#they could be lying about the VA thing i guess but that's such a bizarre and easily falsifiable claim to make

[sexhaver]

lmfao it turns out Firmament used AI tools to modulate human voiceovers and muss up some textures and now kickstarter backers are malding and asking for their money back. and news outlets are treating those requests like they aren't ridiculous

[blookmallow]

alright here we go its trial time babey 

----

WHY DO YOU HAVE BLOOD 

why is an autopsy cruel.... its essentially a medical examination. she’s a nurse. she’s the most qualified to do this 

i fuckign love gundam so MUCH

i still love this. party boy hinata 

GOSH I WONDER!!! WHO COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING LIKE THAT!!!!! WHO WAS IN THIS BUILDING ALL DAY. ALONE. AND COULD HAVE POSSIBLY DONE THIS. I JUST HAVE NO IDEA

oh

i cannot BELIEVE hinata doesn’t see a problem with komaeda’s “ugh, HAJIME, it’s JUST a blood stain, it’s probably not even IMPORTANT just LEAVE IT” attitude here 

i love how needlessly fucking weird everything in this game is

I FORGOT ABOUT MONOMI JUST. HANGING THERE 

theres this new thing where your bullets become Swords and you have to Strike Down The Opponent’s Argument and its so dramatic and chaotic im laughing

i think im starting to get it but im not sure im a fan 

i fuckign hate teruteru what are you even TALKING ABOUT 

right around here i realized the reason komaeda’s voice was throwing me off so much, its the same voice actor as naegi. and i looked it up, they’re the same in the japanese version too so its probably intentional, but i either never realized this before or forgot about it 

and hearing this in japanese before like... you get the tone but not the actual Words if you don’t speak japanese, the translated text is there but. something about hearing the words (that I can understand, I only know a lil tiny bit of japanese) being spoken in Almost Naegi’s Voice But Wrong is fucking me up SO much

which is probably the effect it had on japanese speakers hearing it in japanese originally. the english VA is doing a really good job of reading these lines as fucking unsettling....ly as possible and i hate it so much. he talks so... slowly, like he’s drawing out and savoring every word, so it takes as long as fucking possible to get through his lines and it just gets increasingly more and more uncomfortable. it sounds like fuckign. mastermind AU naegi or something. its..... it sure is something 

GOD FUCKING FUCK

real talk why did they feel it was necessary to replay this audio sequence like 87 times 

oh god they made hangman’s gambit SO MUCH WORSE FUCK THIS 

jfkdsgh why does teruteru point this out this is DIRECTLY PLACING YOU AS THE MOST LIKELY SUSPECT 

oh my god shut the FUCK U P 

i love making my poor protagonists say stupid shit “WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS” “IT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN...... ME!!!!!!” “wait. no” 

also what the fuck happened with teruteru’s accent here i think they were going for like. “he’s actually a country bumpkin after all” but it’s this ridiculously exaggerated fake ass cajun accent, while later on when we get the flashback with his mom she sounds just normal southern, so like.....  What Even

it sounds SO BAD and its bizarre to me because like. i was also gonna comment on how good his voice sounds ordinarily his voice actor does a really good job and its like. this clash of “wow i love this voice and i hate this character so much” but then it gets to the accent slip and its just a MESS 

i mean i guess its supposed to be funny but it sounds less like “holy shit he was doing a fake voice the whole time” and more like “he’s just absolutely losing his mind” 

like in dr1 celestia’s voice sounded Off the whole time and then when she slips you can tell it’s her real/natural voice at the end and its like “OH. THATS WHY”

and it doesnt help that it. took me a while to realize he was doing a cajun accent in the first place i thought for a second it was like...... a really racist “”black guy voice”” or something 

anyway its REAL BAD 

i forgot “teruteru Could Not Have Been There because hes a nasty pervert and would ABSOLUTELY have remembered this” ended up being his downfall LMAO

how does tsumiki even keep landing like that. is she doing it on purpose

i mean considering this exact same thing happened before when he Was there to witness it would it really have been that hard to just bluff it like “mm yeah of course i remember B)” 

then again i guess its possible they could’ve been leading him into a trap and expecting him to say that and then they could’ve been like “gotcha she just fell like a normal person this time” 

[jjbablocklistcallouts]

The Blocklist: A essay (this is very long)

I know everyones sick of it at this point but I got shit to say so feel free to not read this absolute unit of a poorly written essay. The jjbablocklist divided their list into two different list now. One for creators and one for consumers/rebloggers and I cannot stress enough about how dumb that is since it shouldve been done since the beggining. Also, following alot of these artist and “consumers” of these medias, I noticed some of them are falsely accused, others while being minors. here’s why:

1. A lot of teens and young adults in the community like ships like GioMis, FuMis, NaraGio, MisTrish and plenty more and I know your singular shared braincell cannot handle the idea of 2-3 year age gaps not being pedophilia, but uh, newsflash for ya, THEY AINT. Legally, it is not a crime and that in america where the age of consent is 18, not in Italy where its 15 and not in Japan where its even less. Under the general United States Law, which is where I assume the list makers/defenders are mostly from, these ships are not classified as pedophilia or should be problematic and the ages of consent change to lower ages depending on state. The only way you can add these shippers for their “crimes” is if they promoted or created the interactions of these characters in a sexual or intimate manner whether they are aged up or not, which is still wack if their age is above that of the age of consent in writing/art and the fact that minors, in this case teenagers with the VA cast, are allowed to express themselves with people of their own age group in a sexual manner, real life kids do it all the time amongst themselves so why shouldnt people be able to create it, the whole ordeal is ridiculous imo BUT I can see how it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, a lot of it makes me uncomfortable too so we gotta make compromises somehow so absolutely no lewding the mafia lolis/ jojo lolis in general and if you do, tag it properly so it doesnt spread onto the basic hastags of characters and the show. If you dont you on the list.

2. Claim genderswapping/r63 is transphobic all you want but until I see clear and definitive proof of it being purposely made for that purpose then it’s absolutely ok. If someone makes it to offend someone then its wrong and they should be called out for it (which has never been the case in this fanbase as far as I cant tell) It’s creative, it allows people create new desings for characters or adjust current ones for cosplayers or other artist. Im sure one of your mods can relate, since the do the exact same thing as we do while not addressing a certaint character properly by their canon pronouns. Genderbending does not promote the attack or harrasement of the trans community and that is a fact unless its done by actual problematic artist like Sh*dbase and others, which is still a stretch because I dont think they’ve done it to target people or make fun of them but they are the popular problem icons. So get the actual transphobes on the list, aka those who created the content specifically to harras a specific person, or remove the catergory entirely. Its unnecessary and hypocritical.

— The rest of these are just things that bother a lot of people in the community so if you only cared about minors being on the list then you dont have to continue reading. —

Tumblr is infamously known to be a shitshow of a site where all you can find is problematic content. If you dont like this kind of content, why the hell are you here in the first place? There’s a lot of safer websites to use where like instagram, twitter, amino, facebook, and more. They have actual filters unlike tumblr and finding content you dont like is a lot harder unless you are purposefully looking for it, and even then it could be a challenge due to shadow bans or privatized accounts. Tumblr has none of that, everyone knows it, all of those who dont like it try to stay away from it or use it very scarcely. Why do you think that most of these “problematic” artist/creators/consumers are here? Tumblr has always been its own weird realm, trying to make it anything else goes against what it stand for.

You’re crimes make are literal nonsense sometimes because you include such obvious personal attacks like “Made a literal essay defending GioMis” and “All kinds of awful stuff” as crimes. You added a few account because they message you about how ridiculous the whole ordeal is and you take to findind the slightest bit of “evidence” that can aid you into making them look bad. You know thats not a good reason right?? Even if it were, yall are even more guilty for committing acts of Liable and Defamation and you are choosing to for those you incorrectly put on the list, invluding the minors! Let alone hypocrisy but yall are tired of hearing that one.

Dont add other fandoms into this mess. The Hetalia fandom has been dead for more than 5 years and it aint none of your buisness. It has nothing to do with Jojo. Unless you plan on making more blocklist for ALL fandoms then, goodluck, though make em better.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a wonderful and yet problematic series, guess who’s fault it is... its Araki’s. Created a hilarious nazi character, nah its the fanbases fault for roleplaying such a funny character. Pedophilia and rape represented in Jojo and not treated seriously, nah its the fandoms fault for romanticizing it. Homophobia as character traits and degradation of women in Jojo, pfft nah f a n d o m s f a u l t for painting such “false” representations of the characters. Ah, but yall wont drop Jojo cuz that kid your trying to control media for wont drop it either. It is not your responsibility to create a childproof community when the show already has heavy themes. Its their caretakers/parents or the childs own responsibility.

I despise the argument “well Jojo is a 17+ only show so no kids allowed!” you might be right, but has that really ever stopped kids from doing anything?? It does the opposite, it creates a sense of overwhelming curiosity which leads to venturing unkown territory which they may or may not end up enjoying. The problem lies wether young teens are mature enough to watch it or not and judging by this whole fiasco, alot of the people, teens and adults, involved are not.

YOU ARE NOT JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER AND YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO POLICE A MEDIA YOU DO NOT OWN OR TAKE RESPONSIBILITY INTO DOING IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE

I will give you this guys this, theres a few artist and creators that do belong there, very few as far as I could see and read into and some are missing since they are mostly on twitter instead of tumblr. But hey, I managed to find like 12 accounts that I probably wouldn’t like seeing the content of, and I found a lot of good accounts too. A hell of a lot more.

I know Im harsh and a total loser but y’all really gotta do some damage control and think ahead. Merely ignoring the fact that your movement cause a floodwave of hatred, deaththreats and suicide baiting is disgusting, adress it properly, dont condone it. Cuz Im yall wouldnt like 200+ messages of “Kill yourself you of lowlife degenerate. I dont like your the disgusting trash you like so I hope you rot in hell for the rest of your life” It isnt fun, a lot of people have received these, some are even worse and a lot dont even deserve it.

Run the list correctly, its a good idea, it could’ve been handled way better than this and you guys know it. This would’ve been great for 14 year old me not stumbling onto a lot of problematic ships when I first looked up Jojo and it can help many children in the community in the future, but you are ruiling out a majority of the fanbase with such vague and pointless rules as regular shipping and creative freedom. You are demonizing people who like basic shipping and different character desings, and that’ll scare them because they dont want tobe hated for something they like. Because a few biased opinions decided to rule out that what the kids liked is morally wrong and irredeemable. Cuz thats all I can see on the list with the exception of maybe a 12 people on the list. Thats all the rest of the JJBA community sees.

[cryoflyte]

WE WERE WARNED

I was going to tweet this but it turns out Twitter only lets you thread up to 25 tweets in a draft. That’s insufficient. So fuck it, I’ll do it here. I’ve been ranting about this since season 1 (back when it looked like just a tiny blip on an otherwise great show, rather than our first warning sign that these people might have no fucking clue what they’re doing), it’s actually managed to get worse since then, I’m not over it, I’m not getting over it. 

Gather round, dear Voltron Twitterati (or tumblrati or whatever y’all are called around here). Let Cryo the Salt Phoenix regale you with ALL the reasons why Pidge's gender flip being a plot twist was, and remains, completely fucking stupid.

First, a couple of external biases to acknowledge:

1) I feel Pidge was the worst possible character to gender flip, precisely because it was so obvious. He's spent 30+ years getting "lol DotU Pidge wore a headband and had a squeaky voice, maybe he was a girl!" jokes. Buying into them is a disservice to both the character, and the stated idea that VLD Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't fit a norm. Okay sure, you took the character who got mocked for not sufficiently conforming to his gender, flipped him, then went "look how our Pidge represents not fitting in with the norms!" Nah, guys. Not how it works.

2) ...of course that's if you believe them suddenly saying Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't conform to begin with. All we heard in the beginning was "We wanted to make him a girl! Look, he's a girl! Girl, girl, girl! No, not trans, not nonbinary, GIRL! Look how smart we are for making him a girl!" That and how Lauren didn't like DotU Pidge, so she decided she needed to make him more appealing. To her. Which...

3) Pidge has, in all prior canons (possibly excluding DDP? Was it ever fully explained there?), been an alien. In VF (which supposedly Lauren did watch but didn't like him any better in) he was explicitly an alien ninja. So, you know, forgive me for being a little bitter that we got "the only way to make Pidge appealing is make him a girl. Now here, have five seasons of Keith the alien ninja!"

4) My complaint is not really against the concept of gender flipping Pidge. Had they done it upfront as they did the changes to Sven and Allura, I'd have been somewhat irked for the aforementioned reasons, but hey, new reboot, new rules. My complaint is about them lying to our faces for three months (up to and including Bex bluntly saying "Pidge is a boy" in an interview) in service of perhaps the most pointless plot twist in franchise history.

And that brings me to our feature presentation. Get the popcorn, y'all, I've got the salt.

Someone name for me a single solitary moment, watching the first three episodes, where there was even a hint that Pidge was wrestling with his (gonna use male pronouns until the reveal) identity. No, not "oh hey if you go back with knowledge of the twist this was foreshadowing it!" A point where prior to knowing about the twist you went "huh, what is Pidge not telling the rest of the team?" and it was NOT answered by him revealing that Commander Holt was his father. Seriously—please point one out to me. Pidge's premise is very consistent in the first three (and a bit beyond, but I'll get to that) episodes: he has his own reasons and priorities for being there, he'll do the bare minimum of teamwork necessary to achieve his own mission, and he's not there to make friends. Everything he does is consistent with this read. Nothing is pointing to further complexity, him hiding something totally unrelated. There's the picture, but it's at best confusing: I just figured it was his brother with HIS girlfriend, to be honest. Were we really intended to interpret a sad look at an ambiguous photograph as "Pidge is hiding another completely different big secret related to that picture!" rather than "Pidge is sad about his family, like he keeps saying"?

It would have been simplicity itself to add actual hints. Instead of Hunk just presenting "look, it's his girlfriend!" as fact when he finds the picture, "who's the girl? She's cute!" and have Pidge get defensive over that. When they're putting on their armor, maybe skip Hunk making the first of 500 throwaway fat jokes in favor of Pidge looking uncomfortable at the thought of, you know... changing in front of the others? Have him duck behind the armor case? Do something. Do ANYTHING. 

Even after the internal reveal in episode 3, we get nothing. Allura specifically drills her about "hey, do you have a big personal secret?" and she doesn't look the slightest bit worried or defensive, she just looks confused. Pidge is not that good an actress, we know that from Lance having to save her butt back at the Garrison. Also from seven seasons of watching her complete inability to keep her emotions in check, ever.

Pidge's internal struggle is never once presented as being about her gender, or about how the team thinks of her. It's about whether she's going to put aside her own personal priorities for the sake of the team. This is the struggle that's been built up. This is the struggle that she's invoked and settled in the climactic moment with Haxus: "I'm not a child. I'm a paladin of Voltron!" Haxus could just as easily have called her a "little girl" if we were supposed to be reading any sort of gender conflict into this.

(Of course as it is Haxus didn't know she was a girl—more on that later—but that's purely arbitrary. A show that wanted to sell Pidge having a gender conflict would have made Haxus realize she was a girl, especially given Coran's "we were supposed to think you were a boy?" in the next episode. You can’t just pretend it’s so obvious then have nobody else notice it ever.)

Now, I of course acknowledge not every worthy plot twist has to be able to be guessed by the audience prior to the reveal. But it doesn't work here. Because here's the reveal: Pidge is all "I was afraid you'd think differently of me" and the whole team is all "of course not!" and that's that.

Wait, she was WHAT now?

We have not seen Pidge struggling with this. At ALL. There is zero emotional weight to this scene because there were absolutely no stakes shown. You cannot have her say "I've been worried you'd think of me differently" when you haven't fucking shown her worrying that they'd think of her differently. This is writing 101, guys. And then Shiro is all "owning who you are is going to make you a better Paladin"—WHEN HASN'T SHE? Literally the thing she's been shown struggling to accept is THAT SHE'S A PALADIN! Not that she's a girl!

This reveal is bad. It's so, so bad. The only way I could make sense of it after first watching it was assuming they'd wanted to make her trans and chickened out at the last second. Nothing said in this scene seems to be part of the same show we've been watching for the past five episodes. It's not clever or interesting, it's just bizarre.

But now let's take a step back. Because in order to set up this terrible, pointless, non-event of a plot twist, we have also done great violence to certain characters. We have turned Pidge and basically all of Galaxy Garrison into morons.

Is Pidge not supposed to be a genius? What exactly was her thought process here? The whole wide world of possible disguises was open to her, and she went "I know! I'll pretend to be a boy, and I'll make myself look identical to my brother, the famously MIA space explorer. Nobody will catch on." Really, Katie? You couldn't buy some hair dye, maybe a spray tan?

And then nobody fucking does catch on. The Kerberos mission is so well-known it's being used as an object lesson for cadets, Pidge flips out every time the mission is brought up, and not one person thinks "hey, this kid who looks exactly like Matt Holt totally freaks out whenever the mission Matt Holt disappeared on is mentioned." This does not hold up if you think about it for more than two seconds.

Why does she even need to look like Matt for meta purposes? Oh right, because of the picture that was attempting to carry the entire load of this twist. Great. That's totally worth the blatant insult to everyone’s intelligence, not to mention the affront to common sense.

On that note, one specific point of the disguise: why does Pidge wear glasses? We know she doesn't need them. She takes them off to wear her helmet, Katie never wore them. And sure, they make her look less like Katie Holt... but they make her look more like Matt Holt. This was fairly weird even in season 1. It only gets weirder when we finally meet up with Matt.

Oh hey, guys. She's not just wearing a pair of fake glasses that make her look more like her famously MIA brother. She's wearing his literal glasses. Which, incidentally, we know are functional prescription glasses because he says he doesn't need them anymore because the Garrison fixed his eyes.

How many people did this go through without anyone pointing out that wearing glasses you don't need actively fucks with your vision? 

Yes, I know this is a show about alien space cats that I'm holding to standards of opthalmological realism. But most television manages to understand how glasses work. And again, it's just pointless. Why not just have Katie wear glasses to begin with? Oh right, because we need the guy in the picture to wear glasses and the girl not to because SMART PEOPLE DOING A PLOT TWIST, DERP!

It didn't work, guys. It didn't work at all. You know how people figured it out early? Because you gave her a female VA and we've had thirty years of "lol Pidge looks like a girl" so hey look, the picture confirms the meta theory that people were pitching even before we saw the character designs. Doesn't add even a shred of impact to the reveal. The only way to add impact to the reveal was if she’d actually been worrying that the others wouldn’t accept her being a girl. But no.

And after all this dumb, what exactly is there to show for it? Well... nothing. Nobody else in the show knows she's a girl. Aliens consistently refer to her as male. The team has used female pronouns for her what, once in seven seasons? Miss the right four episodes and even a viewer wouldn't have a clue.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the stated rationale that gender shouldn't matter. Know how else they could've shown that? JUST MAKING HER A GIRL IN THE FIRST PLACE. I mean, if they're going to crow about how brilliant they are for "plot twist, she's a girl!" maybe people should at least be able to tell she's a girl after said twist. Or hey, even better, they could make her trans, or genderfluid, or non-binary, put in some rep that would actually be brave and interesting. But no, instead we get "she's totally a cis girl, but it doesn't matter and nobody can tell because she's there to represent people who don't fit neatly into a box!" That's pretty much the worst of all options, guys. Good job.

And then everyone went “OMG yes! You made Pidge a girl! Yay rep, you’re so smart!” without the slightest shred of critical thought on how it was handled, while a tiny handful of us hoped it was just a fluke, the product of a showrunner pet project that didn’t signify anything for the rest of the series.

Then we got Keith’s Galra reveal, which somehow managed to be even worse.

Then we got season 4 making the bulk of season 3 immediately irrelevant.

Then we got two years on a space whale.

Then we got season 7, where everything is garbage. 

Every season has just been more and more ridiculous plot twists in place of character or consistency. It turns out nope, if we wanted to see where this show was going, the horrible Pidge twist was the ONLY part of season 1 we should’ve looked at. Let the salt flow freely.

Okay, I think that's it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk?

[kitliveblogs]

so this is basically a long-ass rant disguised as a review of Little Mermaid II that I originally posted on a different blog. maybe someday I'll actually get back to that blog, but for right now the theme is broken and I can't read anything on it anymore.

so for now, this will live right here instead c:

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

Everyone's already taken their shots at the notoriously bad Disney sequels made in the late 90s and early 2000s. They're basically a walking punch line just by existing. But really, not all of them are completely worthless, and a couple of them are even pretty enjoyable, in a hilarious "I can't believe they actually made this" sort of way.

But I'm here to talk about only the most heinous of cinematic disasters. And let me make one thing perfectly clear: this isn't just Kit being a bitter and cranky old fogy with a chip on her shoulder because the shitty sequel ruined her childhood. I mean, I am bitter and cranky, but The Little Mermaid II couldn't possibly lower my opinion of the original -- there's not really anything lower than rock bottom. (yeah I hate The Little Mermaid fight me)

This movie is just flat out that bad.

word count: 3070

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

I'm just gonna get one thing out of the way right now: nothing about this movie frustrates me more than the cast. This cast is made up of particularly well-known voice actors, and it's heartbreaking that they all got wrangled into doing this shit. Jodi Benson (Ariel), Samuel E. Wright (Sebastian), Kenneth Mars (King Triton), and Buddy Hackett (Scuttle) all return to reprise their roles from the first movie, and Pat Carroll who played Ursula is here to play Morgana, the main villain and Ursula's conveniently-never-before-mentioned sister. Yeah. They're doing that. And on top of getting so much of the original cast, they also roped in:

Rob Paulsen (Eric)

Tara Strong (Melody)

Clancy Brown (Undertow)

Cam Clarke (Flounder)

Rene freaking Auberjonois as Chef Louis

and one my favorite VAs Stephen Furst as Dash, one half of the Timon and Pumbaa knock-offs for the film.

When just looking at the cast list pisses me off this much... I don't think this is going to be much fun.

A quick recap for those who have been living under a rock since the late 70s: The Little Mermaid is the story of Ariel, daughter of the ruler of Atlantica, who at the completely world-wise age of 16 decides she's had enough of life under the sea and wants to live with the humans on land. She turns to the sea-witch Ursula for help, and in exchange for her voice is given a pair of legs and a deadline: kiss the man of her dreams within three days or join the shriveled legion of Ursula's previous victims. Naturally the witch doesn't play fair and Ariel fails, and King Triton offers himself in exchange for his daughter, thus sacrificing his washboard abs and obscenely powerful trident to Ursula. One climactic battle later, Ursula's dead, Triton turns Ariel into a human, and she and Prince Eric live happily ever after.

Until the sequel, of course, where Ariel and Eric have a baby girl, Melody, which makes me question the exact biology of this bizarre offspring. I mean just look at this thing:

She was just born but she's got a full head of hair and disturbingly large blue eyes. It's freakish. But anyway, this is where movie number 2 begins.

And we're off to a good start: smacked in the face with a terrible music number. I would say get used to those, but there aren't really enough in the movie to warrant it -- which is pretty bad when you consider this is supposed to be a musical. Also, "listen to Ariel's Melody"? That's... wow. I can't even say that's cute in a sarcastic way that's just terrible.

But oh no! The party is interrupted by Morgana, who is, as Sebastian so eloquently puts it:

Oh good. I can see we'll be dealing with truly ingenious writing here.

So after stealing the baby Melody, ranting and raving about being better than her sister Ursula, and attempting to feed the baby to a shark (all while Ariel, Eric, and Triton stand there doing absolutely nothing), Morgana flees to the arctic. Wait, the arctic? Well, alright, you need to escape pursuit to a barren wasteland, that's fair. I won't linger on this for now, as the geography problems will get a lot worse later.

One of the main MacGuffins of the movie is a gold locket with Melody's name inscribed on it, that projects an image of Atlantica and plays a lullaby when opened. King Triton was giving it to the baby before Morgana came onto the scene, and after failing to find her in a massive search of the sea, Triton drops it in the water and leaves. This strikes me as odd. Wouldn't you want to hang onto it? As a keepsake of your family? Or at the very least dispose of it more properly, just in case Melody might one day, oh I dunno, find it and realize her mother and father had been lying to her her entire life? Nah, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Fast forward 12 years. A giant wall has been built on the shore to keep Melody and the ocean apart, but being a tenacious kid she naturally figured out a way around it. Or rather, under it. Which raises the question: if this child could figure out a way out, why couldn't Morgana figure a way in? It would have been a simple matter to slip under the wall, scale the outside of the tower with her suction cup-riddled tentacles, and kidnap the baby to hold for ransom. Why was it so imperative to wait until Melody found the locket before enacting her plan to steal the trident?

Oh, yeah, that thing I mentioned before about her finding it? Lo and behold, she discovered the damn thing on one of her jaunts to collect seashells (which are comically huge by the way). If only Triton had done literally anything else with it, this whole mess might have been avoided.

But no time to worry about that now; there's a birthday party to attend!

Through a convoluted mess of trying to hide her seashells and pretend she'd been in her room the entire time, Melody accidentally ties Sebastian into the dorky bow on the back of her party dress. I'm sure this will have no consequences down the line at all--

Huh. Didn't see that one coming. This leads to a ridiculous scene of Chef Louis chasing Sebastian around the ballroom like some sort of crazed lunatic. I know this was a thing from the first movie, but this guy is out of his fucking gourd; why do they keep him around? Ultimately, Melody runs off to her room out of embarrassment.

I really don't want to linger on anything for too long since this movie doesn't deserve that much energy, but there's two things about this scene I need to address. One: so basically if Sebastian had just remained calm and waited it out... none of this would have happened? I think the blame for this one falls on him. And two: why the hell are all these other children making fun of Melody? I know she's ~weird~ and all, but she's the freaking princess. Don't you think they'd know better than exclude the princess of the entire kingdom? I would want to stay on her good side is all I'm saying.

Anyway. Melody finally takes a good look at the locket and realizes something's up, confronting her mother about Atlantica. Okay, Ariel, here's your chance. If you just explain the situation, she'll understand and maybe you could even take her to Atlantica under heavy guard or something so she can finally meet her damn grandfather.

Or you could just get mad. Getting mad is good too.

Naturally after that Melody decides to take off, rowing a rather conveniently placed boat out to sea to try and figure it all out for herself. While she meets Undertow and agrees to follow him to Morgana, Sebastian is back at the castle psyching himself up to tell Ariel that Melody ran away.

WAIT. YOU DIDN'T KNOW? IT'S BEEN TWELVE YEARS AND YOU HAD NO IDEA SEBASTIAN WAS KEEPING AN EYE ON MELODY??

So in the end, a) Ariel is the least observant person in the world, b) Sebastian never once told her about Melody's excursions beyond the wall (remember that for later), and c) Triton didn't bother to let Ariel know he'd assigned Sebastian the job, continuing the family cycle of not communicating with each other. In hindsight all this bullshit family drama isn't that surprising.

Back to Melody and Morgana (yes, somehow Undertow and the manta ray minions hauled the boat to the arctic in just a couple of hours), Morgana is doing what she does best: whining about Ursula. Honey, I don't think your mother favored her because she was the oldest; I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that Ursula was actually competent and managed to accomplish her goals. Plus her magic is clearly more powerful than yours, since you have to use one of her potions to turn Melody into a mermaid.

OH MY GOD A SONG. I forgot this movie was supposed to have those. It's an upbeat little tune about learning to swim with her new tail, which quickly evolves into a duet with her mother and finding their "worlds:" Melody finding a place she belongs underwater, and Ariel keeping Melody safe. It's boring, but at least Tara Strong can sing well, and Jodi Benson can still belt it out like she could twenty years ago.

Morgana tells Melody that the spell will only last for two days, and that in order to make it permanent, she'll need the "powerful trident that was stolen from her." I'm sure you're as shocked as I was when it was revealed that she didn't just want a puppy and someone to make her pie. So off Melody goes with naught but determination and a map carved into a block of ice. Wait. That seems... poorly designed.

There aren't even words on it. Now I'm no cartographer, but that seems like a pretty major flaw for a map.

Meanwhile, Ariel has joined the search for Melody as a mermaid again, because apparently, according to Eric, "You should go. You know these waters -- and you know our daughter." Um. I'm not even sure where to begin with that one. Let's just say I agree with half that statement; I'll give you one guess which half.

Back in the arctic-- Stop. Okay look. I liked Timon and Pumbaa well enough. Timon had his moments of obnoxiousness, but Nathan Lane was likable enough to always bring it back, and Pumbaa is still my favorite character from The Lion King. But lemme tell ya, I HATE what Timon and Pumbaa did to Disney for a while. They wanted quirky, amiable sidekicks that would keep the kids entertained and distract from the lion sex happening in the background. I can understand that. But when every kid walked away singing Hakuna Matata and the Disney execs realized what they'd stumbled on, every movie afterward that was bound to fail miserably tried to shoehorn in a pair that would have the same appeal to sell more merch. Timon and Pumbaa themselves wound up with their own movie and a SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON SHOW. YEAH. THAT REALLY HAPPENED.

Why do I bring it up? Do you really have to ask?

Meet Tip and Dash, your knock-offs for the evening.

They are, as they put it, "adventurers slash explorers." That might have actually been a good way of setting them apart from the lackadaisical Timon and Pumbaa -- except that in their very first scene they attempt to save a baby penguin from a shark and completely botch the whole thing by being complete cowards. And then when the penguin family gets upset and berates them for their piss-poor job, the movie has the audacity to frame this like we should feel sorry for them. Movie, I refuse to sympathize with them when all the criticism against them is CORRECT. Also sharks don't live in the arctic. Neither do walruses. Just throwing that out there.

From there they bump into Melody, and she convinces them to take her to Atlantica, since Morgana was an idiot for carving the map into an easily-breakable piece of ice. By the way, for the record, Dash is the only likable character in this entire movie, but even then that's not saying much when you consider I'm biased because of his VA. He's the one that actually agrees to help Melody because she's "a damsel in distress," and doesn't care that she's actually a human-turned-mermaid. Come to think of it, this could have been a really good analogy for trans youth, but that probably would have been way too complicated a subject for a shitty Disney sequel.

Also I was gonna skip this part but it's stuck in my head so I'd like to introduce you to the CATCHIEST AND MOST OBNOXIOUS SONG IN ANY MOVIE EVER. Like damn! That would be an accomplishment if it wasn't so terrible. And I'm not exaggerating; I'm completely immune to It's A Small World, but THIS? This garbage sticks to me like glue. (and if you decided to skip the song you now have It's A Small World in your head so either way you have to SUFFER WITH ME)

Ahem. Moving on.

The Three Stooges here finally make it to Atlantica, just barely missing Ariel, Triton, and Flounder going the other way. Flounder, in the past twelve years, has had about five annoying kids and developed a dad belly. It's not really relevant to anything but it's just hilarious to me that even fish can have dad bellies. But there's only a half hour of this turd left, so let's keep chugging along.

On their way into the palace they bump into a piece of-- what? Fish jailbait? Jail fish bait? Eh, whatever. THEY BUMP INTO THIS KID:

Yes, as a matter of fact it was. Even though Atlantica is clearly in tropical waters. Starfish, sea urchins, and crabs all live in tropical waters, whereas penguins live in colder climates. This geography is seriously messed up. I don't think anyone on the creative team even bothered to so much as glance at a map while making this -- which would also explain the terrible ice map, I suppose.

Melody swipes the trident and heads back to Morgana's lair. Cloak and Dagger, the two manta ray minions (I know, subtle), follow behind, and Ariel catches sight of them. She and Flounder in turn follow them, discovering the witch's hiding place in the arctic. Personally my first thought was "So, we've looked everywhere actually means except there because it's cold as balls and nobody wanted to?" but Ariel's a bit more focused than I was by this point.

Ariel tries to send Flounder back, to let Triton know where they are, but Flounder, being an idiot, says he won't let her go in there alone. DUDE. GO GET HELP. Who does, in fact, go to get help? Why Scuttle, of course!

And it's all your fault, bro.

Ariel rushes in in the nick of time to stop Melody from handing over the trident, but naturally the two of them get into the argument that puts the final nail in coffin. Melody actually says "You knew how much I loved the sea!" but I'd like to refer you back to the facts. Melody and Ariel never had an honest and open conversation about, well, anything. The closest evidence we have to support this statement is that Melody thought Atlantica was just an old fish tale, which means at some point Ariel told her stories about it and the mermaids. Otherwise there's just genetics: your mother's a mermaid so you must love the sea too. That's an awfully big leap. And there's the fact that Sebastian never told Ariel about Melody's adventures outside the wall. She had zero idea about any of it. So how could she have possibly known how much Melody loved the ocean, outside of sheer guesswork?

Oh, but "you know our daughter." Well if you SAY it it MUST be true!

By the by, Melody's little realization here of "I have made a horrible mistake" when she gives Morgana the trident is just priceless.

De-licious.

Finally we've reached the big battle. Morgana builds herself a big fuck-off tower of ice, and we're ready for action.

Scuttle, in a rare moment of non-stupidity, comes soaring in, tailed by Prince Eric's ship. Before blasting it to pieces Morgana asks, "Come to join the party?" and I have to agree; where the hell have you been for the last 40 minutes, anyway, Eric? ALSO

And I present you the only funny line in the movie:

...If it feels like I'm rushing through this it's only because I am.

After getting the trident, Morgana had sealed Melody and Flounder into an ice cavern. Unfortunately for her, Melody's two days are now up, and she turns back into a human in a chamber full of water. Tip and Dash rush in to save her, and come face-to-face with a full-sized Undertow. Through a not-at-all suspenseful sequence of the shark chasing them around, they manage to trick him into ramming the ice wall trapping Melody and Flounder, and get her back up to the surface. Where she just. wakes up. No coughing water or dizziness or trouble breathing. NOPE. Her eyes open as soon as she hits air and she's good to go.

Disney: showing the lighter side of almost drowning.

As Morgana fulfills her power fantasy of getting everyone to bow down to her and shrieking "WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE NOW, MA" (yeah I'm pretty sure it's still Ursula), Melody scales the ice tower in an attempt to retrieve the trident. If nothing else, this movie shows a very inaccurate portrayal of trying to walk on ice. Unsurprisingly, Melody succeeds and tosses the trident back to Triton, who seals Morgana in a block of ice to rest forever at the bottom of the sea.

So Ursula was literally stabbed through the chest with an entire boat and died but Morgana gets punked out in a block of ice? Weak.

The family reconciles, Melody takes the whole "grandfather" thing a little too well, and the movie ends with them tearing down the wall so the humans and merpeople can interact freely from now on.

I only have two questions before I finally shut up about this stupid stupid movie:

1. So does the whole kingdom just sort of take it in stride that a) merpeople exist and b) the prince married one? 2. How can a movie that's only an hour and ten minutes long sans credits feel SO MUCH LONGER

This whole thing was ridiculous from the jump. Who was demanding a sequel to the Little Mermaid of all freaking things? Who really wanted to see sequels to any of the movies from the Disney Renaissance? And there are quite a few of them. Like I said, some of them can be pretty enjoyable if you like cheesiness. But most of them are just terrible like this one, and if you're wondering whether you'll be seeing more of the Dark Age of Disney, don't worry. Their days will come.