#the ENTIRE FUCKING PLOT is driven by their desperation to save themselves

[hallow-nest]

thinking about pk and radi. these two bitches are two examples of how people act when they’re desperate.

radi realised she was in danger of being forgotten and potentially deleted from existence since most of the moths had forgotten her. so she lashed out in an attempt to be remembered.

pk realised Oh Shit I Just Invoked A Goddess’s Wrath and was put in a situation where he was doomed to lose his kingdom. while usually people don’t super go and have hundreds of kids to prevent the sun from destroying their kingdom, he also didn’t really have much of a choice. he thought void creatures were completely empty and without mind or will—even if we know they aren’t, even the kingsmould—so obviously they would be the only thing that could contain the radiance. but to contain something, you need to put it inside something, which.. the kingsmoulds aren’t exactly a good way to contain it, considering it’s all just exposed void with some armor thrown on. pk had a solution and was desperate to save his kingdom.

[itsclydebitches]

Can I point out how stupid it is that only at the end of V8 did anybody realize "oh wait there's more than these two arbitrary options for saving Atlas" and it was when it was too late? RWBY and Ironwood had access to an artifact called the Staff of Fucking Creation. It can pretty much anything as long as you've got the smarts to make it happen. You could've landed Atlas and made a shield. Or a giant robot. Or literally anything other than "Leave or Stay".

Personally, I'm convinced that the Staff is just another version of Amity. Meaning, like Amity was 100% unfinished in Volume 7 and thus not a resource that Ironwood could rely on, only to miraculously be ready to go when Ruby wanted it, the Staff is presented as an artifact with severe limitations in Volume 7 when Ironwood (the bad guy) wanted to escape, only to miraculously become a tool that could do anything — get everyone to Vacuo and give Penny a human body — when Ruby (the hero) wanted it.

What do we actually know about the Staff in Volume 7? Only that it was creating a power source that kept Atlas floating above Mantle. What did Ironwood want to do with the Staff? Raise Atlas higher. Those two pieces of information align with one another, implying that the Staff, for whatever reason, is only — or currently only — capable of moving this city around. What else do we know about the Relics? That the Lamp has a limitation of three questions per hundred years. Why would the Staff be any different? Many fans, given the dearth of information, extrapolated based on these details. Perhaps the Staff can also only create three things each hundred years too and we're currently on the third creation this century. Perhaps you can modify it — I want this power source to amp up a bit and take us higher — but you can't create something entirely new yet. Because why would the Staff function totally differently from the one Relic we actually know something about? More importantly, why, as you say, wouldn't Ironwood have considered another option other than rising really high? I defended that idea heartily because the story presents it as the only option available. It wasn't a matter of whether the option was good, but the fact that it was the one option they had, other than throwing themselves at an immortal witch. Surely Ironwood, a military and Kingdom leader, is smart enough to hit on the idea that the Staff of Creation can do more than just take them into the air IF it can do more than that at the moment... right?

Volume 7 told us nothing about the Staff, but heavily implied that little could be done with it while Ironwood was in control of the situation. They had two options: stay or go. That was it.

Volume 8 explained the Staff's capabilities literally minutes before Ruby needed to use it, oh so conveniently creating a new situation where the Staff was not only capable of so much more and lacked the limitations of the Lamp, but also functioned in a manner that perfectly allowed for Ruby's "twist" requests. When did the group have time to come up with the (supposedly) perfect wording to save Penny and get everyone safely to Vacuo? The answer doesn't matter because the Staff's abilities were created for their needs, rather than the writing forcing them to come up with solutions to the Staff's requirements.

I did the latest quest for my covenant in WoW the other day and one NPC has a line about how convenient it is that the exact person we needed is also the person who has just shown up. It's meant to be a gentle self-teasing by the writers, acknowledging how they've manipulated the plot in an unlikely way for conveniences sake and in doing so the setup (hopefully) becomes funny for the player, rather than frustrating. RWBY's writing is that cranked up to ten and there's no knowing wink at the audience to get us on the writer's side. The rules, limitations, and expectations of this world continually bend to benefit the group and the result is not just a frustration with their lack of growth as a result, but also an equal frustration at how stupid it makes other characters look, even though they're meant to be smart, knowledgeable, and following the world's rules at the time. Ironwood retroactively looks foolish for his choice, even though the choice is supposed to be about the sacrifice he'd have to make, not his inability to come up with other solutions. The group, meanwhile, looks even worse given their refusal to fight or come up with additional ideas, only to gleefully hit on a perfect solution precisely when the plot needs them to — we're nearing the end of the Volume, best have that epiphany now. But, of course, the story doesn't criticize the group for their own lack of creativity, nor is the fandom interested in criticizing them for not thinking up another use for the Staff within two days, compared to Ironwood trying to come up with a use literally seconds after Salem announces that she's on her way. Yet such details are ultimately inconsequential because RWBY was never interested in creating a fair, continuity-driven story that weighs hard choices, only in continually changing the rules to ensure that the group comes out looking the best. RWBY's stakes are too high and the problems too complicated to easily write solutions where the group looks smart, compassionate, and heroic despite those challenges... so instead we're given "solutions" based on a situation that has totally changed.

It's like watching a chess match where Ironwood looses badly and the spectators are desperately trying to figure out the rules along the way, coming to some basic conclusions about what is and is not allowed in a match. Except then the group's game begins and it's revealed that they can move their pieces in whatever way they'd like, no knights moving in an 'L' shape or bishops not being allowed to jump other pieces, etc. "Well why didn't Ironwood just move his pawn eight squares too? The idiot" comes the reaction, ignoring that he was very much playing a different game, one where he was actually bound by those rules.

[popculturebuffet]

House of Mouse: The Stolen Cartoons Review (Patreon Review)

Hello all you happy people! It’s Patreon Review Time. Since my 5 dollar or higherr patreons get 1 review a month, Kevin my 10 dollar patreon is using one of his to celebrate the 20th anniversary of House of Mouse by having me review a random episode a month. And for this month we’re going all the way back to the start with The Stolen Cartoons!

I already introed house of mouse back when I reviewed “The Three Cablleros” episode but for a refresher: House of Mouse is a 2001 cartoon about Mickey and Co running a club. Mickey is host, Minnie plans the show and runs the books, Donald tends to the VIP”s and co owns the club with Mickey, Goofy is head waiter,  Daisy runs guest services, Horace is technical support, Clarabelle is a gossip monger with no clear actual job, and Max is Valet. The show was used to repackage shorts from the short lived show Mickey mouseworks, using the club setting as a wraparound and said club was attentend by all the various characters from the disney canon. It’s as awesome as it sounds. 

The voice cast, which I didn’t intro thorughly last time, was equally awesome with all the actors for the characters at the time, all legends in the industry. Wayne Allwine as Mickey,who played the character from the late 70′s to his death, Russi Taylor as Minnie and the Triplets, who did the same and was also married to wayne, Tony Anselmo, who should be thorughly familiar to readers of this blog and donald duck fans as his voice since Ducktales, Voice Actress Tress Macneile as Daisy, likewise,  Jason Marsden as Max and Voice Acting Legend Jim Cummings as Pete. All except Allweine i’ve profieled before on this blog in various other series, but Wayne, outisde of a very minor role in black cauldron, only voiced Mickey, and to me is the defntiive voice for the guy, though Chris is getting close. 

The other notable members of the cast i havent’ covered are April Winchell, who while tremendous, I will save for an episode Clarabelle is actually in more, and Bill Farmer. I have a great amount of Love for Bill and like everyone here, he was a vertran of the industry by the time he showed up in this series. His defining roll far and away is goofy, who was, to my delighted surprise his FIRST voice audition, having studided PInto Colving’s voice well to the point you can barely tell the difference between the two, and having inherited the roll around the same time as Russi and Tony. He’s the voice of Goofy I and most kids from the 80′s onward have grown up with and is the best at the roll by far, having chances for depth and nuance Pinto wasn’t allowed with the Goofy Movies and other works. IN general he’s just THE goofy to me. He’s also the voice of horace and pluto, and currently voices Hop Pop in Amphibia which is super noteworthy as looking at his filmography like a lot of the sensational 6′s va’s he’s only voiced goofy or Pluto for most of his career. But hey like Tony, if you only do one charcter might as well be the fucking best at it. He also has a show on Disney Plus with him and dogs I need to watch yesterday. 

So with our cast out of the way, and not much history to go into, join me after the cut and we’ll see how House of Mouse got it’s start and if it was a good one. 

Breaking from my usual format for House of Mouse and doing the shorts as they come up int he main story for two reasons: The first is that the shorts are integral to the plot and the second is that there’s way more main story this time around than usual, likely to properly set things up. 

So we open at the House of Mouse with Mickey Adressing the club and showing off the general premise of this being a club for all of the various heroes and villains of disney to hang out and what not. He also presents the house rules which are no smoking (Fair and should’ve always been a thing), no villianous schemes and no eating the other guests, all helpfully demonstrated as he says them. We also get to see the others in action: Minnie handling the schedule and the crew, Donald welcoming the guests, and Daisy running the desk and getitng brainwashed by Jafar into giving him a table. Max also is providing his job as Valet which surprised me because I genuinely thought he didn’t join the cast till season 2.. despite the fact he’s right there in the credits.. which are the same for ALL THREE SEASONS. 

So things are going well.. so naturally that’s when Pete shows up to try and ruin things. Look he’s having a hard time after the divorce.. several years ago. Okay maybe he’s always just been a dick and that’s why he’s divorced in the first place. Point is he naturally wants to shut the club down, boot them out, and wreck up the place like any natural cartoon villian or real estate scum bag landlord. Pete just happens to be both because he can multitask. .and because it’s basically the same thing you just have to be animated for one of them.  Thankfully whoever the previous Landlord was, i’m going with Shere Kahn given the setting, his roll in tailspin and the fact the obvious candidate, scrooge, would make no sense here given a later episode where he guest stars, wrote into the contract that as long as the show goes on, they can stay in business. Pete stews over this and naturally plans to stop the show while Minnie, in a cute bit, comforts a nervous mickey and just tells him to play some cartoons. So...

Pluto Gets the Paper: Wet Cement and Donald’s Dynamite: Magic Act I”m covering both of these at once. But as I said the animated shorts this time are one big sized one and two of the shorter ones to make more room for the story. Which is fair: this is the first episode, and thus needs to set up the premise. The series isn’t story driven but your first episode should still feel like one, ease you into the world and get you situated and THEN can do the normal format. It’s also in the episode’s favor as the heavier story focus meant a BETTER story than most season 1 episodes, on par with the two season 3 episodes i’ve covered so far. 

The shorts themselves are fine. So far this is the only Pluto Short i’ve liked as it has a neat enough gaga: Pluto has to get the paper in wet cement. Why did the paperboy throw it in wet cement instead of in the driveway, I dunno but given this short is well.. short and just meant to deliver on some quick gags, I’m not going to question it. It’s the first Pluto short i’ve covered without any dog sexual harassment, i’m not looking a gift dog in the mouth. 

The other short short played right after is part of a series where Donald ends up trying to get rid of a round bomb that shows up wherever he is....

It’s pretty damn funny, though being a huge Donald fan i’m obviously biased, but even removing my donald duck brand sunglasses, I will concede this was objectively fun.

But the cartoons stop as, true to the title, they’ve gone missing! Horace is found tied up, the cartoons are gone and Pete is obviously responsible. and hilariously so as the rope has his name on it and he says “I don’t know horace horsecollar” There are a LOT of good gags in this one, i’m leaving a lot out for time’s sake. 

So Mickey and Minnie come up with a plan: Mickey sends the.. Quackstreet Boys.... to stall. Now it may shock you but I actually LIKE the backstreet boys. Not to an extreme amount but I did grow up with them, and even now find their music pretty damn good. No my issue is this parody is weak, mostly running entirely on the title pun. The most I can give them credit for is using the outfits from their second album cover. No I wasn’t kidding I did grow up with them. You saw that everywhere so even if I didn’t enjoy their music then and now, i’d know it. But it just feels really weak, like they had no idea what to DO with the boys and instead just slapped them in a lame parody. It dosen’t help i’m not a fan of the classic version of the boys outside of the comics, as I feel later productions should’ve had them actually be distinct, and it took until 2017 to pull that off with the reboot, something I fear may be undone in future productions. Please.. don’t.. you can have Cristina Vee voice them all, I don’t care about the voice I just want to be able to tell them a apart. So yeah I don’t like it but it dosen’t drag the episode down. Just something I wanted to have a moan about. 

So they split up: Mickey, Minnie and Goofy go to shoot a cartoon while Donald runs the club. Naturally he rebrands.. but what really is telling is everyone boos him when he tries to mc.. just for not being Mickey. While Donald does have a massive inferiority complex here, desperately wanting to one up mickey.. with moments like this it’s hard not to see why> He’s JUST as big a star, just as talented , maybe not as nice but just as likeable. He even co-owns the club. But ironically only Mickey Himself, and Daisy of Course, treat him like an equal. To everyone else it’s Mickey’s world and he’s just the sidekick. It’s no wonder he spend sthe entire show desperately trying to outdo mickey: he doesn’t hate the guy, even if he wouldn’t admit it.. but he just wants to be loved too. Sure it’s part ego.

Mickey does return though with the new cartoon. And our only sizeable one so. 

Hickory Dickory Mickey: This is a REALLY good one with a simple enough premise; Goofy wants Mickey to take him to the airport at 6am tomorrow.. which Mickey balks at. 

Seriously i’ve woken up at 3-4am to go to the airport or on road trips. Waking up at 5:30 is pretty standard. Goofy also has good reason to ask as he once BROKE MICKEY OUT OF JAIL. And as seen up top the flashback is done in black and white AND with their old models. I just.. love everything about this and it had to have taken extra effort to make new models for the old models and thus extra money for a quick joke. So kudos best part of the episode. But with his hands tied Mickey is forced to take him and Goofy leaves him his clock which won’t stop ticking. So we get just.. nonstop good gags as Mickey tries to sleep with standouts being his trying to drown it out only to get the tick station, the tock station on the radio and the clock channel on the tv. He also tries to mail it and naturally it comes back thanks to a kangaroo when he ships it to Australia..a nd then get’s progressively batshit as he mails it to HADES (comes back in a puff of smoke) and to the 1920′s (It comes back in black and white with arms and legs). It’s just.. really damn good and I suggest seeking it out. I have liked other shorts better but this was a good one. 

Pete still gloats as they’ll need more cartoons.. only for one to fall out of his jacket and Mickey to shake the rest out. We then get a fun chase between the two, SO many good jokes, my favorite being him dressing up as a dalmation only for Cruella to take measurements, before being cornered by the three and the elephant from tarzan who throws him out.. right next to pepper-ann and her mom “Don’t touch the villian dear”. Good crossover.. and another show that like House of Mouse is not on disney plus don’t ask me why. 

So our heroes win, we get our usual sponsorship and unusually we see the guests leave, a nice bit I wish they did more. All’s well that ends well. 

Final Thoughts: This episode was fantastic. It introduces the cast well, sets up our villian, our basic premise and while only having one major cartoon, uses that as a plot point and it’s a damn good one. A fantastic start to the series and frankly the best place to start if your curious about the show. I’d like to thank Kev for sponsoring this review. If you’d like your own review you can look at comissoin details on my blog or get one guaranteed every month by becoming a 5 dollar patreon. You get one guaranteed review a month, acess to my discord server for my patreons, and to pick a short when I do birthday specials. And contributing to my patreon gets me closer to my stretch goals, even one dollar helps. Next goal not only gets reviews of the super ducktales mini series, but also a darkwing duck episode EVERY MONTH. And with the plug done, i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Episodes 37-39

Bravo

Just... Bravo.

Sugar and Spice

You know, it’s funny. One of the first things everyone tells you about Ikuhara as a director, whether they’re fans or not, is how obtuse and symbolism-driven his shows are. Everyone talks about how many metaphors the dude layers into his work, how you need to read deeply into every single image to parse out the meaning. And that’s true to some extent; Ikuhara does not exactly create the most accessible shows in existence. From Utena to Penguindrum to Sarazanmai, the way he tells stories invites you to fill in blanks he doesn’t fill in himself. His work can be confusing or unclear, or even just confidently non-literal. He asks you to work out the meaning for yourself, whether or not he’s given you all the tools to do so effectively.

But every once in a while, it seems like even he gets tired of all the pussyfooting around and decides to just explain his symbolism outright so even the thickest audience member can understand it.

Anthy’s statement that “girls are all like Rose Brides” pretty much confirms that my reading from last session was 100% true. The title of Rose Bride is just a literalization of the pressure that society places on women and girls, the way it commodifies them and turns them into prizes to be fought over, lacking any agency to enact meaningful change in their own lives. It’s a box to squash them into, until whatever individual personality they once had is erased and papered over by the designation of Female and all the submissive surrender that implies. Every woman has felt the chains of the Rose Bride hold them down at some point in their life, whether an abusive boyfriend, a toxic work environment, an overly traditional family, or any number of the conscious and unconscious social structures in our society designed to keep them in place. Anthy may be the character who actually bears that curse, but the patriarchal tyranny represented by Akio has no issue treating all the women around him in the same way. Just listen to how he condescends to Utena, telling her over and over again that girls shouldn’t wield swords, girls shouldn’t be princes, girls should just shut up and let themselves be saved by the men in their lives. Hell, he literally tries to take away her own internal sword, telling her that the literal representation of her heart is better off in the hands of a man. You can’t get a more cutting metaphor for this monster’s attempts to rob her of her very personhood.

The False Castle

And speaking of Akio’s manipulations, there was one last plot twist waiting for us in this final stretch, and it’s possibly the best goddamn twist of the entire show: the dueling ground is Akio’s observatory. All this fucking time, Utena, the student council, the members of Black Rose, they’ve all been fighting right under the prodigal asshole’s watchful eye. All those crazy props that littered the stage during the later duels, like the desks and cars? Projections from the observatory’s telescope, which I guess has the power to make hard light objects. The castle floating in the sky? Another projection. The giant symbolic building that everyone’s been fighting for was never even real. It was a perfectly crafted illusion designed to lure in the desperate and foolish, making them believe they were fighting for a shot at eternity when all they were fighting for was a chance to be used by Akio as an unwilling key to open the gateway to eternity for himself. That means that all this crazy symbolism we’ve been seeing over the course of the duels was actually fucking real. It wasn’t just a directorial flourish to represent the characters’ mental states, it existed within the show’s universe. THERE WAS ACTUALLY AN EXPLANATION. How fucking bananas is that? I can’t believe Ikuhara found a way to make his symbolism make both metaphorical and literal sense. I bow my hat to you, sir. Seriously, well fucking done. No goddamn wonder Akio doesn’t actually have any interest in the stars: this observatory was never meant to look skyward in the first place.

And it really is the perfect image, isn’t it? The last piece of information we’re told is that Akio and Dios are technically the same person, as foreshadowed by plenty of previous clues. Dios was the hero Akio used to be, but when Anthy saved him all those years ago, that persona was ripped away from him and now exists as a quasi-real spirit figure, just barely still holding on to reality. With the heroic side gone, Akio’s curdled into the bastard he is today. He accepts no responsibility for the hurt he’s caused, telling Anthy to blame the world, not him, for how she’s suffered under him. He victim-blames Utena for keeping up her relationship with him, as if a middle school girl is more culpable than the adult man who took advantage of her. The eternity he promises is the happily ever after of fairy tales, the perfect prince with his perfect princess living on forever and ever. And if his own sister must suffer eternally as humanity’s witch to make that dream real? That’s just a price he’s willing to let her pay. Besides, she’s happy now. This is the only way she can truly be happy. It’s the logic of an abuser through and through. But he still sees himself as the gallant prince he used to be, slaying evil and coming to the rescue of maidens in distress, even as he does nothing but mistreat, assault, and degrade the people around him. As he even mentions himself, the castle Utena thought she was ascending to was, in the end, nothing more than the fetid den where he enacted his worst crimes upon Anthy. A projected image of an ideal that doesn’t exist, luring you in to be swallowed whole by the scummy, all-too-human monster using it as bait.

In the end, Utena really did find her prince. Her search for her noble savior brought her, literally, symbolically, and metaphorically, right into Akio’s cursed arms. And just like the false castle that drew her eyes, she didn’t realize the true nature of the dream she was chasing until it was almost too late.

The Fool Reborn

And Utena comes so terrifyingly close to giving up. The pressure Akio exerts over her almost turns her into exactly the damsel in distress he wants her to be. She takes her ring off for the first time, thinking that a prince’s attire no longer suits the girl who slept with an older man. She continues hanging out with him, despite now knowing what kind of person he is, perhaps believing she deserves it. No longer trusting Anthy after last night’s revelations, she’s separated herself from the person she thought she could confide in the most. And Anthy, in her eternal sadness, seems all too happy to keep suffering in silence and let the pain swallow her whole (”Pardon me. This isn’t mine, it’s yours.” Yeah, she ain’t talking about the toast there.) She’s spiraling faster and faster, and if someone doesn’t catch her, she’s going to completely self-destruct. But miracle of miracles, someone does come along to catch her: all her former opponents. Yes, after so long trading blows on the dueling ground, the members of the student council are no longer the same antagonistic forces they used to be. They’re a little older, a little wiser, a little more self-assured, a little more aware of the problems with the way they’ve carried themselves. Without Utena knocking some sense into them, they never would have started down the long, slow path to self-recovery. And now that Utena’s in a crisis of her own, it only makes sense to return the favor.

And Christ, I fucking love this scene. After so long being at each other’s throats, watching them just play a casual game of badminton as they hash out their issues one last time really makes you appreciate how far they’ve come. And as they volley questions and shuttlecocks back and forth, Utena comes to realize how much they’ve all changed since they first met. Nanami stepping in as the rare voice of reason! Miki and Juri revealing they’ve both sort-of fallen for Utena after getting over their toxic feelings for their previous crushes! Not only that, they’re all aware of how much they’ve changed. Nanami acknowledges how obsessive she can be as she encourages Utena not to let her worst instincts betray her (”I get stupid when I’m around you!”) Miki takes a casual attitude toward how his affections have shifted: “Can’t I change my mind?” Juri’s equally nonchalant about wanting Utena’s picture to be the one in her new locket. How remarkably easy it seems in retrospect. How infinitely capable are humans of becoming something other than we used to be if what we once were no longer suits us. Utena is no longer the person she used to be, but that doesn’t mean she needs to be the person she’s turning into either. Only she gets to decide that much. Only she gets to figure out who she wants to be. And in the end, there was only one choice she was ever going to make.

In the end, who she wants to be is someone she’s been from the beginning: a fool who believes in true friendship.

On the Balcony

Which brings me to the first of two scenes in this finale that utterly fucking destroyed me. After years of suffering Akio’s abuses, years of burdening herself with endless pain, after everything she and Utena have gone through in the past months, Anthy finally breaks. It’s too much heartache. It’s too much fear. It’s too much internalized self-loathing. Trapped in a vicious cycle that’s stripped her of her humanity and dragged down the one person who genuinely cared for her, Anthy tries to throw herself off a balcony. To erase herself from the world and escape the eternal agony she’s lost all hope of ever healing from. But just as she falls from the edge, Utena’s hand is there. It reaches out. It grabs her own. It holds her steady and pulls her back from the brink. It pulls her back into the arms of the girl who always promised to save her.

And after thirty-seven episodes of dancing around each other, hiding their feelings, unable to give voice to the pain they hold inside, unable to confide in each other... Anthy and Utena finally talk to each other.

God. Fucking god. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment? Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for these two to stop holding back and finally let their walls down? To hear Anthy choke back tears as she says she thought it was okay for her to be abused and misused, because she didn’t think she had a heart worthy of being broken? To hear her break down with the guilt of having caused Utena pain and admitting all the lies she’s told her? To hear Utena in turn apologize for never realizing the pain she was suffering? To hear her admit the shallowness and egoism of playing a prince to save her, despite not being able to heal the wounds that truly mattered? To hear her admit that her first instinct upon Anthy revealing the secret of her and Akio, reaching out for help in the most desperate manner possible, was to feel betrayed instead of realizing the true horror of Anthy’s situation? Every repressed feeling, every mistake they made, every regret they could never move past, all of it comes pouring out in a single, overwhelming tide, and it just fucking broke me. I was weeping openly and proudly all throughout that litany of confessions. God, they did it. They fucking did it. After spending the entire series circling each other from a distance, these two flawed, suffering people finally found their way into each other’s arms. And it’s a sight so beautiful it chases away the night.

The Prince Defeated

But accepting their pain is only the first step. The monster that drove them to this point still has his claws in them. If they truly want to step back from this ledge, they need to make sure Akio can never reach them again. And Anthy’s still too traumatized from years of abuse and coercion to dream of defying him. She begs Utena to leave her behind and run, run far away where she and her brother can never hurt her again. But Utena takes the second choice: stand and fight. There’s no way in hell she’s leaving Anthy to suffer anymore. Not when she finally understands the true extent of her pain. Not after chasing this destiny for her entire life. She chose to be a prince to save Anthy from her despair, and there’s no way in hell she’s turning back now. No matter how terrifying the path ahead, she’ll face it head-on, clasping Anthy’s hand tightly and never letting her go again. It took her far to long to realize, but she’s sure of it now: she loves Anthy Himemiya. She came all this way just to save her. And no one- no god, no devil, no prince, no monster- is going to stand in her way. She fights back with all her strength! She matches Akio blow for blow in a final, furious duel! Her conviction pierces the projected illusions and finally brings the false castle crashing down, just as Saionji saw all those episodes ago! It’s a brilliant, breathtaking light show! The full might of the prince Utena’s always aspired to be, blazing with all her courage intact as she carries the mantle Dios abandoned all those years ago!

But just when it looks like she’s going to win... a blade spears her through the back.

I don’t think I can adequately express the sheer horror that burned through me when Anthy betrayed Utena. I don’t even recall if I made a noise or was too traumatized to manage anything other than a silent gaping scream. I have seen so many shows try and fail to pull a last-minute twist where the hero is betrayed by someone they were trying to save, pulling the maneuver out of their ass for a cheap, unsatisfying shock to try and make things feel more meaningful. It almost never works, and it almost always reeks of laziness and contrivance. But this? This fucking hurt. This fucking speared me through the gut just as surely as Utena. All the courage she showed, all the determination that drove her forward, and it still wasn’t enough. Because it could never be enough. No matter how hard she fought, no matter how desperately she struck against evil, Anthy’s prison was never one a prince could break. A knight in shining armor could never free her from the chains Akio imposed upon her. A hero could never slay the self-loathing that bound her to the man who made her life a living hell. Utena was fighting a losing battle from the start, playing a rigged game she had no chance of winning. And Anthy would rather strike her down right there than force her to become the next victim of the system that kept her locked up.

The Rose Gate

And so, Utena falls. The prince fails one last time. Anthy surrenders to her jailer. The path is clear for Akio to open the way of revolution. The door to eternity, bound by roses, is the last barrier he must pry open. He strides forth, accompanied by a shimmering rose mosaic on the wall, shedding bitter tears in a pathetic attempt to guilt Anthy into overcoming her regrets and joining him once again. And once again, Anthy is ripped to shreds by the swords of humanity’s hatred. The last guardian of the rose gate is the endless storm of steel that flays apart all those fooling enough to reach for eternity. It is for that reason the Rose Bride was created: to bear the wrath of unending slaughter, taking all humanity’s sins on their head while the supposed noble prince grasps his prize all on his own. It’s horrifying. It’s brutal. It’s utterly eviscerating and tears your heart from your chest. And Utena desperately tries to stand up, pleading Akio to turn back, to help the sister he claims to care about, to show even one glimmer of the hero he used to be, for there to be some way, any way, to save Anthy from this torment. But no way comes. No one steps in to save Anthy. Even Dios, the power Utena’s always relied on when her own falls short, tells her she’s done enough. There’s nothing more a girl can do. There’s no way left to save Anthy. She might as well give up, satisfied she did all she could. She might as well lie down and accept one last kiss from the prince who set her on this path in the first place.

But Utena rejects his kiss with a violent punch to the floor.

She rejects giving up.

She rejects thinking she can’t do anything just because she’s a girl.

She rejects the failed path of the prince.

She rejects every last role that’s even been placed on her, including by her own hands.

Utena Tenjou, broken and bruised, stands up.

And what follows is a sequence that officially solidifies the finale of Revolutionary Girl Utena as one of the greatest anime finales I’ve ever seen.

Love’s Revolution

The power to revolutionize the world. From the very start of the show, every character has been fighting for it. The student council has sought it. The black rose folks sought it. Akio sought it, and now stands on the verge of obtaining it. But try as he might, the door won’t open for him. Utena’s sword, the sword of the prince she used to be, shatters against it. Not a single prince has been able to breach that gate. So Utena pushes by him, grasping the gate’s handle as Anthy is skewered endlessly in the sky above. She pulls with all her might, even as her strength fails and her body crumples. She pulls as if her life depends on it. She pulls as Akio criticizes her from the sidelines, comparing her to the Dios he used to be, telling her that such childish determination won’t amount to anything. She pulls as everyone and everything tells her she can’t do anything. She pulls and screams in their face to shut up. She pulls not as a prince, not as a hero, not as a princess, not as a girl. She pulls as Utena Tenjou, who loves Anthy Himemiya with all her heart.

And before Akio’s stunned eyes... the door begins to open.

Except the door is no longer the rose gate that would grant the power of revolution. Why would it be? Utena’s desire was never to change the world. From the very start, she never cared about the foolish duels or the misguided motivations that trapped everyone within them. Her mission was always one single goal: save Anthy Himemiya. Rip the chains of the Rose Bride off her. Free this lost, frightened soul from her lifelong prison and allow her to stand on her own two feet at last. And what else should the door become but the door to Anthy’s coffin. The door to the prison she’s been trapped in all her life. The door that keeps her trapped in despair, unable to move on. The same coffin that Utena buried herself in when her parents died, the same coffin that Saionji spoke of to Touga, the same coffin representing everyone’s fears and regrets and trauma and paralysis. The same coffin that freezes everyone in place, victims of the lives they’ve lived, unable to break free of the systems that hold them in place. The same coffin that Utena was never able to open before, all those times she misread Anthy, all those times she was unable to see her despair, all those times she failed to open up to her.

But this time? This time, Utena holds nothing back. This time, she pulls with all the strength she was too scared to call upon until now. This time, she whispers, in a voice wracked with sobs, the words of her heart she was never able to say before:

“The only time I was really happy... was when I was with you.”

And just as the droplets of water unlocked the gate to the supposed “dueling arena” time and time again, Utena’s tears break through the seal.

The door to Anthy’s coffin- the door to Utena’s revolution- opens.

And inside is the true Anthy Himemiya, naked and bare, the girl Utena was always trying to save no longer hidden.

After almost thirty nine episodes... Utena and Anthy have met each other at last.

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, I’m not ashamed to say that I fucking lost it. I descended into full-on Niagara Falls territory and didn’t let up for the rest of the episode. All the hardship, all the suffering, all the battles, all the twists and turns, all the lies and deceptions and hidden agendas, all the unspoken pain and repressed trauma, all to bring us to this one singular, perfect point, where two people finally let their defenses fall and see each other clearly for the first time. No longer are they a duelist and a rose bride, a prince and a witch, a broken ideal and a chained scapegoat. Now, at long last, they are nothing more or less than Utena Tenjou and Anthy Himemiya. Two girls with the strength to reach out to each other, to share each other’s pain, to open their hearts and let their love be known. The dream that Utena’s been fighting for, the mission she’s tried to hard to achieve, has finally come true: Anthy is free. The door to her coffin is open. The chains of the Rose Bride have been shattered. And it came not from the valor of a prince, not from the courage of a princess, but from something far more powerful than either of those restrictive roles: love. Love, in its purest, most unabashed form. Love, in its capacity to see someone as they truly are and let them see you just as clearly. Love, which tells you that you deserve to be happy. Love, which tells you that you deserve to be free. Love, which is the truest, greatest revolution that could ever wait on the other side of that door.

That’s the truth that Akio could never see, that Dios failed to realize, that the student council was blind to, that the Black Rose never even came close to realizing. The power to change the world lies not in some false notion of eternity designed to keep you frozen in place forever. It doesn’t lie in binding yourself to a broken system that only serves to drag you down. It lies in the simple kindness of reaching out. It lies in rejecting hatred. It lies in offering a shoulder to lean on when times get rough. It lies in owning up to your mistakes and resolving to be better. It lies in telling someone who’s been trapped all their life that they deserve to be free. Beyond all the upheaval and posturing and chaos, the power to bring the world revolution is nothing more or less than the power to give someone the strength to live their own life. After all, when the systems that govern out lives are based on oppression and misery themselves, what other revolution could there be... but love?

Someday, Together...

And for all the sacrifices, for all the missed opportunities, for all the failures and false starts along the way, Utena’s revolution is a success. Just for a moment, she and Anthy lock hands as their true selves. Just for a moment, they find the strength to save each other before Anthy’s coffin falls away with the collapsing arena. Utena becomes the new target for the swords of mankind’s hatred, gladly serving as their new scapegoat so that Anthy can walk free. In the end, the school goes back to normal, and Akio retains his position. But the people he had under his thumb are finding their own paths. Miki has taken Tsuwabuki under his wing. Juri has returned to fencing on her own terms. Touga and Saionji spar as friends once more, giving each other the strength to strive to be better. Nanami seems an infinitely more well-adjusted and eager member of their friend group than she ever has before. Wakaba has found a new friend who’s just as doting and loving toward her as she herself once was Utena, and she deserves all the loving cuddles she’s about to receive. And Anthy? Anthy makes the single bravest choice of the entire show: she leaves. She leaves Akio, leaves the school, leaves the abusive environment she’s been trapped in for god knows how long. Akio can stay in his cozy coffin pretending to be a prince, but the former Rose Bride has no reason to play along anymore. She has no reason to stay on this sinking ship with a paralyzed coward who can only hurt other people in pursuit of an impossible goal. At long last, Anthy’s life is her own, and only she can decide what to do with it.

And what choice does she make now that her life is finally in her own hands? The same choice Utena made for her all those years ago. Wherever Utena is now, she’s far outside Akio’s clutches, some place he can never reach her. And this time, Anthy will be the one to save her. This time Anthy will be the voice of kindness come to pull Utena out of whatever prison she’s become trapped in. This time, they’ll be there to rely on each other through thick and thin, no matter how rough the path ahead may be. After all, they still have a date in ten years to look forward to. They still have so many promises to fulfill. They still have so much life ahead of them, far from any princes or princesses or false idols desperate to tear them down.

We still have so much life to live.

We still have all the time in the world.

We still have so many revolutions, big and small, left to undertake.

And someday, together... we’ll shine.

Odds and Ends

-It bears repeating: this OP fucking slaps.

-”It’s been a long time since we’ve ridden on a bike together.” Oh, just kiss him already.

-”What a coincidence. I put poison in your tea.” sdfkhsdkfh WHAT

-Christ, they’re even bringing back the cursed therapy elevator.

-So. The red carpet leading toward the final door. The side characters having a cookout as they wait for the protagonist to come back safely. Lesbian lovers falling from a tower and suffering the sins of dreaming. Gee, I wonder which show’s tragic ending Revue Starlight was subverting.

Wow. Okay. This has been the single largest amount of time I’ve ever spent on an analysis post for this blog. This took me close to four hours to write. So you all better fucking appreciate it. I’m gonna go shower, and once I’ve given my wrists a chance to recover, it’ll be time for me to give my final thoughts on this truly one-of-a-kind show.

[davidmann95]

E L S E W O R L D S ? ? ?

MY THOUGHTS ON THE WORLDS AND THEIR ELSE-ENING ARE MANY.

Gonna put most of this under a spoiler cut just in case, but right up front: I only regularly watch The Flash starting with Season 4 (along with seeing the first half-seasons of it and Supergirl, plus sporadic episodes of the other shows and Invasion!), and while there are absolutely standout episodes, it’s probably the most lukewarmly received piece of media I consume on a regular basis. So Elseworlds looked rad, and The Best Superman was coming back for it, but aside from hints that it was going all Final Crisis (which sadly weren’t realized) I was hardly outright ecstatic at the prospect of a Freaky Friday alone, even with Batwoman’s introduction in play. Basically I assumed it’d a bunch of fine stuff I’d get through so I could drink up the Superman content like a dying man in a desert.

This was my favorite live-action DC thing since The Dark Knight Rises if not in fact The Dark Knight itself, and in all honesty probably my favorite period of the non-Batman division. It was everything I want out of this sort of project and more.

I’mma break this down into a few categories: as a whole, Superman specifically because if you’re here you know what my deal is, THE ENDING, and a multitude of scattershot impressions and thoughts.

AS A WHOLE: Was this a masterwork of layered conceptual depth and calculated plotting tight as drum? Hardly - if nothing else, the sheer fact that the entire Superfamily is functionally and thematically superfluous precludes that upfront. But again, this is the perfect version of this kind of series, where clockwork precision is rarely the name of the game (aside from that dope episode of Flash with the bomb) so much as excitement and character-driven emotion, and in that regard this is the platonic ideal. Oliver and Barry hold the narrative together as Barry low-key relearns the value of his own kind of strength, and Oliver high-key learns to accept that he’s not living in a world defined by him anymore and he needs to be better, to the point where I may not even rag on him as Walmart Batman anymore every time I have cause to mention him, especially since that gets its own perfect sendoff. Batwoman functions as a perfect pilot capsule while still functioning as a chunk of a larger story, and Ruby Rose is on point. Supergirl gets some quality content even with her hands off the wheel (which is one of the lesser aspects given…well, given this is probably gonna be the last crossover like this and she really should have been the lead for one of them). It’s funny and thrilling and so damn weird, concerned above all else with making you giggle at doing stuff you’ve wanted to see for years and then making you give a shit about the emotional consequences of Barry Allen picking up some archery classes, and it earns what it reaches for.

Moreover, this episode represented a moment of maturation for me in terms of its status as a shared universe: Crisis on Earth-X was the culmination of what this world HAD been with its massive group shot aboard the Waverider, and that culmination was my going “wow, lookit that, they really did build something kinda functional out of what they had to work with”. It was a world that was comic book as all hell in the best way, but its own oddball strain made up of recognizable pieces broken off from a larger puzzle and rearranged into a new configuration. Here? From the moment the Monitor chases off 90s Flash on a desperate race from his dead world and the bodies of an army of superheroes to save all creation, into Superman taking his place as a central figure, Batman’s mythology unfurling out of nowhere at a beautifully shameless breakneck pace, the establishment of the Multiverse and Monitor mythology as the base level concept uniting the universe as a whole, and hotlinks to a half-dozen other major mythology elements I’d given up on ever seeing acknowledged, this really and profoundly feels like DC Comics.

SUPERMAN: Still so so good! I will say, this wasn’t nearly as much a breakthrough standout display for Hoechlin’s Clark as his prior Supergirl appearances, with a couple line readings where he’s maybe just a little too chill, and less opportunity to display range or depth given he’s in the back seat. And dude’s gotta practice pretending to be thrown back, however you do that, because that was pretty badly fakey-looking. If this had been his debut, I still would’ve loved him, but he’d be taking up third or fourth on my list of live-action Superman actors rather than sitting pretty at #1; I have to wonder if a lot of his energy simply went to his killer performance as Deegan, or if he’s still modulating his kinda-being-his-real-self-but-also-still-putting-on-the-Supermanness chunk of his performance given it’s with Kara and Lois that he really shines. If someone writes him off as a dime store Reeve though, they’re still wrong and also probably bad. Shoring up his cracks though is Elizabeth Tulloch, who’s already at least vying for a place on the Lois Lane Mount Rushmore. Reminded me heavily of the best of Erica Durance’s take, but with an additional straightforward bluntness that suits Lane incredibly well, and a talent for talking rings around Clark that does more than any other Lois to date to sell the idea that that’s a huge part of what he loves about her. Also she slaps around a mad god with the hammer for the cosmic anvil from All-Star Superman, because if there’s one thing Lois Lane steadfastly refuses to be in the business of, it’s in any way fucking around.

As for the big question: even aside from Tulloch making pretty clear in a recent interview that it’s something producers are talking about, yes, I absolutely think the Superman/Lois chunk of this was as fully intended to act as a backdoor pilot for them as the second act was for Batwoman. I know I’ve been certain on this in the past just as a matter of ‘they can use Superman so it would be foolish not to push that’, but then, well, nothing happened. But here, while the creators are clearly hedging their bets with providing them what could easily be a happily-ever-after, their appearance in this way in this context is bizarrely conspicuous and pointless if that wasn’t what was intended. They’re incidental to the plot (Deegan becoming Superman, while great fun that gives us an interesting new spin on the evil Superman concept, is basically just an aesthetic), the functionality of getting Clark away from National City had already been handled by the season premiere and never actually takes anything more than ‘he’s busy in space/plugging up a volcano/fighting Luthor’ as has already been done in the past, the guest spots and relevant emotional beats could have easily been contained to an episode of Supergirl rather than spilling out into an already stuffed three episodes, and if they could only be used in one crossover for some reason they’d obviously be saved for the next one. And they get a scene to themselves AFTER their role with our leads is wrapped up, with a moment that could have already come off-screen earlier but didn’t, purely to endear them to us in a way that would make us want to see more of them. I’m not saying a Superman show is now guaranteed, but unless there was some bizarre instruction that they suddenly once and for all needed to permanently get rid of him - yet permitted that to be accomplished via the delivery mechanism of more Superman, in a way that’s noted as impermanent in-universe and in a context that’s going to introduce him and Lois and push them as big deals to the maximum possible number of viewers - yeah, I think that’s what the people who made this must have been intending. And that the powers that be let them is incredibly encouraging. As Tulloch said, a lot of this is out of the hands of anyone but corporate, but Elseworlds got season highs so that’s a point in their favor; hopefully Cryer works out as Luthor, because I imagine that’s the other checkmark needing to be crossed off that comes down to the response of the viewership.

Also the proposal was perfect, and I am astonished that happening after the pregnancy was announced got to go through - ‘modern’ indeed, as Cat Grant would put it. I get it’s got precedent of a sort in Superman Returns, but on the other hand, that precedent was Superman Returns. I’m surprised I’m not already seeing thinkpieces on the degradation of American Values coming out of this.

FUCK: 

FUCK.

I really thought there was gonna be one more crossover before they dove all the way in. But nope, nope nope nope, instead by this time next year for-real live action Crisis on Infinite Earths with Flash, Supergirl, Superman, the Monitor, shadow demons, the Psycho Pirate, and assuredly a comprehensive collection of carefully curated cameos from the ghosts of DC TV past will be a thing out there in the world. Marv Wolfman sure must be having a nice day.

And boy, they are not in ANY kind of position to half-ass it. The name value alone would be enough, but if that was it they could at least maybe get away with Dean Cain and Brandon Routh showing up in their old working clothes to help beat up the Anti-Monitor on a cordoned-off Vancouver street, maybe a couple of the Legends folks biting it. But they‘ve been explicitly acknowledging it as a thing they’d build up to for five years, since episode one of their most popular show, and if I’m right and the writing in the book of Destiny was supposed to be the same kind of text that Nora’s writing, they’ve been actively setting up Chekhov’s guns within the shows themselves for at minimum two years. AND they’ve already done three other world-threatening multiversal crossovers, including a classic JLA/JSA-model Crisis, so they’ve already established a threshold of crossover event that this needs to plainly mark itself as an entirely different order of magnitude from, AND they’ve had a threat to the multiverse before in Zoom so just saying that again without really showing it isn’t going to measure up. Hell, the idea of massive status quo changes is reinforced as being just the much of the mission statement of this as the original via Psycho Pirate. They’ve apparently quite knowingly backed themselves into a corner where they actually have to Wreck Shit. At minimum one of the three leads has to die for keeps, and all have the symbolic weight behind them - Oliver included after Elseworlds, and really in the first place as the founder of this DCU - and have obvious enough successor shows waiting in the wings to feel like they’re legitimately in the line of fire.

My hope? One that unlike usual I’m not gonna bolster by drawing on evidence at hand and logical assumptions, but the way I simply feel it Should Go and think at this point has a legitimate chance of being the case? Crisis is its own miniseries in the fall in place of the return of the other four shows, a massive high-budget ensemble piece with room to breathe…and at the end pretty much everyone dies. Most of the Legends, some supporting cast members, and above all Oliver, Barry, and Kara ALL die grandiosely and nobly to save all creation, hidden from the audience successfully by way of a miniseries ‘putting off’ the actually nonexistent renewals of the existing series. Earths 1 and 38 are merged (hopefully without discarding the multiverse as a whole, and with the heroes remembering their pasts), and in the wake of this massive conclusion, the entire DCTV lineup is effectively relaunched. Batwoman comes in here, taking Arrow’s place, while Superman emerges (likely with a psuedo-Rebirth setup since Jon’s on the way - they can figure out a way to get him to the appropriate age) with him dealing with his family and his initial grief, The Flash is relaunched with Wally and/or Nora assuming the mantle, and Legends reconstituting itself, whether by its original title or as Legion of Superheroes or Justice League, with a new lineup made up in large part of the castoffs from the cancelled series. Again, obviously there’s nothing definitely pointing towards this being the case, but somehow it just feels right, especially with Batwoman and Superman shows clearly being gestured towards when Arrow and Supergirl are the shows that would definitely have to end or at least change names with the death of their leads. The strongest evidence against all this, I think, is that Supergirl wouldn’t quite have hit a hundred episodes and syndication yet. Though there may still be that Supergirl movie too, so that’s a factor.

A couple incidental thoughts on that front: 

* Interesting that Flash vanishes in 2024 and is still gone in 2049, but the first crossover - made when ‘Flash vanishes’ was already a keystone mythology element, and given its place at such an important moment you’d think the writers would remember - makes clear there’s an old Barry around in 2056. I could see that coming up. 

* Thawne’s role in this season of Flash feels at this point like it has to dovetail into everything, and I could see him taking up Psycho Pirates’ role in the original story even if the genuine article’s around. 

* I wonder if Jon Cryer’s gonna play Alexander Luthor.

* If Kara and Barry do die, and likely make some post-death appearances, I wouldn’t mind if they for the sake of novelty reverse things so that it’s Kara who comes back for real in Final Crisis, while Barry’s the one who comes from the past unknowingly and tear-inducingly ala Whatever Happened From The Man Of Tomorrow? (that could easily be set up via the “three hardest days of your life” thing Johns did in his Flash run).

* Incidentally, do Final Crisis as the ultimate event the next wave of shows build up to like this was built up to, and make that the end of everything.

* If I’m all wrong about Superman and he’s just being set up as a lamb to the slaughter for Crisis to fill the Supergirl role (which would still by no means require him appearing in Elseworlds, especially given it’s not like he develops a relationship with Barry or Oliver, so I’ll say my points all still stand), I get the impulse is to do him dying in Kara’s arms. But if they do wanna go this way and finish his story, I really, really hope that instead they let him deal at least part of the killing blow and then somehow vanish into ‘Heaven’ with Lois and Jon. If you’re gonna homage a Superman bit from there to close him out, that’s the one to go with.

* If Ezra Miller wasn’t bullshitting and would be willing to put in a little appearance, this is the place.

ASSORTED REACTIONS:

* “Oh Barry, what have you done this time?” Oliver’s wise to your shit, boy. He knows full well he’s pretty much in a ‘Barry fucks up with Flashpoint even further’ meme come to life.

* Barry freaking out that he knows kung fu is a delight, as is Oliver trying so dang hard to do this whole ‘Flash’ thing.

* Knocking out the pair of them is admittedly *a bit much*, but while some might correctly note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they should be able to accept this, I’d say it’d also be fair to note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they’re not wrong to think this is gonna snowball into some bullshit and it’d maybe be simplest to nip it in the bud and get things under control.

* Barry, I’m glad there are toilets in the Pipeline, but someday you’re going to think to ask ‘so Cisco, what are you feeding them down there?’, and then Vibe’s gonna go OH FRAK or some other nerd shit and they’re gonna find 5 seasons worth of corpses to clean up.

* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha they did fuckin’ KGBeast on Arrow. Was that who Dolph Lundgren played? Checking…no. Dang.

* I had heard there was gonna be a Remy Zero shout-out for Smallville, but I assumed someone would just ask for someone to save them or it would be playing on the radio, not that they’d hard swerve from vague orchestral stirrings to pseudo-Nickelback. Loved it.

* Clark’s doin’ Clark stuff and I love it, Lois is doin’ Lois stuff and I love it, she nearly kills the Flash and Green Arrow with a hammer (truly her weapon of choice!) and I love it.

* Oliver pathetically puffing out his chest, WHILE CLARK ISN’T EVEN BEING SUPERMAN, is as good as television gets.

* AMAZO. Aside from basic delight at his existence, I love that the ‘Mirakiru’ ties into the Ivo material I know was in early, pre-superhero Arrow. It’s as if when Smallville got to do Supergirl and Doomsday for real they went ahead and tied them back in to the weird proto versions of them they’d already set up not knowing what they’d be able to do later. Much as Mxyzptlk or Grodd or Muppet Legends (I also caught that shows’ midseason finale, it was delightful) are easy to point to as indicators of how far this universe has come, this underlined that in a very unique way.

* Harsh, Barry - and where did you get those crossbows? - but earned as the Superfamily probably put together when they heard Oliver yelling about how when HE shot Barry he totally had a good reason for it. And along with the sheer, savage power of “I don’t think you can go more than nine hours without some sappy motivational speech”, it sets up Barry’s more understated character arc relative to Oliver in questioning and then reaffirming that his brand of emotional strength is just as strong as what your cowled types draw on. And while Lois obviously had the killer moment, Clark’s little “well, you kinda had that coming” look when Barry floors Oliver is nicely done. Smart money says he was thinkin’ about Bruce.

* Continued into the porch conversation, where the show takes its first real step in rehabilitating CW Green Arrow into a character I may no longer refer to by default as Walmart Batman as the show continues to dunk on him but he begins to take it in stride and realize he’s gonna have to change things up a bit.

* “Cool. Who are you?” “A friend.” So choice. Is that very clearly Williams-evoking musical sting at the end there something that often shows up in Supergirl? And I can’t tell whether’s Clark’s grin is in response to what he’s about to do, or because he’s relishing the hilarity of meeting a normal dude for the first time in his adult life who doesn’t know who Superman is, but either way I love it. And since I found his previous introductory shirt-tear honestly a little sub-par, this was an appreciated moment of redemption.

* Amazo fight rules, obviously. I do like to imagine the headlines the next day mentioning “hey, another superhero teamup happened with Supergirl from that other Earth who helped out with those invasions, and this time a male partner of hers showed up, some kind of…Super-man?” as the one pubic mention of Superman in the history of what’s presented as a ‘main’ DC universe.

* Barry just casually addressing ‘Clark’ by his first name is the first moment where I really thought ‘oh wow, this IS the DC Universe now’. And that “You’re welcome” worked as a reminder where there otherwise wasn’t space that yeah, he’s a nice dude, but maybe don’t tug too hard on his cape.

* Even though it wasn’t overtly followed up on, Barry being reminded that following Oliver’s example as his source of strength isn’t what’s gonna win him the day in the long run in the way that matters is a pretty essential piece.

* Every moment of Total Bat-Bullshit in here was so cheap and I loved it all so much.

* Oliver-dunking takes on its glorious apotheosis here - you know the line I’m thinking of - but it’s a necessary aspect of his journey here.

* Ruby Rose is very good as the charismatic vaguely menacing but easily flirty businesswoman, and again later kicking ass and delivering the growl, which she honestly does better than any live action Batman to this point. Curious to have it elaborated what kind of role she had in Bruce’s operation, given she clearly knew and has her own friggin’ cave.

* And then Barry stands up to Oliver’s demons while Oliver realizes Barry’s.

* “You really do have a lot of tattoos.” Oh my, Kara.

* “You have real steel in you, my friend.” And there you go for Barry’s arc.

* Well, wow. Fan theory bullshit triumphs at last, and now I kind of have to imagine we’re gonna see some actual Lanterns down the line. Hope, likely in vain, we see Hal so he can pal around with them before Oliver and/or Barry bite it.

* Mar Novu, huh? Somea that Final Crisis bullshiiiiit, please do feel free to pursue that further. Mandrakk’s cousin or something I guess?

* That can’t really be the end of the 90s Flash, right? If nothing else, he needs to stick around so that if they decide not to disintegrate Grant Gustin after all he can be the one there to make the death run.

* Episode one: “The darkness…I feel it…it threatens…to…CONSUME me…” Episode three : “oh my GOD Oliver we broke a LAW I’m gonna THROW UP”

* Hoechlin plays the hell out of Scary Dickhead Superman, even if it’s odd that Deegan was defensive about making an arguably sexist choice of identity when he already openly fucking supports eugenics. But an anon asked me about this and suggested this is a top-tier evil Superman, and yeah, I’d agree with that. He’s not scary because’s a mad god, he’s scary because he’s a small, small man who’s lucked his way into being GTA mod Superman, all of the pluses with none of the minuses, all of the ego-assuaging praise and power without having to meaningfully hold up his end of the bargain. It’s an effective twist on Superman as a power fantasy, one that’s scary in a very different way than the idea of it going wrong usually is. Because instead of him letting us down, it’s one of us joining him in the sun and trying to kick him and the rest of us out because it’s all HIS now.

* Oh yeah, of course Superman totally knows about the Book of Destiny. All the REALLY cool superheroes got that that kind of experience in the bag.

* As I said, Supergirl takes a back seat, but Benoist really shines with swaying Alex Danvers - from the moment I saw she’d be in this from the trailer I thought “Kara swaying her can’t be done very believably, it would be convincing her of a whole other life instead of a minor alteration”, but damn if she didn’t sell it.

* I must admit, the Superman V Superman fight is Hoechlin’s low point; him losing the advantage because he’s saving people is perfect, but some of his good-Superman deliveries lack the necessary conviction, and whether due to the animation or his overexagerated tumbling, him getting knocked around the city looks notably fake in parts to an extent that breaks the immersion.

* I guess Superman fought Bizarro at some point, if that concept carried over (I know Supergirl fought a Bizarro too, but if Superman never fought one the average citizen wouldn’t make that comparison). I suppose it’s the Earth-1 Alex Danvers and James Olsen though?

* Similar note: Kara mentions that ‘maybe my pod didn’t make it here’, and given doppelgangers are a thing, it’s been noted there’s a Krypton in each universe, obviously at least one other major superhero carries over in Batman, and the degree of long-term planning clearly going on at this point with the multiverse stuff, I honestly wonder if they might be laying the seeds for something on why Superman and Supergirl never happened on Earth-1.

* I do like that Superman’s technically the one who beats the bad guy flat-out and saves the world from a broken history by sheer force of will, even if he’s not the one with the splashier more permanent win later (and even then he saves Lois).

* Fuck yes. Never liked Superman turning the world backwards, but now entirely worth it for how that shit comes back here in the most gleefully unhinged manner imaginable (even if Mach 7 wiping out Barry and Kara is absurd on the face of it).

* And Oliver comes full circle to realizing he’s no longer the center of his own universe, realizing he can be better while still proving he has it in him to make the hardest call. This dude still ain’t Ollie, but I guess I can acknowledge him as Green Arrow.

* And then it’s all Superman stuff and Crisis, which I discussed, though worth mentioning just how off-guard the Jon confirmation caught me. Thumbs up on that!

[toaarcan]

RvB 15-17 Condensed

The working title for this was “RvB 15-17 but not crap”.

Now, this might seem a little presumptuous to include Season 17 in this, which, at time of writing, has yet to be released, buuuut I’m basically mashing S15 and S16 into a single block which would make S17 actually the sixteenth season in this version. So the rewrite is that Season 17 happens a year earlier.

Now, I have my problems with RvB 15-16.

I don’t want to start off on such a negative tone, but I feel like I need to establish that before we go ahead.

While Season 15 was at worst, a mediocre RvB Season with tonal problems and inconsistent characterisation for our leads, Season 16 is all of those problems made worse. Like, it’s not Season 9 bad, but it’s still bad, and while I’ve mostly covered those issues in past posts, I haven’t really covered how much the setup for the climax is just plain stupid.

Like the setup for the finale, and thus Season 17, is as follows:

Atlus: Don’t do the thing.

Wash: Don’t do the thing.

Huggins: Don’t do the thing.

Carolina: ... Alright guys let’s do the thing.

[Time breaks because they did the thing]

It’s a little more complex than that, but not by much.

Now, I ummed and ahhhed over how to make this work for a while, but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that this is how I would do it.

For starters, 90% of Season 16’s plot is getting dumped. If not all of it. Legitimately all I’m keeping is the ending. Sorry, it’s not exactly a big loss.

Second off, I’m not heavily altering Season 15. While there’s definitely a good Season 5-13 tier plot that could be told with a fake BGC, this isn’t it, and attempting to alter that leads into a completely different set of stories. So Season 15 is mostly unchanged, just assume Temple is actually a competent villain and the plot isn’t driven entirely by the BGC being dumber than usual for a week.

So the timeline is now Season 15 -> Paradox -> Season 17.

We’re also scrubbing Wash’s injury from Season 15. It’s going to be an unnecessary complication for the lead-in to the next season anyway. If we’re going straight for the time paradox, then having Wash be injured is kinda pointless. Given that Season 16 ended on a warped Blood Gulch way before Wash ever showed up, there’s nothing to gain by having him out of action. He’s already imperilled enough by time being fucked.

“But wait,” I hear you say. “If Wash and Locus are with the heroes when they take on the Blues and Reds, surely they catch up to Temple quickly enough that the time machine doesn’t get turned on!”

Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. Whether the time machine is turned on or not is not the focus of the paradox here. And because that’s not a vital plot point, we’re free to have the characters just Travel At The Speed Of Plot, and arrive precisely in time for the actual climax.

You see, rather than changing history around Wash’s injury and thus fucking the timeline up, the key to the paradox is Church. Specifically, what happens when Church is removed from their history because someone pulled him into the present before the events of Blood Gulch really happened.

In the actual show, when Church appears in the portal, Tucker tells Caboose to pull him through, and Caboose refuses, instead bidding farewell to an extremely confused Alpha and allowing the portal to close. It’s a big moment for Caboose’s character, and it’s one of the parts of Season 15 which is pretty well-executed.

Obviously, I’m not going to overturn that and have him not have the growth. So, how does Church end up being pulled through?

“Tucker did it!”

Now, I’m not a big fan of Joe’s Tucker. In fact, that’s an understatement. I hate the way Joe writes Tucker, and I’d rather not fall into that same trap, so I’m going to explain in detail why Tucker would make this mistake.

 1) Tucker just had Epsilon die on him. Inside his head. And at the same time, the other remaining pieces of Epsilon all faded away too. And Tucker didn’t even notice it was happening, by the time he realised what was going in, the fragments were gone and he was left in a very empty and very non-functioning suit of power armour. Given how heavy this armour is, with it non-functioning, Tucker was probably unable to move until his friends removed most of the suit, so he was trapped in a coffin that was emptier than it should’ve been.

2) Struggling to cope with his grief, Tucker does something frankly stupid and activates the Temple of Procreation.

3) A while later, Tucker is starting to recover from his friend’s death, when Dylan shows up and he finds out in short order that A) Someone is committing terrorist acts while disguised as him and his friends, B) The planet he sacrificed so much, and Church gave his life for, is being blamed and might be invaded, and C) Church might be alive. This effectively halts Tucker’s recovery.

4) The consequences of his fuckup with the Temple of Procreation come back to haunt him, and suddenly, something Tucker has always been proud of- that he’s a great father to Junior- is called into question because he’s now an absentee dad to a fuckton of Chorus babies, which deals a blow to the poor man’s ego.

5) Shortly after that, the fiasco where Temple manages to manipulate him happens, and it makes things even worse for him. He should’ve seen through it after Felix, but he didn’t. And now, Wash and Carolina are hurt because of him, and the message from Church was a fake.

6) Finally, after all of this, he’s face to face with Church, and he has the chance to save him, and while maybe he could follow Caboose’s example… there’s one key problem. This isn’t Epsilon, it’s Alpha.

Y’see, there’s a big difference between those two. As has been pointed out before, Epsilon was always kind of a total prick to Tucker. A lot of this can be chalked up to Epsilon’s knowledge of the BGC coming entirely from Caboose, who purposefully left Tucker out of his recounts of their many adventures.

But this isn’t Epsilon. It’s Alpha. Tucker’s best friend, Alpha. Alpha, who went off and died without Tucker being there. Without Tucker ever getting a chance to see him once again. They got separated and one year later, Alpha died, in denial about a fact that Tucker had figured out long ago. Maybe Tucker could’ve helped save Alpha if he’d been there. Maybe Alpha wouldn’t have had to leave the safety of Wash’s suit and end up vulnerable to the emp if someone else had been there to hold the Meta’s attention.

 Tucker decides to save his friend. He’s at the end of his rope and after all the crap he’s been through on this journey, which he set out on because he wanted to save Church, he’s going to damn well save Church.

Additionally, by tying Tucker into the portal scene properly, there’s now a proper narrative throughline from the characters receiving Church’s message to the portal. Caboose has been covered, but Tucker hasn’t.

 Time paradox.

Despite his best intentions and hopefully understandable motives, Tucker has just pulled Alpha-Church out of their history before it even got started. And given how much of Seasons 1-13 was motivated by Church in some form or another… well, they’ve just unmade themselves.

The final twist is that time isn’t rewound to Season 1. We don’t need to see that. Season 1 retreads aren’t needed. If they want to remake Season 1, they should just bite the bullet and do a full remaster of the early Seasons to clean up the audio, rather than forcing new Seasons of the show to ape it.

Instead, we see a Blood Gulch wherein the same amount of time has passed since S1E01, but with none of the elements that Church brought in having happened.

Tex never goes to Blood Gulch. She spends her time hiding from Freelancer and desperately trying to find her other half, whom she was ripped away from and now will never be able to reunite with.

Tucker loses his friend, and is left with Caboose, who already doesn’t like him.

Caboose, for his part, doesn’t get brain damaged by Omega, but he still has his air shut off and Church still convinces him to drink Scorpion fuel, so he’s not doing much better.

Kai probably gets deployed to Blood Gulch faster, since Blue team is undermanned. She’s stuck in an empty box canyon with the rest of them.

York lives on, not getting recruited by Tex, until the Meta comes for him. The Meta takes Delta and leaves York to die alone.

Wyoming is not sent after Tucker, and doesn’t get the chance to formulate the plan with Omega.

Junior is never born.

Because Wyoming’s plan doesn’t happen, Wash is left to try and combat the Meta without the aid of the Reds and Blues. He fails.

The Meta remains free to hunt down and murder its former comrades. Like Tex, it ends up searching endlessly for the Alpha, which it will not find.

Without the Project’s downfall, and without Epsilon’s activation, Carolina remains in hiding.

The Director remains in hiding, endlessly repeating his attempts to perfect his remake of Allison. He never finds the answer.

Chorus is destroyed by perpetual civil war, all according to Hargrove’s design.

And as the galaxy darkens, people who would’ve been friends die or are left alone to rot, and the Project that put them there tears itself apart until only Tex, the Meta, Carolina, and the Director remain, scattered to the winds and pursuing impossible tasks, Blood Gulch remains. Its purpose is lost without Alpha, and the Project is gone, but with no new orders, VIC perpetuates the “war” between Red and Blue teams, and so it goes on. Static. Unchanging.

Cue the ending, and the setup for the next season. A Blood Gulch without Church.

[iabsolutelyresentthiswebsite]

The Last Jedi Sin #12

I was hesitant to name this post this title because I know how easily it turns people off to reading the post, but honestly, that is what this is and honestly, this one is really worth the read.

It is The Last Jedi Sin #12.

12. Plot-Driven Characters

Up until yesterday night, I didn’t know how to describe what was bothering me so much about TLJ in the respect I will be talking about in a few. It was just “wrong” and “unconvincing” because honestly, what Rian chose to do to these characters is rarely done.

Why? you ask

because this isn’t how you write, Rian!

When I was a Senior in HS, I had skipped a grade, but was taking college classes nonetheless. One of the classes I was taking was English 101 from a local college for dual high school and college credit. At the same time, I was taking English 102 from another local college. One of the first things I learned in my college classes, after y’know...being told them for years, was that good stories are driven by strong characters. This was reinforced when I elected to take Screenwriting 101 when I was a Sophomore in college. The plot is something that happens as a result of what a character does or fails to do. Of course, sometimes you have to push a character to push forward the plot...that’s a necessity of character development, but it has to feel natural and the plot has to feel like it was meant to happen. It has to make sense. The build-up to the climax has to feel as seamless as possible and plot is really to bend around the characters...

Not the other way around.

Did Rian not get that memo? Did like...no one tell him?

What bothers me so much, and is, in fact, The Last Jedi Sin #12 is that the whole movie of The Last Jedi is the plot driving the characters and not the characters driving the plot. It’s hard to describe, but I'm going to do my very best.

In The Original Trilogy, the protagonists and antagonists have a certain dynamic. Vader and Sidious have a master-apprentice relationship, but almost like equals. Luke, Han, and Leia have the friendship dynamic. Luke and Vader, however, have a very different dynamic because they are father and son and are the “Functional Skywalkers” of the Trilogy. (This is not meant to sideline Leia...it’s just that her dynamic with her father was not established until late into VI so the dynamic was overshadowed by Luke and Vader’s that was established as early as the end of IV, but formally established in the middle of V.) 

Vader and Sidious wanted to control the whole galaxy and worked their asses off to destroy the Resistance. Luke, Leia, and Han were members of the Resistance and Resistance heroes; Luke was a Jedi and was bestowed a legacy upon him. The dynamic that really pushed forward the entire saga was the relationship of Luke Skywalker to Darth Vader. 

The plot of the entire Star Wars OT was to redeem Anakin Skywalker, establish Luke Skywalker as a hero, and bring balance to the galaxy, all of which was accomplished, but could only have been accomplished through the dynamic that was Luke being the son of Darth Vader, taking the legacy of his father upon himself, believing in the goodness of his father, and being the strong, emotional, loving, faithful character he was. It could only have been accomplished because Darth Vader still had a heart and cared for his son more than he ever could care about power. 

The entirety of the Prequels was the fall of Anakin Skywalker. The PT was, truthfully, so character-driven, it may have been character-driven to a fault because they were so focused on getting Anakin’s descent to the Dark Side satisfying and “right” that other things seemed to be pushed to the background. The main villains in the PT weren’t the most intimidating, except for Palpatine/Sidious, dialogue was clunky and awkward, but for the most part, the Prequels did a decent job at clearly displaying the internal struggle of Anakin Skywalker to remain good in the face of his dark tendencies, intense emotions he couldn’t control, and disdain for the Jedi Council. 

Even TFA was a pretty character-driven story. JJ knew what to do, as much as few have faith in him. 

The Force really Awakened when Finn saved Poe from the clutches of Kylo Ren and chose to finish Poe’s mission by bringing BB-8 back to the Resistance. Along the way, he met Rey, a girl whose emotions were very strong, had a very hard life, and wanted nothing more than a family. TFA repeatedly reminded the audience that Rey needed to return to Jakku because of her family, but because she found a family in the Resistance, she went full speed ahead into helping them and finding the belonging she sought ahead of her. Kylo Ren’s intentions in the movie were clear: to find Luke Skywalker and presumably to kill him. Why? We allegedly find out why in TLJ, but it’s unbelievable at best. He also desired to “finish what his grandfather started”, which was always a very confusing motivation because we all know Anakin Skywalker defected and murdered the Emperor as his last act in his life.

I digress.

How does TLJ differ from the OT, PT, and TFA?

Aside from the fact nothing in the movie should have logically happened, which I keep saying again and again...things just inexplicably happen to these characters and they just respond to it. 

Like, the Resistance is suddenly on its last legs, so now Poe is a trigger-happy fly-boy and causes the death of lots of people.

Rose Tico sees Finn leaving the Resistance cruiser, so she tases him with no questions asked, thus resulting in this stupid side-quest on Canto Bight.

Rey hands Luke his lightsaber and he rejects it (which he never would have done), so she follows him around for days with literally nothing happening for the most part.

Kylo Ren and Rey have an inexplicable Force-Bond.

Like absolutely, a lot of those things happened because of what a character did, but these things just happen to these people. They react to it and we move on from it. It kinda dies as a concept as soon as someone reacts and by the end of the movie, the characterizations of all of the characters are basically unrecognizable, there was no plot, and we’re right back where we started...a return to normalcy.

Like Finn is exactly where he would have been without the trip to Canto Bight. Poe is exactly the same character. Rose Tico had little to no characterization in the first place. Kylo Ren is just as dark, if not a little darker. Luke’s character was assassinated. And Rey’s character regressed. Like...there was no point to this movie. 

I said at the beginning that “strong characters drive a plot”. With what was just said and is true, none of those characters are strong, especially the one that so desperately needs to be- Rey. Rian Johnson altered their characters from TFA and changed them so that it would fit his narrative. That is an astoundingly stupid move. Because not only are these characters now weak, but they are not even themselves anymore! So these characters, who we didn’t come to see, are not experiencing any character development, in a movie with no plot, are doing nothing. I’m literally watching a movie about nothing with nothing happening!

The Last Jedi was boring in every single way but visually because there was no plot. There was no character development. There was no point except super cool visuals. 

What drives a story is character development and a convincing plot based off of the characters, neither of which The Last Jedi had. 

It has tHiNgS happen, but nothing that actually pushed the trilogy-long plot. 

A lot of stuff happened in the Empire Strikes Back, like Lando in Cloud City with Darth Vader, Luke continues to train with Yoda and learn the ways of the Force, Han and Leia’s relationship happens, Han gets frozen in carbonite and given to Jabba, and whatnot. But what pushes the plot forward was the reveal that the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker’s father, is still alive as Darth Vader. But had Lando not kinda “sold out” his friends to Vader, which led to Han being frozen in carbonite, Luke would have never left Jedi training to save his friends and fight his father, which led to the reveal that he was his father. Most of things that happen in this movie support the advancement of the trilogy-plot.

BUT NOTHING HAPPENED IN THE LAST JEDI. 

The reveal, which could have been the turning point in the movie, making Rey a Skywalker or even a Kenobi, was shot to shit and actually regressed the plot because just when we thought we were getting somewhere, after the shitty central conflict of the Resistance running out of fuel and the slow-motion cat and mouse chase, Finn, Rose, and DJ’s failure and sell-out, we got literally nothing. Nothing supported any kind of plot because there was no plot to begin with. Rian was- objectively- trying to rip off ESB, but failed because he so desperately wanted to subvert fan expectations that he actually sacrificed his plot and characters so that he could be “edgy” and “different”. 

Just when the Kylo-Rey dynamic was beginning to really be grounded and justified, Rian decided “hell fucking no” so whatever plot he was trying to go for, whatever character development he was trying to push forward, whatever he was trying to have happen, literally crumbled in front of the audience’s eyes. 

The whole reason ESB was so good and the dynamic going into ROTJ was high-octane was because of the dynamic between father-son Vader-Luke. There were high stakes in place, there were risks involved, there was faith being tested with the legitimate possibility for validation, and Vader’s possibility of redemption. Luke and Vader’s lives were in jeopardy because of their relationship.

There is no dynamic between Rey and Kylo because they, yeah maybe sorta understand each other a little better, but they still hate each other. They allegedly have no relationship with one another whatsoever, so where are the stakes?!  Kylo betrayed Rey after getting her hopes up. Like I honestly don’t know what to say about this. 

I fear for the franchise because I don’t know how it can be saved at this point.

Rian Johnson wrote not only himself, but JJ Abrams into a corner.  

You can’t write a compelling narrative where nothing happens and the characters simply respond to what happens to them. You can’t write a compelling narrative based on no stakes and no character development. People get bored when nothing happens and nothing progresses. I’ve had children tell me that TLJ “finished the same way the last movie did”. If children, Disney’s target market, can see it, that’s catastrophic. 

This isn’t how writing works, Rian.

[hellyeahomeland]

Do you think the hacker (and the files he had access to and may have backed up somewhere) or the use of ransomware will loop back as a substantial plot point later this season or was it a total one-off to highlight Carrie's current state of mind?

Anonymous #2: It seems many fans didnt like the 4chan storyline, because Carrie should know better and the whole thing became contrieved, very unrealistic and ridiciolus. But many liked the ending because Carrie was so extremely badass. What do you think the writers meant to say with this story, about Carrie or the world or….what, really. You are the no 1 expert on Carries persona, and seem to always find some sense in her story, which is a good thing.

Anonymous #3: I didnt really understand the point of the hacker scene. It didnt add to the plot other to show how off the rails Carrie is, but man was it awesome to see Carrie/Claire fuck shit up! I felt so much of S1 Carrie, whether thats a good thing or not idk. Claire even looked more like Carrie from S1 imo

I definitely don’t think we’ll see the hacker later on. I think the writers accounted for that in the final scene where Carrie was like “I will kill you if you ever contact me again, dude.” Maybe that would scare him off, maybe it wouldn’t. She certainly seemed convincing.

But onto your questions: why did they do that? Was it all just a cheap way to make Claire Danes play with her breasts on camera? Or did they want to infuse some Jack Bauer/Peter Quinn badassery into her character after two seasons of Carrie trying really hard to convince herself she wasn’t that woman anymore (at the end she says “I’m CIA, motherfucker” even though, she’s, y’know, currently NOT).

From a character point of view, I think the purpose of the story was almost entirely to reveal her current mental state. I say almost entirely because I also think there was a drive from the writers (this episode is written by Patrick Harbinson and Chip Johannessen, who were writing partners on 24 before moving to Homeland) to just show a completely entertaining action adventure genre plot. 

The episode opens for Carrie as she’s seeing a psychiatrist–Maggie ordered, natch–for the first time in who knows how long and in that session Carrie reveals her grandiose vision of being “called on to protect” America. She says she’s actually making progress. The psychiatrist is more than skeptical and then Carrie invokes Quinn. Not only would Quinn understand and not be asking questions about how one woman could possibly uncover or expose a government-led conspiracy. No, Quinn would be right there alongside her, helping her! She’s seen it with her own eyes. He did the same thing last year (only without her support most of the way). 

Through this conversation the show establishes two things: 

The lithium Carrie has taken for 15 years may have stopped working and she may actually be on the cusp or in the midst of a manic episode.

We normal folk just don’t understand. There are normal people and then there are people like Carrie Mathison and Peter Quinn. Loyal, to a fault, and driven not by their desire but their innate need to protect their country, no matter the cost to themselves (both) or others (Carrie). 

Jump forward a few scenes and now we learn that the 200 people Carrie’s been fighting for two months to be released have been, without any help from her. So now she’s desperate because all that progress she talked to the therapist about was possibly fictional and existed only in her head. Then her daughter asks why she’s mad all the time. I didn’t know it then, but the writers were laying the groundwork for what was to come.

And then, as in most stories, Carrie is faced with a problem she must solve. Her hard drive has been stolen and she must get it back. I think the point of the hacker debacle was to show how a woman like Carrie, in her current mental state, decided to solve that problem. 

First, it was through sex. She turned on the charm and gave him a taste. We haven’t seen Carrie do that since season four but we also know it’s possibly her go-to method of solving problems. When the FISA warrant to surveil Brody expired in season one, she manufactured reasons to see him, eventually leading to a sexual relationship. When Brody went AWOL in season two, she brought him to a motel to get him back in line. When she needed to know what had happened to Haqqani in season four, she slept with his nephew. 

Carrie knows the value of her body and she knows what works. She has been encouraged to do this likely her entire career. She knows that men may underestimate her but also may be unable to resist when she offers up sex. At her core, Carrie views sex as transactional.(There is a lot unpack in this regardwith respect to Carrie and Quinn’s relationship and why they never had sex, butit’s too off-topic for this post.)

Later, in that creepy ass warehouse, she uses sex again, feigning difficulty taking her top off so that he’d come close enough. He was a boobs guy, clearly, and as she backs up into him she places his hands on her body. If, to borrow a phrase from Carrie, the circumstances had been “wildly different,” the scene might have been kind of hot. Instead, it was mechanical, false, and (obviously) gross and creepy. She opens her mouth as if to moan because she knows that’s what men want. 

But she wasn’t his pawn to play with. The show inverts the notion of control in a really interesting way via Carrie’s sexuality. Carrie is stuck, and she makes him believe she’s desperate enough to do anything (which she is), desperate enough to have sex with this sad white dude who brings women to creepy ass warehouses to have sex with them. He was clearly surprised when she first offered. In a moment, he has all the power. A split second later, after she lures him into her trap, she does. 

What follows after, which I can only describe as one of the most epically satisfying ASS WHOOPINGS in history, is the invocation of Quinn. It reminded me of the end of “13 Hours in Islamabad” when Quinn begins to torture Ghazi. That kind of ruthless ass whooping requires a complete control of the situation but a relinquishing of the parts of yourself, the parts that society instills in us, that demand calm, coolheadedness, restraint, and reason–especially for women. Carrie and Quinn’s CIA training would have taught and reinforced the former. It’s their difference from the rest of us normal people that allow them to achieve the latter. 

Not every time you hear someone say on a TV show or in a film, “I will fucking kill you” do you actually believe them. I believed Carrie. And I believed Quinn. Is this the impulse she’s lost control of? She loses herself, split seconds away from crushing his windpipe. And she would have, if not for a last-second save from… what? Her conscience? Or maybe Quinn himself, her “beacon,” steering her “clear of the rocks”? 

[bluboothalassophile]

I’m Hiding Your Brother Under My Bed

Quiet Moments

Raven had gotten very accustomed to sharing her quarters with Jason; they had given him his own room but just about every night for the past week there'd be a quiet knock on her door and he'd be there. Since Bruce's arrival Jason become rather quiet, at least when Bruce was around. And since Raven now had a lot of interactions with Bruce Wayne, discussing Jason to some degree as she explained the Lazarus Pit, and it's true nature, and what Jason's emotions were ranging from, she didn't understand Jason's meekness around his parent. Without Bruce around though Jason was a vibrant individual whom she found entertaining and fun to be around.

Which was why, after a week of having him around she'd been trying to figure out his problem with Bruce to see if perhaps she could solve that problem.

Granted, she knew that was not her place, she was merely a fourteen year old empath demon, but she would rather have her new friend happy than in the pain he radiated when Bruce or Dick were around.

"Raven," Damian's terse voice had her looking up from the book shelf she was studying for information on human psychology.

"Damian, how may I help you?" she asked as the puppy came barreling in. Raven scratched Titus' ears as she resumed inspecting the bookshelf.

"I am here to inquire about Todd," Damian stated coming to stand beside her.

"What about Jason?" Raven stressed Jason's name for Damian. For some reason Damian had taken an extreme dislike to Jason for reasons she couldn't fathom. And Garfield's laughter wasn't helping the matter since it only made her want to punch Garfield in his stupid face.

"You spend an aweful lot of time with that lunatic, I am here to demand you cease this because he is dangerous," Damian stated.

Raven stood, bringing herself to her full height; which, while not impressive brought her to Damian's eye level. The air in the room cooled as the shadows quivered to her command, Titus whimpered.

"You demand?" she said so coldly as she stepped forward to be toe to toe with her friend.

"Yes, he is dangerous, unstable, and will kill you if you are not careful. I more than anyone knows the dangers of the Pit," Damian stated firmly.

"Damian Wayne, I am the only daughter of Trigon," she stepped forward, he stepped back then. "I am the last Azarathian," she poked his chest then because by Azar she was furious now. "And I am the most powerful magic wielding creature in the realm, I have fought more demons than you, I have a connection to the Pit which far exceeds your own, and I am my own person. You cannot demand who I do and do not spend time as it is my choice. And if you dare to make such a demand of me again, make no mistake, I will blast you!"

Spinning on her heels she stalked out of the room as she summoned the entire shelf of psychology, purposely aiming it at Damian so he had to evade it. She felt a few hit him with satisfying thwacks as she walked to her room.

Stupid Damian!

She didn't know what had her friend's panties in a twist but if he didn't knock it out soon he would discover she had a full range of abilities she hadn't divulged to him.

Hopping up into the air she folded her legs as she levitated there, her powers lifted her tea pot as she started making some tea and she flicked her wrist so all the books floated open and around her as she closed her eyes and took another steadying break before she opened her four eyes and started reading everything there was to know on human psychology.

She would help Jason, a week of him being here and she would help him. she was determined to help him. For she knew what loneliness felt like. It was something that no one should banish themselves to. It was not pleasant. Not at all.

~~~*~*~*~~~

Jason had taken to slinking around the Tower; he didn't have anywhere else to go. And in the past week, Bruce had stayed, but Jason didn't want to be around him. No, it was part of why he hung out with Raven, and endured Damian's glares at him. Seriously, one would think he was stealing the demon brats woman with how Damian was glaring at him, not that Raven was a thing to be taken. No, she wasn't a thing, but that's how Damian apparently taken to her.

Not that it mattered, Raven was nice and all, but he didn't think she was going to be his friend.

Which was part of why he was sitting up on the roof looking at the map trying to plot his next move. There was just no way Bruce was going to take him back and he needed a plan as to where to go before Bruce decided to toss him in juvie or something.

He looked up when the roof of the door opened and his eyes narrowed on Dickhead as he walked out onto the roof. Quickly he folded up the map and shoved it into his pockets.

"Hey little wing," Dick smiled.

Jason scowled. "What do you want, Dickhead?"

"Just… Just to talk," Dick said uncertainly.

"Don't see why, you never wanted to before," Jason muttered.

"Jay," Dick sighed. "I know I wasn't good at the brother thing with you, but… if you're willing to, I'd like to give it a second shot."

"Why so you can kick me to the curb like B will when I fuck it up again?" he demanded. Jason knew what was going to happen to him, after probably figuring out how to fix his death certificate B would send him to a home for troubled boys and he'd be shoved into the system to never be seen again. He'd been in the system before, and he wasn't joking when he said he'd rather die than go back into the system.

"We're not kicking you to the curb," Dick said, and when Dick moved to hug him, Jason leapt out of reach. No, No hugging. He wasn't going to be suckered into this again. Never again.

"Bullshit!" he shouted.

"Jason," Dick started.

"You don't care about me, and neither does B, and clearly I don't matter as there's already a new Robin, and I'm not needed here! You never liked me anyway so what the fuck do you care!" he shouted, his eyes welling up with tears. "You got the perfect little brother now, so what do you need me for? To be you're fucked up replacement of 'don't be like him'!? You didn't care Dick! Why Care Now!?"

"Jason," Dick said his name and before Jason really knew what Dick was doing he found himself with his a faceful of Dick's chest and trapped in strong arms as fingers slipped through his hair. Jason stiffened as he stilled completely, he couldn't even breath as he stared at Dick's black sweatshirt.

"I'm sorry little wing, I'm sorry I wasn't there, I'm sorry I was a childish ass about getting a baby brother, and I'm sorry for messing all this up. But I cared, I cared a lot, I never told you because I was jealous of how proud Bruce was of you. And you mattered, you mattered a lot more than I could ever tell you, and because I was fighting with Bruce I acted like you didn't matter. But that's a lie, a big lie. You Matter Jason. You're my baby brother. And you're not a replacement for anyone, no one could replace you, and you can't replace anyone, and I should have said all this sooner but I couldn't, and you didn't listen.

"Please don't leave Jason, please don't go, I'd like to know my baby brother, and you shouldn't feel unwanted here. It's not about needing you, Jason, it's a simple matter of you're family and this is where you belong." Dick spoke softly against his hair and Jason just blinked a few times at those words. "I missed you so damn much, little wing, I thought I'd never see you again. I'm so happy you're alive and back."

"B…" he started.

"Bruce is happy too, so stop avoiding him," Dick said pulling away, but he didn't release Jason's shoulders. Jason glared up at Dick, feeling tears streak down his face against his will.

"I didn't kill that asshole," Jason stated.

"I know you didn't little wing," Dick assured him. And there was so much conviction in Dick's tone that Jason almost believed him. Almost. Jason would never take anything Dick said at face value.

"Why would you believe me? You never did before," he spat out.

"Because, little wing, you're my brother, and I'm going to be a better brother. Besides, as Dami's actually killed, I know you haven't, you don't have the look around your eyes. I just also know you wouldn't save a rapist who had driven his victim to suicide, when he's falling off the building."

"Isn't that murder in your book as well?" Jason hissed.

"Not even close," Dick said and Jason found himself enveloped in another hug. "And even if it was, I forgive you, I want my brother back. I want you back more than anything in the world."

"Bruce doesn't," Jason muttered in a broken whisper to Dick's shoulder as he now found himself clinging to the older man.

"Bruce is so happy you're alive, and here," Dick whispered. "It's just going to take him longer. But he's happy, Jaybird, he's so happy to have you back."

Jason said nothing now as he just hung on. A week of no one caring, no one but Raven acting normal around him. He just wanted a moment to feel wanted and normal, because it hurt. It hurt so bad, it all hurt not having anyone or anything here. He just…

He was tired of it all, as he gave up holding it in and clung desperately to someone he'd wanted to be his family.

[antialiasis]

The War of the Worlds

So after seeing that live War of the Worlds concert the other day, I started getting curious about the book. I was interested in exactly how faithful of an adaptation the album was, plus just feeling a little uncultured for considering myself a fan of this classic story without being more than very vaguely familiar with the actual book. So I decided to do something about that.

I started by just going on Wikipedia (hence that H. G. Wells quote I posted the other day) and reading the plot summary to get the basic gist of how it might be different. The plot summary featured passages like “Now in a deserted and silent London, he begins to slowly go mad from his accumulated trauma, finally attempting to end it all” and “The narrator continues on, finally suffering a brief but complete nervous breakdown, which affects him for days”, which made me think that aaactually maybe I should just read it, particularly after feeling a great kinship with the author after reading that quote that I posted. And luckily, it’s in the public domain and freely available online.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, actually more than I expected. The War of the Worlds came out in 1897, and like a lot of people, I can’t help but feel sort of instinctively prejudiced against books written that long ago - I expect something kind of stuffy and unrelatable, rooted in the values and concerns of a bygone, alien era. The War of the Worlds, somewhat ironically, is not alien in that way at all. Human society may have changed over the course of the past 120 years (120 years!), but the basic emotions and instincts of human beings are the same as always, and The War of the Worlds is an intensely human novel - more than the activities of the Martians per se, it’s about human reactions to the invasion, the narrator’s harrowing emotional journey through his encounters with the Martians, how the people he meets cope with the horrors that are happening, the dawning realization that humanity is powerless to stop this alien apocalypse.

In other words, it’s also my kind of novel, and it’s delightful to me to see just how similar this is to the sorts of things modern authors write about analogous situations - the sorts of things I might write. There’s even a bit that presses my buttons pretty hard: The narrator is holed up with a curate (the book equivalent of Parson Nathaniel) who is slowly losing his mind and has started shouting and raving in a way that’s set to alert the Martians outside to their presence. After trying desperately in vain to get him to be quiet, the narrator, “fierce with fear”, grabs for a meat cleaver on the wall and leaps after the curate, then, “with a last touch of humanity”, turns it around to strike him unconscious with the butt of it instead. A man desperate to survive after weeks of unending horrors is driven almost to horrific murder with pure, animalistic terror, but can’t actually do it? Yes, please. This is totally what I would write into a story about a Martian invasion, and 120 years ago H. G. Wells wrote the same thing, because humans and the fascination with the outer edges of human psychology in extreme, horrifying situations transcends time and culture.

That being said, it is of course obvious in the framing of the novel that it’s set and written in the 1890s, and that’s pretty fascinating too. I noticed particularly how much communication has changed - in the novel the Martians have murdered a party of scientists and set a large area on fire days before the news starts to spread that okay, there are Martians and they’re hostile and this is kind of a big deal. A man sends a telegram to London about it, but is dead before they telegram him back to confirm, and when they get no response, they shrug and figure it’s a hoax. It seems incredible to read about people going about their lives normally the day after an alien mass murder, simply because they’ve only heard vague third-hand stories if that and none of it seems terribly real. It’s unthinkable in the modern world to imagine information spreading at such a slow, human pace - it really makes you appreciate how much the world has changed in that respect.

In other places, the novel is simply scientifically dated, in delightfully quaint ways. Everything about Mars in it is of course wild speculation from long before we’d gone to space or knew much of anything about Mars: Wells posits that its red color is the color of its native vegetation, for instance. The Martians themselves have evolved to sustain themselves simply by injecting the blood of other creatures into their own veins, and this completely removes their need for a digestive system, allowing them to consist almost entirely of brain. And the narrator asserts that this (along with their asexual reproduction) is what causes the Martians to experience no emotions - because human emotions come from the digestive and sexual organs, and would simply disappear if we were to evolve to discard those organs! The way it’s described sounds very logical, and it must have seemed totally reasonable at the time, but it’s pretty amusing for a modern reader.

That speculative aspect is often really interesting, though, and it was fun to see how much more of that background the novel has than Jeff Wayne’s adaptation (understandably). I was not at all expecting an explanation for why the Martians would decide to feed on humans specifically rather than other animals, but that’s in there: the Martians brought in their cylinders the corpses of a couple of Martian animals which coincidentally happen to be bipedal and fairly similar to humans in size, and it is subsequently deduced that these must be their primary native food source. They simply regarded humans as the most edible-looking creatures on Earth, the same way we’d probably feel most comfortable eating a bulky, quadrupedal alien resembling cows or sheep than one whose basic form looks more like a human or an insect. It takes a standard weird trope that your average person would just shrug and accept and explains it to make perfect sense - beautiful.

In the musical version there is a moment where the narrator mentions the Martians have long since eliminated bacteria from their planet, obviously in order to set up the ending; I’d often heard the ending referred to as one of the most infamous examples of a deus ex machina, so I wondered if the novel had had no such setup at all, but it actually sets it up even more extensively, in two separate chapters (once when discussing the biology of the Martians in detail, from which the line in the musical is taken, and also in a different chapter where the narrator explains that the Martian red weed would eventually be killed off by microbes).

(Really, the ending is fucking awesome and I will fight you on this. The whole point of the novel is how for all of humanity’s arrogance and what they consider awesome weaponry, they can barely touch these superpowered invaders, but the Martians’ own arrogance and reliance on their superior technology is their downfall in the end - they’ve rendered their own bodies frail and defenseless against these invisible threats that they simply forgot existed and never accounted for (or never knew; the novel also suggests maybe bacteria never even evolved on Mars), which we humans are protected from because of our evolutionary history of struggling with disease and developing defenses against it. It is not an authorial asspull to save the day on any level at all; it’s carefully foreshadowed and exactly thematically appropriate and makes perfect sense within the established premises of the novel and is generally one of the best endings of anything ever. Putting it in the same category as lazy “but then a contrived coincidence/power pulled out of nowhere/conveniently arriving character fixed everything” resolutions is pretty ridiculous.)

Of course, since at the outset I had wanted to examine how Jeff Wayne’s musical version had adapted the novel, I was also looking out for that. The adaptation is all in all quite faithful to the basic story; the actual core storyline of the Martian invasion is pretty much identical aside from being compacted, with most of the narrator’s lines closesly adapted from the novel as direct or near-direct quotes (where changed, they’re usually cutting out detail or slightly simplifying the language).

There are mainly two major changes. In the novel, the narrator never goes to London himself until the end; instead, there are a couple of chapters from the point of view of the narrator’s younger brother, a medical student in London (still written in the narrator’s voice, though, since in-universe he’s writing this account after the fact, relaying what his brother described to him). The brother is there for the panic when (several days into the invasion) the government calls for an evacuation of London, and then eventually gets on a steamer out of the country, from which he witnesses the HMS Thunder Child’s valiant last stand. These chapters feel a little out of place, and the introduction of several new characters to tell this part of the story who then simply disappear is fairly extraneous and doesn’t get the reader terribly invested, so it’s definitely a solid and sensible choice in the adaptation to simply remove the brother and have the narrator be in London and witness the Thunder Child chapter himself. Since he’s obviously not going to be on the boat getting out of England himself, though, to get the listener invested in the fate of the steamer, Jeff Wayne instead puts the narrator’s girlfriend/fiancée Carrie and her father on the boat - with them also providing his reason to go to London to begin with. In the novel, the narrator is married and lives with his wife near where the first Martian cylinder lands; after they turn out to be hostile and dangerous, he leases a horse-carriage to take his wife to safety in the town of Leatherhead and then comes back alone to return the carriage, which is how they get separated. He then spends the rest of the novel worrying for her safety and wanting to get to Leatherhead to find her again. This setup is a bit complex, and all in all I think the musical version made a good call in simplifying it to one that’s easily comprehensible with much less dialogue; it does create an interesting difference in the narrator’s situation during the second act, though, as in the musical version he knows that Carrie made it to safety, while in the novel he believes his wife to possibly if not probably be dead until they both meet again in the epilogue.

The other major change is in the narrator’s dealings with the curate/Parson Nathaniel. In the novel, the narrator meets the curate, a young man, shortly after escaping from the fighting machines and being separated from the artilleryman, and they spend weeks together, first traveling and then trapped in an abandoned house after a cylinder lands on top of it. The curate is cowardly, indecisive and grows increasingly agitated and incoherent, and he is in a constant conflict with the narrator for most of this time. His character is frustrating, pitiful but starts to border on despicable, a man reduced to a gibbering, animalistic mess selfishly hogging food and recklessly endangering the narrator and himself with inane ramblings.

Parson Nathaniel in the musical adaptation, however, is a more genuinely pitiable figure. The narrator only comes across him shortly before the cylinder lands on the house they take shelter in; he sounds much older than in the book, and he has a wife, Beth, who he deliriously believes to be one of the devils here to claim the earth for Satan. His religious philosophy, while deranged, feels much more coherent than that of the curate in the book, and ultimately he comes across as much more of a sympathetic and tragic figure. That’s likely the root of why this change was made - the curate in the book is desperately unlikeable, which mostly fuels the narrator’s conflict with himself and the long, grueling setup culminating in that desperate moment of nearly killing him. Obviously I’m a fan of that part, but it would’ve been very hard to do that setup in a way that would actually work in the musical version, and making the parson’s desperation and misguided faith into the focus for that part instead makes a lot of sense. It helps that “The Spirit of Man” is one of the best songs on the album.

(Interestingly, the outtakes on the Collectors’ Edition include some voice outtakes with a much younger-sounding parson who is much closer to the curate’s character in the book and seems to match his role much more closely, with more direct or near-direct quotes from the book. The change to the parson’s character must have happened fairly late in the development of the album, then - after they started recording vocal work. I’m pretty interested in the story here and how they developed the final version of “The Spirit of Man”.)

The addition of his wife Beth is a less obvious choice, and even before I read the book it felt a little weird how unceremoniously she was disposed of in the musical version. Part of me thinks she may have been added in part just to get one female voice on this album - the book contains basically no real female characters with significant speaking parts whatsoever. That lack isn’t too glaring in the book - there are very few characters with significant speaking roles to begin with - but it’s still reasonable to want to patch it up a little in a more modern adaptation. But her role is also as an optimistic, hopeful contrast to the parson’s apocalyptic ravings, which the narrator probably couldn’t have provided in the same way after everything he’s seen. And the parson’s relationship with her develops him a bit more and adds to his tragic nature - she’s his wife, so they must have loved each other once upon a time, but this alien apocalypse has driven him to believe she’s in league with the Satan himself, and even when she dies he only channels his anguish into his nonsensical convictions. Beth is the only character who remains steadfastly hopeful and urges sanity and reason - in the book, the narrator remarks that seeing the curate’s descent into madness tightened his grip on his own sanity, but perhaps Beth’s genuine hope serves the same purpose for him in the musical version.

(It also occurs to me that theoretically Beth’s optimism could be viewed as setup for “Brave New World” - if one man could stand tall, she sings, there must be some hope for us all, and later, the narrator comes across what initially seems to be just such a man, with a plan for saving humanity and keeping its spirit alive. But I’m not sure I buy that as a reason for her presence - both because it seems a bit backwards given the artilleryman turns out to not actually represent the true hope of humanity and because otherwise these two songs feel very separate and not like they’re supposed to be connected at all.)

I found it interesting that in the book, the way the artilleryman frames his plan is a lot more explicitly eugenicist in nature - he talks a lot more about getting the right sorts of men and women into their underground city and keeping the riffraff out (“We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.”), compared to “Brave New World”’s vague, innocent-sounding “With just a handful of men…” Interestingly, the Icelandic translation of the musical version felt closer to the book in this respect, because there that line was translated as “With just a few chosen men” - definitely getting the feeling the translator had read the book. I suspect this was very intentionally toned down for the musical version because the narrator initially pretty much buys into the plan, which would be a bit jarring with the full implications of the original.

The artilleryman’s character in the book also generally comes across as more of a… well, the sort of nerd who today might fantasize about the zombie apocalypse. He focuses a lot more on how the Martians will keep humans as pets and how most humans will eventually just accept their Martian overlords, relishing the minutiae of how grim things will be and the depths to which humanity will sink and how they must resist descending into savagery, while Jeff Wayne’s version is far more focused on his grandiosely optimistic ideas about what the underground city will be like - banks and prisons and schools! We can get everything working! He sounds enthusiastic at the idea of this underground living, whereas his book counterpart appears to suggest it strictly as a means of survival.

I don’t have much of a big conclusion here; Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds is a good adaptation, its changes are solid, and overall it puts the novel fairly faithfully into an accessible dramatic format, but I still really appreciate the book’s somewhat more complex and nuanced, if also somewhat more cynical, takes. Overall, I think The War of the Worlds is a really good story, and I’m amazed that here I am enjoying its explorations of human nature 120 years on. And if you want to enjoy it in a more accessible form than a 120-year-old novel, go give the musical version a listen, because it is great.

[goofyzachy]

You wanna know the great thing about retelling an old story? You get to put whatever new spin on it you can think of, you can take an age-old legend and you can make it something familiar yet totally new! The story of Beauty and the Beast is definitely no exception to this, as storytellers have been presenting the tale in new and unique ways for centuries.

So one has to wonder, after so many years and so many different variations of the story, how could one make this classic fairy tale new and exciting? How can we make it relevant to today’s audiences? What new perspective can we gain from a timeless narrative? Well, how about setting it in a modern setting? And how about making the “beast” a young woman? Okay so maybe neither idea is new, nor are they that unique anymore, but both were incorporated fairly well in the 2006 film Penelope.

Set—as I said before—in a contemporary setting, the film tells the story of Penelope Wilhern, a young woman born to a wealthy family of bluebloods. The problem is that a witch, long ago, placed a curse upon her family which has found its way to her, causing her to be born with “the face of a pig.” We’ll get into why that’s in quotations later.

Poor Penelope (played by Christina Ricci), born with such unusual features, is raised in solitude in her family home, hidden away from prying eyes until she is an adult. Her parents—especially her mother—desperately seek to find a young man, another ‘blueblood’ to accept and marry their daughter, as the only way to break the curse is for one of their own to love and accept Penelope exactly as she is. Penelope, of course, soon grows tired of the many young men who run screaming at the sight of her.

And here’s where the ‘beauty’ to Penelope’s ‘beast’ comes in. Is he a kind, loving young man with a love of books and roses? Not really. Johnny Martin (James McAvoy), mistaken for down-on-his-luck blueblood Max Campion, is recruited by tabloid reporter Lemon (Peter Dinklage) to pose as the latest prospective suitor to the mysterious Penelope, not to marry her but to get a photo of the legendary pig faced girl. Johnny, being a gambler, accepts the job, not knowing that he will find himself charmed by the mysterious young woman who speaks to him from behind a mirror.

The Beautiful:

The terms “unique,” “unusual” and “different” can often carry bad connotations, but in some cases, they can be quite good or at the very least they can be interesting. I’m going to go ahead and say that Penelope is unique, unusual and different in good and interesting ways. It doesn’t feel like the run of the mill motion picture you see cranked out by big-budget studios, but there’s still some level of quality and skill behind its production. It’s somewhere in-between Hollywood blockbuster and lesser-known independent film, which I find to be refreshing.

Having already informed you that the film is set in modern times, one of the bigger plusses of the movie is that ‘modern’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s distinctly set in 2006. Well, there is a little bit of an early 2000s feel to the film’s production and quality, but otherwise it’s done a good job of not dating itself. You could tell me the movie took place in the 90s or in the year 2018 and I wouldn’t be able to say otherwise, making the period setting relatable regardless of the film’s age—for the foreseeable future, anyway. By the time this movie’s setting starts to feel like “a long time ago” the movie itself will be pretty old.

Ricci as Penelope is the gem of the movie (and a good thing too, since it is her movie) and gives us a smart, spunky young woman that’s easy to root for. We’ve seen ‘beasts’ that are frightening, wise, comical and even creepy before, but Penelope feels unique among her fellow beasties as a more independent and active character, as driven by her own dreams and her own desire to be free, to be ‘normal’ for once as she is by her desire to find love. Indeed, it’s her own self-discovery and the realization that she happens to love herself, just as she is, that breaks the curse. She saves herself by finding and loving herself, and I find that to be a great message.

McAvoy, too, gives us a different spin on the ‘beauty’ character as well as an enjoyable character who has his own ark outside of a romance with Penelope, though inspired by her. He starts the movie as a gambler, dishonest and cynical, but by the end of the movie he’s turned himself around. He works to overcome his addiction, he gets himself a job and by the time he and Penelope get together they’ve both already made something of themselves and their lives, making their eventual romance feel more mature and healthy.

And I’ve already let you all know how important a good and healthy romance is for any BatB adaptation, right?

The rest of the cast is pretty good, each character serving their purpose in the story well and each one just as likeable—or unlikeable—as they’re presented with good performances for the most part. Yeah not every actor was at their best, but it’s forgivable.

The Beastly:

So this whole movie is based entirely on the premise that Penelope was born cursed with the face of a pig, and that this “hideous deformity” is enough to send several young men screaming for their lives, even diving through glass windows just to escape her. But the makeup used to give Christina Ricci this pig faced look is…

It’s underwhelming? Don’t get me wrong, the makeup work itself is really well done, the prosthetic nose is applied so well that you could easily forget it’s not real, but the problem is you could just as easily forget it’s even there. That, along with piggish ears we hardly ever even see, hardly convey any kind of ugliness on Ricci’s otherwise lovely features (yes I have a crush on Christina Ricci, shut up) and I can’t really believe that even the most shallow and spoiled young men high society has to offer would run screaming from this sight? I can see them cringing or more probably laughing but screaming?

I’ve said that I find the movie refreshing in how unlike most films it is, but at the same time there are things which I can’t help but question in terms of editing, pace and writing. To put it simply, a lot of this movie is going to leave you thinking ‘what the fuck?’ It’s not exactly jarring, and if you like the story and characters it’s a pretty minor gripe but it’s certainly going to rub some people the wrong way, especially those used to the conventional American film brought out by Hollywood.

The story has a good narrative, a decent balance between the main plot (Penelope’s development) and the biggest subplot (Johnny’s development) and a happy, satisfying end, but the writing isn’t perfect. Along with the ‘what the fuck’ moments of editing, there are moments of dialogue, plot twists like the butler who turned out to be the witch, and even some minor characters that honestly one has to wonder if they were really all that necessary. Probably my biggest gripe in the movie was with Penelope’s mother Jessica (Catherine O’Hara), who I didn’t consider to be a malicious or bad person aside from her paranoia and obsession with overprotecting and micromanaging her child’s life, being punished in the end by losing her voice thanks to the afore-mentioned butler-witch. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to me.

While I did very much enjoy the story and found it had good messages and a romance that felt natural, healthy and full of chemistry, I can’t really say it was executed in any sort of amazing and groundbreaking way. It’s a refreshing, enjoyable film, but not one I would say is a masterpiece. Do I recommend it? Yes. Do I think everyone will love it? No, not at all. There’s a definite reason that the movie has received mixed reviews, it’s just not going to sit well with everyone. But you never know until you try, and if you’re a fan of Beauty and the Beast stories or even just romantic films I definitely think it’s worth a try.

I give Penelope three rose petals out of five.

Next week...