#this film is so visually ugly i'm sorry

[jabberwocky1996]

Carrie Coon as Jean Cole in Boston Strangler (2023, Dir. Matt Ruskin)

[lastoneout]

Okay I'm finally sitting down to properly watch the PJO series so here's an episode-by-episode live blog I guess. (Fair warning, I haven't read the books since I was a teenager, I am a smidge of an apologist for the films, and my favorite adaptation so far has been the musical.)

Episode One:

All of the actors are doing a really good job, I especially like Sally.

The costume design for both the monsters and the humans is pretty killer. I want Percy's sweater.

I also love the little seaside cabin and want to live there!!!

This is such a mild gripe BUT as someone with dyslexia I wish there was a better way to visually depict it without like, doing the swapping letters thing cuz that's just not what it's actually like at all.

Gabe maybe feels a little too funny. Like I'm supposed to hate him and think it's justified that he deserves to be turned into stone at the end, this version of him is really.....toned down, and his banter with Percy and Sally was fun to watch. I should hate him, but really he just came across as unpleasant. Less abusive asshole and more "old married couple who share interests but can't communicate without shouting" you know?

Loved Grover's little "I'm 24 actually" lmao that was great.

Not a fan of Percy immediately recognizing the Minotaur within a millisecond of it appearing before the audience even got a good look at it. Like, I just sat there thinking "how can he even see it?" rather than feeling scared of a big monster barreling at them.

The action is uh....fine? Feels a little lackluster. Or kinda....divorced from the rest of the show weirdly?? Idk it makes me feel like I'm watching a movie of a movie if that makes sense?? But we'll see where they go with it. (I know banter during a fight isn't realistic and people make fun of Marvel for it, but like...it helps to have at least a little talking. We don't wanna be Man of Steel.)

I feel like there's been a few "slightly out of sync ADR" moments but they weren't too distracting.

Pacing into Sally saying goodbye felt a little long, kinda took the shock of her dying out of the scene, but the actress REALLY sold all the emotional beats so I'll forgive it.

I LOVE the credits sequence!!! Reminds me of the designs on that one box set of the books in a really cool way.

Episode Two:

Oh yes the ugly ass neon orange shirts are here bless!

FUCK YES THAT'S DIONYSUS BAYBEEE!! My ONLY note is that he def could have turned up the energy a little, but that's probably just bcs I love how loud and unpleasant he is in the musical and I also know how unhinged this actor can be.

Chiron is such a delight <3

I like the cabins too, way better than how I imagined them as a kid reading the books lol

Oh, I can see why the new fans fell for Luke so hard.

Grover assuming a human being squished would be like an old banana is very funny. Felt very book-humor in a good way.

Clarisse!!

Oh damn actual disabled half-bloods, very cool!

Minor but I can't actually tell what Percy did wrong with the bow? Weird editing I guess.

Aside from that I actually love a good "fuck up" montage, I honestly wish it were a little longer.

Probably doesn't matter but I don't get having them burn the food after they've started eating? I thought that was a before you sit down type thing.

Percy burning the blue candy to try to talk to his mom was sweet tho T_T

"real friends" hahahaha.....yeah.......about Luke.......

yay! hazing!

Oh I love Annabeth already >:D

Thalia.....is pronounced differently than I thought....?

(I'm sorry I'm too much of a fan of 'Tree on the Hill' for this exposition dump. That shit hits harder when coming from Grover.)

Percy giving Annabeth the "actually I suck and my self esteem is riding on this so like pls don't ask me to do anything hard T_T" talk is just, so good lmao

ofc he doesn't know what's going on Annabeth you didn't tell him anything

Okay the action is a lot better when it's between the actual characters and doesn't involve a 3D monster, though I still had trouble following all the hits Percy was taking.

Oooh I can see why people did so much art of Percy being claimed that was a good shot.

FUCK YEAH TELL HIM YOU'RE SALLY JACKSON'S SON

(I hope they kept the Oracle in the attic...)

Okay I have to go do some things and then I'll be back for more!

[theriverbeyond]

do u care to elaborate on why tlt would be worse as a visual adaptation? the issue that comes to my mind would be that the unreliable narration and the sense that the main character has no clue what is going on would be way harder to get across on film, but i'm curious if there would be other problems

sure! also sorry this ended up being rlly long lmao.

the unreliable narrator part of the books is a big reason why I think the series would be worse as a visual adaption. overall, GtN as a standalone would probably adapt okay, but you would still lose Gideon's unreliable narration and all of her gorgeous & funny prose. NtN would probably be just okay as well, but again you would still lose her subjective narrative voice and the specific way she perceives the world. like..... at their best, a visual adaption (animated or live action) of NtN or GtN would still be less-than the book because both are stories that so heavily rely on their specific narrator's internal subjective experience.

and that's not even getting started on HtN -- I have no idea how one would adapt HtN into a 3rd person narration in any way without drastically changing it. and in changing the format, you lose the backbone of the story (Gideon Telling Harrow a story about herself), and you lose the disorientation of Harrow's lobotomy. you lose the viewer experience of confusion/self doubt/etc that just makes HtN what it is. I just can't see a visual adaptation succeeding without making massive sacrifices that I just don't think are worth it. like.... these books are good because of things that don't translate to video. video isn't the pinnacle of media. if something was designed to be a book/audiobook and it does an amazing job as that, I just do not see any reason to sacrifice a bunch of what made it good just to see it on a screen.

Secondly, I do not think a visual adaption would be able to retain fidelity to the source material, because everyone in tlt is gross all of the time. I love fan artists having fun with the designs but IMO that's not the same as an official adaption. like, not only is necromancy gross, a lot of the characters are described with traits what would probably not survive the transition to camera or animation. Such as: bloodsweat, Harrow being a wet rat constantly covered in vomit or blood or both, Silas looking jaundice/like mayo, Issac & Jeannemary looking like they are going through all the terrible parts of puberty etc. Gideon has a pimple problem and a crooked smile and Ianthe is gross and constantly wearing clothing that absolutely does not fit her. Mercymorn has a resting bitchface, G1deon looks like a skeleton with skin, etc etc. Anime or arcane-style animation would probably be better, at least with stuff like necromantic gore and bloodsweat, but they would probably still end up being like. conventionally attractive! idk maybe this is more of a personal preference but it's kind of important to me that they are not.

I have 3 personal exceptions:

Stage musical adaption. I think a stage musical could capture the drama, the emotion, and the camp needed. for GtN at least, but maybe even beyond. everyone is seen from a minimum of 50 feet away so they can use exaggerated makeup and really lean into all the ugly. practical effects for necromancy, musical numbers for the marta/cam duel and initial gideon/harrow fight.... palamades' explosion happening offstage as gideon stands frozen in the middle, her and us helpless and unable to do anything but wait. massive puppets for the lab 2/final boss construct. dramatic lighting to signify eye change/lyctorhood.... gideon falls on a rail and then everything goes totally black. silence, or maybe crying. harrow screams gideon's name. then lights up on gideon standing behind harrow, holding the sword together, under a narrow beam light. it could be good. and i think a stage musical could bring in enough of a meta-level awareness to make up for the lack of narration. for example, when she's trying to do her big speech, ianthe keeps trying to sing a song but the music refuses to start for her. & before lyctorhood, she stands literally in corona's spotlight shadow. gideon makes harrow out to be this big scary witch but she is just very tiny under a big spotlight. "dulcinea" could have her face covered on stage until the reveal, leaving the audience to realize they were had. while a stage musical would lose some parts, it could enhance the story in its own way. GtN but to the left. it could be fun. i have put a lot of thought into this.

a comedy short film, shot rom com style (or animated like a shoujo), of Ianthe's POV of HtN.

a comedy short film, shot like the office/parks and recreation, of Ianthe's POV of Antioch

[sunny-rose]

Watched the first episode of the PJO TV show and I have Thoughts.

Warning: this is long, entirely too nitpicky, and written like an English essay (sorry). It also isn't wholly positive so there's that...

I've come to accept that we'll probably never get a perfect adaptation of PJO but that doesn't mean I'm not slightly disappointed by the amount of small details that were omitted or outright changed for the television show.

It's very minor, little touches that at first appear insignificant or trivial but ultimately lead to a watered-down story and an experience that lacks the depth the books have.

The first thing that comes to mind is when Percy pushes Nancy Bobofit into the fountain. Not only could we have avoided the Disney Effect Budget rearing its ugly head, having the ambiguity from the book would have added a great layer of mystery to who Percy is and what his powers are.

In the books, Percy doesn't see Nancy go into the fountain at all. He states, "I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain" (9). I'm no film director, but a good way to interpret this scene might have been to have a quick cut - like implying that Percy blinked and she was in the fountain - instead of showing her being Force pushed into the fountain. It keeps Percy's powers ambiguous and continues to build up intrigue. It's about the suspense of that moment, rather than showcasing Percy as a demigod early.

Another detail I wish they'd left alone was the timing of Percy learning that he's a half-blood. I understand that they wanted the explanation to occur early in order to keep viewers watching and have them understand the premise but I think it was a mistake to have Sally bring it up on their trip to to the cabin because it ruins the tension. It's implied in the books that Sally knows something happened to Percy at Yancy, but she doesn't want to push him on it. And Percy doesn't want to mention it because he doesn't want to cut their vacation short: "But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that" (40). This is EXCELLENT characterization. We can tell that Sally is stressed, that this cabin is her escape. Percy mentions, "As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face" (37). Percy, sweet, kind, Percy doesn't want to ruin his mother. He knows this trip means a lot to her, that it's a brief moment away from Gabe and the complications of her life and he doesn't want to take that away from her. It's STRONG characterization and allows us as viewers to see Percy as something more than a trouble kid; he really loves his mom. Having Percy learn about being a half-blood at the cabin helps expedite the plot but it takes away from a genuinely sweet and good moment for him, takes something away from his character.

I'm not even going to talk about omitting the Fates I'm going to admit full stop that seems weird to me. It's such a small detail, could've been like a ten second scene that adds to the weirdness and mystery but they just didn't?? Go for it?? That's fine. (Honestly they probably should've cut out Grover telling the principal that Percy pushed Nancy into the fountain and replaced it with the Fates but hey. I'm just a uni student).

My final gripe about subtext erasure from the television show is, of course, Gabe. I can absolutely 100% get behind the idea of why they turned down the implications about Gabe. This TVLINE article by Keisha Hatchett contains interviews with the crew of the PJO TV show and in one of them, Rebecca Riordan explains that, "When you see it visually, it is triggering and difficult to watch. That is why we came at Gabe in a different way, because this isn’t supposed to be a horror show." I can absolutely agree that toning Gabe down was the right choice, especially considering the age range for the television show. I just wish it had kept a bit more of the subtext. Having Gabe shake Percy down to cash might've been a little much but there were smaller details in his conversation with Sally that could've been kept that would've flown over kids' heads but had allowed more mature audiences to realize that Gabe wasn't just your average douche.

In the books when Sally asks to go to Montauk, Gabe asks, "So this money for your trip... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?" (35). As a child, the implication of this completely and totally flew over my head. Even as a high school student this line didn't seem weird to me at all. It was only now, in my last year of university, as I was rereading the series, that I thought to myself, "That's so controlling wtf." To imply that Sally, a woman with a job, is being financially controlled by douchebag Gabe is pretty chilling and although it is undoubtedly still abuse, it's also something that I think wouldn't go too far. As it stands, Gabe feels a little bit toothless and if they stick to his canon fate, it'll feel a little bit unwarranted. In that same TVLine article, John Steinberg mentions that, "When you’re reading a story, you can read past the parts that could be upsetting if you’ve stopped to give them more thought. You don’t really get to do that with the show. It’s all in your face and it’s all presented in a much louder way.” I think that even keeping just this one line isn't too "in your face" but still gets across how much of an absolute jackass Gabe is.

I also think that although it was a strong choice to have Sally stand up to Gabe immediately, I do have a bit of an issue with her characterization. One of the first paragraphs you get when you meet Sally is Percy specifically stating, "I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even more or Gabe" (33). The books make it a point to show that despite Sally being on the quieter side, it doesn't mean she isn't an absolute badass. She's calm, rational, and cool during the Minotaur scene and then of course kicks ass during The Battle of Manhattan. The books have proven over and over again that Sally's kind, sweet nature is a strength and not a weakness. I can absolutely get behind seeing this side of her earlier in the TV show, I'm just concerned that they're forsaking her softer nature for something more "cool mom." Part of what I like so much about Sally is her kindness, the way she seems to be the embodiment of a warm hug on a hard day. It's not the vibe I got from her TV show counterpart.

Okay that's it, that's all my grievances. I've only seen the first episode and despite this mega page of my negativity I still think that the show is pretty good! It's infinitely better than what we got before and I can tell that there's so much passion and love put into the show. The young actors who are portraying the starring roles are absolutely brilliant, they're killing it, and I hope they have a bright future. I think the show looks great considering it's a Disney+ show (I've seen your special effects, Mouse) and I genuinely hope that the show is enjoyed by old fans and new ones. My brother said, "Hey, the first half was pretty cool" before the pacing kinda nosed dive off a cliff - high praise indeed.

I'm probably still going to watch the show, just to sate my own curiosity (though I'm probably NOT going to write another English essay on why I wish we'd kept some subtext) and I hope that everyone who's sticking with the show enjoys it. I don't think it's bad by any means, I'm just a pretentious literature nerd and this is how I digest media.

So yeah, here's to another decade of Percy Jackson!

[nitrateglow]

Thoughts on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)

Time for another episode of "Nitrateglow didn't think the panned movie was that bad"... though this one isn't necessarily great either.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was MGM's attempt to remake an old hit. In 1921, under the banner of Metro, the original Four Horsemen was a zeitgeist hit and catapulted Rudolph Valentino to superstardom. It was a lightning in a bottle kind of film, a movie about the horrors of World War I released a few years after the end of that conflict.

The basic plot, because it's late and I'm tired: A lusty Argentine patriarch has two daughters, one married to a German and the other married to a Frenchman. The old man prefers the French part of his family, which causes issues even before WWI rears its ugly head and the two families are drawn into the conflict. The focus is on Julio, the son of the Frenchman. He likes partying, has an affair with a married French woman, and is apolitical, until he isn't because drama. Then he becomes a self-sacrificing hero because personal problems aren't worth a hill of beans in this crazy world.

(That sounded bad, but it's just because I'm sleep deprived. The movie is actually very good and worth watching, I promise. It was directed by Rex Ingram, one of the strongest directors of the 1920s, and it has one of Valentino's best performances too. But crap, I'm supposed to be talking about the remake!!)

Now MGM was thinking about remaking this film as early as the 1940s, but once their 1959 remake of Ben-Hur became a smash hit, they were eager to see what other old blockbusters they could dust off. Four Horsemen was pushed into production, its time period shoved from WWI to WWII, and Vicente Minnelli put behind the camera.

Minnelli wanted to keep the WWI setting, but he was ignored. To be honest, the WWII setting isn't too problematic. The heart of the Four Horsemen story is the family drama and how events outside the family threaten to tear it asunder. Also, you still have Julio's arc from apolitical partyboy to self-sacrificing hero, so the spirit of the original is intact.

This movie isn't bad screenplay-wise due to those strong thematic cores. And Minnelli's visuals are rich as always. I particularly liked the surrealistic flourishes, like the superimposition of the four horsemen over key scenes. A bit campy, perhaps, but whatever, I liked it. And the Andre Previn score is just outstanding: epic, rousing, and romantic.

However, what brings the movie down is the casting of the lovers. Glenn Ford, good an actor as he is, is just wrong for the part. He's 46 playing a role made famous by Valentino at 26, and he's lacking in the charming impetuousness that would make the character credible. (Apparently, Alain Delon was considered but he wasn't famous enough for MGM's liking.) Ingrid Thulin is okay but not exceptional, her performance marred by lack of chemistry with Ford and some obvious dubbing over of her lines by Angela Lansbury doing a French accent. These characters should break my heart but they don't have enough passion to make me care.

It's a decent movie, but not a lost gem. And sorry, I can't help but compare it to the silent film in my head. Between the famous tango scene (not replicated in the remake-- for the best, really) and the finale in the massive graveyard, the mourners lost in a sea of white crosses... God, there's just nothing as memorable in this new version, save for the music.

[alfredsnightmare]

I wouldn't mind the new Exorcist movie having the most boring plot imaginable and the worst possible excuse to bring back Ellen Burstyn if it didn't look so... ugly. And tired. And very ugly. I just don't understand how you'd want to make a sequel to a film known for it's visual impact, and whose other sequels (like it or not) have also raised the bar in terms of cinematography (I mean, even the worst Exorcist film has been photographed by Vittorio Storaro of all people), and make it look like a Hallmark special... this is so sad, William Friedkin I'M SO SORRY, sTOP UGLY HORROR MOVIES this is cRIMINAL

[shiverandqueeef]

can you tell me a bit about the movie with tree grafting and um. where can i watch it?

yeah, for sure! It's a 2021 movie called After Yang directed by Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada. It's the first of his movies I've seen, so I don't know a lot about him, but he seems to be 1) a massive film nerd and 2) focused on innovative cinematography. He's made a shit load of what I am inclined to call youtube video essays but like. in a non-youtube font. a short film festival font! video essay that premiers at TIFF type font. Also his name is a pseudonym, or possibly more like a heteronym? meaning that "Director Kogonada" is a character he inhabits in order to create something specific and outside of himself; his name is also tied up in his ethnic identity in a way that is really interesting and none of this is what you asked for lmao sorry I got distracted SO ANYWAYS

After Yang is Kogonada's second/latest feature film, and based on the short story Saying Goodbye to Yang by Alexander Weinstein, though the screenplay is written by Kogonada himself (he also edited the film and i am not going to nosedive into the rabbit hole that is 'Tasha's Thoughts and Feelings on Auteur Theory' in this reply but boy howdy i sure will be spending the rest of the night thinking about it)

The film is set in a nebulously futuristic time-period (no specific year given) and centres around a family of four (no last name given). I'm sure there's nothing thematically relevant going on there. anyways, our main characters are Jake (played by Colin Farrel whomst i am totally normal about), Kyra (played by one of the most beautiful people i have ever seen though that is neither here nor there Jodie Turner-Smith), their young daughter Mika, and an android named Yang (played by Justin H. Min, who I am only not realizing is the guy who played Ben in the Umbrella Academy. Incidentally also one of the most beautiful people i have ever seen).

I think the less you know about the events of the movie before going in, the better. but in general, it's a quiet, contemplative, visually driven narrative that approaches themes of grief, identity, and familial connections. The word that immediately comes to mind is "gentle" but like. It doesn't pull any punches with it's emotional beats - it's more like... the visual presentation of death, loss, lonliness...Kogonada presents everything with beauty, I think because he strongly believes all aspects of existence are beautiful. some of it didn't really hit for me but there were three separate scenes that made me ugly cry into my popcorn and i am getting too much into it imma shut up now.

WHERE YOU CAN WATCH IT!

it's available on prime video (boo hiss) also i think apple tv? ummm you can probably rent it on youtube or google play. Oh! It's for sure on Hoopla if you have a library card (and your local library uses hoopla).

I just pirated it. i think i watched it on braflix? maybe the movie archive? if you go to the piracy megathread on reddit they have a list of streaming sites (also torrent and direct download). as long as you have ublock origin and a VPN you should be fine with any of the listed sites.

if you end up watching it, lemme know what you think!

... Sarita Choudhury is also in this. she is also one of the most beautiful people i have ever seen. that is all.

[whiskeyswifty]

she sang these surprise songs to distract us from how bad the Karma MV is.... Jk, she looks hot and all and the devil scene is a serve but i am getting sooo tired of the cgi onslaught and the "random scenes of me looking cool" kind of concepts. I gettt the theme whatever but girl none of it is fun or interesting! Ari caused a stir with a similar mv concept a few years ago already!!! You waxed on and on about being a film nerd a while ago WHERE is that? And I knooow music videos are a different wheelhouse but you can do so many cool things with them and in the past Taylor has had amazing storytelling concepts and cool visuals and from like Lover onward it was like: "Teehehe look how many Easter Eggs I can drop in these 50 unrelated scenes filmed in front of a green screen". The fucking art heist music video she filmed in Liverpool better be good.... I am tired... (Sorry for being mean and rambling in your inbox it's just. Blergh!)

i totally agree and i'm not really a current mv aficionado (ask me about any mv from the 90s thru the mid 2010s tho i gotchu) but i can speak to how the cgi garbage onslaught is saturating film as well and it's soul sucking. look i get it that cgi is cheaper than it's ever been before and practical effects but so many "directors" use it as a crutch. it's just plain ugly for the most part and you can compare the practical effects in the LavHaze video and see how lovely and gorgeous and tactile something can be when done practically. it's just more tangible and quite frankly show's a level of skill and understanding of the medium and craft of filmmaking where cgi just shows the opposite. it's not going away, unfortunately, but there are still many directors out there who insist on practical or use cgi in really tasteful ways.

i also think many swifties don't want to reckon with this but she is a budding filmmaker (if she continues on this path) like she is JUST STARTING. which means she has no skills in this department. her mv's prior were amazing because they're made by longtime professional directors. and i don't care how good you are at storytelling in other mediums, filmmaking is a very specific and restrictive way of doing it. and if you're bad at it, it's VERY obvious, and it's like learning a new language. yeah you can write a stunning novel in english, but it'll take you at least 10 years to learn spanish competently enough to even attempt to write a novel in spanish that is as deft and skilled as your english one, and it will probably still not measure up. because a language is more than the words; it's also the phrases and the references and, well, you get the metaphor. creative skills take decades to hone. unless you're a savant, or someone with a singular, culture shifting vision (which she is not, not in film at least, sorry) it takes soooooo many films to really sharpen your tools and understand the craft. i'm willing to give her some slack in that department, as every MV she makes is just basically her film school projects, and film school projects are clunky and middling at best cuz you're learning. sometimes i like them, and sometimes i feel like they're just not quite there, but she's fortunate that she is afforded this many mini projects to experiment and find her footing before embarking on a feature. unfortunately they are also promotional material, so they must be bogged down with easter eggs and the like. i'm sympathetic to that, even tho i am, like you, also frustrated. I really hope the liverpool one is good. it looks like it had a lot of moving parts which is promising!! hopefully less green screen cop out garbage. fingers crossed!

[baekhvuns]

OMG THIS IS SO LATE 😭 IM SORRY BUT IM HERE IM HERE

I'll be waiting for a new romance in my life 😩 I hope it comes soon Bcz this loneliness is getting harder to romanticise buddy.

Ah your genre was shoujo, I started with sweet and kind animes too but I somehow got occupied with those adventure and like revenge arc ones 😭 MAID SAMA AND OURAN HIGH SCHOOL ARE LITERALLY COMPULSORY LIKE YOU GOTTA WATCH THAT OR YOU'RE UNCULTURED SRSLY! kamisama kiss though 😭😭 I still haven't watched it!!.

Right now my genre would be pure comedy and on the b sides I like watching animes like haikyuu, jujutsu Kaisen, attack on Titan and stuff. It gives trauma but hey :') I'm used to it. But studio Ghibli movies are pure joy really, I've watched howl's moving castle and OHMYGOD SOMEONE GET ME A MAN LIKE HOWL! And honestly if I'd want someone to play the role frm k-pop industry I'd realllllyy want either Yeosang or joshua from seventeen they'd be perfect Bcz they seriously look like they got up and decided it'd be a good day to leave their anime dimension and came here to make us all feel ugly.

YES REMOVE THE SMUT 😭

I've seen so many people wanting some real ffs like guys me too PUHLEASE SOMEONE QUENCH OUR THIRST!!

I'm currently trying to write a hwa fic Bcz my first one, I felt like was trash and just... discarded it. And now, its something that fits my genre a lot. Like imagine hwa and yn being friends since literal birth and BABY HWA DEVELOPED A CRUSH ON YN WHEN THEY WERE IN KINDERGARTEN 😭😭 AND IT STRETCHED TIL HIGH SCHOOL

But....yn doesn't feel the same way and they seperate at the graduation ceremony.

It has a lot to it.

Although I'm still trying to improve my writing, so I feel like mine are probably not the best choice bcz somehow I feel like they won't make an impact on the reader ykwim? But still im writing it for the sake of real and true love 😔

And it just came to me thru a vibe like idk if it's just me but i make the moodboard first and then write the story 😭😭 im always in the opp. Direction for some reason, idk how but pretty pictures inspire me to write masterpieces. So, yeah we'll see what'll happen once I release it.

SHINESTARS GOTTA UNITE!!!

no worries!!! LMFAOOOO but isn’t it peaceful to not have any romance in life and then giggle at webtoon’s where the men are just scrumptious ☺️

yes yes!!! i loved shoujo so im excited bc the it’s coming back w my happy marriage which i 10000% recommend,, align w shoujo slice of life, darker magic ones and the comedy ones r just 😮‍💨 GIVES U TRAUMA RHWKJDLQKDLQ used to wach them but they are just sO long kudos to u chaerssss!! let us know more if ur recs <3 U DIDNT WATCH KAMISAMA KISS???? HELLO????

STOP studio ghibli films are just so comforting esp on rainy days 😭😭 and howl </3 a man like him would end my existence OH U ARE SO CORRECT JOSHUA OR YEOSANG YES OR INFINITE’S L HE FITS IT 😭😭

REMOVE THE SMUT!!!! no seriously real fics with plots that are to die for, we need movie like fics back 🤚🏻

WAIT THAT HWA FIC??? 👁👁

we are into it, we will be there, we will be there regardless of what happens 🤚🏻 writing for the sake of true love AS U SHOULD!! ooo i also do the same!! i visualize a scene and look for pictures to put it a lot together it’s the only way i can do it also 😭😭 it helps to write too <3 WE WILL BE AT UR DOORSTEP THE SECOND U RELEASE IT

AS WE SHOULD ✊🏻

[perryhedge]

Fire Punch

This was a bit of a frustrating read, and I wasn't sure it would be worth it to actually make it to the end, but ultimately I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed the first and last volumes, which were somber, contemplative, and often times ridiculous, but always in a way that felt as weird and off-putting as it was sincere. The six volumes in between were a bit of a mess.

Comparing Fire Punch to Chainsaw Man, which I can't help but do, the first thing that stands out about is that while the latter is always fun to read, the former is for most of its run miserable, humorless, and self-serious. There is Fujimoto's trademark surreal humor, and it does have its high points, but for most of the story it is very much a standard dark action manga. Far too much of the interminable fight scenes, for example, are just reaction panels of the ugliest dudes you've ever seen.

Much like Chainsaw Man, Fire Punch tends to have really interesting panel composition. There's a lot of repetition and cinematic framing throughout, there's interesting contrasts across page spreads and striking panels are left the space to achieve their intended effect. Due to the weak writing, I started to get cynical in the middle and began to see the unusual composition as gimmicky. But looking back on it, the paneling is consistently great and only lifts up the rest of the manga, even when the dreary backgrounds or landscapes of corpses and limbs that fill those panels are, well, ugly (in an aesthetic and a moral sense).

Now, I have no problem with ugliness in a manga. I would guess that a lot of people's problem with this manga would be the copious amounts of "objectionable" content, but I think that mostly plays to its strengths. All the incest stuff, particularly, while strange, is coming from a place of sincerity and surprisingly offers some of the most poignant moments in the manga -- and this is not a backhanded compliment. Agni's pain is constant, so the few moments of peace and love he experiences, particularly towards the end, generally make an impression. But ultimately, I don't think that the constant violence is in service of a message strong enough to justify it -- it ultimately just felt bleak and nihilistic. I get that's part of the point. But at least in Chainsaw Man, the violence feels flamboyant and fun. I can't appreciate the death and destruction in Fire Punch on an aesthetic level, and it doesn't hit on a thematic level either.

There are a lot of themes that are more or less adequately fleshed out in this manga. Central to it all is the notion of "acting", cleverly framed by Togata's obsession with film. Everyone is always acting, and people will eventually become the mask. Agni plays various "roles" in his life, and the central thrust of the story is always his conflict between the roles imagined for him by others and the one he plays in the end.

There's also a throughline of fire-related symbolism, where people are concerned about various things metaphorically represented by firewood, or sometimes food/fuel [sorry, I read this in Japanese, and I don't know a less cringe way to translate this -- but these are the words that are most often used].

The manga sets up these themes more or less from the beginning and is constantly revisiting them, but therein lies the problem. The dialogue is so consistently mediocre, and explores those themes in such a basic way, that it's hard to appreciate them. Chainsaw Man has its flaws, but while it wasn't subtle about its themes, it at least had the good sense to explore them with its characters and visuals. It felt like most of Fire Punch consisted of long, unbearable Socratic dialogues that had me rolling my eyes. These scenes are extremely repetitive in content (again, this is in tandem with the cinematic flair of the manga's form mentioned above), and often amount to one or the other character explaining the ideas of the manga in an extremely straightforward way. In a way, this strengthens the theme of artifice in the manga -- and I'm sure this is somewhat intentional on Fujimoto's part -- but in the end, none of the characters feel like characters, but rather vessels through which the mangaka could explore these themes. Normally, people get to do this by writing bad poetry in high school and never have to show it to anyone. Unfortunately for us, Tatsuki Fujimoto's bad poetry is a hit manga published in Shonen Jump+. C'est la vie.

The worst offender is Togata, whose entire character feels completely inorganic, at least to me. I will refrain on going too much into depth on a certain arc of their character in volume 4 and 5 (if you've read it, no doubt you know what I'm talking about), but it felt completely artificial and trite. Yes, it does strengthen the "acting" theme, and in a way I wouldn't have expected for this genre of manga, but it really comes out of nowhere and adds such thick melodrama to a skeletal, uninteresting character that the effect is lost. In general the character drama all suffers from this problem -- and unfortunately, a huge chunk of the manga is exactly made up of this kind of navel-gazing pablum. I also tend to hate anything that approaches "meta" -- and the self-referential nature of this manga made most of Togata's dialogue and the entire framing device of the movie itself incredibly irritating to me. I can appreciate the cleverness of it on some level, yes, but meta gets old very fast, and art that is this self-conscious very rarely has anything interesting to say. And indeed, almost from the page Togata is introduced, there is really not much of substance to be had for the next few volumes.

There is also an insistence on social commentary via the constant story element of religion. This stuff was probably the most insufferable bit of the manga for me, and one of its largest components by weight. There's really nothing clever to be said in any of these scenes, especially those surround a plot twist in the final volume. Again, it feels like very amateur writing that I've seen a billion times before, writing that one often finds in works that insist themselves to be exploring deep and universal themes, but in an extremely shallow way. This is really no better than Zack Snyder's Superman, or any JRPG where the final boss is the Catholic Church -- it's complete shlock. It may be addressing philosophical themes, but it's still shlock, and the fact that it aspires to be something else makes it worse. I'm not one of those people that thinks something like One Piece is a revolutionary work of political fiction, but I think the contrast is evident when you examine how unpretentiously that manga explores similar territory, while still managing to be engaging and emotionally resonant. Funnily enough, in the early volumes I almost caught myself thinking "this is kind of like Attack on Titan, but good" -- but ultimately it isn't much different in its didactic treatment of slavery, religion, and other such topics.

Ultimately, Fire Punch has finally convinced me to swear off any manga that sports the politics or philosophy tags, but before I end this rant I'd like to maybe throw an olive branch to any fans of that stuff by pointing out that it may just be me -- I've always felt this tension with a traditionally pulp genre (like whatever dark action series genre this manga is in) attempting to handle themes like this that are better suited, in my opinion, for the format of prose, or even philosophy. I can't think of a single example where it really works, at least an example where those themes are the focus. In the end, something like Fire Punch is still a weekly serial published in a magazine aimed at teenagers -- and that's not to say that it can't be a great work of fiction or discuss those kinds of topics, but I think if you're looking for kind of existential pondering that this manga is preoccupied with, you would be far better off reading Crime and Punishment or something -- something that can actually examine them in depth and perhaps bring you to some novel understanding of those concepts. Manga is a visual medium, its powerful at conveying strong visual ideas, ideas that transcend language itself -- and so to lock a manga down to such basic, pulpy dialogue seems like a waste to me.

In that sense, I have a philosophical bias against something like Fire Punch from the start, as opposed to Chainsaw Man which is primarily a sensory experience. Chainsaw Man is funny, bloody, nauseating, and appealing all at the same time, it's an orgasm of a manga (please forgive me for saying that, holy shit) and I think that's why it's great. It's not hard to see why someone could think that the brooding Fire Punch, by comparison, is dull. But Togata says penis, you might say -- and that is true, it is pretty funny that Togata says penis. Unfortunately, that's where the fun ends. And I might have said that this beef I have is philosophical -- but really, in the end, I just like reading manga to be fun. It's a preference at a very primal level for me. Jumping from this series to something like Call of the Night really made that stand out all the more -- that manga is funny, dynamic, and just a joy to read, and in general that's what I prefer a manga to be.

Despite my fundamental issues with it, I think Fire Punch is still an exceptionally well constructed manga. There are high points just as much as there are low points, and I think it's worth reading. The last scene gave me some pretty strong goosebumps, which only happens with art I care about. In the end, Tatsuki Fujimoto remains a bold and interesting figure in current manga, and if I find his cleverness to border on grating at times, there's no doubt that he can draw the shit out of a comic.

[josephfrancismazzelloiii]

Okay, sorry, I had to go return some video tapes (make cookie dough) before I write an incoherent essay.

Off the bat, Ravenous is my favorite movie, so I can definitely appreciate humor and wackiness and tonal shifts in horror-- but I also think this movie would have been better if kept simpler, bc the writing is just not there to carry it. Anyway, problems:

The tone of this movie is like, dismally noncommittal. I get the vibe that the writer worries you won't take it seriously in the scary moments, so it undermines itself with over the top visuals and gags-- the baby bottle, the mother leaping through the air, or crashing through a wall LIKE A CAR. This keeps it from ever really being scary for me, so idk what other folks are responding to.

This is aside from the larger tonal dissonance that Justin Long's character brings-- he's way too cartoonish to fit in with the rest of the film.

On the other hand, the comedy isn't focused or funny enough for it to go the other way as a full-on comedy horror (but Long's delivery of WHAT'S UP FAGGOTTTT did get me both times lmao, and it's a fun "punchline" to his character setup, as much as I think his character writing sucks and is bad)

The writing largely just doesn't feel fully thought through, politically, logically, logistically. The inclusion of Detroit's housing crisis/poverty feels a little trite and underexplored. The stuff going on under the house just. doesn't make sense (sorry to be that guy). A lot of the things the characters do doesn't make sense. It doesn't feel grounded, even within its own fiction.

My BIGGER ISSUE is the uh, sloppy politics of the film. I genuinely would not usually center this criticism, but this movie feels so so so distinctly Written By A Man to me. Soapboxing throughout about women's pains and fears and The Evils of Men (bc see, you're one of the good ones, of course), and then you're really going to have the main scare factor of the film be a naked, ugly, unfuckable woman. And we're just not looking the hypocrisy. Okay. (No, actually see, it is okay, because despite consistently using her gross naked body as a horror device, she was a victim in the end, which means something, I guess, and erases the entire framing, definitely.) This is obviously a bit of a trend, I guess an evolution of the oversexualizing of women in film, and horror in particular-- where you subvert the audience's expectations that nudity is to titillate by showing them shocking images of untitillating bodies. They did it in X, for instance; and both of Ari Aster's films; def others I'm not thinking of rn. But it felt SO stark in this film because it dedicates so much of it's story to the ways women are harmed by men. How can anyone write this obliviously?? It makes me feel insane LOL.

I'm cutting myself off there because jfc, I can get deeper (trying to translate the politics of the breastfeeding scene alone is giving me hives), but I will just sound crazy and I have things to do rn, but. yeah, I think it's a bad movie. I might not be articulating myself perfectly, but I think it was stupid and not scary.

Ooh what did you hate about barbarian?? I've been dying to hear from someone that thought it sucked lol

OKAY SO, god. I'll get into it, but let me try to list the things that did work for me first, bc that will be a lot quicker:

The first third was overall good, the night with the two tenants had some good building and tension, and I particularly liked the "reveal" with the house/street in daylight.

I like the big editing jumps, at least conceptually

That's it? I think? Yeesh. Okay, gimme a sec to type up the rest of my thoughts in a reblog.

[transfemstarscream]

i actually meant everyone calling the WHOLE of bw ugly, as if a cgi cartoon made for weekly syndication in the mid 90s should have perfect animation like it's the ff7 remake or whatever

oh, i HATE that sentiment even more. "hurrdurr beast wars ugly" beast wars SAVED this franchise. this is 1996, of course the CGI isn't going to be million-dollar film budget animation; beast wars was already one of the most expensive shows to produce at the time alongside reboot. we're talking 1996 computers holding character models with more polygons than the backgrounds and baked-in JPEG textures.

and the show doesn't look bad. it doesn't. the colors are rich, the characters are expressive, and the "janky" animation is engaging to watch. the animators are working within their limitations to deliver excellent character animation. no matter how "dated" you say the show looks, the scenes are visually fascinating.

nothing onscreen is wasted! there's no cheap tricks like recent transformer CGI shows pre-earthspark to hide poor animation! everything onscreen matters to tell the story it wants. beast wars is full of stories, and the visuals deliver them. the characters have functional and memorable designs. the settings, although limited, are creative.

beast wars' animation limitations meant writing was prioritized. even if beast wars was ugly, the writing saves it. so many stories told in beast wars could not be told by any other transformers media, and this is a good thing. beast wars is a fantastic show outside of its transformers label. it doesn't need to rely on only its visuals to tell such stories (unlike some other transformers media).

like i'm sorry, but in a franchise where cheap roosterteeth web series such as the prime wars & WFC trilogies moving at 6 frames per second, the actually aired-on-TV energon show, and the many IDW stories that rely on pretty art to carry subpar stories exist—beast wars is phenomenal.

[chiegaming]

An intro to something completely different;

Sorry about the 3 month delay between this and the last post. You'll find out soon that this isn't strictly a write-up about video games but I have been working on another one about an actual game which should be done a couple days from this. Anyway,

Video game movies have always been pretty interesting to me from the perspective of someone that really likes both mediums, more notably the way games are portrayed in an art form that's far more established and with a longer line of prestige and cultural importance. I've always subconsciously thought of it as a kind of older and younger brother dynamic but regardless, the ones that fall more into the younger camp have mostly known about this for years and it definitely results in a lot of complicated feelings about how worthwhile the medium actually is.

But despite Roger Ebert famously being an old coot about the whole thing alongside several others, movies have kinda not been able to help revolve every occasional decently budgeted story about the New Thing that's evidently causing a lot of commotion and as will become definitely more obvious down the road, very profitable for better or worse.

I've had this project in the back of my mind for 4 months and I figured now was as good a time as any to get it actually in full gear so without further ado;

Sorted by release date, these are all the video game movies Wikipedia cites as "centered on video games", a couple of more were added since I compiled this but I figured letting Free Guy be the "final boss" of this project would be fitting. It'll almost certainly be the toughest on me mentally but we'll get there.

I'll go through all of these alongside my typical game coverage, but these aren't going to just be film reviews, my goal is to primarily examine how filmmakers interpret and use video games in their own work, which is why I'm not doing movies based on video games (way too many to count and most are just their own kind of film as opposed to anything about video games). I've only seen 7/46 of these so far, you'll figure out which when we get to them.

With all that out of the way, let's kick things off with...

Tron (1982)

I was honestly pretty surprised to find out this was what's apparently the catalyst of video game movies but by all accounts, it's far better than what I had expected. Double surprising too seeing how mixed everyone else seems on it despite being so famous.

The premise is actually relatively typical for an 80s adventure movie but it's layered underneath a lot of jargon that doesn't seem to even make much internal sense. It's all stuff that'll generally sound like it makes enough sense on its own until you think about it for even a minute but it's bold as hell to put this much trust in the audience to know that it all ultimately doesn't matter and it's just in service to the story and aesthetic.

And the aesthetic is like, wew. It is a genuine marvel to look at and absolutely not even cuz of the CG. All the actors seem to have been greenscreened and then have their frames waterpainted over and it makes for a super interesting effect. It's obviously not flawless and there are clear artifacts from this process but it does also result in everyone having this slight sort of shakiness which made the whole world feel a lot more unstable which is cool cuz everyone is literally just a program.

The visuals in general feel so much more ahead of the curve than they have any right to, everything's illuminated and highlighted with LEDs. Even obvious tricks like reflective water have so much bloom that you forget it's literally just water, straight up I don't know why Razer doesn't adapt to this kind of aesthetic wholesale instead of the sometimes ugly bloomy lights they tend to go for.

All that alongside the slightly bit-crushed and reverbed audio design makes for a data-driven universe that's as dreamy as it is alien, which considering the kind of cultures and interests the internet cultivated, which this also kinda predicted in its own way. The downtimes really showcase The Grid's cold vastness, even the action scenes don't get that bombastic all things considered.

The video game stuff itself is a lot closer to something tangibly real than I expected too, the motorcycle races are contextualized as competitive multiplayer Snake and the other games are also, kinda silly but it's not impossible to picture them as their own VR esports, in this case being algorithmically perfected by various AI vessels, as you do.

Anyway, this project's off to a shockingly stellar start. Things will definitely vary in terms of quality from here on out but this far exceeded expectations. A good kick-off to what is definitely gonna get worse down the road, but hey, we're pretty far from that still. We can bask in the goodness of genuinely enthusiastic video game movies before formulas had become perfected and took genuine risks. Still, Tron happened a year before the game crash so things are probably gonna look fairly different from this point on, but that's alright. We're still in the experimental era, anything's possible.

[supergay-supergirl]

The Dragon Girl & the CatChat Algorithm

or, the autistic zari tarazi fic we all deserve (under the cut cause it's 1746 words)

read my autistic lena luthor fic here

i'm pretty happy with this one :) enjoy

From a young age, Zari Tarazi knew she had what it took to be famous.

She liked making things look pretty. She fumed when her parents or her baby brother messed up the way she’d lined up the shoes by the door—in the right order to make the row look even, even though they were all different sizes. She didn’t get why, when assigned to design book jackets on Photoshop in third grade, all her classmates chose the ugliest distributions of positive to negative space possible. Surely they knew. Surely they’d also figured out that with a simple custom package, you could make Photoshop automatically align your objects for you, then unalign them slightly so they looked the best to the human eye. Why else would they ignore her day in and day out, or make fun of her project when she showed it to the class, saying she always tried too hard?

When the other kids ganged up on her during recess and yelled taunts at her (“Zari, Zari, why your clothes so sorry?”), in her head, she cited efficiency. It was a waste of time to look for something new when the same worn-out jacket had fit her since first grade. It was a waste of money to buy the trendiest graphic tees when all they did was scratch her chest. Later on, she would say she'd had a keen eye for entrepreneurship and a business sense beyond her years.

Her parents and teachers called it something different. An ugly word. Kids yelled other things at her, things that made her maman clench her knuckles and curse them out in Farsi. But that word was reserved for conferences behind closed doors and late-night whispers when Zari's parents thought she was asleep. She blurrily recalled a different word—one with too many letters, that sounded in her parents' accents like a sneeze gone wrong—but by the time she was old enough to understand what it meant, it had solidified into that word. The one adults kept from her unless they needed something from it. She learned to hate it.

The first time Zari held a phone was the day Behrad was born. From that day forth, she was obsessed. In a different life, she might have picked up computer science. But in this timeline, she already had one viral video on the internet, and being the natural-born star she was, she decided to capitalize.

Algorithmic marketing became a buzzword in the Tarazi household. Zari’s parents helped her assemble a camera and lighting setup in her room; Zari took care of the rest. Articles said that viewers liked consistency, so at first, she filmed every video in front of the same wall, with different-colored fairy lights indicating different topics. Then she read that viewers liked to feel like they were being allowed access into the creator’s life—especially when that life was different from her own. So she started vlogging from the kitchen and the living room, explaining Persian food and traditions, recording her aunties and uncles on holidays, all with the barely-teeth smile and perky voice her therapist told her to use. She introduced new settings and characters gradually—first her maman in the kitchen, then her baba playing the setar, then her baby brother, learning to walk and sounding out his first words.

Her Internet name came from the articles, too. People were already calling her "the dragon girl" on YouTube and TikTok. It was recognizable. It was visual. It was catchy. And it was a face she could put on when she needed to—human enough to act normal, plastic enough that it didn't bother her when she lied.

Les-lay first approached her when she was thirteen years old. They set up a meeting at the organically-sourced Noonan’s in a neighborhood richer than the Tarazis’, and they discussed.

"I'll get straight to it," Les-lay said when they sat down, which Zari thought was ironic. "In the last few months, your CatChat follower count has risen faster than anyone else under 18. As a member of D.C. Entertainment, LLC, I would like to represent you as your publicist."

D.C. Entertainment was the foremost media agency in the eastern half of the United States. Zari had researched them extensively in the past, then again when Les-lay reached out to her. Les-lay herself, fresh into college, was only an intern, but that was expected. The company wouldn't want to spend too many resources on someone so young, who might pivot and choose a different career as she grew up.

But if they knew Zari at all, they would know that she wasn't that kind of person.

"I'm interested," she said.

Les-lay looked taken aback. "You don't have any questions?"

"Is there something for me to sign?"

The contract was eleven pages long. Zari read the whole thing, her finger patiently tracing beneath each line while Les-lay fidgeted across the table.

"Does that woman know?" Zari overheard her baba whisper late that night.

"Don't tell her," her maman said. "We don't want her to think that Zari is…"

She stopped listening after that.

-

Les-lay was the one who suggested that Zari take acting classes. "Your little socially awkward thing was cute for a little while, but you're growing out of it. People don't want to follow a teenager who acts like an eight-year-old."

She didn't mince words. It was both Zari's favorite and least favorite thing about her. Before Les-lay, she would have denied that such a thing could exist. But, like Les-lay pointed out repeatedly to Zari's parents, this was a learning opportunity for her, in more ways than one. To be honest, she didn't need to take classes in math and programming and other things she could just look up. Having an online presence, minding how she appeared to others, felt like an unexpected saving grace. The schoolyard taunts vanished, replaced by a worldwide adoration of her online self.

So cute!!!

Love u Dragon Girl! From Iran <3

Your channel gives me the confidence to embrace my culture and be myself. Yesterday I made halva for the first time using your recipe. Thank you, Dragon Girl!

So who cared if she'd lost the bit of coding she used to know, or if her favorite jacket was collecting dust in the attic? She had a career. She was famous. People loved her. She had everything she'd always been told she would never have, and she had barely just turned sixteen.

"I want to come out on my channel," she told Les-lay over chai tea at Noonan's.

Les-lay choked on her tea. When she managed to catch her breath, Zari was leaning forward slightly with her lips pursed and her eyes open, waiting for an answer.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "And why am I only hearing about this now?"

Zari narrowed her eyes. She added a touch and a half of annoyance to her tone. "Because I only told you about it now." Duh.

Les-lay took a long draft of tea. "So, you're gay?"

"Bi," Zari said, "and it's not a big deal. I just thought it might help my ratings." All the biggest celebrities who had come out in the past few years had immediately rocketed to the top of trending lists for weeks, if not months. Zari could only assume the same would happen to her.

"Z," Les-lay said, "you're not a thirty-year-old white man playing teenagers on TV. You're… you."

And although she knew Les-lay was referring to her gender, her ethnicity, everything other that she intentionally put on display to draw people to her channel, that word reared its head in her chest.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Zari kept her voice light, but the tension in it suggested murder.

Les-lay let out a long, suffering sigh. "I don't really have to explain this to you, do I?"

With effort, Zari shoved her Dragon Girl mask back on. "So is that a yes or a no?"

"No. Very much no." A pause. "It's 2026, Z. Nobody needs inspiration to be themselves anymore. They need marketable, accessible content in the form of 50-second videos on CatChat. That's how you'll make your mark."

She was clearly lying, but Zari wasn't supposed to point out liars anymore. So she drew her lips into the fakest smile she could muster. "Understood."

She never brought it up again.

-

Much later, her maman once asked if Zari ever resented Behrad for being… normal. She didn’t. Being a multimillionaire businesswoman and bad bitch seemed a lot better than being a pot-smoking Wharton dropout, regardless of how she’d gotten here. And Behrad had issues of his own, a lot of which probably came from being Zari’s brother. But sometimes she wished he understood a little more—that she couldn’t just go with the flow, that she’d had to piece her life together bit by meticulous bit, while he could smoke around and flunk his way out of school and remain completely and totally fine.

Which brought up the question: how the hell was he fine?

She didn’t get it until she met the Legends.

To be fair, they'd had a rocky start. And Zari still sometimes felt like an appendage to the team rather than a part of it. But they weren’t restricted like the people Zari knew. When all your crew members hail from wildly different times, places, and backgrounds, social mores go out the window, and you end up with a team that evolves, breathes, and sticks together all on its own.

D-list superheroes, Sara called them. The Legends had left dead-end lives and dystopian wastelands. For them, it wasn’t a hard decision whether or not to stay on the ship.

Zari had thought it would be harder for her, but it wasn’t.

Because what did she have at home, really? A publicist who hooked up with the boyfriend she’d pushed to propose a few weeks earlier? Parents who tried to fix her, even while they loved her? Millions of adoring fans who only liked her when she was the person they wanted her to be?

Despite their different backgrounds, the crew of the Waverider was united by one thing: they were losers. They'd tried so hard to live up to others’ expectations and never figured it out. Eventually, each one of them had decided it wasn’t worth it. And that was how they stopped being losers and started being Legends.

[septembersghost]

Classic spn had just so many effortlessly iconic shots 😔

it truly did! it was visually beautiful and arresting - even when it was dealing with the "ugly" (things like the gore, the monsters, injuries, etc), they still managed to make those shots appealing/intriguing because that heart of inspiration rooted in gothic horror shone through, and that's often about making the terrifying and the darkness alluring and emotionally compelling.

I believe there were a lot of reasons for that - Kripke having a very determined vision for the show, McG's influence directing the pilot and setting a standard, and (perhaps most vitally in many ways) the aesthetic brilliance of Kim Manners - which is also evident in TXF and Breaking Bad. losing him was a major blow to the show's consistently strong cinematography and its unique look and dynamism. (and, of course, his passing was so sad for every reason.)

I also think switching from film to digital changed the texture of the show, even though they kept the filters/washes for a while. I was telling a friend recently that the notes they're given in Hollywood Babylon ("We were just wondering if it could be, you know, a little brighter? ... who says horror has to be dark, you know? It's just, it's sort of depressing, don't you think?" and we all know he's a fool for suggesting this!) were all based on real notes they were forced to endure from the suits at Warner Brothers who simply did not GET the show and wanted it to fit in homogeneously with everything else, to its detriment. and then (excuse the salt incoming), Kripke left, Sera Gamble was pushed out, and Robert Singer has very little taste or artistic vision whatsoever (I'm sorry, but this is apparent in his directing style which stands out in comparison to so many of the great directors that the show did have - including Jensen! - for being basic and flat). it happened gradually after S5, but S8 marks that shift where we lost the filters and the mysterious depth of chiaroscuro, and the shots became much more generic and the colors overly bright. it's wild to me that what was a signifier of things being "off" and unreal - too-saturated, too static (like the world of the djinn in What is and What Should Never Be) - became the norm of the show.

I could list SO many iconic scenes that the early seasons gave us seemingly so effortlessly and they're still amazing to look at. it's classic for a reason. 🖤

[papers4me]

Hello :) I thought it would be easier to answer you this way than keep adding on your original post (for organisation sake ^.^) The other manga I was thinking about is Hoshi wa Utau, I think it's called Star Sings in English (I'm not sure, I have the French version). It is grimmer than Fruits Basket but I love it dearly so if you decide to read it, I hope you'll appreciate it too. It's also shorter, it's 11 volumes when Furuba has more than 20.

thank you! I’ll save this post as a fave & once I decide that the writer is good at wrapping things effectively up in furuba. I don’t mind grimmer stories at all. I enjoy fiction & have trained myself to return to reality once I close the book, finish the show/ep/film. So I think it’s fine.

As much as I loved furuba, I have many issues with it recently plot-wise & currently my experience changed from super excited to super annoyed, which is the reason I’ve decided I’m not going to read the manga in the future. I never thought the character that made me watch the show will be the character that makes me decide against reading the manga. Tohru will forever be the most wasted character in anime history. For the entirety of season 2, she exists 95% to support & worry abt yuki & others & I know she’ll have her time once season 3 starts, but meh~ by now, her character is just cutely precious & that’s all she is. she is rarely given the treatment of any type of visual imagery or symbolism or inner monologue abt herself even for short cryptic thoughts! Only happened once (when her mom & kyo were put in a kinda of box) which I now perceive as the story telling us, she’s shelved now, come back later (season 3 perhaps) for tohru. heck! she is rarely depicted as a woman, girl, or human, & all emphasis is on mom-tohru, angel-tohru. She is not allowed to be ugly from the inside like the boys, cuz this isn’t a look for good mothers.I hate when characters with lots of potential are wasted in favor for other characters or reduced to weak story finale. that is just bad writing, period.

Sorry, this got so long & out of topic! I just finished ep, 21, which I loved for yuki’s story & character but also, is heavily dependent on this holy image of tohru as a mother (which is valid given his story) but yeah, the show has already hammered this image all season 2 & i’m done with it.

Thank you for the ask & the recommendation! seeing you in my blog has become a joy <3