me of that one part in Hana. Either way it hurt to watch. Though it’s distinctly amusing to see Araragi ultimately be sorta pointless, while it’s the girls who resolve the scene by actually talking to each other. It’s almost cruel how ultimately simple it was, that it all boiled down to them laying out the basics of how they feel about each other, and how much it’d horribly backfire on Kanbaru if she actually did anything to Araragi. I guess the lesson of the day is pretty much just that you should REALLY talk to people about your feelings, and not let them fester inside you until they fuel violent rampages. [[I get why scenes like this lead to the typical complaints of Araragi being a weak hero, but eh. It makes perfect sense that his toxic hero complex and his lack of self-regard isn’t really rewarded by the narrative. The story cares much more about the importance of people saving themselves]]

-It’s still nice to see that Kanbaru more or less ends up on good terms with them both by the end of the arc, though, and that they’re basically friends again. That’s nice. But MAN is it still really fucked up to contemplate the fact that she’s stuck living with that arm of hers for her entire life even if the devil in it is gone. I’m pretty sure that Hana makes it clear that even a year or so down the track, she still restrains her arm at night and obsessively reads newspapers each morning to see if she still ended up going on a rampage and hurting someone, so it really is still haunting her, if only as a purely psychological complex. Which is just disturbing and sad on so many levels. Especially since she even ended up giving up basketball due to it. That sure sucks. Thankfully she knows how to look on the bright side of things because she’s still the same old Kanbaru we know and love.

-As one final note, on the topic of the story caring mostly about people saving themselves, next time on Monogatari: the arc where Nadeko gets saved by somebody else, the root cause of her emotional problems is left unaddressed, and it leads, later down the track, to her becoming a completely psychotic snake goddess who very nearly murders a large portion of the main cast! YAY! This arc is going to be so fucking weird to rewatch. I haven’t even read it in LN form yet. So this is gonna be a trip. I’m still unsure if the trajectory of Nadeko’s arc was planned from the start, but it’s very possibly my favourite overall sub-plot in the show.

#murasaki rambles #monogatari series #bakemonogatari #this got super long again #I need to figure out a faster way to do this #just watching these three episodes and writing up my thoughts took like #three or four hours I think #hopefully I'll get my nadeko snake post up tomorrow

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