#whereas in the og game it was in ur face

[resizura]

i have a crack theory that capcom purposefully didnt make re1, not just because it already had a remake but because they wanted more opportunity to reboot the series without making it obvious

[mejomonster]

What was that other cdrama people said was not bl the way dmbj was not bl???? (Was it the new mystic nine movie???)

Anyway. Other things in that category.

Star Trek the original series - spirk obviously. They're gay and in love and one of the og gay ships that are not explicitly canon but sure are Right There

*Xena Warrior Princess - xena/gabrielle. Also obvious. They're in love and it's borderline explicit but keeps from being completely (until the comics) cause it just wasn't possible for them to write it as text rather than borderline. This ship in my opinion is indistinguishable from weilan in guardian or wenzhou in word of honor, in the sense that all these shows seem purposely gay for sure and just have to balance the line of technically not explicit romance to air. If they'd had full freedom, all would for sure have been explicitly romantic to any audience. Whereas like... spirk at some point to some degree was unintentional romantically (like dmbj's pingxie probably not intended as a romantic story to some degree for some of the writing tho it certainly turned out Pretty Dang That way)

Death Note - it's not gay and there's a good argument light isn't into anyone. But if one wished to interpret this show Any kind of way, light only cared about one person's attention and their relationship and it was Ls and when L was gone he no longer had anyone who could get him or entertain him and. Well it was sure Something.

Hikaru no go/qi hun - I only watched the cdrama adaptation but. If you're rivals that long who act like best friends and move in together and share a bed idk u can definitely make the argument that they're gay and in love. They're like Bad Buddy but not. That's their whole arc. I love them. That show also made a fun little effort to put a Lot of ships implied together in the final episodes as pairs being compared to the main 2. The cdrama was indistinguishable from a bl adaptation much like dmbj sometimes is. U cannot convince me the cdrama did not have some shipping intent.

Kingdom Hearts - soriku. It will forever canoncially just be a game about many friendships (which is how I like it, it's nice there's no overt romances tbh and doesn't feel like there ever will be, and friendship is a nice thing to make the most important foundation of ur story). But if u did wanna read it that way, boy does riku love sora. Wowza is that smacked in ur face in every game, in the way he's written, in the manga adaptation, I have yet to read the novels but I bet it's in them too. Riku loves sora and wants to protect him. That paopu scene in kh1 where he throws it at sora and it seems like he wants to share it with sora then he jokes sora wants to share it with kairi (ah yes kairi his romantic/friend rival to Best Friend too), to being beyond sad his best friend picked a duck and dog over him, to his whole rivalry being fueled by wanting soras attention, to him killing nobodies etc left and right to get sora back, to him wanting to hide what he's become from sora, to becoming himself again cause of sora, happy to be in darkness if its wirh sora, terra giving him a keyblade cause kid riku just wants power to protect sora, wanting to leave the world to get strong for sora, all of DDD, just uh. Nomura sure put it in there that riku sure loves sora. While I maintain nomura intends no explicit romance in the games and its all friendship, I also think if u read kairi as loving sora (and plenty do with her wanting to leave the island with just sora and not riku, wanting to give the paopu to sora etc) it's easy to see riku as just as in love with sora. Rikus gay and in love and pingxie can relate. And despite many many years of kh content at this point rikus continued to be written this way. Hence kh gets the category not bl but uh feels the same like dmbj feels the same

[curly-q-reviews]

FLIX FROM THE NET

Bird Box, 2018 (dir. Susanne Bier)

SPOILER WARNING THERE WILL BE SPOILERS DONT READ IF U HAVENT SEEN IT YET AND WANT TO

[TW: SUICIDE, MURDER, VIOLENCE, BLOOD, GORE]

well fuck its been a while!!  happy new year y’all hope u had a Fun and Safe time!!!  i for one was at a party where we started playing Shrek at exactly 10:39 PM to see if Smash Mouth’s hit song I’m a Believer started playing right at midnight and to my utter disbelief and elation it did!!!  move over times square ball drop a new arbitrary way of celebrating the start of a new calendar year is here and it involves a large green monster with a scottish accent who really loves his onions (#me am i right ladies)

WELL ANYWAY heres a fun new series ive been thinking of starting cause ya girl watches a lot of netflix movies and has many opinions about them.  i think i’ll do a separate post about the whole Netflix Original Film trend in general and how its changed the film industry at a later date but since i just watched the above movie not too long ago i wanted to get all my thoughts out there right fuckin now!!

netflix is without a doubt the OG king of streaming services, they were really the first to get the ball rolling and then dozens of other companies scrambled to latch onto this money train while it was rolling on the tracks full steam (or should i say.... stream EL;KGHS;EKFSH; please end me) ahead.  it started out as a rental subscription service where u could pick out three movies at a time to rent and then they were sent to u in the mail (like blockbuster but now you never have to leave your house ever again to get that sweet sweet rental content).  and then the decision was made to actually start online streaming, no physical DVD’s required!  ISNT TECHNOLOGY GREAT

well whoooo boy this shit swept the nation, people couldnt get enough of such a convenient and relatively affordable service and netflix started really raking in the dough.  and at some point they got rich enough to say “hey fuck it!!!  lets make our own movies baby!!!!”  and here we are now with Netflix Original Movies and TV Shows, which means a new player has entered the movie game in a very novel and innovative way.  why pay money for a movie ticket and leave your house to go to a theater when cool new movies are being released on a subscription service u already own to watch movies you already know and enjoy?  and then u can sit butt-ass naked in ur bedroom alone stuffing ur face with cheese puffs like an insatiable cheddar beast and see something new and fun and interesting

ok so.  Bird Box.  here we have a movie based off of a book (so i guess this also counts as a Book Movies review but I DIGRESS) starring hollywood powerhouse sandra bullock, featuring Supreme Lesbian Overlord Sarah Paulson and Resident Crazy Old Man John Malkovich, directed by a relatively unknown but competent female filmmaker Susanne Bier (who also directed Things We Lost in the Fire in 2007, a moving drama starring Halle Berry).  this one definitely has a lot of proimse compared to what netflix has offered so far in terms of their original movies (im gonna get into Dumplin’ at a later date cause jesus christ what a mess) and i went in with pretty high expectations

did it deliver???  well uuhhhh yeah sort of i guess!!  we got some pretty strong performances from our leading lady bullock who really does deliver it every time, a few strong supporting roles like newcomer Trevante Rhodes of Moonlight fame (his energy on screen is just so compelling and soothing), not overly obnoxious child actors which is really all u can ask for, and overall a solid story. 

now heres where i gotta say that i couldnt help comparing this film to another movie of its kind, directed by the notorious M. Night Shyamalan.  y’all remember The Happening?  cause i remember The Happening.  i remember that it was total shit and that the twist was that it was the fucking plants making everyone kill themselves.  the PLANTS.  and i also remember mark wahlbergs dumb-ass confused face that he used in every single shot no matter the context, im AMAZED i remember zoe deschanel in this movie cause she may as well have been one of the killer plants with how little she emoted, and i remember mark wahlberg yelling at a fake office ficus and apparently i was supposed to be scared while watching this clusterfuck. 

the way that this movie was described to me by friends who had seen it before me was basically that Bird Box is a slightly better The Happening, and no truer words have ever been spoken.  we basically have the same premise going on here:  unknown force is causing people to off themselves, our lead(s) have to try and find a way to escape this unknown force without even knowing what it really is, and theres some sort of “sanctuary” they gotta try and get to (which is a common plot point in really all apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films).  now whereas The Happening’s rules for this scenario make entirely no fucking sense (how in the fuck are u supposed to be able to out-run WIND???), Bird Box has some rules for dealing with this Unknown Thing that make slightly more sense.  when u open ur eyes while outside, the chance of the Thing making u kill urself in some horrific way is extremely high, so wear a blindfold when ur outside and keep all windows covered when ur inside.  makes sense!  thats something i can believe and get behind which makes me more immersed in the story!

unfortunately like The Happening there are still some little things that kinda dont make much sense and take u out of it.  apparently some people when they see this unknown entity dont wanna die, but instead find it absolutely beautiful, which makes them want to make everyone else look at it to see how beautiful it is.  and its insinuated that these people are mentally ill or have some sort of psychiatric issue.  i get that this adds more stakes to the situation and ups the ante, but it doesnt really sit well with me that once again, mentally ill people are the villains in a horror-type story.  and i also dont really understand why theyd then wanna go around and make other people see the thing??  unless the thing has them in a mind-control state or something and is making them do its bidding but that seems kind of a weird thing for an all-powerful evil formless entity to do. 

and that leads me to the next issue i have with Bird Box.  if ur gonna have an apocalyptic scenario where people do something as serious as kill themselves due to an unknown cause, it almost seems a little cliche and cheesy to have it be some sort of mythical celestial god-like or demon-like entity thats doing the damage.  i actually really liked where The Happening was going with its source of all the chaos being something naturally made, like the Earth deploying some sort of self-preservation mechanism or something.  the idea of that to me is actually loads more frightening than some invisible boogeyman that u cant look at.  and then Shamalamadingdong had to go and make it stupid by saying that it was fucking plants trying to kill people by releasing pheromones or some shit.  like why cant we have the best of both of these??  something naturally-occuring that maybe has even happened before in the planets history (maybe it wasnt a meteor that killed off the dinosaurs after all??), that isnt FUCKING PLANTS, and that doesnt do cheesy shit like make ur eyes turn grey and bloodshot and like whisper to u telling u to take ur blindfold off (i swear that happens multiple times it was pretty silly)

thats another thing, this movie’s tone is all over the place.  there are some moments where a more light-hearted tone is needed to break up the tension, for sure, but it almost as if the writing and dialogue werent really taking this serious of a story as seriously as they should have.  weirdly placed jokes are all over the place, there were some moments where the dialogue made me cringe cause it was so awkward.  bullock’s character gets to have some good breakdown moments which help bring the tone to the level of somberness and despair it should be at, but all the other supporting characters dont really get the same space to process whats happening to them, so it kinda comes off like they arent really affected by, say, their wife throwing herself into a burning car right in front of their very eyes. 

overall i’d still say this is a worthwhile watch, especially considering its a netflix movie.  if you’ve ever wanted to see a not-as-horrible version of The Happening that has some deeper metaphorical stuff going on about motherhood and family and shit than this is for you.  the production value is overall pretty solid (though when it comes to cinematography i actually prefer The Happening from an artistic standpoint) and sandra bullock knocks it out of the park.  go check it out if this seems like something thats up ur alley!!

ok bye for now hopefully it doesnt take me six months to write another review but we’ll see!!  my brain is a mystery and time is an illusion HAPPY 20-BI-TEEN Y’ALL