#the payoff of this series is not one I expected in the slightest but it was so worth it

[rosefires20]

Im-

I just finished the final book of the Earthsea Cycle and oh my god. There are no words to describe that ending or how well it fit. It settled so perfectly and so neatly. It went exactly where it meant to go and no I do not have the words to describe what exactly that intent or path was just that it existed.

Genuinely, the Earthsea Cycle is one of my all time favorite series. It's just so curious and so deep but also not at the same time. The lessons of the series are so fantastic and ones that I believe are impactful no matter your age. The exploration of being a woman in a world dominated by men is incredible in this series as well as the process of finding your place in the world and sometimes acknowledging that it isn't what you thought it'd be.

Each book I love more than the last. The Other Wind is so damn good. I love Alder as a character. I love Irian. I love Azver. I love the Kargish princess and her own character development. Lebannenn's character growth as well. Like just. It's so incredible. It also makes me appreciate Tales from Earthsea more because it's shocking how much each of those short stories truly contribute to the world building and conclusion of the series.

The way the story just slowly built up to the events of The Other Wind is also just incredible considering the time between the books being published especially in the second half of the series. The consistency is incredible and you really don't actually know where it is all going until the end yet everything pays off still.

Just god. I love it so much.

[chaozsilhouette]

Moonlit Musings

The night is such a perfect time to face one’s darkest truths. Shrouded in the moon’s light what can one do but admit to their flaws. It can be a time of rejuvenation and rebirth, only if you let it.

§~~~~§~~~~§~~~~§

It was a quiet night.

The full moon hung high in the heavens accompanied by millions of stars. Not a cloud to be seen, an ideal night for passions to run wild. Normally people would be taking out their telescopes or arranging romantic picnics.

Sadly, nights like these only filled Sun Wukong with dread. It was a night like this when he was finally able to return after the Journey. That was the night he learned he had lost a precious treasure.

When he returned, he expected to be greeted by his subjects until Macaque showed himself. He expected to be strangled as the pale furred monkie admonished him for his recklessness. He expected to watch as fury transformed into tearful joy as they embraced one another for the first time in over five hundred years.

But that wasn’t what happened.

The moment he set foot back onto Flower Fruit Mountain, he sensed something was very wrong. Like his previous return trips, his subjects greeted him with loud celebrations. The new mothers showed off their infants. The young ones wasted no time climbing all over him, taking in the scent of their king.

The immortal elders, however, looked concerned.

That was when he realized Macaque’s scent on the mountain was far too faint. Even the magical signature of his clones no longer felt fresh.

Macaque was nowhere to be found. The monkeys reported Macaque had returned a few years after he stopped by the mountain earlier in the Journey but not as his usual self. He didn’t respond to any of their questions. He didn’t even take time to check in on the infants. He didn’t say a word.

He just entered the mansion, but no one saw him leave.

Entering the mansion, Wukong dashed to their room desperate for answers. Opening the doors, he saw the room was horribly empty, sure all of his belonging were exactly as he remembered them, but all of Macaque’s stuff was gone. Macaque’s closet was empty and all his books had vanished. Despite his desperate hopes, there wasn’t any signs of a struggle or hidden messages to be found.

Macaque left of his own free will, but why?

He couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the bed they shared so many nights together. Every time he dared, he awoke expect to be greeted with the comforting warmth of familiar presence, instead he opened his eyes to a cold emptiness.

The lack of answers broke his heart, but he didn’t have time to start tearing the landscape apart trying to find him. Now that he was back for good, he had so many responsibilities to catch up on. He was determined to be a good king for his subjects and that meant ughthinking things through. Plus, he wanted to spend as much time with his master and brothers as possible.

Then there was the concerning fact all his previous allies had severed their alliance with him.

Apparently after all the fuss with the Demon Bull King, word had spread that Wukong broke their alliance by disrespecting protocol and attacking the royal family. Plus, his new position as a defender of humanity annoyed more than a few respectable demons. Combined with the sheer number of powerful demons he killed on the Journey cemented the idea that having an alliance with him would only end poorly.

He was banned from court meetings and the other kings in the surrounding areas wanted nothing to do with him. The chaotic nature of his past had finally caught up to him and in the worst possible way.

He was still recognized as the Monkey King of the Sun Court but was effectively blacklisted. No one wanted to mess with him, but they also didn’t want to interact with him. Not good for his mental health to say the least.

Simians are naturally social creatures. Wukong was used to constantly being around other people and learning new things. His time imprisoned was not kind. His first year of freedom had him constantly climbing over his brothers and master just to reassure himself that this was real.

And now that he couldn’t reconnect with old faces unless it was through a battle to the death…It forced him to delve into old memories. Memories that while sweet only made the emptiness more pronounced.

§~~~~§~~~~§~~~~§

Sun Wukong smiled as he watched Macaque’s reaction.

The six-eared monkie was furiously pinching the bridge between his eyebrows after he shattered a boulder with a careless headbutt as though it would make his life mercifully easier. “You’ll have to explain it to me again. What did you mean by ‘no longer under Yama’s jurisdiction’?”

“Exactly what I said. I was napping. Having some time to myself, when out of nowhere some idiots tried to take my soul to the afterlife.” Wukong explained as though having entities of death rip out your soul to drag it to the underworld was no big deal.

“Bet you weren’t happy.” Macaque couldn’t help but smirk at the flippant tone. He just made it so difficult to stay mad.

“Not in the slightest. I barged my way to the top brass, bunch of cowards called the Ten Kings (totally undeserved titles by the way) and demanded what the fuck was going on.” He was still ticked off even if the payoff was sweet. Seriously! Did immortality mean nothing to these cowards? They couldn’t even play it off as him dying in battle. He was in the peak of his youth! “Can you believe they tried to play it off as a misunderstanding? Should have smacked the loudmouth when I was there.”

“So, through a series of ridiculous events, you erased your name from the records of the dead.” Macaque could easily piece together the rest from there. No matter how ridiculous the odds. He learned never to bet against his friend when a problem could be handled with brute strength or intimidation. If it didn’t look like such an answer was possible, clearly, they hadn’t experienced the force of a determined Wukong. Something about facing a ticked off monkie of practically infinite strength and invulnerability left harden conquerors pissing themselves.

It was hilarious.

“Not just mine. In my infinite wisdom, I erased the names of several of the monkey inhabitants of esteemed Flower Fruit Mountain, including yours.” Wukong playfully booped Macaque’s nose.

Turning away to hide a light blush, Macaque scoffed to cover his embarrassing response. “Typical. I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you doing something insane.”

“I know. I’m just that awesome.”

“So what? Are we now double immortal?” That was the question wasn’t it. Due to their master’s instructions, they were immortal and ageless, so what exactly would this give them? He didn’t feel any different. He couldn’t sense any new powers or changes in his instincts.

His counterpart, however, had other things on his mind. “Who cares. All I know is that those idiots have no control over our souls anymore.” And with that the King took his rightful place across Macaque’s lap as the other returned to his scrolls.

Wukong instead took the time to examine his friend, who finally gained enough confidence to fully drop his glamour and embrace his true appearance.

He still couldn’t believe Macaque actually had six ears. The weird part was how natural they looked, almost as if seeing him with only two was bizarre. The coolest part was how each pair softly glowed a different color. Blue. Purple. Red. Sometimes Wukong would just stare at them, imagining that he could see glittering stars emanating from that glow.

Suddenly those magnificent ears twitched. Macaque didn’t bother looking up from the bamboo scroll. “A trespasser...multiple, boar and vulture demon. Another hunting party”.

“Again. Ugh. Don’t these idiots ever give up!” Don’t get him wrong, Wukong loved a good fight. What better way to prove how superior you are to others than to steal what’s most precious to them? But even he was starting to grow bored with the sheer number of hunters that thought kidnapping his subjects was a quick cash grab.

After the fifth army he returned in pieces to the surrounding upstart lords, you’d think they’d take a hint.

Thankfully he wasn’t the only powerhouse on the mountain. “I haven’t tasted blood in a while. Why don’t I defend the kingdom while your highness enjoys a show?” Macaque set aside his reading material, eyes glittering with bloodlust.

Wukong returned the smirk with one of his own. “I’m always up for a good thrashing. One request: make it glorious.”

“Don’t I always.” Macaque joked as he retrieved his spear from his own shadow.

Wukong summoned his cloud and claimed a good vantage point. Once again, he marveled at his friend’s hearing. Judging by the distance it would have been at least three hours before he would have detected their presence.

Kicking back, he transformed some hair into a fruit platter and waited for the screams.

§~~~~§~~~~§~~~~§

To this day, Wukong knew Macaque was alive. Thanks to his efforts combined with the intense training, the monkie was double immortal. Besides, that monkkie was way too stubborn to die. He would survive purely on spite if he had to.

Macaque left, but why?

While he may have effectively isolated himself, that didn’t mean he didn’t hear about the other courts. A few centuries ago, he heard rumors about the formation of a new court by someone under the title of the Macaque King. Supposedly they were a powerful monkie who knew way more than he had the right to. For a brief moment, Wukong dared to hope it was his old friend, but it didn’t last. The few recounts he caught described him with black fur. Besides, he knew how much Macaque hated the title of King. Even when Wukong offered him the position as co-ruler of his kingdom, the pale monkie adamantly refused.

Still, he was curious.

For a few weeks he could have sworn he detected a familiar scent hiding underneath Mk’s. And he wasn’t the only one who noticed. A few of the immortal monkeys questioned him on the mango infused scent and what his plans were. It was almost too much to take in.

To think he returned to teach his student instead of showing his face. It hurt just to think about it. He chose to ignore the beckoning scent until it became impossible to ignore MK’s leap in progress. Then it just vanished like it hadn’t been testing his patience. Like it hadn’t brought him to the brink of shaking the kid upside down until he confessed where his old friend was hiding. The kid probably grew wise, or someone told him to change his bathing habits, and by the next training session it was all but gone.

Dragging his hand down his face, Wukong tried to reevaluate his thoughts.

Getting mad at the kid wasn’t going to solve anything. He knew he hadn’t been the most attentive master. Hell, the whole hammer exercise at its core was a desperate attempt to remove a painful reminder of better times. His master would be disappointed in how he was running away from his problems, but would encourage him to take the steps to be better. Zhu Bajie would be a sarcastic little shit, trying to get him riled up so the monkie would prove him wrong. Sha Wujing would sit him down and wouldn’t let him leave until they talked everything through.

He had to make things right with the kid. He deserved a better master. And this New Years he was gonna get one.

He spoke, praying the winds would carry his voice to his Warrior.

“Macaque. I know it’s been a while, but…I-I want to talk. I know you’re out there, somewhere I can’t reach. I miss sparring with you. I miss lazy days napping in the shade by your side. I miss defending the mountain as we held contests to see who could take out the most trespassers before their common sense kicked in. I miss you. Please come home.”

§~~~~§~~~~§~~~~§

The moon was high in the sky. Stars danced in the heavens as the faintest hints of vibrations pulsed through the concrete from the late-night dance clubs. MK lay awake, his mind struggling to make sense of it all.

Ever since Macaque disappeared in order to remain undetected, he kept thinking about his relationship with the Monkey King. Sure, he was being trained and he was definitely making progress. The monkie was still on his case for supposedly cheating on him with another mentor. Nothing MK said or did could make the monkie think otherwise. Thankfully, he was no longer shooting him suspicious glares, but the underlying tension remained.

The sad truth is they just weren’t that close.

He would have expected to learn more about the Monkey King on a personal and emotional level, but he just couldn’t get past that wall. Their training sessions felt more like just the Monkey King arranged just to get it over with. There was no passion at all.

Okay, perhaps that last bit was an exaggeration.

When you peered past the arrogance and pride, you found one socially awkward monkie. It was similar to Red Son the more he thought about it, both seemed to find it difficult to talk to or relate to others in a friendly setting. Sure, Monkey King projected a friendly demeanor and called him “bud”, but if he didn’t know any better he could have sworn the monkie was afraid to take that final step.

The last few sessions had taken a bit of a turn in a positive direction as Sandy would say. Maybe Monkey King decided it was time to make a change? Maybe this was all a trick so MK would lower his guard and reveal Macaque’s identity? Maybe he was just tired and should have conked out an hour ago?

Maybe.

Reality was so different from the legends. When Tang first introduced him to the Monkey stories, he was hooked. He loved listening to the tales of the infamous trickster that flipped off every major religious figure with unbridled confidence. Meeting the Great Sage in the flesh was like a dream come true until he was exposed to the King’s less pleasant tendencies.

Mk couldn’t help but wonder just how much confidence the Monkey King had in his training skills. Did he ever train someone before? Could MK talk to someone about this without appearing even more ungrateful than he already looked? Why didn’t he stop Red Son from unsealing his father when he was there? Why didn’t he simply seal the entire family when they were reunited? Why did the five times immortal sage decide that now he needed to train a disciple? Was Monkey King not telling him something important?

He had so many questions and not even the foggiest idea of where to start looking. Or perhaps he did?

The truth was he missed Macaque. The dark-furred monkie may have only taught him for a month, but the progress he made and the level of care he was exposed to made him feel as though he had finally unlocked the ability to fly.

He missed the regular grooming. He missed learning about the demon community. He missed learning new ways to mess with Red Son through appropriate court manners.

Watching the fire user freeze up at the term “honorable prince of the Iron Bull Court” just made him laugh, when his hair combusted it really matched his face. Now that he thought about it, were those horns starting to peek out of his forehead? And maybe the slightest hint of a tufted tail swiping the bottom of his coat? Seeing the demon frantically compose himself was a treat he didn’t know he needed. He still had the video saved as one of his favorites, didn’t hurt that Mei caught it at the perfect angle.

Oh yeah, he missed that.

With any luck, New Years would be the start of something better.

§~~~~§~~~~§~~~~§

On an island that remained surrounded by unquenchable storms, a single black-furred monkie sat cross-legged in a secluded part attached to the palace. All around him fruit trees and bushes bore a hefty bounty releasing an intoxicating scent of life.

Ears twitched.

Macaque opened his eyes, aroused from his meditation. It was odd. He had the faintest sensation that someone had been talking about him. Now that wasn’t exactly unusual, he made plenty of allies and enemies across the centuries. What was odd was that the voice sounded like someone he once cherished.

But that couldn’t be right.

The deceptive silence of his personal orchard gave him no answers. Not that he really expected it to.

For some reason he refused to identify, Macaque turned to the single peach tree in the grove. A tribute from his past and a reminder of his mistakes. But it was also a valuable resource once he learned the truth about the peach’s properties. He used its powers to protect many happy relationships, if only it could have helped him so long ago.

No matter.

He still had many projects to work on, including one successor just rife with insecurities. He honestly felt bad ducking out as he did. If things were different, he would have offered him a new life. His Stars were always happy to welcome a new member into their budding community.

As a bonus, his presence would have interrupted their constant attempts to set him up with new dates. He adored their efforts but being paired with partners who only wanted power or he would view only as friends was not something he enjoyed. Although watching them mentally destroy those they didn’t find suitable for him was quite entertaining.

Either way, New Years was coming up fast and he still needed to approve a few changes. His Stars were determined to make sure this event topped last years in every way possible, but they had to make sure they didn’t set the orchard on fire again. Or worse, they could launch the fireworks into the storm barrier. He wasn’t sure why or how, but the tornadoes and clouds turned different colors as explosions rang throughout the night.

It was beautiful but lost its charm after the third day.

[makeste]

i saw a post that explained well why i hate this: deku's outlook is now like kacchan's at the beginning. whereas before he saw people like kacchan, aizawa & shoto as heroes, strong & admirable, now he looks down on them (regardless of intent), invalidates their decision to participate and only sees them as useless and bloody. now kacchan's the kid throwing a notebook at a villain and deku's the one dismissing him (see: kacchan's sacrifice). i guess the speech from post-ground beta 2 is forgotten

also like seriously fuck the narrative, fuck all might and tbh fuck deku too lol kacchan kept their stupid fucking useless secret, helped deku train for months on end while knowing deku getting stronger and dominating 7 entire effing quirks inevitably meant kacchan never would even have the slightest chance to accomplish any of his dreams, worried his mind off about deku (all might knows, not like he gives a fuck), mounted strategies to prevent deku from battling alone, sacrificed himself (cont)

(contd) got out of his literal coma bed marching to see deku while still bleeding from the mouth, was dismissed by everyone, and still nothing at all. his hero name reveal was treated like a fucking joke, his sacrifice amounted to nothing by the stellar narrative, he was off paneled for literally anything that wasn't a stupid gag, and now he's thrown aside like garbage. hero name after all might: all might doesn't care. all might in the room hearing the ruckus: doesn't care, but ida & co (cont)

(contd) can see him. spent months helping deku & all might figure out the ofa stuff, with the most productive contributions: no one cares. so to have not only deku dismiss him like this (he's now a useless victim, not a hero who decides to collaborate, help, and save), but also all might, who kacchan also did all of this for, and who told them THEY, TOGETHER, would be the best winning to save and whatever, so sucks. all might no longer has any use for bakugo, so he's ignored and thrown aside.

(last ask abt this i swear) & ALL OF THIS comes after kacchan's plot has been reduced to absolutetely nothing but deku to the point he has spent literal years of this manga without even interacting with kiri or kami. at least have kiri in his room when he woke up but nope, not even that, kiri's with shoto for some reason bc we have to make a gag out of kacchan's worry and he can't have meaningful interactions. no battles, no wins, no friends. just a side char in the ofa plot, now not even that

anon, no offense (because you seem polite enough in spite of this ask getting rather heated), but I disagree with literally every single point in this ask. literally every last one. this is basically all of my least favorite discourse bundled into a single post. I don't particularly enjoy reading "fuck All Might and Deku" in my inbox first thing in the morning, and I don't like reading paragraphs of hyperbolic negativity about Kacchan being shortchanged because the story doesn't revolve around him every single moment, and we haven't yet -- yet, because the story is still very much ongoing -- gotten to the narrative payoff for things like his hero name and his reunion with Deku. these are opinions you're more than welcome to post about on your own blog, anon. but to be frank, I'm not keen on spending a ton of mental energy trying to change your mind on my own blog when I'd much rather be discussing other things about the chapter and about the series. so yeah, my apologies, but I'm just going to leave it at that.

---

ETA: as promised anon, here are links to my other posts about the various topics you brought up:

re: Deku’s current mindset (tl;dr he’s traumatized by what happened at Jakku and him pushing everyone else away because he’s afraid of them getting hurt is totally expected)

more on said mindset and what drives it, and the parallels between him and Kacchan (and why Kacchan is inevitably going to be the one to knock some sense back into him)

meta on Deku’s role as a MC and how that affects his characterization (by design, for better or for worse)

and a couple of add-ons to that meta

meta re: All Might keeping OFA a secret

and another post about that

and another!! this is why I don’t want to talk about it any more lol

meta re: the meaning of Kacchan’s new hero name (which btw All Might hasn’t even heard yet, and which I suspect has more to do with Deku anyway)

and lastly, re: fandom needing to chill and be patient when it comes to Kacchan and Deku’s storyline

a big part of my reluctance to wade into these discourse waters again is because I would probably just be reiterating stuff I’ve already said in previous posts. but anyway so here you go if you or anyone else is interested.

[theatticoneighth]

Watching The Queen’s Gambit; on the Remarkable Unexceptionality of Beth Harmon

‘With some people, chess is a pastime. With others, it is a compulsion, even an addiction. And every now and then, a person comes along for whom it is a birthright. Now and then, a small boy appears and dazzles us with his precocity, at what may be the world’s most difficult game. But what if that boy were a girl? A young, unsmiling girl, with brown eyes, red hair, and a dark blue dress? Into the male-dominated world of the nation’s top chess tournaments, strolls a teenage girl with bright, intense eyes, from Fairfield High School in Lexington, Kentucky. She is quiet, well-mannered, and out for blood.’

The preceding epigraph opens a fictional profile of Beth Harmon featured in the third episode of The Queen’s Gambit (2020), and is written and published after the protagonist — a teenage, rookie chess player, no less — beats a series of ranked pros to win her first of many tournaments. In the same deft manner as it depicts the character’s ascent to her global chess stardom, the piece also sets up the series’s narrative: this is evidence of a great talent, it tells us, a grandmaster in the making. As with most other stories about prodigies, this new entry into a timeworn genre is framed unexceptionally by its subject’s exceptionality.

Yet as far as tales regaled about young chess wunderkinds go, Beth Harmon’s stands out in more ways than one. That she is a girl in a male-dominated world has clearly not gone unremarked by both her diegetic and nondiegetic audiences. That her life has thus far — and despite her circumstances — been relatively uneventful, however, is what makes this show so remarkable. After all, much of our culture has undeniably primed us to expect the consequential from those whom we raise upon the pedestal of genius. As Harmon’s interviewer suggests in her conversation with Harmon for the latter’s profile, “Creativity and psychosis often go hand in hand. Or, for that matter, genius and madness.” So quickly do we attribute extraordinary accomplishments to similarly irregular origins that we presume an inexplicability of our geniuses: their idiosyncrasies are warranted, their bad behaviours are excused, and deep into their biographies we dig to excavate the enigmatic anomalies behind their gifts. Through our myths of exceptionality, we make the slightest aberrations into metonyms for brilliance.

Nonetheless, for all her sullenness, non-conformity, and her plethora of addictions, Beth Harmon seems an uncommonly normal girl. No doubt this may be a contentious view, as evinced perhaps by the chorus of viewers and reviewers alike who have already begun to brand the character a Mary Sue. Writing on the series for the LA Review of Books, for instance, Aaron Bady construes The Queen’s Gambit as “the tragedy of Bobby Fischer [made] into a feminist fantasy, a superhero story.” In the same vein, Jane Hu also laments in her astute critique of the Cold War-era drama its flagrant and saccharine wish-fulfillment tendencies. “The show gets to have it both ways,” she observes, “a beautiful heroine who leans into the edge of near self-destruction, but never entirely, because of all the male friends she makes along the way.” Sexual difference is here reconstituted as the unbridgeable chasm that divides the US from the Soviet Union, whereas the mutual friendliness shared between Harmon and her male chess opponents becomes a utopic revision of history. Should one follow Hu’s evaluation of the series as a period drama, then the retroactive ascription of a recognisably socialist collaborative ethos to Harmon and her compatriots is a contrived one indeed. 

Accordingly, both Hu and Bady conclude that the series grants us depthless emotional satisfaction at the costly expense of realism: its all-too-easy resolutions swiftly sidestep any nascent hint of overwhelming tension; its resulting calm betrays our desire for reprieve. Underlying these arguments is the fundamental assumption that the unembellished truth should also be an inconvenient one, but why must we always demand difficulty from those we deem noteworthy? Summing up the show’s conspicuous penchant for conflict-avoidance, Bady writes that: 

over and over again, the show strongly suggests — through a variety of genre and narrative cues — that something bad is about to happen. And then … it just doesn’t. An orphan is sent to a gothic orphanage and the staff … are benign. She meets a creepy, taciturn old man in the basement … and he teaches her chess and loans her money. She is adopted by a dysfunctional family and the mother … takes care of her. She goes to a chess tournament and midway through a crucial game she gets her first period and … another girl helps her, who she rebuffs, and she is fine anyway. She wins games, defeating older male players, and … they respect and welcome her, selflessly helping her. The foster father comes back and …she has the money to buy him off. She gets entangled in cold war politics and … decides not to be.

In short, everything that could go wrong … simply does not go wrong.

Time and again predicaments arise in Harmon’s narrative, but at each point, she is helped fortuitously by the people around her. In turn, the character is allowed to move through the series with the restrained unflappability of a sleepwalker, as if unaffected by the drama of her life.  Of course, this is not to say that she fails to encounter any obstacle on her way to celebrity and success — for neither her childhood trauma nor her substance-laden adolescence are exactly rosy portraits of idyll — but only that such challenges seem so easily ironed out by that they hardly register as true adversity. In other words, the show takes us repeatedly to the brink of what could become a life-altering crisis but refuses to indulge our taste for the spectacle that follows. Skipping over the Aristotelian climax, it shields us from the height of suspense, and without much struggle or effort on the viewers’ part, hands us our payoff. Consequently lacking the epochal weight of plot, little feels deserved in Harmon’s story.

In his study of eschatological fictions, The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode would associate such a predilection for catastrophes with our abiding fear of disorder. Seeing as time, as he argues, is “purely successive [and] disorganised,” we can only reach to the fictive concords of plot to make sense of our experiences. Endings in particular serve as the teleological objective towards which humanity projects our existence, so we hold paradigms of apocalypse closely to ourselves to restore significance to our lives. It probably comes as no surprise then that in a year of chaos and relentless disaster — not to mention the present era of extreme precariousness, doomscrolling, and the 24/7 news cycle, all of which have irrevocably attuned us to the dreadful expectation of “the worst thing to come” — we find ourselves eyeing Harmon’s good fortune with such scepticism. Surely, we imagine, something has to have happened to the character for her in order to justify her immense consequence. But just as children are adopted each day into loving families and chess tournaments play out regularly without much strife, so too can Harmon maintain low-grade dysfunctional relationships with her typically flawed family and friends. 

In any case, although “it seems to be a condition attaching to the exercise of thinking about the future that one should assume one's own time to stand in extraordinary relation to it,” not all orphans have to face Dickensian fates and not all geniuses have to be so tortured (Kermode). The fact remains that the vagaries of our existence are beyond perfect reason, and any attempt at thinking otherwise, while vital, may be naive. Contrary to most critics’ contentions, it is hence not The Queen’s Gambit’s subversions of form but its continued reach towards the same that holds up for viewers such a comforting promise of coherence. The show comes closest to disappointing us as a result when it eschews melodrama for the straightforward. Surprised by the ease and randomness of Harmon’s life, it is not difficult for one to wonder, four or five episodes into the show, what it is all for; one could even begin to empathise with Hu’s description of the series as mere “fodder for beauty.” 

Watching over the series now with Bady’s recap of it in mind, however, I am reminded oddly not of the prestige and historical dramas to which the series is frequently compared, but the low-stakes, slice-of-life cartoons that had peppered my childhood. Defined by the prosaicness of its settings, the genre punctuates the life’s mundanity with brief moments of marvel to accentuate the curious in the ordinary. In these shows, kindergarteners fix the troubles of adults with their hilarious playground antics, while time-traveling robot cats and toddler scientists alike are confronted with the woes of chores. Likewise, we find in The Queen’s Gambit a comparable glimpse of the quotidian framed by its protagonist’s quirks. Certainly, little about the Netflix series’ visual and narrative features would identify it as a slice-of-life serial, but there remains some merit, I believe, in watching it as such. For, if there is anything to be gained from plots wherein nothing is introduced that cannot be resolved in an episode or ten, it is not just what Bady calls the “drowsy comfort” of satisfaction — of knowing that things will be alright, or at the very least, that they will not be terrible. Rather, it is the sense that we are not yet so estranged from ourselves, and that both life and familiarity persists even in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Perhaps some might find such a tendency towards the normal questionable, yet when all the world is on fire and everyone clambers for acclaim, it is ultimately the ongoingness of everyday life for which one yearns. As Harmon’s childhood friend, Jolene, tells her when she is once again about to fall off the wagon, “You’ve been the best at what you do for so long, you don’t even know what it’s like for the rest of us.” For so long, and especially over the past year, we have catastrophized the myriad crises in which we’re living that we often overlook the minor details and habits that nonetheless sustain us. To inhabit the congruence of both the remarkable and its opposite in the singular figure of Beth Harmon is therefore to be reminded of the possibility of being outstanding without being exceptional — that is, to not make an exception of oneself despite one’s situation — and to let oneself be drawn back, however placid or insignificant it may be, into the unassuming hum of dailiness. It is in this way of living that one lives on, minute by minute, day by day, against the looming fear and anxiety that seek to suspend our plodding regular existence. It is also in this way that I will soon be turning the page on the last few months in anticipation of what is to come. 

Born and raised in the perpetually summery tropics — that is, Singapore — Rachel Tay wishes she could say her life was just like a still from Call Me By Your Name: tanned boys, peaches, and all. Unfortunately, the only resemblance that her life bears to the film comes in the form of books, albeit ones read in the comfort of air-conditioned cafés, and not the pool, for the heat is sweltering and the humidity unbearable. A fervent turtleneck-wearer and an unrepentant hot coffee-addict, she is thus the ideal self-parodying Literature student, and the complete anti-thesis to tropical life.

[minijenn]

As an outsider, I don't quite get what your deal is with KH3. Could you elaborate?

Ok, so. 

I’m a relatively new KH fan. I got into the series back in college, about a little over a year before KH3 released. I fell into the series and I fell hard, particularly growing attached to the characters (especially to Sora, who quickly became my son and my favorite of the entire bunch). And tbh? After playing all the games? I was very hyped for KH3. New trailers were dropping constantly at the time and each one made the game look so epic and fun and exciting! I was ready to enjoy this game and have such a great time and watch this saga wrap itself up in a nice, conclusive way. 

But then... that didn’t happen. 

Instead, what I got was a game that, while very fun to play and while very beautiful visually and musically, really just... completely dropped the ball with its story. The Disney worlds didn’t matter in the slightest, and honestly the way most of them were executed was worse than how they were implemented in previous games. The actual meat of the plot is shoved into the back half of the game after all the Disney worlds are over and a lot of characters really don’t get any time to shine or do anything important at all (Namine, KAIRI ESPECIALLY WHO THEY DID SO INCREDIBLY DIRTY I CANT BELIEVE, Vanitas, Terra, so on), the payoff upon defeating the main villain is so fucking disappointing and not cathartic in the slightest, and the ending oh god the ending. The ending upset me so fucking much that I not only cried over it, I was legitimately depressed for two whole days over it and not in the fun way. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, about how much I hated it, how disappointed i was in it and in so many other smaller things about the game, about how it didn’t live up to my expectations which ok, fine, it didn’t have to do that but still, I expected something at least somewhat better than what we got but what we got was.... Kingdom Hearts III.

 And I can’t help but be kinda bitter about that? Its petty and silly and dumb I know, but I was invested, dammit! I was looking forward to something amazing and while there are some sprinkles of amazing things in KH3, the overall package is lackluster at best. I appreciate plenty of KH3 for what it is though and I have a very love-hate relationship with it to this day (again, gameplay wise and visually its probably the best of the series). Either way, I do owe KH3 a lot. After all, Keys to the Kingdom wouldn’t exist without it pissing me off enough to write it. 

(also my opinion on KH3 has only soured with the release of post KH3 content like Re:Mind and MoM that have only served to make its ending even more dumb in retrospect :| 

[mirrorfalls]

The Alchemist When He’s Full of Metal, Vol. 20

(Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, Vol. 8, Vol. 9, Vol. 10, Vol. 11, Vol. 12, Vol. 13, Vol. 14, Vol. 15, Vol. 16, Vol. 17, Vol. 18, Vol. 19)

In which Arakawa - as if there were any lingering doubts - proves herself a master-class troll.

"Yeah, you were expecting Briggs to field an Epic Battle? You already got that with Sloth. Have a jump cut instead.”

Part of me does wish the fort had gotten a grander send-off than winning an offscreen fight, but hell - as long as Olivier is still relevant to the plot, it's not really gone. And in any case, the North as a whole gets to host Team Scar’s takedown of Envy, which is suitably grand and a positive Crowning Moment of Awesome for all involved.

Its payoff, though...

I might've swallowed this more easily if I hadn’t read about it first on TV Tropes, but what’s done is done. It’s great that Mei is grappling with her first piece of internal turmoil, and I don’t even mind the general idea of her being manipulated by Envy (she’s, like, twelve). but the angle feels all wrong. What happened to her resolution from last volume that taking intel on the Philosopher’s Stone to her Emperor is an extremely bad - tantamount-to-okaying-genocide-ily bad - idea? Shouldn’t that be the basis of the conflict, instead of some “can you ~abandon~ Amestris?” thing the Very Envious Caterpillar pulled out of their nonexistent keister five seconds ago?

(Come to think of it, pawning Envy off on her does a number on Scar’s character too. What, is putting thousands of lives in the crosshairs of Genocide Alchemy okay, as long as it’s icky Xing lives?)

Let’s move on. With nothing more to do in the North, our heroes latch onto “get as far from Kimblee as fucking possible” as their new goal. So Ed goes off to have a bunch of slapsticky shenanigans with two of Kimblee’s ex-lieutenants, while Al and the rest head on to Reole, where Hohenheim just happens to have parked himself.

This cues a bunch of jawing about The Plot, but there’ll be more on that next volume. Instead I’d like to talk a bit about Reole specifically - it’s nice that Arakawa’s tying the story back to the series pilot when a lot of other Shonens would probably have left that to gather dust in the back of a cabinet somewhere, but I’m getting a general impression she’s trying to backtrack on the city’s situation through Rosé.

Wasn’t this town supposed to be seeing enough bloodshed to water one of the points on that Nationwide Transmutation Circle? From the nation’s top troops, no less? This kind of optimism seems more suited to the wake of a natural disaster, not a clearly man-made one.

But I guess that’s inevitable, because you have to do something to quell the suggestion that Ed and Al left this town worse off than it was under Cornello.* I understand that’s the exact route the ‘03 anime took, and bringing it up in the wrong corners of fandom can still net you thousand-post flamewars.

Ed’s thread, then, winds up being the superior one this time around - if only because it dovetails with GreedLing and one of the most oddly touching Shonen speeches I’ve ever read.

Touching less in content, you understand, than in context. In content, a thousand Shonen heroes must’ve said the same thing to a thousand rivals/fallen friends; but for a supporting protagonist to say it to an anthropomorphic personification of sin and get through is something else entirely. Better still, it leads to GreedLing effectively joining taking Ed’s party, which promises a whole heap of Funny Dysfunction ahead.

Aaaaaaand... I guess that marks the end of yet another Act! With a here’s-the-whole-cast montage and everything! The narration even mentions we’ll be picking up “next season” - I’ve no idea what that reads like in Japanese, but I hope like hell there’s an equivalent pun.

See you next week, folks - for the home stretch.

*I know Cornello made some speeches about molding his followers into an army to invade Central or something, but I frankly never bought that - none of his people, apart from the professional guards (who might not even be believers) showed the slightest inclination for war.

[gunnerpalace]

Final Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary Project

So, the scheduled time for the "BLEACH 20th Anniversary Project & Tite Kubo New [Project] Presentation" is at 9:45 to 10:15 AM on March 21st (a Saturday). In attendance will be the VAs for Ichigo, Rukia, and Byakuya, the Editor-in-Chief for WSJ (Hiroyuki Nakano), and Yoshiyuki Hirai of the comedy duo America Zarigani as moderator. (Is this another dig at Bleach as a “gag series”?) This information is also available on the main site:

(Interesting how Ichigo, Rukia, and Byakuya are the “main cast of the anime,” isn’t it? Gee, I was told that Bleach had some other girl as the “heroine”... And they sure as hell aren’t the focus of TYBW...)

I think that you wouldn’t launch a multi-season anime return as part of a mere (two-part!) 30-minute presentation early in the morning on Saturday, first thing on the first day of the venue, in the secondary venue. See, the Blue Bird Stage announcements aren’t as minor as the Wind Green and Moon Yellow ones, but they’re also not as big as the Flower Red ones. It’s also interesting that many of the other Blue Bird Stage announcements are explicitly listed as “TV anime” reveals in the main site’s program guide and Bleach... ain’t. It strikes me as more of a small-fry time-slot for a small-fry announcement.

I also don’t think you’d do that with no hype (as Bleach is not prominent at all in Anime Japan 2020′s marketing outside of this event) in the year of the 2020 Olympics, an essentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hype things up. I also don’t think that you would do it under the title of “Face Again,” the name of the 20th chapter of a 686 chapter manga. I also don’t think you’d do it with merch from the pre-timeskip era of your series on the horizon.

None of that makes the slightest bit of sense to me as a series of business decisions. I would fire anyone running that kind of marketing campaign without a second thought.

I have been vocal in my belief that it is probably something relatively minor, like an OVA special, and all of these things leave me all the more convinced of that.

I’m on record as having said that I don’t think TYBW is in the slightest bit commercially viable given its abysmal readership rankings. I have been over that already.

I’m also on the record as having said that if TYBW is animated, it will show once and for all what an atrocious arc it was, what with its incredibly diffuse focus on the main cast, its bloated cast in general, its terrible pacing, its unsatisfying resolution of plot points, and its frankly fucking awful fights that have no real payoff. Like, forget how it ended: TYBW was a dumpster fire throughout, period. It was the worst of Bleach in every regard, and if you liked it, then in my opinion you have poor taste in Bleach arcs, shounen, anime, and media in general, because it was straight-up bad. Like, Daredevil (2003) bad. The Punisher (2004) bad. The Predator bad. But I have also been over that already.

(Although as an aside I would like to briefly add that CFYOW somehow even further undercuts TYBW’s “dramatic stakes” because it reveals very few people died and it in fact brings back a bunch more characters from the HM arc too, so it all feels somewhere between Ginjou “dying” only to not actually be dead, and Kishimoto only killing Neji out of everyone in the Fourth Shinobi World War: it retroactively completely ruins the tension. That combined with the further power creep makes TYBW even dumber than it is merely unto itself as a standalone arc. Simple example: what was Tokinada going to do if Yhwach had succeeded? One can ask the same of Yhwach if Aizen had succeeded. Ain’t none a this shit with these assholes waiting in queue behind each other make sense.)

I stand by each and every one of those positions. 

But finally, I want to go on record as saying I do not give a single fuck if it turns out that I am wrong.

Listen.

America is turning into a banana republic. There aren’t bad odds that Trump will get reelected. If he is, then Ben Franklin’s “A republic, if you can keep it,” line will be a concluding statement because we couldn’t. And “democracy” (such as there is) is on the decline all around the rest of the world too. Hell, we can barely even agree on the fundamentals of a consensual reality anymore.

This, mind you, against the backdrop of a world quite literally on fire, as more and more wealth is concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people who do less and less to address the unsustainable pace of exploitation and greed.

You think the Syrian refugee crisis is bad? You think the wildfires in Australia are bad? You think the coronavirus outbreak is bad? You haven’t seen shit yet. These have all been but the smallest appetizer of the ten-course meal that is the shitstorm yet to come. We will be lucky if the human race makes it to 2100 without deciding to be an unending LARP of Mad Max: Fury Road. And each and every day that passes, more grains of sand fall through the neck of the hourglass.

And I am expected to give a shit about some anime? About who scores more points in this social media shipper dick-waving contest?

Well, the truth is that I don’t.

I’ve already got the essential truth of the series.

I’ve already extracted the meaning from it.

I know what is good, I know what is bad, and I know what is ugly. I could, can, and will do it better. I just sometimes like taking out my frustrations on other people when they think they’re hot shit and can step.

And anime adaptation or not, nothing is going to change that. Whatever happens happens. And the truth is that it won’t matter either way to the body of the text that exists and will go on existing.

So if you’re anxious, or excited, or whatever in between, harden your heart and steel your nerves. Let’s see what happens. But I don’t care what it is, and I’m not interested in talking about it any more either.

[gascon-en-exil]

Joining the Game Late: S3E9 “The Rains of Castamere”

Synopsis

Walder Frey hangs a lampshade on Robb’s love life. Prime UST in Dany’s camp, leading up to a classic FE chapter. Sam is like a wizard because he’s literate. Arya and the Hound swap moral opinions and death threats, but he’s there to save her in the end. Bran learns he can possess humans which isn’t creepy in the slightest as Jon blows his cover and his love interests are sad. Rickon almost has a recognizable character before he leaves for another plot with Osha. It’s the Red Wedding - everybody’s dead, even the direwolf! Catelyn and Robb take an extra minute to go out dramatically. (But what happened to the bride and groom? That’s rhetorical, I already know.)

Commentary

Except for two points, everything’s about the Starks tonight. Sam and Gilly get one inconsequential scene that does not follow up on how Sam just one-shotted an ice zombie, and Dany’s siege of Yunkai plays out exactly like a chapter in Fire Emblem where three men (one of whom seemingly has no common language with the other two, how does that work?) infiltrate and capture a city all on their own. Yeah, yeah, the plan is for them to sneak in and open the main gate for the army, but with the number of soldiers they’re shown fighting once inside it’s all rather silly. I find that my threshold for suspension of disbelief is higher in video games than it is for other media; is it the immersion factor? Other than that, though, when the show’s not at the Twins it’s setting up future plotlines for Bran and Jon and maybe even Rickon while also maneuvering Arya into position to add an entire house to her hit list that I know will have a huge payoff a few seasons down the line. I’d actually not picked up from spoilers that Arya was just on the fringe of the Red Wedding, but it makes a lot of sense. The only Stark not in this episode is Sansa, who sits it out along with everyone else at King’s Landing.

The Wedding itself is incredibly well-crafted, not least because the scenes leading up to it are so relatively mundane that even if you know what’s coming it can be easy to be fooled into believing that this isn’t going to end in a bloody massacre. Walder Frey is still the same asshole he was back in Season 1, but he’s a funny asshole and he heralds Robb’s arrival at the Twins by stumbling over the names of his numerous daughters and granddaughters and making lewd remarks about Talisa. Unpleasant old lecher as he is, I feel like he’s very briefly being used as an audience surrogate in that moment, poking fun at how quickly Robb/Talisa went from serious philosophical discussions on the cost of war and the traits of a good ruler to gratuitous sex and clandestine marriage. The show invented Talisa and her romance with Robb all on its own, so it’s good to see that at least in this the showrunners were able to have some fun at their own expense. The rest of these scenes do the work of establishing traditions of hospitality as well as Westerosi marriage customs, and I liked seeing them pull bits from both the Robb/Talisa and Tyrion/Sansa weddings for that as this is probably the most we’ve ever seen from the show about what being a participant in the faith of the Seven actually entails. The decision to use Catelyn as the primary PoV character for the last tense moments before everyone starts dying pays off well, especially since the final scene - and death - of the episode is hers. As much as I had wanted Robb to be a favorite before starting this liveblog I found Cat’s anguish at seeing her son killed seconds before she slits Frey’s wife’s throat and then dies herself to be the single most moving piece of the Wedding, in large part because she’s so often been the PoV character for the Starks’ storyline. So yeah: great character, strong way to go out, glad she’s not resurrected into an evil version of herself which is apparently what happens in the books.

When people compare this series to FE the Red Wedding is inevitably brought up as a point of comparison, specifically to Genealogy of the Holy War’s Battle of Belhalla. Both events are shocking midpoint twists that exploit a violation of hospitality to kill off a sizable amount of the established cast, and both are tied in some way to the primary male victim marrying a woman he shouldn’t have. Sigurd may share more personality traits with Ned Stark than with Robb, including the bumbling sense of honor that leads both of them to their deaths, but I think in this comparison one may read the common character flaw of the Starks: they expect the world to be a certain way, whether that’s wanting to marry a charming prince and become queen, see justice delivered upon evil men, or attend a wedding and not be violently murdered. That in turn calls attention to the snowballing list of poor decisions made by the Starks that have culminated in this moment, which again is very reminiscent of the equivalent in FE. Sigurd sets out on his quest to rescue his kidnapped childhood friend, but on the way he stumbles into conquering two countries without realizing it and setting up the pieces for men far more politically savvy than he could ever hope to be to take control of the entire continent. So it has been with Ned and his wife and children; it’s telling that the most successful of them at the moment are the two who’ve been working outside the conventions of their world, whether that’s traveling the countryside in drag and learning how to kill from a procession of very dangerous men or following prophetic dreams into a realm of barely-understood magical abilities. The jury’s out on Jon and Sansa at the moment.

One nitpick though - Roose Bolton’s role in the Wedding is not set up very well. I can piece together that he’s there to betray the Starks for the Lannisters because of his arrangement with Jaime, but that’s more me thinking back to what he was saying two episodes ago. It’s not established that he did any planning with the Freys beforehand, and I read that the line he says when stabbing Robb was changed from the book so that he doesn’t mention Jaime specifically which is weird. The Boltons are like the Seven to me; I know they’re there and they’re important to the plot, but the show so far hasn’t done much to establish them to the extent to which they ought to be. A lot of that is them continuing to play coy with Ramsey’s identity, granted, but prior to the Wedding Roose was a mildly sinister figure at most - not someone whose betrayal firmly hit home as the cherry on top of Walder Frey’s bloody sundae.

[stray-tori]

Tangled S3: First Impression

To be quite honest, I’m not a huge fan so far. The pilot was........ okay... I’m not sure how to feel about all these goddamn orphans finding their parents, like.... are Red and Angry next? :’D 

I feel like the most unnecessary one is Eugene, the whole point of his character was that he wasn’t a prince. But hey, that’s just me.

Cass is... allright, I feel like I get it. I still think it’s too sudden but hey.

Sudden is a good word. Everything just felt sudden. The S3 pilot felt more like a finale with Varian and everything.

HAHHHHH, VARIAN. Listen, I get his whole point, and I’m willing to believe that he was just angry and extreme and that after that hate wave he just kind of realized SHIT. What I don’t get is that we didn’t get any buildup to this. He just returns and in like 30 minutes he’s redeemed. Now, that’s still more than White Diamond, and the reasoning is actually pretty sound and it goes from pointing out small errors and builds up. The problem I have with it is that we went from “REVENGEEEEEE” to “oh god I’m terrible, i’ll have you forget” and we haven’t seen him inbetween. It also feels weird to hear “we agreed nobody would get hurt!” from the guy who almost crushed Cass. 

It’s also awfully convenient how fast he came back. Are Varian and Cass just taking turns? :’D Now I like the whole thing all things considered but I feel like it would have been better to keep his return and redemption for a bit later.

“Oh Varian’s back. Oh, Varian’s good now. Oh, I guess Rap can use the dark thingy for the amber, okay, that was never rly established but fair I guess.” 

Some more:

Where are the king and queen?! WHAT

Varian did not ask about Cass in the slightest. Am I delusional?? Am I imagining their bond they had? Why did Cass not really care at all about Varian’s turn and why does Varian not even QUESTION THAT SHE ISN’T THERE

LIKE DOES HE KNOW??

My hopes for Varian were that Cass would be able to get him to calm down and reconsider what he was doing. But we didn’t get that, so my hopes of Varian doing this for Cass now instead are PRETTY SLIM. Tangled always managed to engage and surprise me but I feel like sometimes I just don’t get the payoff I want / expected. Now that doesn’t mean it’s bad! It’s just weird because I usually don’t get my expectations so utterly reversed but not in a mindblow-way. 

We don’t even get Varian and Cass villain team up now >:/

Listen Varian in the pilot was cute, a bby, i cried, okay. I feel it’s rushed but that didn’t stop me from bawling my eyes out.

Rapunzel snapping out of the hurt thingy was rly weird and anti-climactic

WHAT DID THE NOTE SAY

THAT WAS MORE THAN “I’M PROUD” IDIOT

Varian feels like any bg character now. Maybe it’s because he’s just back now, and it’s weird. But the way he gets casually thrown in the bg now feels like any other character that’s there for a laugh or for a plot to work. It doesn’t mean it’s not charming, but he doesn’t feel as distinct to me. When the hunt is declared, Varian’s movement was rly unnatural. In S1, whenever Varian showed up he was DISTINCT, he was focused on. He felt less geeky, even when he did the rebuild of the tech in “Herz der Sonne”. Maybe it’s just me or maybe I’m still weirded out by his sudden return, but it just doesn’t feel like Varian. 

(The animation at “I feel like a bird” is still so hecking cute though)

I also feel like we could have devoted more episodes to Varian settling back in back home. Maybe make his father freement its own episode, have them explain and talk. Have another episode about Varian getting hated for being back and having to accept that it’s not gonna be easy. An episode to have Varian talk to the King & Queen OH WAIT WHO KNOWS WHERE THEY ARE

This just all makes Varian seem like he’s not gonna be special or plot relevant anymore. He’s just in the background, it never feels like in S1. To me, at least.

Like listen, if Varian and Cass don’t interact by the end of the series I will scream. They had an whole episode of bonding, imo their bond should be stronger and more acknowledged than that of Rapunzel and Varian (at least in S1). I mean, now not anymore, probably. Rap really did a lot and now that they’re friends again it must be hella strong. Idk maybe I’m imaging things.

So yeah. I hope I’m just imagining things with Varian seeming less distinct now and he will come back with plot-relevance soon ^///^ To be fair we hadn’t really a plot episode since the pilot so. FAIR.

[katindabox]

Deadpool 2 spoilers!!

It’s been a few days since i saw Deadpool 2 and--though it was a funny film and, i feel like, a worthy sequel that nearly matches the charisma and humor of the first one--there’s something that’s really bothering me and that’s the handling of X-Force. The X-Force payoff has a pretty solid set-up: Deadpool sends out a casting call for a superhero team and gets a bunch of D-list heroes like Shatterstar, Bedlam, Zeitgeist, Domino, Vanisher, and Kevin--a powerless shmuck who answered the ad for fun. Truly the kind of people that would answer a help-wanted ad from Deadpool.

To add some context, apparently, Fox has been teasing the possibility of an X-Force series and, with the heavy use of X-Force-centric footage in the trailers, many were expecting this movie to be the X-Force origin movie. To reinforce that, each character gets their own little introduction and brief explanation of their power-set.

Wade gathers the team in a plane to do a parachute drop and the film drills in how everyone wants to be a part of something greater, like a family. The team gets hyped, jump from the plane, and all but Deadpool and Domino are horrifically killed because of the high-winds that Wade casually dismissed earlier in the scene. And i mean horrifically killed.

Bedlam flies into a bus and dies from blunt-force trauma, Shatterstar flies into a helicopter propeller because he can’t see through his 90′s-comics-edgelord-ponytail (genuinely funny), Vanisher flies into power lines and is electrocuted, and Zeitgeist flies feet-first into a wood chipper. Kevin is, comically, unharmed. Had the characters’ demises gone quickly with some snappy editing, then i feel like it would have been just as shocking and funny as what the writers intended.

But it isn’t over quickly.

Once Kevin lands, he rushes to Zeitgeist’s aid; trying foolishly to pull what’s left of him out of the wood chipper. I can’t quote this 100% cuz i only saw it once but the interaction pretty much goes like: Kevin: “Hey, you’re gonna get through this. We’re the X-Force, remember?” Zeitgeist, looking to Kevin with renewed hope: “Yeah, we’re X-Force.” Only to be immediately undercut with Zeitgeist, in immeasurable pain, vomiting his acid bile onto Kevin--killing him instantly--and then being dragged into the wood chipper completely.

The fact that these characters were genuinely good people wanting to help an abused mutant boy and be a part of a greater cause makes their cruel deaths just too cynical for a movie about tongue-in-cheek cynicism. The fact that their drawn-out deaths and sincere hopes were only included for a cheap troll on the audience (and i’ll get to that) legitimately made me upset from a story standpoint.

X-Force dying in the parachute jump was very clearly just a giant dump on the typical superhero movie audience and served very little story purpose save to show how Domino’s luck power is legitimate. I know this because they filmed a whole fight sequence with the X-Force fighting a group of armed bad guys JUST to be used in the trailers to mislead the viewers simply because people were getting hyped about the X-Force series. They make X-Force the center of the trailers and then pull the rug out from the audience like “Ha ha, you fuckin’ dweebs, you thought we were actually gonna do X-Force? Fuck you!” And that’s all the X-Force was--a gag. Their deaths do not affect the story in the slightest. If they had changed it so that Domino was the only hero that had showed up to the auditions, the story would have played out completely unchanged. Not a single moment goes by where the remaining characters lament that the powers of the deceased heroes would have been crucial to saving the day.

And the worst part--the worst part...is how hollow the whole X-Force plot feels. In a movie centered on the far-reaching consequences of Wade’s actions, not a single thought is given to the X-Force team as soon as their scene ends. The film begins with Wade’s callousness getting Vanessa killed and ends with Wade’s selflessness saving Cable’s future and countless lives. These are both strong scenes that reinforce the film’s themes and further along Wade’s character. So it just feels so wrong for a character--so tortured by his own hand in his girlfriend’s death---is so apathetic to a whole cast of innocent characters being killed by his negligence. 

...thanks for coming to my TEDTalk

(We’re not gonna talk about the end-credits scene were Wade time travels and saves Kevin because it’s not even clear if that’s canon)

[aion-rsa]

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 16 Review: Above and Below

https://ift.tt/3ctoeiI

This Attack on Titan review contains spoilers.

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 16

“There’s much to learn from an enemy.” “Including how to make more enemies.”

Attack on Titan treats the Titan serum as one of the most powerful substances that can pollute and transform somebody’s body, but this final (sort of) season proves that denial and egotism make an even more dangerous cocktail. There’s a simple scene between Yelena and Dot Pixis where the latter is forced into submission and almost seems to respect Yelena’s cold and calculated ability to double cross her own people in favor of the changing tide. Yelena chastises Pixis for his decision to not side with her, Zeke, and Eren sooner, but it’s really a conversation that’s applicable to everyone. 

Yelena and Pixis’ discussion functions as an elegant microcosm to the larger debates that break out between every faction of characters whose beliefs become at odds with one another. Scrutiny isn’t always a bad thing and characters like Eren used to understand that. Yelena doesn’t know if she’s right. Nobody knows if they’re right. However, these characters have been pushed this far and committed so many sins that considering anything else would be sacrilege. Delusion has become the new religion because doubt is now a force that’s more destructive than bullets. “Above and Below” is not the very end of Attack on Titan, but it does close the book on a lot of its past and presents very changed teams for the upcoming final battle.

Much of the second half of this season has been focused on the many pieces of Zeke, Eren, and Yelena’s master plan. “Above and Below” puts it in plain sight and wants the severity of these actions to be out in the open. Everyone believes that this strategy involves reuniting Zeke and Eren to trigger the Rumbling, which is true, but Yelena hints at an even more grim solution that involves either Eldian euthanasia or sterilization to permanently remove them as a threat to the Founding Titan. 

It’s a bleak endpoint for the series and the stakes have reached such a diabolical level that characters act as if their brains have overheated and nothing makes sense anymore. Jean is still in disbelief over the nature of Eren’s actions and it’s hard to tell if Armin is actually moved by Yelena’s impassioned speech regarding Zeke and Eren’s intentions or if he’s just lost it. Attack on Titan has reached a fascinating point where it’s hard to take anyone’s reactions at face value or consider if they’re part of a more intricate con, which is perhaps most prevalent in Gabi and Pieck’s encounter with Eren.

Read more

TV

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episodes 14 and 15 Review

By Daniel Kurland

TV

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 13 Review: Children of the Forest

By Daniel Kurland

This whole season has carefully juxtaposed the later stages of Eren’s journey with the first steps in Gabi’s adventure. Both characters are presented with many flaws, but it’s been a challenging process to put Attack on Titan’s previous baggage aside and attempt to accurately determine which of these characters is the lesser evil and “more right.” Gabi and Eren have extremely similar backgrounds, but these episodes have pitted them against each other and made a showdown feel inevitable. “Above and Below” creates a ton of tension when it forces Gabi into an unlikely alliance with Eren after he uses Falco’s life as collateral. These two reflections of the same image must work together and this becomes a more stressful exercise than if Eren and Gabi were locked in combat.

It’s also pretty perfect that during this pact Eren refers to Gabi as “the brat who killed Sasha.” Not only does this indicate that he might not even know Gabi’s name, but he so casually throws around Sasha’s death in a way that emphasizes just how hollow he’s become inside. Eren promises Gabi the safety of Falco if she works with him, but I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if Eren just pulled out a gun and shot Gabi and Falco in the head after he gets what he wants. 

It’s utterly crazy that in only a season’s worth of time it’s now very easy to picture Eren–the show’s protagonist–in this disaffected light. There have been frequent moments this season where Eren’s dark turn has reminded me of Walter White’s descent in Breaking Bad, but there’s a lot of overlap between the two of them as Eren presses his forehead against the barrel of Pieck’s gun and fearlessly taunts her to pull the trigger. This meek individual has turned into someone that’s now more frightening than the person with the loaded weapon.

Slices of Pieck’s backstory come forward during this hostage situation and it acts as another slick way to remind the audience that every player in this struggle is a real character with a life, family, and people that they care about. The enemies aren’t just mindless monsters anymore. Eren remains unphased, but his smug demeanor disappears when Pieck and company are the ones that pull off the surprise betrayal. Eren narrowly survives, but it shouldn’t be dismissed that these plucky kids nearly killed Eren and ended this whole thing. 

Despite how you feel about Gabi, Pieck, or the Marleyans, it’s hard to deny the brilliant nature of this plan. It also allows some cathartic momentary justice for Porco Galliard and his Jaw Titan, who Eren used to kill the Warhammer Titan, but also nearly killed himself and tried to gruesomely disfigure. It’s inspiring to see all of these Marleyan fighters spring together when nearly everything else is left in disarray. 

It’s impressive how focused Attack on Titan’s season finale is and there are major threads from the past few episodes that are left unresolved. I can’t imagine how someone that believed that this was the anime’s very final episode would feel around the halfway point when “Above and Below’s” leisurely pace is established and it’s clear that nothing is really getting resolved here. It’s a surprisingly subdued finale and it’s telling that the episode’s priority is to make the ideologies of the different sides of this war crystal clear. 

Major characters are shelved to the background and material that seems like it would have been the focus of this episode, like if Levi and Zeke are still alive, gets brushed aside. Even larger questions remain unresolved such as whether Falco is effected by the small amount of Zeke’s spinal fluid that he inadvertently ingests. This season teases the return of Annie as well as Historia’s pregnancy, but these exciting storylines now feel slightly hollow with no payoff. Some of these developments may have worked better if they were held off on entirely until the next batch of episodes. 

“Above and Below” makes a lot of decisions that a season finale shouldn’t do and in many ways it feels more like a regular episode that only tells a fraction of its story and is dependent on the episode that follows. With what’s covered in this finale it wouldn’t have been impossible to deliver a version of this episode where some of Reiner and Marley’s attack against Eren actually happens. “Above and Below” pointedly concludes just as chaos breaks out and it intentionally leaves the first strike of this war for the final final batch of episodes. What this speaks towards is how these sixteen “final” episodes really act as more of an extended prologue for what will really be the concluding installments of this incredible series. 

This bait and switch isn’t a problem, but there are likely many people that blindly went into this season with every expectation that it’s the ending, only to figure out the hard way that this isn’t the case. This could sour some viewing experiences, either for this finale or the season as a whole, especially since Part 2 isn’t coming out for practically an entire year. 

It’s not dissimilar to the understandable outrage that some people experienced towards Final Fantasy VII Remake when they learned that it’s part one of a series and doesn’t cover the full story. It wouldn’t have been difficult to add Part 1 to the new Final Fantasy game, but it’d be even easier to have added it to Attack on Titan: The Final Season. If anything, showing that this final season requires two sections to be fully covered would create greater anticipation for the epic story that’s being told. 

It’s a minor complaint against an exceptional season of television and one that will become irrelevant after all of the episodes are released. The structure of this season’s release doesn’t rob these episodes of their layered storytelling, stunning point of view work, and the emotional gut punch that’s accompanied the transformation of the series’ beloved characters.

“Above and Below” is an unusually direct installment and at one point Pieck asks Gabi, “Are we Marleyan? Or are we Eldian?” This question will be more important than ever as Attack on Titan heads into Part 2 of its Final Season, yet the audience already seems to understand that there is no difference between the two. These are all just people that want to have futures full of possibilities and families and friends that can thrive rather than live in fear. 

This may seem like a glib oversimplification to a very busy season of television, but the conflict has literally built to a point where the embrace of two brothers will cause catastrophic danger. Hugs and handshakes are now tools of destruction and the situation between Eren and Zeke becomes metonymic for all of humanity. Reconciliation is impossible and there’s an overpowering feeling that Attack on Titan can only end in complete annihilation.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The War for Paradis begins in Winter 2022!

The post Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 16 Review: Above and Below appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[gameridernews]

Ex-Aid review: Month 9 (Episodes 34-36)

Alright, time to once again dust off my review text file and talk about last month. I'm gonna try something less long-winded, talk about major plot points instead of doing one episode at a time.

At the end, I will also talk about predictions made a few months ago and make some predictions... for the rest of the show. Most of them technically relate to July episodes I haven’t seen yet. 

Last we left off, Hiro got played for a fool, or at least that's what I expect to be the outcome once I see July's episodes... Masamune Dan has promised him his girlfriend's life, in favor of his loyalty as a lackie who'll smack away any Riders that try to get in the way of Chronicle's success.

As a whole, this subplot is about as necessary as I suggested in the last show review - it makes sense, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't really help when our only exposure to Saki is a scene in which their relationship was at its worst. That's the only reason it doesn't really work for me - you have to sorta fill in the gaps to make it work. 

Meanwhile, the Bugsters are on the move with a Kamen Rider Chronicle Gashat of presumably morbid origin, injecting their Bugvisor with the data of Gemdeus in order to maybe have the slightest chance at being able to challenge Cronus... which I kinda wasn't expecting. 

Especially when Graphite INJECTS IT INTO HIMSELF. We see a followup later where he's clearly got some reaction to it, but I don't know what exactly this will lead to - I've remained pretty unspoiled on July's episodes, to my delight!

Graphite and Parad's plan to infect Cronus' ability to pause time ends up failing, because Masamune has hired a new big-chinned Rider to inhibit the virus' infection: Kamen Rider Lazer Turbo!

Okay, this is a bigger talking point... Kiriya is BACK! And it doesn't feel like he left since he appeared in three other things after death. At least this time, he's back for real and there's a story reason that makes sense within universe. I suspected weirdness when he was summoned from the Proto Bakusou Bike Gashat, but I guess they establish here that EVERYONE'S data is stored there somehow. Okay.

Lazer Turbo is a design I'm sure only works for a handfull of people. As someone who was honestly kind of bothered by how they weren't able to make regular Lazer compatible with the other armors, I am pretty happy to see them figure something out even if it could stand to have some more original parts. The use of Proto Shakariki Sports and Jet Combat are fun and provide some kind of show canon for how those armors work, and I guess it's fine to know that Proto Giri Giri Chambara just kinda summons the weapon - would want more, but an answer is fine even if it's not the one I want.

Kiriya's role this month was pretty fun. He initially seemed a bit flat, but once I recalled that Kiriya's character trait is LIES, I caught on. I'm glad that they framed his fight by the shore in such a way that says "We know you know, so we won't drag this out too much". It was kinda cleverly executed, in that regard. And the payoff was a lot of fun.

Okay so, there's one other major talking point for this month, which is Ex-Aid's final form Gashat, Hyper Muteki! But first I wanna get out some capsule thoughts on other things that happened... cause honestly I didn't have much to say.

Saki's repetition isn't nearly as creepy as Kuroto, so it's a lil more annoying. Wouldn't be surprised if Hiro went crazy during all this.

Parad's desire to rejoin Emu is an interesting subplot after Cronus completely shook the playing field. This has a wonderful followup once I get to the big talking point.

Masamune's plan is to kill more people so that the new treasure in the game is a bunch of innocent lives? That'll sale! Actually, wait, it is selling. Damn. What a world this is. I also like how convincing he is to Genm Corp despite everything that's happening.

Ride-Player civilians are beginning to get comical. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm just noticing they're becoming more of a background nuisance. Less about saving a life and more about preventing a child from putting a fork into a power outlet. I also like how they tried to give one of them a gut.

And the use of Hyper Muteki by Genm is pretty fun, displaying its ability to literally serve as a video game power-up with 10 seconds of invincibility. Which Genm wastes by expositing and laughing maniacally. It's so perfect, and reminds me why I love Genm as a chaotic good Rider.

Okay, let's speed this up and go into the true use of Hyper Muteki!

Muteki Gamer is Ex-Aid's final form. Speaking of, did you know the proper term for this is STRONGEST form? That's what the Japanese term translates to. But Decade gave us Final Form Ride, so I guess both can be accurate. Regardless, we all know what final form means in this kind of context - it's the big one.

Much like Cronus' Chronicle Gamer, there is no level attached to Muteki, all for the better - we've had a few series in which the final form makes reference to infinity (see Wizard and Ghost), and others that make reference to some kind of extreme (see W and Gaim), so Muteki basically just referring to video game invincibility is fun.

Also when it comes to the game, Hyper Muteki is apparently a "musou" game, which seems to mean a Dynasty Warriors style experience in which the player is invincible. Kuroto's basically made a game that best represents his genius, and is just letting Emu use it, I think. Hey, that’d be fun to see Genm make use of if they do a proper Genm spinoff. Just change the eyes and bam. 

Muteki Gamer's debut is exactly what it needed to be. We get a transformation that is interrupted midway, but continues despite Cronus' pause. Then he points out Ex-Aid only haS 10 seconds due to how Genm used it, only to be shocked that Ex-Aid has all the time in the world. Finally, when he unleashes a barrage of fast attacks against Cronus, it seems initially ineffective... then he pulls off a "You're already dead" and the attack kicks in after Ex-Aid unleashes it. I think they were going for the idea that his attacks were so fast the gear didn't even immediately register them, but regardless, it looked badass.

Final forms are fun to see in action, but I think this is the first time I've been this pumped to see a debut in a while - it really does handle it all in style!

With that, we end June's review... halfway into July. I gotta be more timely with these, because now we know for a fact that August will be Ex-Aid's final month. 

Also hey, it’s been 3 months since I did predictions! At that time, Kamen Rider Chronicle was just starting, and lots of crazy things have gone down since then. Let’s see what I guessed right. 

Kamen Rider Chronicle sure is chaotic (...) But I think that the effects of Chronicle are gonna be temporary, and all of the deaths resulting from it will be undone somehow (...) Ride-Players will probably all go away after that, meaning Niko’s chance to be a Rider will probably be short-lived.

Called it. We know now there is absolutely an undo button involved here, but I am surprised that Ride-Players have persisted this long - including Ride-Player Nico! 

Next up, Kamen Rider Chronos. I really still believe Kuroto’s dad is going to be him. Not Parado, not Graphite, just a man we keep seeing in prison. He’s got an intimidating visage to him I look forward to seeing in a Rider belt.

The man I was hoping for~ And he did not disappoint. 

We’re getting Poppy Pipopapo as Kamen Rider Poppy, and due to the nature of female Riders, people have low expectations for where she’ll go. Some think she might even die! But based on the blue-eyed version of her in the opening (as opposed to the red eyes on the physical suit we’ve seen in the preview), I suspect she’ll turn good and still get to fight as a Rider. At worst, she might get the Buggle Driver II taken away from her so that Chronos can use it.

Yeah I’m surprised the Buggle Driver II wasn’t taken away. Not because of what was stated about female Riders, but because they just... decided to introduce a second one. Still, nice to see I was wrong there. 

I think that Parado will be a major antagonist for the heroes now that he’s been boosted to Level 99, which is gonna be a close rival to Ex-Aid’s Maximum Gamer form. (...) But if there’s anything to take him down a peg, it’ll be Ex-Aid’s final form. Let’s just hope he gets in some character development/history before then.

I did get some kind of character out of him in last month’s episodes, what with him showing a fear of Cronus. But I did not expect Cornus to level the playing field and be the one that overpowers everyone - Parad lives... for now. 

But I’ve definitely seen spoilers for July. I know there’s an episode title that is literally referencing his departure. So maybe it’s too easy to predict that he’ll die, but I will add this: I think Parad will live on in some way. Maybe a little bit of him is still inside Emu, meaning he can still get some revenge on his killer. We’ll see. 

Oh, speaking of... something happens to Taiga in the next episode, I know. I haven’t payed enough attention to see if Taiga appears in episodes after, so I can only guess that perhaps he is in intensive care right now. I can’t imagine they killed him off, but I guess we’ll see. 

One thing I’ve not been spoiled on is Hiro’s situation with Saki. I think since the heroes now have the Proto Gashats, they’ll be able to convince Hiro well enough to return. That being said... Masamune giving him a new form with no strings attached? Suspicious. Maybe there’ll be some kind of mind control in place in the event Hiro turned on him. This man thinks ahead. It’s gonna take a heavy duty “What it means to be a doctor” speech to shake Hiro from this one. 

Some heavy stuff is gonna happen with Gemdeus, isn’t it? I betcha what’s gonna happen is, Graphite and Parad were successful in infecting Masamune’s belt with the virus of Gemdeus... which results in him becoming a Gemdeus with the unstoppable power of Cronus! That’s, like, twice unstoppable. Perfect for an endgame villain. 

Finally... the ending? Okay, so I kinda went over this when it came up that August would be Ex-Aid’s final month, but let me be more clear on what I expect from the ending. 

The summer movie, True Ending, definitely seems like it’s framing itself as the proper ending to the show’s story, even though it has various summer movie elements to it. I suspect it will be an ending that is perhaps bittersweet, sacrifices will be made, and there’ll be no real attempt at a continuation from there. Like, the movie will be a self-contained thing. 

As far as how that relates to the show’s ending... I think that the show will have your standard happy ending. Bugsters are gone, CR is disbanded, everyone goes back to their regular lives as doctors/non-doctors. All that needs to be kept in place is the ability to transform, or at the very least modify the gear so it isn’t required anymore. Basically, the show’s ending is more welcome to continuation and crossovers. As for which one is “canon”? I don’t think it matters. Whichever ending is to your liking, I guess. 

I am very interested to see how my predictions check out. Now, see you in a couple more weeks I guess, as we see where Hiro's princess-saving journey takes him.

[nevillelongsbottom]

you should write something with george and draco after the war and they bond over loss after not seeing one another for years❤❤

aaaaand this somehow ended up with george the private investigator but I TRIED

-

Draco hasn’t an inkling of what he’s signed himself up tountil the car comes rumbling up to the pavement besides Malfoy Manor; it’s abattered red BMW E30 that looks as if it had seen better days before it hadeven left the factory, and he swallows his crushed pride as he slams into thepassenger seat next to George, sucking a lollipop like there’s something coolabout it, like it’s a cigar and he’s living in the era of The Sopranos –though, Draco thinks with a vague hint of amusement, he hits the same mark ofcool as the novel rather than the series.

“Been a while, Malfoy,” George croons as he presses his footon the gas, the car rolling smoothly out and along the cobbled roads, rumblingunhealthily. “I’m hoping you read up on all the case files?”

“The fuck’s got you working as a PI, Weasley?” Draco asks,folding his arms, the folder of his case files strewn over his lap – of coursehe’s fucking read them; what’s Georgeexpecting, a level of expertise to match his own thick brother Ron? Draco isbetter than that – not enough so as to expect a better job than trailing peoplein ancient boxes that call themselves cars, but he’s better, and that’s clear,to be expected. “I was under the impression you were running a joke shop.”

“You were a fan of our products, or so I’ve heard,” Georgereplies, though he sounds ambivalent about the whole affair, which surprisesDraco – he appears to have mellowed out somewhat, despite the clear aesthetiche runs with, old car and lollipop and thick sunglasses like he’s in a B-movie.He feels vaguely like he ought to check that there’s not a gun in the car door.“Lee runs it on the off-season, so I can do this.”

“Let me repeat the question: why the hell are you wastingyour time with this, when you have a perfectly successful business enterprise?”Draco says, making sure to speak slowly, stressing word after word in caseGeorge doesn’t understand him this time – stupid, really, for a PI. He answersquestions like a politician, another Cornelius Fudge.

“Cause it’s fun,” George says with a shrug. Draco doesn’tbelieve him for a moment, but as he turns off and out of the collection ofstreets surrounding the Manor, George takes a turn in the conversation, too,and chasing it seems pointless. “So, we’re on the Finch-Fletchley case today –the plan is to speak to him, re-evaluate our position and, if he wants us to goforward, we’ll stakeout at Flourish and Blotts tomorrow and see what we cansee. Any objections?”

“Apart from working this job, no,” Draco says, leaning hishead back. George snorts, leaning forward and switching the radio on; The Hindu Times rocks the car, andbecomes the opening symphony for a new day.

-

Stakeouts are fucking exhausting,Draco finds: sitting up until late into the night in the company of aquip-happy jokester in his shitty, claustrophobic car is a surefire way to keephim cranky, despite George’s habit of sneaking in enough food for a family offive each time, and when George had offered the first time to let him just sleepover instead of taking the hours’ drive remaining, it had seemed perhaps theeasiest option.

George’s flat is above the shop, and still dressed for two:Draco can’t sleep in Fred’s bed, because that’s too disgusting, even for him,and so he takes the sofa, a comfy green affair with patchwork blankets and afortress of pillows. He thinks he might crash the minute his head touches thefabric, but instead, he can’t sleep at all: his eyelids are heavy, but hisbrain stubbornly remains active.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” George says, stirring sugar intoa cup of tea. “Could never sleep after Fred – not for weeks, anyway. I’d be sobloody tired I couldn’t stand up, but I couldn’t sleep if I tried.” He drinksin comedy mugs stained at the lip and his living room is lit with magic anddusty vintage lamps that remind Draco of the way they were always dressed inhand-me-downs; it’s warm, though, with real central heating that feels like anembrace if he weren’t so acutely aware he feels like he’s taking up a role thatcan never be replaced.

“All this and we still have no fucking clue what Greengrassis up to,” he groans, accepting the tea, still not quite sure he’s capable ofthanking a Weasley; George’s hands have the slightest tremor to them, he’snoticed, and part of him wants to clasp them still – the rest of him isperturbed that he could even think such a thought.

“The work can be slow,” George assures him, “but we’ll getthere. The payoff makes it worth it.”

“You never told me why you took up this kind of work,” Dracosays from across the steam of hot vapour. “It’s been two months. Don’t I atleast deserve that? You know why I’mhere.”

“Oh, yes, I do. You got so bored you decided that nebbing inon other peoples’ lives would be a good time-killer.” George leans on the backof the sofa; he smells of cinnamon rolls and aftershave and days spent in hisBMW thumbing their way through packets of Love Hearts while waiting forinevitably nothing to happen, the radio humming out the songs of the day whileGeorge laughs about something or other – his laugh is hearty, infectious. “Butfine. I will.” He tosses Draco a Hob Nob; it lands in his tea.

“Like everything in life, it’s Fred.” George shifts,uncomfortable, like a dozen invisible weights are pressing him all over hisbody with red-hot surfaces. “He always thought it’d be funny to start our ownprivate investigations company and run it like we were in a bad eighties filmor something – and, after he died, I felt listless, hopeless, directionless:the triad of misery and depression.” George’s jokes are lifeless, like all thesoul they might’ve once had left him with Fred; he stutters over the word‘died’, as though even admitting it to himself is still too hard. Draco wantsto tell him it’s okay; he knows that’s a lie. “So I started doing this. I’m theonly wizarding private investigations firm, so I get a lot of business, but doyou know what the worst fucking part of this is?” His shaking has amplified,and his teeth clench, hands white where they grip the back of the sofa. “Hewould’ve hated this. Sitting in cars doing nothing all day following aroundpeople who probably aren’t cheating on the behalf of their ridiculouslyparanoid spouse for no reward, just some money that isn’t worth the hours youkilled for it.”

“You said the reward was worth it,” Draco reminds himsoftly, the teacup suspended in the air as he turns; George is red with tearsthat steal across his cheeks like they’re running a hundred-meter sprint.

“I just said that because I could tell you were as bored asI was.” George shakes his head, wiping angrily at his eyes with the back of hishand. “What’s in this life, Draco? I’ve lost myself.”

“Flamel be damned, George; Fred’s in this life – don’t you go bloody shouting about what hewould’ve thought and not consider that you’re living for him, now. He never gotthis life that you have, so you better not fucking waste it, and if you reallyhate this job, give someone else the company and to do something else, becausenobody asked you to waste all your time.”Draco’s angry, too; he wants to hold George, to wipe his tears and soothe himand the idea makes him nauseous to the point of backlash. George’s eyes shinewith a feeling that’s ineffable, and because he alone knows the humiliatingtruth that Draco never passed his Apparition test, takes him home Side-Alongand vanishes again, leaving what feels like a black hole, a hush in theatmosphere.

George’s void smells of Capri-Sun and Fizzers.

-

The BMW is a friend, though a temperamental one: George isripping her apart in the rear, scratching his head in puzzlement as to whyshe’s given out on him, and Draco waits in the front with boots rested by thedashboard, his aviators tinting the world green. Six months into being a PI,and he thinks he might’ve grown to adore the job, the thrill of the chase, theexcitement of beginning to clinch someone in their own web – George might havebeen lying once, but if Draco can read him, he’s engrossed in the same rush.

George comes swinging back into the driver’s seat, and thecar seems to have recovered from her temper tantrum, running with just theslightest splutter. “So,” he says, squinting at the street signs as he tries tonavigate the labyrinth of estate to Bulstrode’s. “You really joined us causeyou were bored?”

“Sitting on your riches in bloody boring,” Draco snorts. “Idon’t know; I think, maybe I wanted to get away from having to deal with myselfas if it were a full-time job.”

“You’re surprisingly pleasant company, you know,” Georgeanswers, pulling up in front of a house that seems to radiate deprivation;Bulstrode’s ambition hasn’t taken her anywhere, he supposes.

“You’re not at the forefront of the self-targeted cynicism,”Draco points out; he can rip down walls with his scathing wit, the only problembeing that he isn’t immune to it, despite having flirted intimately with it foryears.

“And I’ve told you, you can talk to me about it, but younever do. I’ve survived a lifetime of an inferiority complex, you know.”

“Your suggestion of coming to you to feel pathetic as a pairis hardly reassuring.” He approaches the paint-peeling door, waiting for Georgeto flank him; they’re like the world’s shittest comedy double act. Eric and Ernie should be shaking in theirboots, Draco thinks nonchalantly, and though he’d like to make this quip toGeorge, he has a feeling that George has just thought the same thing.

-

It smells of lollipops and Tetley Extra Strong; Draco’seyelids flutter, and he allows himself the moment of nuzzling into George’sfuzzy chest. He remembers the night before, remembers the salty taste ofGeorge’s bittersweet tears on his tongue because he was so fucking sick ofwatching George fold into himself like origami. Far more importantly, really,he remembers the feel of George’s arms around him clinging to him as if fordear life and the way they had loosened over the night; if he can make adifference, then by Paracelsus, he’s going to take his chance. Fuck the war,and fuck the misery.

“Draco.” George has such a ditsy little grin and Draco catches it in his own.

Fuck misery; Draco hears a siren call, and it’s the sloganof the twenty-first century: choose life.

-

The first time he sleeps with George is at Malfoy Manor;they have the time to drive all the way back, and he invites George in just fora cup of tea, coffee, something. He’s always felt a swell of pride surroundingthe Manor – it’s aesthetically eloquent, Gothic, a masterpiece; and yet now hefeels like he’s presenting George with a shitty bedsit, because Malfoy Manordoesn’t feel like home – not to him, not to anyone.

“Are your parents not here?” George asks, helping the houseelves gather the coffee grinds, tea bags, and biscuits as Draco switches on thekettle in a routine like a waltz across the cold floors; George looks sonatural, as if he’s lived there for years, and Draco almost catches himselfwanting to sink into George’s back like a lover.

“They’re here and there between the country house in Franceand the Manor,” Draco replies, leaning against the countertop, pristine andwithout George’s habitual stainage. “I stay here. I decided not to run awayfrom people - it’s like an admission of guilt, to run.”

“What are you even guilty of?” George asks, stirring sugarinto a tiny whirlpool; Draco thinks that it possibly represents how he feelsbest of all. “Being scared? Everyone was scared, but you were scared and anarm’s length away from Voldemort. They can’t fucking blame you.”

Draco snorts; George senses he’s being patronised, save forthe fact that he’s become immune – he works retail and has been automaticallygranted his sainthood. “Oh, believe you me, George, they do.”

“I’ve half a mind to tell them to piss off, then,” Georgescoffs, but with rage, as if he’s a boiling kettle and it rumbles just beneaththe surface; he’s a façade, though if he lets it down, he might break andbelong in a scrapyard, or attain the obtainability of helium.

Draco can’t help himself anymore, because he’s been left solong the phrase to stand up for soundsmeaningless bouncing in his eardrum; he bunches his fists into the polyester ofGeorge’s spotted shirt, and their lips are colliding head-on at eighty milesper hour.

He’s never spoken to anyone after sex before; George playswith his hair, and resumes their conversation sprawled naked on Draco’s bed. Heresists the urge to laugh; he resists the urge to tell George his company isecstatically wonderful; he resists the urge to admit he’s fallen like Lucifer,head over heels.

-

“Ready?”

“Just a tic.”

Draco straightens his tie, runs a tongue over his perfecttop row of teeth, and slams the front door, relaxing into his passenger seat,head tipped backwards; from between his lips hangs a lollipop stick, his eyesadorned with shades; their speaker blasts eye-rollingly modern rap as they rollalong the streets, windows rolled down.

Fuck, thinksDraco, watching the stunned onlookers whip by in a haze neither he nor themwill remember in the hours that follow, clacking the ball of sugar andartificial flavouring between his teeth. He loves this job.

He glances to his left; too, he loves George, who’s like afucking fallacy – but he laughs like a sunny day and holds Draco like he’sworth all the galleons in the world, and he’s somehow glad that he’s here, in afucking BMW E30 like the biggest tosspot a B-movie has ever seen.

[delayedcritique]

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES REVIEW

“Definitely the best entry in the already critically acclaimed series”

BY COLLIN DE LADE

              War for the Planet of the Apes is the third entry in the new series of Planet of the Apes movies centering on Caesar, played by Andy Serkis, as he continues to protect his followers of apes from getting caught up with the dangerous humans. A new army of human lead by the Colonel, played by Woody Harrelson, attempts to eliminate all the apes before they get the change to take over the world from mankind. Apes are forced to fight against the humans, as only one can make it out as the dominant species. The previous movies in the new series, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes both were very well received movies, but War for the Planet of the Apes is absolutely the best entry in the series to date!

              One of the more obvious improvements over the last two films are the special effects. Each one of the new Planet of the Apes movie shows off the amazing motion capture and realistic effects of the apes. With this being the third entry in the new series, the filmmakers have perfected the special effects and made every moment with the apes look as realistic as possible. The last two entries had a handful of moments that felt like it needed another round of rendering. In the newest one, I never had one of those moments where I questioned the effects. There’s so much detail on making the fur and the subtle face motions look photo realistic with every single shot of the movie. The effects team on this movie are some of the best in the business. Along with the special effects being top notch, the performances are also amazing.

              If any movie proves that this man deserves an Oscar, it’s this one that Andy Serkis should be considered for the award. Just as the effects team adds so many minor details into making the characters, Andy Serkis completely transforms into Caesar when he is performing. I never saw Andy Serkis trying to act as an ape; I saw Caesar protecting his people from the evil humans. Along with Serkis are Karin Konoval as Maurice and Steve Zahn as the new character, Bad Ape. All their performances are very subtle and might not appear that special at first, but considering how much each one of them sucks you in to believing that their ape character exists, it’s quite impressive. I give a lot of props to all of the actors playing apes for bringing these ape characters to life. As for the human characters, this movie has limited the number of leading characters from the previous movies; with Woody Harrelson being the only main one. Woody Harrelson is barely in the first half of the movie, but when he comes on screen, he nails every scene he’s in. I love how the leading human character is not a hero like in the last two movies. Even more, than in the last two, the entire focus is on Caesar and the other ape characters, without any jumps to cover the human side away from the apes.

              With these impressive effects and performances, there needs to be an engaging story; and War for the Planet of the Apes shines when it comes to its plotline. Without giving a lot away, the tone shifts from an adventure to confront the humans to a very emotional second act that earns everything that it goes towards. As much as I loved the first half of the film, it’s the second part that really kicks in with the heartwarming and heartbreaking moments. As much as you can compare the tone of the second half to something else similar in the series, the filmmakers add so much more to it that makes it something you have never seen before in the series. Getting so attached to these characters throughout the three newest movies makes for a great payoff when it gets to the climax. The only complaint that I have with the story is how you shouldn’t walk in expecting a war movie, as the “war” aspect is very limited when it comes to humans vs. apes.

              I absolutely fell in love with War for the Planet of the Apes. I couldn’t find a single flaw I had with it for the majority of it. However, the last two minutes completely took me out of what was supposed to be an emotional scene. The actual events and what happens in the last two minutes are not the problem, as it fits in well with everything else. What bothers me is how the amazing writing and excellent performances are gone in the last few minutes of the movie. What should have been an amazing payoff to a great series of movies ends on an over the top and silly moment. In a series known for its subtlety, the filmmakers forgot that less is more when it comes to emotional scenes. It doesn’t ruin the movie in the slightest for me, but it does give one major flaw to the nearly perfect movie.

              I was prepared to give this a 10/10 rating. Even with recently giving Spider-Man: Homecoming the perfect rating, I found War for the Planet of the Apes to be the better-made film. From the effects to the performances of the story; I loved almost everything about the movie. The last few moments really brought the nearly perfect movie down a bit. I am shocked by how the ending was treated with these filmmakers that proved that they can deliver on emotions. The ending is as subtle and emotional as Jim Carrey’s performance in The Mask. Even with my complaints with the end, this is an absolutely amazing movie that demands to be seen on the big screen. You will be doing yourself a disservice by not seeing it in theaters. This is an absolute must see, and I highly recommend you see Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes beforehand to properly get the most out of the outstanding story of War for the Planet of the Apes.

9.5/10

[theinquisitivej]

SteamHeart Thoughts & Reactions: Ep.10 – Return of the Hunter, and Ep.11 – Armor

Going through ‘SteamHeart’ on a week-by-week basis has made me engage with the story differently to how I’m used to. Up to this point, I’ve been going through the ‘New Century’ stories after they were finished, when they were available in their entirety. ‘The Princess Thieves’ was the exception, but I started that when roughly two thirds of the episodes had been released. Having everything available so that you can go through it at whatever pace you like is rewarding, in the same way as a book can be read gently over a month, or over an intense couple of days. But going through it episodically as they are released week-by-week also has its benefits. For example, the anticipation as you wait for certain dramatic encounters or character interactions makes the payoff all the greater, as we saw with the last three episodes that gave us some of that juicy chemistry we were waiting for. It also encourages you to pay attention to the finer details of a scene. Looking at a small segment of a larger story which an editor has decided is a complete section and a micro-narrative in and of itself allows us to digest the words, the order of events, and the individual atmospheric touches in a way that gets lost when the story is delivered in its whole with less emphasis on the breaks between chapters.

         This time we have two episodes – ‘Return of the Hunter’, and ‘Armor’. Episodes 2-6 were a continuous sting of James and Abigail episodes, and the last three chapters formed a three part account of these two arriving at Washington, and subsequently meeting the rest of the key players who have been introduced up to this point. This time, we have an episode duo that alternates between reintroducing us to the main characters of ‘Tiger’s Eye’, and returning to Washington to check in on Team Steam’s preparations for the journey. I was expecting Ep.11 to continue following Hrao and Miguel in the same way we stayed with James and Abigail for a few episodes. I’m glad this didn’t happen however, because the story benefits by going in this other direction. We’ve become invested in Team Steam and don’t want to spend too much time away from them because we are excited to see them set off. However, Hrao and Miguel are very special characters for a lot of listeners, and I am especially interested to see how their unique experiences in another world will impact the rest of the cast. Our interests draw us in two different directions, so this order of events allows us to keep tabs on each one without spending too much time away from the other.

         In retrospect, spending a bit of time at the beginning on James and Abigail’s early years was a good call. It not only gave us character development in a gentler setting at the start of the narrative for us to ramp up from, but also allows the story to flip between these two plot threads now. We’re firmly caught up to speed on the backstory and context of the characters thus-far, as well as where they are now, and where they plan to go. We’re ready for new information, and dropping a fantastical bomb-shell of a young boy who has travelled to another world and shares a bond with a humongous anthropomorphic purple tiger captures our interest, but doesn’t derail the main plot or confuse matters by throwing this at us when we’re still processing everything else. Alternating between these two threads is a promise that, just like how the different characters have come together to form the crew of the SteamHeart, these two storylines will become interwoven before too long.

         Anyway, that’s enough talk about the ordering of events and episodes – let’s talk specifics about each one, and react to some new story!

Ep.10 – Return of the Hunter

This will always sound like hyperbole when coming from a fan, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that seeing what happens next for Hrao and Miguel is one of the most anticipated events for long-time fans of ‘New Century’. ‘Tiger’s Eye’ had one of my favourite endings in any story. If the rest of that book wasn’t enough to sell you on ‘New Century’ and its emphasis on emotional storytelling, then that ending ensures you’re in for the long haul. These thoughts & reactions posts of mine inherently contain spoilers, but if you haven’t checked out ‘Tiger’s Eye’ and have even the slightest interest in it, do so right away, because it’s one of the best places to jump into ‘New Century’.

         However, if ‘SteamHeart’ is your first venture into ‘New Century’, then this episode makes sure you’re well covered. Miguel’s narration covers the important points of both his and Hrao’s background, and carries across the deep connection that the two share. I also appreciate how the narration goes over what happened in ‘Tiger’s Eye’ in a sweeping way that makes the entire experience seem almost dreamlike, which evokes the tone of the book rather well. Once this recap is done, we are shown the immediate aftermath of Hrao and Miguel’s leap through the portal. As the dust settles and they take in their surroundings, we see that, despite Hrao deciding to follow where her heart was drawing her, she is still exhibiting the same calculating survivalist mindset that made her question her instinctive reactions when she saved Miguel from the river so long ago. We may not hear her internal thoughts, but her growls and Miguel’s insight make it clear that she is still taking in the magnitude of her decision. When Miguel points towards the portal and she shows that she is determined to stay, all the bittersweet emotions we felt for their relationship in ‘Tiger’s Eye’ come flooding back.

         The rest of the episode is slow, and very little happens, but that’s exactly what was needed. We need a moment for the characters to get their bearings and for Miguel to process what he is feeling after coming home after all this time. Meanwhile, those who are new to these characters will benefit from being introduced to these characters in a calm setting, where they can take in who and what they are, as well as how they communication, and the intimacy that comes with that. The little cat figurine that Miguel shows to Hrao is another instance of artefacts having a deeper significance to these two. It’s also a small moment of levity to assure newcomers that, like every other character in ‘New Century’, these two are capable of joy and humour, and are not just grim, serious individuals to offset the others.

         As the music from ‘Tiger’s Eye’ plays, and Miguel sets off with Hrao to return to what he once called his home, we too feel like we have returned to a familiar and comforting setting. We are back with these characters, and they have brought their own iconic touch with them to ‘SteamHeart’.

And it’s awesome.

Ep.11 – Armor

It was cool to hear Toshiro Yagyu’s voice again as our characters talk shop and decide what armor best suits James and Abigail. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, in an ideal world, Alex would have wanted this character to have been voiced by the late and great Mako. Hearing a vocal performance so reverent to Mako’s distinct voice and rich, charismatic mannerisms is a lovely way of carrying on his memory and creating a legacy of characters inspired by his work.

         As we are shown the V3 Scorpion Armor (I have to wonder if at least some influence for the armor’s design was drawn from the various ninjas of the ‘Mortal Kombat’ series), the significance this armor represents, as well as armor in general, is raised. Thomas Arlington’s presence leads to some interesting points of contrast when he remarks at Abigail and James both turning down the armor’s full protection for the sake of their own comfort.

         Thomas has always deliberately tried to be a guarded man, both physically and emotionally. He takes combat lessons, wears bulletproof armor that even throws his attackers off by being disguised as regular clothes, and strives to never show vulnerability to anyone he doesn’t know and trust. He would naturally be critical of any decision to sacrifice security for the sake of what he would deem to be trivial personal preferences. However, in James and Abigail’s case I believe it has less to do with security and more to do with wearing armor that enables them to be who they are without compromising their strengths. For James and Abigail, armor should ideally augment the one wearing it, rather than stifle them. For Arlington, armor is about blocking the outside world from ever touching the person wearing it, even if the person is completely hidden underneath as a result.

         This aspect of his personality comes across in a much darker light when we move into the episode’s last segment, and he reveals his contingency plan for preserving James and Abigail’s gift in the event of either individual becoming compromised. The cold assurance with which he commands Annie and Frank to dispatch their friends if it becomes necessary for them to do so is unsettling, but what troubles me even more is that he isn’t being malicious or unreasonable. Arlington is absolutely right to plan for every event, and he should make sure that a gift which could save countless human lives is not lost just because of the actions of one or two individuals. His statement that James and Abigail’s abilities may not necessarily be unique to them and does not make them special is a reminder that these characters have a duty to something far more important than any one of them. I suspect it is also partly a declaration by the author that these two are not safeguarded chosen ones whose fate is secured by some lofty pre-selected destiny. James and Abigail are not automatically special because someone handed them the secret recipe for greatness on a plate. However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t go on to do great things by showing courage and being active agents who make their own destiny and do the best they can with what has been provided to them.

         Still, while Thomas is speaking a lot of sense, this contingency is a troubling indication of the dark road he may be walking down in his quest to maintain controlled security over all matters. Armor can save lives, but it can also suffocate the humanity of the person cocooned inside it.

I can only hope that Thomas doesn’t lose himself, should he ever don the V3 armor…

[oscopelabs]

‘The Counselor’: No Movie for Most Men (or Women) by Mike D’Angelo

[This month, Musings pays homage to Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, a review anthology from the National Society of Film Critics that championed studio orphans from the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the days before the Internet, young cinephiles like myself relied on reference books and anthologies to lead us to film we might not have discovered otherwise. Released in 1990, Produced and Abandoned was a foundational piece of work, introducing me to such wonders as Cutter’s Way, Lost in America, High Tide, Choose Me, Housekeeping, and Fat City. (You can find the full list of entries here.) Over the next four weeks, Musings will offer its own selection of tarnished gems, in the hope they’ll get a second look. Or, more likely, a first. —Scott Tobias, editor.]

Most people prefer movies to be affirming, in some way. Life-affirming, love-affirming, norm-affirming—just so long as something we believe (or want to believe) gets reinforced, everybody’s happy. Declining to satisfy that desire is step one en route to making an art film, or what publicists who are nervous about the word “art” like to call a specialty release. These, too, cater to viewers’ preconceived notions about the world (good luck finding something that doesn’t), but they target notions that are less commonly held, which makes them less commercially viable. Deriving enjoyment from genuinely despairing or pessimistic movies is a taste that must be acquired, and only a small subset of the population has the time or the inclination. These are the folks who’ll go see a Moonlight, say, or a Manchester By The Sea. They’re game.

It’s possible to alienate these adventurous, open-minded viewers, too, though, by making a movie that’s not just challenging or upsetting, but flat-out nihilistic. A movie that assumes the worst about human nature, with few (if any) mollifying grace notes. A movie that, at least to some extent, glorifies venality and ugliness. “Alienate” is too mild a word for the common reaction, actually. They will be pissed off.

Such was the reception that greeted The Counselor back in 2013. Expectations for the film were sky high: It features a superb cast (Michael Fassbender, Pénélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, and Brad Pitt); was directed by Ridley Scott (a decidedly erratic talent, but still capable of greatness); and, most exciting of all, boasts a screenplay from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s books had been adapted several times—most notably by the Coen Brothers, whose version of No Country for Old Men won multiple Oscars—but he’d never before written an original story expressly for the big screen. Had The Counselor been made available intravenously, many would have mainlined it without hesitation.

Cue the adrenaline-shot scene from Pulp Fiction. Not all of the Counselor reviews were negative, by any means, but the critics who hated it really, really hated it. “Meet the Worst Movie Ever Made” ran the headline on Andrew O’Hehir’s savage takedown at Salon, and that wasn’t some editor’s hype; in the actual piece, O’Hehir expands his assessment to “the worst movie in the history of the universe,” thereby dismissing the possibility that alien life forms in faraway galaxies may possibly have committed an even greater sin against cinema. Other reviews in major publications deemed the film “lethally pretentious,” “a jaw-dropping misfire,” and “unforgivably phony, talky and dull.” (Characters do indeed talky on the phony sometimes.) Audiences were similarly repulsed: The Counselor got a dismal D in Cinemascore’s survey, which generally skews so positive that you can currently find an A- assigned to the likes of Assassin's Creed (Metacritic score: 36/100) and Collateral Beauty (Metacritic score: 23/100). It’s not a popular title.

Here are a few reasons why many people seem to hate it:

The narrative is ludicrously convoluted.

All of the characters speak primarily in lengthy philosophical monologues.

It’s just a catalogue of horrible things happening to people who mostly deserve them.

Cameron Diaz fucks a car.

We’ll come back to that last one. Let’s start at the beginning, with the basic story McCarthy wants to tell. The Counselor is about a drug deal that goes horrifically wrong, mostly because the title character (played by Fassbender; we never learn the guy’s name), who’s never done this before and just wants to make some quick cash, has not the slightest clue what he’s doing. That’s essentially all you need to know, as far as making sense of events is concerned. McCarthy lays out some essential details—how the drugs are transported, and by whom, and who’s looking for a way to intercept the shipment—but only in the service of making it clear that what befalls the counselor is to some degree just very bad luck. What matters is that he was completely unprepared for the possibility that some random misfortune could cost multiple people their lives. Indeed, even the characters, like Brad Pitt’s Westray, who consider themselves prepared, and keep warning the counselor that he’s unprepared, are not themselves really prepared.

Think for a moment about Jurassic Park. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t much matter exactly why the dinosaurs get loose—that Wayne Knight’s programmer was planning to steal embryos, and that he got killed by a dinosaur in the attempt, and that his death left the fences unelectrified, and etc. It could just as easily have been some other series of seemingly random deviations from expected outcomes. (Indeed, Ian Malcolm, the chaos theory-obsessed mathematician played by Jeff Goldblum, would argue that it surely would have been.) Jurassic Park is a simple tale of hubris: Various smart people foolishly imagine that they can control the uncontrollable, but something utterly unforeseen occurs, and all hell breaks loose. Nobody complains that the chain of events leading to disaster is overly complicated, because it’s all just a means of providing the exciting sequences of people being menaced by dinosaurs that we want to see.

The Counselor is basically the same movie, aimed at a different sensibility—one that doesn’t necessarily require some of the threatened characters to be sympathetic, and that appreciates a more detached approach to carnage. About halfway through the movie, a man about whom we know nothing shows up at a motorcycle dealership, waves off the salesperson, and proceeds to measure the height of a particular bike. For those on the right wavelength, curiosity about this anonymous character’s purpose is its own reward, and the gruesome payoff constitutes just as much “fun” as does watching a dude cowering on a toilet get chomped by a Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s not even wholly clear to me why the latter is almost universally perceived as entertainment, while the former got widely dismissed as empty grotesquerie. Both involve a benignly sadistic voyeurism that’s always been at the core of the moviegoing experience.

Granted, The Counselor’s nihilism might be less off-putting to many if the characters didn’t keep openly discussing it, often in speeches that occupy several minutes of screen time. (And that’s after they've been trimmed—the unrated extended cut of the film, available on the Blu-ray release, runs an extra 21 minutes, with most of that consisting of additional monologue.) This is a natural reaction, as most screenwriters would hesitate to include even one such blatant exegesis in a screenplay, much less a baker’s dozen of ‘em. There’s something strangely liberating, though, about seeing this dramaturgical rule violated with such gleeful excess. Almost every character in The Counselor, including those who drop in for just a scene or two, is ludicrously verbose, prone to bloviating. The first couple of times, it’s a weird distraction; by the end, it’s become an even weirder form of gallows humor. How many different ways can this movie’s pitiless thesis be openly analyzed by the very people who are doomed to be spared its pity?

If McCarthy were Joe Eszterhas, sure, it’d be a problem. But the speeches are beautifully written and performed, and the ordinary give-and-take dialogue is even better. There are admittedly some howlers, like Malkina, the femme fatale, being asked if she’s really that cold (emotionally) and replying “Truth has no temperature.” (Though even that line might have worked with a different actor; I'll get to Diaz shortly.) The stuff that makes me cringe is handily outweighed, however, by the stuff that makes me chortle.

“Is this place secure?” “Who knows? I don’t speak in arraignable phrases anywhere.”

“I want to give her a diamond so big she’ll be afraid to wear it.” “She’s probably more courageous than you imagine.”

“Cheers.” “A plague of pustulent boils upon all their scurvid asses.” “Is that your normal toast?” “Increasingly.”

As far as I can determine, McCarthy invented the adjective “scurvid,” but it sounds suitably noxious. In any case, the notion that a movie chock-full of pungent exchanges like these offers nothing of value is absurd. Certainly the actors relish them. Pitt, who’s usually at his best when he goes over the top (Twelve Monkeys, Burn After Reading), finds just the right degree of languid sangfroid for his cautious middleman, and Bardem turns in a performance as amusingly eccentric as the wardrobe his character sports. The one weak link is Diaz, for whom Malkina’s predatory nature proves just too much of a stretch. (It doesn’t help that she reportedly performed the role with a Bajan accent, then was asked to overdub it.) The infamous scene in which Malkina intimidates Bardem’s Reiner by rubbing herself against the windshield of his Ferrari was always meant to be ludicrous—although McCarthy’s screenplay conceived it entirely as a story that Reiner tells the counselor, not something that we’re meant to actually see. With Diaz visibly straining to look depraved, it comes across even sillier than was intended; imagine Charlize Theron in her place, and see if it doesn’t suddenly shift into focus, along with the rest of Malkina’s presence in the movie.

Even with these undeniable flaws, McCarthy’s offbeat vision for the movie survives mostly intact. Scott wisely stays out of his way, choosing to serve the text, though he declines to indulge some of the screenplay’s most experimental ideas. The opening scene, for example, depicting the counselor and his girlfriend (Cruz) in bed, begins with the two of them hidden entirely beneath white sheets, suggesting two corpses. As scripted, they were supposed to remain hidden from view the entire time, for what was originally going to be six or seven minutes. What’s more, McCarthy specifies that all their dialogue should be subtitled, despite being spoken in English, as it’ll be too muffled to hear. (Said dialogue is also considerably more blue in its original form.) The decision to shoot the scene more conventionally seems perfectly defensible, but I do wonder whether the more extreme version McCarthy intended might have at least helped to signal that The Counselor doesn’t operate like a traditional thriller. Its subsequent discursiveness and single-mindedness wouldn’t have seemed so thoroughly out of character.

Ultimately, what made this film an object of ridicule—see also everything from Ishtar to Drive—is the enormous gap between the size of the audience it courted and the size of the audience predisposed to appreciate it. Not many people would salivate at a description like “what you might get if you gene-spliced a slow-motion multi-car accident with a freshman comparative philosophy seminar.” (That’s not from a negative review—it's my own best précis.) But not every movie needs to appeal to every taste. And a movie that makes a lot of folks mad is always more interesting than a movie that makes everyone shrug.