#why would you start your trilogy of musicals with a concept that’s never mentioned again

[mossyclaw]

I genuinely start tweaking when I see someone say that “Marvin’s giddy seizures” are actual seizures. Like I get it’s very vague and up for interpretation I guess but. Like.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Thank you for answering my question. I also have to ask, do we know for sure that BTS had no insight into Ed Sheeran's thought process with PTD? Is your point that there was no communication at all because they stated they never met in person? They are separated by a pandemic and a language barrier, yes, but that does not mean there was no exchange between them, even if it involved a third party transmitting information. I don't know the answer. Maybe none of us know? It seems a bit extreme to call the Weverse writer or any BTS members dishonest because of this. What they said isn't "laughable" from my prospective. It reflects the process of an international collaboration.

When it comes to criticism and would be critics, whether they consider PTD or any other song artistically bankrupt is a matter of individual opinion. There is no objective way of measuring artistic quality. What is artistic quality? In the words of RM on the AGUSTD track Strange:

'you think got taste? O babe, how do you know?'

Even music that has "stood the test of time" has been helped along by western cultural hegemony, institutionalized gatekeeping, sexism and racial bias. Criticism usually comes off as a judgement in value. This is why people like me get in our feelings about it sometimes. BTS are the first Asian band to achieve this level of global success so it does matter, to me, where the criticism is coming from. Over the past few weeks I have read a lot of criticism from western platforms that make judgements about authenticity, americanization and commercialism. I have never felt the need to make any kind of comment on social media up until PTD came out. It has highlighted how unable many western critical voices are to understand the outsider's perspective. I wonder, why aren't they digging so harshly into other pop acts?

Thanks for taking the time to listen.

There is no way to know for sure if BTS had an insight or not into Sheeran's thought process. What we do know is that he participated in writing a song that was then bought by Big Hit for BTS. Was he specifically asked to do it for the band? Were there other songwriters who did it and Big Hit chose the best one? That's an option. Or was the collaboration with Sheeran an exclusive job? Again, we don't know. If he actually gave a nod to what Yoongi said during 2018 Festa, I see this as a type of information that could easily be shared during the promotional interviews, but there's barely any mentions of Sheeran. BTS are following some talking points and they stick to it in interviews, which is why most of them sound the same, with a few exceptions.

For the second part of your ask, I'm going to get a bit more didactic and explain just for a bit what is the deal with criticism, judgement, and values.

I want to start by saying that criticism does not automatically have a negative connotation. Analyzing a piece of art, be it a song, novel, painting, film, that's all criticism, usually based on theory, but not always. When someone writes a review, they don't need to go really in depth, all they do is make a general assessment of what they write about and then we have the bigger, deeper side of analysis for a more nuanced piece, gathering references, what others have written, if there's something that's missing that they can provide with a new perspective. Criticism can lead to a negative judgment of value or a positive one. We should not be afraid of the word. It does not mean what people usually think it means and I believe a lot of confusion has its origins in that.

BTS are considered a global band at the moment (although I would use the word glocal), with fans all over the world, so of course there is discussion on Western platforms as well. The judgments from those platforms in regards to authenticity, Americanization and commercialism come from the fact that people were used to a certain type of music from BTS (which always had a Western influence due to the nature of K-Pop, but it was never just Western), but they saw a change in the trilogy which focused on delivering music, concept wise, closer to American imagery (PTD) and with a sound that is deemed as commercial because it sounds just like American Pop. Perhaps people can be quite harsh in how they express themselves and social media is not the place to expand on our thoughts and sometimes people post their first thought immediately, but I don't believe we should ignore it all the way. We should acknowledge it and try to understand how come there was such a reaction once we got to PTD. This is just my personal opinion, but I don't think it came out of nowhere, I think it was influenced by the fact that it was already the 3rd song in a similar fashion to what they released before (Dynamite and Butter), combined with the reasons behind it.

Now, we get to the motivation part. Of course it's important and incredible that a band such as BTS has achieved global success. I also understand that despite our feelings and opinions, the American market and the so called important awards are American. It's Western hegemony, just as you said. Do I personally agree with it? No, but it's the reality. That does not mean that we should stop and just accept it as if this is just the way things are. It's about changing the perspective. Seeing Parasite winning the Oscar for Best Picture is a moment for the film history books and an achievement, but after also winning several other awards, including the Palme d'Or at Cannes (which is a better example for promoting a more international, global cinema), then the Oscar does seem to look like a local, American award (I think this is how it was said by Bong Joon-Ho). Unfortunately, the Grammys are not the same, they are still considered the ultimate goal for musicians and for an Asian act to win, it would be huge.

American culture is not the center and the rest is a periphery. It was thought to be so, but there are so many attempts made, especially through criticism, to move away from it. I want to borrow a concept from Dudley Andrew which talks about an atlas of world cinema which could help us move away from hegemonic tendencies, to not look at a center that influences all others, but we should look at influences from different time periods or different places. Perhaps we could use this when we talk about music in global terms. Unfortunately we're not there yet.

I hope I explained a bit better my own perspective on why there is an aversion when people judge the songs because they sound too ''American''. Of course, not everyone has the same thoughts as me, but this is how I try to make sense of it.

There's a lot to talk about this, and your questions are relevant and worthy of further discussion, but for now, I leave it here.

When it comes to criticism in general, I will expand on it, as I said from the beginning, so it becomes a bit more clear what I mean by it when I use the word.

[jam-is-my-food]

writing asks. all of them. ( for 50 uhh just write a paragraph about how hot emmy raver-lampman is in a suit please and thank you </3 )

fUCK YOU NESSIE

THAT’S IT IM DOING IT JUST TO SPITE YOU

this is gonna be long asf click keep reading at risk of death or boredom

1.     Do you listen to music when you write?

not usually, it's distracting

 2.     Are you a pantser or plotter?

naturally pantser but if i wanna actually finish smth i gotta plot it hh

 3.     Computer or pen and paper?

computer i'm not a boOmer /j i so am

 4.     Have you ever been published, or do you want to be published?

bitch i wiSh

actually technically i was published in this anthology thing once? and i think i have a piece in a magazine somewhere on the internet i forget those are cool

but yeah bye getting a novel published is my d r e a m (gotta write a novel first tho lawl)

 5.     How much writing do you get done on an average day?

n o t  m u c h

unless i get one of my bUrsts aka finishing a 2.3K almoons chapter before 8am the other week after procrastinating it for like two months 

but yeah jdsghliuedskj it um depends often none

 6.     Single or multiple POV?

i answered that for kiri so i'll just copy paste it over loll

mmm it depends. usually i do single? but i do do multiple occasionally. i almost never do alternating chapters, though, it’s usually more like part one is narrated by person a, part two person b etc.

 7.     Standalone or series?

baha like i could ever write a series (please, please be jinxing yourself rn refster) aside from that one trilogy when i was 7 but uh yeah atm just standalones but a series would be so cool in future 

 8.     Oldest WIP

the aforementioned trilogy. chronicles of clara. it is incREDIBLE. 10/10. so good. so, so good.

 9.     Current WIP

i haven't actually mentioned it on tumblr yet but hehehe it's called the wordweaver's apprentice it's fantasy and i'm v excited about it :DD that was ooc but :DD

 10.  Do you set yourself deadlines?

(also answered for kiri, copy-pasting over)

hahahahhahahuhdkjashdglauhsdaugediuskjlkehdsgihkdskhgdkjx

i? try?

it does not go well?

but then i never finish my projects?

send help pls im dying

11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most

lmao the list is too long

 12.  Describe your perfect writing space

somewhere w/o distractions

 13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished

hm. idea. that's cool. that's cool. write it down. hype myself up. forget about it within a week.

el em mayo

but like

f r LMAO

okay but fr fr idk i don't usually finish stuff but it'd be idea, brainstorm, plot (sort of), write, agonize, write, finish, throw in the other direction and never touch again bc revision whos she

 14.  How do you deal with self-doubts?

cry and spam my friends

 15.  How do you deal with writer’s block?

i don’t - mm. i don’t tend to get writer’s block? or like - idk what to classify as writer’s block? bc sometimes i get blocked for a certain story, but then i get really into like poetry or sum for a week so it’s fine idk

 16.  How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied with a project?

o n e as i said i don't - revision is a no

 17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?

uHhHhhhhh idk???

 18.  If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and what would you write about?

*laughs in gfc*

 19.  How do you keep yourself motivated?

i don't. if you have any ideas please hmu i need it.

 20.  How many WIPs and story ideas do you have?

m a n y.

21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write?

mmmmmmmmm i love cass i haven't written her in too long but i think she's probably my most well-done character to date and i'm so proud of her badkghewiludkjs

 22.  Who is/are your favourite pairing(s) to write?

c y i l l

though possible imeini (ship name needs revision) in future we shall see (from twa) (the aforementioned newish wip)

 23.  Favourite author

there are Many

 24.  Favourite genre to write and read

fantasy maybe? ooh dystopia is fun

 25.  Favourite part of writing

everything about it when i'm motivated hh, my problem is getting more motivation

 26.  Favourite writing program

oh idk huh?

27.  Favourite line/scene

idk?

 28.  Favourite side character

j o o s t

 29.  Favourite villain

i def have one but i forget

 30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet

too many

31.  Least favourite part of writing

motivating myself :/

 32.  Most difficult character to write

mmmm i'm not really in the throes of a wip atm so idk

 33.  Have you ever killed a main character?

yessir

 34.  What was the hardest scene you ever had to write?

drunk will was surprisingly difficult in a fun way. def not the hardest but yeah

 35.  What scene/story are you least looking forward to writing?

god idk

36.  Last sentence you wrote

And then Mei was gone, and in the space that she'd filled, Imani whispered, "I wish I was like you."

 37.  First sentence or your current WIP

It is said that when we came to this stretch of Tatys land, it was empty.

38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had

mm there was one about anthropomorphic chickens battling sentient fruits, the fruits in question also being six-year olds

 39.  Weirdest character concept you’ve ever had

s e e  a b o v e

 40.  Share some backstory for one of your characters

cass's mom used to have a drug problem & she would leave her alone for long stretches of time, she went to rehab and is now sober but it's where cass gets her abandonment issues from

41.  Any advice for new/beginning/young writers?

just write! no one taught me how to do anything, and there's no rules per se, aside from basic grammatical stuff. do what you wanna do, don't worry about others' reactions. this is cliche asf but true.

 42.  How do you feel about love triangles?

mostly gross, but they can be good.

 43.  What do you do if/when characters don’t follow the outline?

adapt. i  g o  w i t h  t h e  f l o w.

 44.  How much research do you do?

not much usually, depends on the genre of story. i do as much as i feel i need to. and ofc i have the random writer search history.

 45.  How much world building do you do?

in the past, not much. twa (once again my new wip) is fantasy, though, so i' m attempting to remedy that.

 46.  Do you reread your own stories?

i do! it's fun to look back at them after a few years and see how much i've improved.

 47.  Best way to procrastinate

random character headcanons/doodle writey spurt thingies

 48.  What’s the most self-insert character/scene you’ve ever written?

bAHA this one scene in the cHrOniCLeS of cLaRa book two when this girl lisa who was 100% self-insert got annoyed at her little sister daisy (sister-insert) for chewing too loudly and then proceeded to use her wAtEr pOwErs to like flood the house. that part was less self-insert.

 49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?

bye that's so hard. c a d m u s & l a u r e n t tho cinnamon rolls are liFE.

 50.  Write a paragraph about how hot emmy raver-lampman is in a suit please and thank you

i don't gotta write my own bitch i have everything i need to plagiarize from right here

"Raver-Lampman’s enthusiasm is contagious. So is her laugh. It comes from deep inside, just like her voice, and it rings out — ricocheting off furniture and walls. Her head is shaved, all except for a distinctive swath of tight curls on the top and left side of her head. She has the tiniest septum ring in her nose, and a tattoo of what looks like a musical note behind her right ear."

- the clearly gay jessica belt

thank you for the ASKS darLING and thank you if you read this idk why or whether you're okay but yup

[smolie]

in december i wrote a 2020 year music review for myself that i intended to post here BUT...because i was infamously restricted twice last year, i didn’t bother since you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway because it was not possible to view my blog hjfdhfd

now that my restricted era is (hopefully forever) over i just want to post it here for the sake of completion since i want to do the same thing this year

this is really long so if you actually read it ... idk you are insane in the membrane and i love you... but i genuinely don’t expect anyone to read this hjfdhjf i just like reflecting on the music i have listened to and be able to look back on what i enjoyed in certain stages of my life! okiiii bye 💗

january

mac miller - circles (album) it’s a bit funny that i worried putting my thoughts down about this album and now it turns out to be first on the list, chronologically of course … oh bittersweet irony </3 listening to this album is such a double edged sword, either way i am always hit with a truckload of feelings when i turn to this release.

this album came to me in a time of my life where i was slowly but surely sliding down towards rock bottom again just after i got out of it and thought i was okay. the times i’ve listened to this crying in the bathtub with a glass of wine….girl let’s not lol…. it’s almost strange how much i can relate to the thoughts another person brought to paper. the comfort this album brings me is otherworldly, i feel so understood by mac’s words and it’s my go-to “wallow in self-pity for a bit then come out stronger than before” album. then again, i feel a little sting when any of mac’s songs come on shuffle. a friend of mine said she cannot listen to artists who have passed because it feels too strange and most of the time i agree but this time, it’s so so different. this album would have been mac’s salvation, i can feel it. everything would have been a bit brighter and lighter for him after this, it would have had to be. i feel like i would do him a disservice if i did not listen to this album, so i will cherish this final gift from him as his legacy and my comfort. i miss him incredibly and am all the more thankful he shared his heart with us.

album favs: circles, good news, surf

tiny meat gang - broke bitch (single) MAN I TELL THAT BROKE BITCH IF YOU WANNA GET IN TUNE BETTER CHANGE YOUR WHOLE PITCH LIKE WOAH !!!!!!!!!! did that give you whiplash? hehe funny to say this about a song called broke bitch by a duo called tiny meat gang but this song actually means a lot to me! it came out shortly before their show in berlin and i almost exclusively listened to it on my 7+ hours train ride from one side of the country to the other to see my meat boys. this played out of the fat ass speakers at the venue when they stepped on the stage and i will never forget meeting them :’) also the song fucking slaps obviously

february

loona - [#] (mini album) ah yes, the most controversial loona release to date! i’m not gonna lie and say this sounded anything like i expected it to. but also, i have come to terms with the fact that loona release noise music now and personally i am here for it. why not did not have the endless energy of hi high or otherworldly vibe of butterfly, but it’s a hype song and i am always there for hype. i also have to say the b-sides were not as strong for me as on previous releases but i think i have to come to peace with the fact that loona will never top their debut mini for me. though if i can wish for one thing…… let loona have title tracks with a chorus in 2021? pls? crumbs?

album favs: so what, oh (yes i am)

tame impala - the slow rush (album) *lights cigarette* i’m listening to pretty underground music….i don’t think you’ve heard of this band….they are called tame impala *intro of the less i know the better starts playing* yes i am a basic white bitch and listen to like 3 alternative bands but damn i listen to them religiously. like any other basic bitch on this planet i found out about tame impala through the less i know the better and checked out their music. i wasn’t too much into this album as i was into currents but towards the end of the year, i was in a moody alternative music slump that took me back to this album and i like it a lot more now! most importantly, tame impala fulfills my primitive urge to listen to songs that exceed the 4 minute mark. something clicks in my brain when i see a song that is like 6:34 and chances that it ends up as one of my faves on a album are high. i enjoy tiktok like everyone else but this trend of 2:50 long songs needs to be stopped immediately.

album favs: borderline, lost in yesterday, it might be time, is it true, posthumous forgiveness

honorary mentions: onlyoneof - dOra maar, everglow - dundun

march

nct 127 - neo zone (album) ah, yes. the album that fundamentally changed me as a person <3 i’ve been listening to nct for a while, matter of fact i checked my top tracks 2019 playlist on spotify and cherry bomb was on there lol. i remember trying to get into them in 2018 when they released their regular-irregular album but the endless member & unit concept scared me off, so i only listened to a handful of songs without looking into them march 2020, the fateful month in which they released kick it and screencaps of jaehyun’s sexy ass tiddies in the kick it mv landed on my tumblr or twitter and i HAD to look up who this man is…...remember when i thought jaehyun was my ult for like, 2 weeks? me neither, johnny suh only in this house <3

anyway, i checked out this album and by god, is this pure kpop perfection. last time i listened to a god tier no skip album like this was … maybe the perfect red velvet? hype songs, well crafted ballads, love songs that make me wanna learn the lyrics, genuinely fun and interesting pop songs, this album has it all. somehow, the way this album is crafted greatly reminds me of brown eyed girls’ sound-g, it has the same vibe, concept and mix of genres to me, i’m not entirely sure how to explain. anyway, this album is one of my favorites of all time and even though i’ve obsessively listened to it (lastfm says 1.4k scrobbles as of today, december 7th…) i am still not tired of this. i recommend this to anyone who loves kpop tbh, you will have a good time with this!

other than being just a musically solid album, the emotional ties i have with this are …. isabel stop making albums your emotional support 2021 challenge. i’ve listened to this release all spring lockdown, this basically played at every waking hour for all of march and april. the promotion time of this era and lockdown are deeply intertwined for me and so i am always remembered of all the nct content i consumed during that time which inevitably cheered me up so much. this album really means a lot to me :’)

album favs: kick it, mad dog, love song, boom

honorary mentions: itzy - wannabe,

the weeknd - after hours (album) my dear melchanoly, was one of my favorite releases of 2018, so i had been desperate for a new release by abel and boy did he not disappoint. the perfect thotty, dirty emo 80s, making it clap while crying in the club album! this is a no skip from top to bottom and all i can say is that the grammys can go to hell <3 abel aoty! there is really not much i can say about this album, the flawless production, lyrics and sound speak for themself. my only criticism is that i feel overwhelmed by 14 songs, especially when some of them are really long. a few songs greatly overshadow the weaker tracks on the album for me but i still love this to death.

album favs: escape from LA, blinding lights, after hours, faith

dua lipa - future nostalgia (album) after the weeknd’s masterpiece of an 80s inspired pop album i was really looking forward to this. i greatly enjoyed the pre-releases, i played don’t start now and physical up and down, they are still some of my favorite songs released this year! when i first listened to the album i really liked it, songs like boys will be boys or pretty please sound like fillers to be but the rest is solid. yet a month after release you couldn’t catch me listening to this and i cannot even really tell you why. i think it was a combination of the following: 1) i greatly overplayed dsn and physical to the point where i didn’t want more of the pop 80s sound that the album has 2) there were other releases at the time that caught my attention and interest more like neo zone or after hours 3) dua herself….girl….she really gave it her all this year to make herself as unlikeable as possible. nationalist propaganda and the constant traveling during a fucking pandemic were really the kicker. i can barely stand seeing her on my instagram feed anymore, much less listen to her album. her having the nerve to go “we’re in a pandemic lol” when people asked about an animated music video …. if you don’t shut the hell up lmao … also, she takes the crown for the corniest album opener of all time. i nearly closed spotify when i heard future nostalgia (the song) lmao

album favs: don’t start now, physical, levitating, hallucinate

honorary mentions: megan thee stallion - savage

april

apink - dumhdurum (song)

listen, i’m not gonna sit here and pretend like this mini album interested me in the slightest but god, the title is such a banger.i’m so sick, eung eung and dumhdurum are a holy trilogy that i will defend until the end of time! i really hope apink stick to this mature, elegant concept, it suits them so well and goes well with their new sound. come back soon queens <3

rina sawayama - xs (song) i feel like i’m gonna catch some hands here … xs is an absolute banger, the guitar riffs and disruptive sounds really get me going every damn time! but the rest of the album … tell me why it doesn’t catch me?! i literally cannot explain. i need to take an hour, sit down and do nothing but listen to the album from top to bottom once again and see if my thoughts change but right now i only care about xs.

chungha - stay tonight (song) drama! vocals! dance break! choreography! this release served it all. i listened to this obsessively during the time of the release and it still holds up today. can we talk about the run chungha had with gotta go > snapping > stay tonight? lord have mercy.

honorary mentions: april - lalalilala, nct dream - ridin’

may

lady gaga - chromatica (album) the immense disappointment i have in this album is tough to put into words lol. any other artist might have gotten away with this release but gaga having the discography that she has, well … she doesn’t get away with it. this has underwhelming all over it. i enjoyed the pre-releases and my hope was high but the rest just doesn’t live up what i expected, i can’t even say why. it’s just underwhelming pop for someone of gaga’s calibre. i listened to this album during release week and then never again till december to write this list and i can see why.

album favs: rain on me, sour candy ft. blackpink, stupid love

baekhyun - delight (mini album) it’s confession time … this is a name i never would have expected on any of my music lists to end up. exo has always been one of those boy groups i casually listened to. i greatly enjoy their title tracks and a handful of side tracks, i have a few members that i keep an eye on more than others but that’s about it. baekhyun was never one of those members i had any interest in, matter of fact i always thought he was kinda vanilla and boring 😭 i didn’t even plan on listening to this release if it wasn’t for his association with superm and thus nct, so i gave it a shot and we have no choice but to stan. his voice is like butter and can cut sharp at the same time, his versatility is insane. i dived a bit more into baekhyun related content and he is so likeable, it’s almost ridiculous. this production is absolute god tier, not a single skip on this mini. late spring/early summer i had this weird urge to listen to songs with mellow voices but still a banger instrumental and i wholeheartedly blame this release. matter of fact, this album is so good, i had to buy a physical copy. Y’ALL. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. i haven’t bought a kpop album of anyone that’s not holy top 3 (brown eyed girls, loona, nct) in like … idk, 5 years?! baekhyun’s impact. i’m a fan now <3

album favs: candy, r u ridin’?, love again

ak aussenkontrolle - in meinem benz (song) this … is very unrelated to this entirely list but i had to put it on here. i miss my ex boss and our 3 hour drives to meetings in the south of the country where we would blast trashy german rap music </3

nct 127 - neo zone: the final round (repackage) *airhorns* REEEPACKAGE TIIIIIME!!! my first nct era that i experienced from start to finish! i remember watching nct 127’s beyond live with luna where these mfs performed punch and we finished the concert having no idea what this song sounded like. the structure is so unusual and the intro catches me off-guard every time just to hype me up beyond compare. not gonna lie, the fact that johnny has exactly one (1) line hurts but! it’s my favorite line of the entire song! possibly related to the fact that it’s his line but let’s ignore that ….

album favs: punch, make your day

kim woo seok - red moon (song) i’m not even gonna lie to you. i have not a single idea who this man is. you could put him right in front of me and i wouldn’t know … all i know is that he has a banger song. i saw him perform this on a music show that i watched for nct and i ended up loving the song … thanks for your service sir, whoever you are ...

june

stray kids - go live (album) 2020 was kind of the year of boy groups for me, i’m so sorry … stray kids promoted simultaneously with nct 127 so i ended up hearing their title track and holy hell, is that a song. god’s menu is hype from start to finish. it reminds me of good ol’ 2nd gen noise boy group song a lá b*g b*ng fantastic baby. just pure hype and fun noise. i am forever grateful to witness the birth of the line cooking like a chef, i’m a five star michelin. the title track impressed me so much that i ended up checking out the entire album which i rarely ever do with boy groups and what is even rarer is that i enjoyed the b sides lmao!!! it’s not an album that i would put on and just enjoy from start to finish but it has some really solid tracks! this release made me want to keep an eye on stray kids, they seem like a really fun bunch.

album favs: god’s menu, TA, airplane

seventeen - left & right (song) the boy group run continues … same thing with stray kids, seventeen promoted during punch era so i heard their song while watching some music station show for nct and i heard this and was sold. solid, fun pop with the catchiest pre-chorus in history and a banger chorus. i listened to the entire mini and can’t say it really caught my interest so this is a title track only release for me.

dishonorary mentions: twice - more & more (i hate this song so much lol)

honorary mentions: ryu sejeong - tiger eyes, monsta x - fantasia, chloe x halle - do it

july

irene & seulgi - monster (mini) this is a weird release because it’s good. the title track is fun enough, the b sides are dope. but my issue with this is that it’s nothing new. this sounds exactly like a red velvet release. i get that they didn’t want to a  joy, seulgi, irene, yeri release only and went for the sub-unit route instead, but why not be experimental and stray away from the usual sound of the group? also, whoever made monster and not naughty the title track deserves to be spat on. at least the choreography here is more interesting and “experimental” for kpop standards. also, why only a seulgi solo and no irene? i have no idea how reveluvs reacted to this release but this has rushed written all over it.

album favs: monster, naughty (i’m counting this to the mini idc), uncover

exo-sc - 1 billion views (mini) doing my part as a filthy casual exo listener. this release goes in the same category as baekhyun’s delight where i like the album so much that i HAD to get a physical copy. i don’t know what they put in the title track for it to be so diddly darn addictive but it clearly worked. the only bad thing about this release is how criminally mismanaged it was by sm, when i get you lee sooman ...

album favs: 1 billion views, on me, say it

baekhyun - garden in the air (song) i told you i’m a loyal baekhyun fan now <3 king releases and i listen, that’s just how it goes now! this is a cover of a boa song and i really love his version. there is not much to say except that it’s a really smooth song and his voice absolutely carries the track. i enjoyed this much more than i thought i would!

hyoyeon - dessert (song) YOU KNOW WHAT I DESERVE??? DESSERT!!!!!!! *insert tik tok challenge here* imagine if miryo featured on this instead of the ethnic hip girl … why can’t we have nice things. anyway, a banger!

johnny - sunny side up episode 1 set (spotify playlist, actual set) johnny being the skilled, talented, multi-faceted king that he is has been dj-ing since before debut (not me acting like i was around at that time lmao) and thus he decided to bless our quarantined, lockdowned asses with an online dj set! that was the most turned up sunday morning i ever had in my entire life. this set kicked off an edm/house/techno affinity that i had for the following couple of weeks. this set is an absolute banger, i would go insane to this in the club. he has an amazing ear for transitions and drops and i still just put on this set on the regular when i have cleaning to do or so. he could fill the void that rona and thus no clubbing in 2020 left in my heart and i’m so happy he decided to share this with us <3 now … john … sunny side up episode 2 pspspspspsps

honorary mentions: gfriend - apple, jessi - nunu nana

august

cardi b ft. megan thee stallion - wap (song) late summer 2021. we are vaccinated, icu beds are free, barely any new cases, clubs are open, this song plays and i can finally make it fucking clap.

troye sivan - in a dream (mini album) a cute mini album! nothing life-changing or as exciting as previous releases but easy (haha!) to enjoy. i really, really enjoy easy, can always count on troye for a dreamy sound.

album favs: easy

honorary mentions: itzy - not shy

september

wonho - love synonym pt. 1: right for me (mini album) honestly? i know like, 3 monsta x songs. i never bothered to get into them and maybe i never will, but it was difficult to ignore the whole wonho & monsta x mess that went on. i have absolutely no memory of why i decided to check out this release, i guess i was curious what he was going to do and … i was positively surprised lol. open mind is the exact time of song i had been so desperate all summer (remember mellow vocals with banger instrumentals? yeah) and uhm … can’t ignore the obvious … mr wonho is fucking fine. sir, you just gained a fan … now, where is love synonym part 2?? huh?????

album favs: open mind, i just, losing you

joji - nectar (album) this one is on tiktok. i heard gimme love in a bunch of tiktoks and had to look up the song and here we are. what an album! it came right as seasonal depression started to hit and accompanied me for a good chunk of autumn. at this point one has to ask if joji can ever really miss? the entire album is a no skip, it’s almost difficult to narrow down my favorites if my favorites weren’t so damn god tier!!!

album favs: gimme love, ew, tick tock, pretty boy, your man

super m - tiger inside / 100 / drip (songs) okay, listen. technically tiger inside & 100 were already released in august. instead of those three songs i was gonna write about the entire album until i realized i really don’t give a fuck about it 😭 i really only care about those three songs. and YES, i unironically like 100. is it a good song? no. but neither is jopping and that fucking bangs. i don’t turn to superm for life-changing, profound music, i turn to them for a good time LOL and that’s what they deliver every time! that being said, taeyong’s VROOM VROOM, UHMM UHMM, GRRRAHHHH verse is life-changing and profound! speak your truth king! also i wish drip was a b side for nct 127 that song is so damn sexy

taemin - never gonna dance again act 1 (album) this isn’t kpop, this is taemin pop. taemin never misses and the fact that hw*s* won dance performance over taemin is a literal hate crime. i will never forget the industry for this daylight robbery … anyway, nice album!!!!

album favs: criminal, black rose, waiting for

stray kids - in life (repackage) *airhorns* REPACKAGE TIIIIME 2.0!!!! i was on the edge of my seat waiting what stray kids were going to deliver after i greatly enjoyed god’s menu. i was still not over listening god’s menu when the repackage came out so i didn’t listen to it right away and now i greatly regret the few days i could have listened to back door earlier </3

album favs: back door, any

jackson wang - pretty please (song) i’m not gonna pretend like i ever listened to a song by jackson ever before. he is short king from got7 in my head and that’s all! i don’t even remember why i listened to this song but all i know is that it slaps severely. i love the wong kar wai inspired music video and the choreography is fun too! i’m gonna check out more of his music <3

honorary mentions: fromis9 - feel good, knk - ride

october

blackpink - the album (album, duh) i don’t even know what to say about this … this might be the weirdest release on the list for me. there are song i absolutely fucking hate (ice cream …) and songs i get my life to (pretty savage) on here and the discrepancy just gives me massive whiplash. i would never put this album on and listen to the whole body of work, i just cannot with the brain damage it gives me. i am still stuck in 2016, begging for bp to release music like whistle/boombayah/stay/playing with fire but i think i need to give up on that wishful thinking … i am just grateful we a got a title track with actual lyrics in the chrous for once.

album favs: pretty savage, lovesick girls

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 1 (album) this era was … a ride. nct 2020 happening was near inevitable but with covid it got pushed back so far, i started to believe it wasn’t even going to happen. i was semi-terrified of what was going to happen during a comeback with 21 (now 23!!) member group since i only experienced nct 127 comebacks so far and uhh … a LOT happened lmfao but let’s keep this about the album … i had no idea what was going to hit me. johnny having effectively 3 lines in nct 2018 did not give me much hope and after he got denoted to no line treatment in punch again, i was ready to not even have any expectation but this release changed everything. make no mistake that most of my favorite songs are units with johnny, we knew that was gonna happen lmaooo they dropped the teaser video for misfit and i thought i had my favorite song in the bag and then faded in my last song happened. y’all. JOHNNY SINGS? LIKE? ACTUALLY SINGS? DOESN’T GET FORCED TO RAP OR TALK-SING? MY MAN’S VOCALS??? OH MY GAAAAHD! this song is dramatic, theatrical, emo, it serves vocals and rap, it has catchy english and korean lyrics, this is THE song, the ULTIMATE song. i love this song so much, i want to belt it on top of my lungs in the pouring rain. apart from fimls, i also loveeee misfit, that was to be expected after i was going completely insane over the track video. johnny has like 3 lines but again they are iconic (WARNIN’! NCT WE MOBBIN’!) and i just enjoy the track too much to be upset over that. nectar. holy fuck. nectar!!!! wayv never disappoints with their thotty songs, they now have an absolute god tier hoe-ly song trinity with love talk > bad alive > nectar. the first chorus and hendery’s first verse (CHOP CHOP CHOP!) get me every time, this song is so insanely good i am severely upset i cannot sing along to it :( music, dance has nct 127 written all over it in bold letters, it’s so inherently 127’s sound!!!! i love this song so much, it’s so fun, upset and has massive dance-ability, i wish we had gotten a stage for it but i guess you can’t have everything in life </3 make a wish……………………………..the cursed unit. i don’t want to say anything about this except that, unfortunately, the song is fun and i enjoy it. the end. overall, this album is so insanely solid. i know i talk about my favorites A LOT but i genuinely do not dislike a single song on here, this is an absolute no skip album! that’s it. see you for resonance part 2!!!!!

album favs: FADED IN MY LAST SONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, misfit, nectar, music dance, make a wish

loona - 12:00 (mini album) controversial loona release 2.0! i don’t know what it is, but somehow they managed to lace the words di da dam di dam di dam dam dam dam di dam (yeah) with pure crack. i fucking love why not, i would even go as far to say it’s my 2nd favorite title track. that is right, i think it’s better than butterfly (btw: hi high > why not > butterfly > so what). so much was strange this comeback, from the inexplicable concept + teasers, the outfits, the styling (yves….i mourn your hot girl era) but the title track is just SO good, SO fun, SO catchy that i am willing to ignore it all. i also enjoy the b sides much more than on #, they are much more memorable to me. and now … HASEUL RETURN…………….i purely live to see the next loona comeback at this point

album favs: why not, voice, universe

twice - i can’t stop me (song) thank fuck twice released a good song this year. if more & more had been the only 2020 release, that would have been the real tragedy. not gonna lie, i still haven’t listened to the full album, it just keeps slipping my mind. but! i’m going to! until then i’m gonna bop to i can’t stop me.

ariana grande - positions (album) the way this album has people upset is so funny. i am a huge dangerous woman fan myself, it’s my fave ariana album to date but she has said repeatedly that this is not the sound she is striving for. now she has her coin and can do whatever she wants in music and if that is r’n’b then fuck! we have to live with it! lmao! i can live with the sex theme of the album because it’s delivered in a fun way? but it’s getting a bit old...if the next album is about riding dick only too idk how much i would enjoy that. i would probably always come back to ari because i like her voice so much but girl, there are other topics to sing about, i promise! anyway! i like this album, it’s one of those where i can hit shuffle and enjoy it in the background while doing other stuff.

album favs: positions, 34 + 35, love language, my hair, pov

tiny meat gang - sofia (song) ayyy, it’s my meat boys :’) ending the year the same way they started it, with a banger! i absolutely love the guitar instrumental, the melancholic love song type sound paired with the theme of singing about loving a robot … yup, that’s creativity and talent right here! this makes me so freaking desperate for a new ep and i genuinely have no idea how far or close we are to one but!!! i am always waiting!!!

noel - push (ep) this is something i absolutely did not expect. noel (of tiny meat gang!) released his first ep ever and i was absolutely wowed. noel has it all, the voice, the talent, the creativity and all it took him was the confidence to finally put something out and i’m so happy he did. he gets real personal on bus back, more than ever before and i always get a bit emo listening to this track </3 this man is gonna go places and i’m so happy to witness his journey.

album favs: crow, head sunk, bus back

honorary mentions: sam smith - diamonds

november

taemin - never gonna dance again act 2 (album) i’m gonna say it. idea is better than criminal. the chorus drop???? when he goes MY AH AH  MY AH AH MY AH MY IDEA MY MY IDEAAAAAA A-A-A A-A-A???? bitch … tell me you can sit still, i won’t believe you. i like part 2’s title track more, but part 1’s b sides are more interesting to me. either way, taemin delivered as expected!!

album favs: idea, impressionable, exclusive

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 2 (album) part two, baby! we made it! part 2 had more mellow, ballad-y songs with my everything, i.o.u. and all about you, overall less drama than part 1 but i still enjoyed it. work it is one of those controversial songs where you despise it with your entire being or you defend this top tier noise till the end and i am absolutely the latter. the agony of not being able to listen to it and seeing the timeline so divided nearly killed me, but i have concluded that people who hate work it have never felt joy in their life <3 honestly my opinion cannot be counted because i eat up anything johnny participates in … biased ass… what i’m not gonna talk about is resonance (the song), this absolute mess of a “remix”. the audacity sm had to release this as a single is insane. anyway!! this era was a rollercoaster ride. all the interactions truly made me interested in members of other units more. hendery (the rise and fall …), yangyang my beautiful son, jeno aka blue hair guy, chenle the chaos kid and xiaojun after he made make a wish his bitch in particular! all the interactions between the units were so fun to witness and it was fun while it lasted but i am … so glad it’s over lol. i miss nct 127, i miss some peace, i hope the boys get to rest for a bit and so does my bank account.

album favs: work it, 90s love, i.o.u., raise the roof

miley cyrus - plastic hearts (album) not in a thousand years would i have expected a miley release to be on here. this girl does everything to be absolutely unlikeable in my eyes but after severely banging out to her heart of glass cover, i was really excited for this and it did not disappoint. what is disappointing is that it took her so long to find a sound that fits her like a glove. i believe many people miss out on this release after her previous history and i nearly would have done the same. this alt/rock influenced pop does her voice so many favors and i really hope she sticks to this direction, i love this album greatly!!

album favs: heart of glass, midnight sky, night crawling ft. billy joel, wtf do i know

kai - kai (mini album) just. imagine debuting with an album like that. lol. what a god tier big dick move. we all knew whatever this release was gonna be, above all it was going to be sexy and boy were we RIGHT!!!! mmmh is exactly as thotty as i needed it to be and the b sides give me everything from r’n’b to trap. i love this release and i love that it’s only the beginning of kai! like!! he is only gonna gain even more experience and become even more powerful!! what the fuck!!!!!

album favs: mmmh, ride or die, hello stranger, nothing on me

honorary mentions. gfriend - mago

december

nothing? wtf?? 😭 no interesting release happened,,,,half the time i listened to christmas songs anyway lol

pre 2020 releases i only found this year

mgmt - little dark age (album, 2018) & oracular spectactular (album, 2007) another tiktok serve. i found little dark age through a tiktok trend and ended up really liking mgmt. they fit perfectly into my autumn/winter moody alt/rock mood that i had going on and i’m happy they have so much more music that i can check out!

artist favs: little dark age, electric feel, time to pretend

tame impala - currents (album, 2015) everyone’s favorite basic alt bitch album! i enjoyed this more than the slow rush for a good chunk of time, it also fit right into my alt rock autumn mood. i really love this album, like previously mentioned it has my favorite long ass tracks on there but also a good amount of short or medium long tracks. i’m still busy enjoying currents and the slow rush but i can’t wait till i finally take the leap to dive into their other releases because i’m loving everything i’ve heard so far.

album favs: the less i know the better, let it happen, new person same old mistakes

joji - ballads 1 (2018) after liking nectar so much, checking joji out was a given and i just love this album. only when i listened to this i realized i heard slowly dancing in the dark a few times on tiktok lmao that cursed app man … i would say i love nectar a bit more but this is still a fantastic album!!

album favs: slowly dancing in the dark, attention, test drive, yeah right

jus2 - focus (mini album, 2019) in my “mellow moody bangers” phase i was scouring playlists for more songs and i think i found focus on me first which fitted right into the niche i was looking to fill and i ended up enjoy this whole release! only later i realized this is a sub-unit from got7 lmao how come i enjoy solo or unit releases by got7 members but their group discography never interested me? anyway, very sexy ep!

album favs: drunk on you, focus on me, love talk

knk - sunset (song, 2019) part of my mellow bangers playlist. very sexy, i can imagine this as a runway song! i have no idea who knk are but given the fact i enjoyed two of their songs so far maybe i should look into them lol

baekhyun - city lights (mini album, 2019) i am repenting for my sins of missing out on baekhyun releases by consuming his music at an exorbitant rate. un village is one hell of a title track that i didn’t appreciate before, but i feel like in 2020 my music interests started to vary and i love the groovy r’n’b and string sound of this song so much. i also love stay up to death, the vocals baekhyun serves here are unreal. his BABY WE CAN STAY UP!!!!!!! gets me every single time!!!! what a mini!

album favs: un village, stay up

mac miller - swimming (album, 2018) i’ve listened to this album before 2020 but i had the urge to put this on here. this is going to sound so corny, but if i had to pick one song to be my life’s title track, it would be ladders. the hope this song gives me is unreal, it feels like a light at the end of the tunnel. this album is so fantastic, i love the upbeat instrumentals paired with sometimes gloomy lyrics are so incredible, mac was truly one of the greatest artists of our time. this album is  so outstanding and i miss him every day.

album favs: ladders, jet fuel, 2009, self care, perfecto

doja cat - hot pink (album, 2019) i can never decide if i like doja or not but the album slaps lol that’s it come on tiktok queen

album favs: say so, juicy, like that, streets

my fav 2020 playlists

slapping mellow

neo culture technology

malcolm

why go to therapy when this playlist exists?

top songs 2020

(by spotify)

[hauntedfalcon]

Happy Christmas, Star Wars Is Over

that was a thing I saw with my own two eyes 

“we have to End the Saga! ... but also leave ourselves opportunities to make more money” you really clearly cannot have it both ways 

there was... so much about that movie that I would have been able to tolerate... if the trio had been together the whole time 

but the instant Rey left the group, it became a terrible movie where stupid things happened for no reason, and there was nothing good going on to balance that out 

the trio interactions were, give or take one uppity Poe, everything I wanted 

they were so good together 

literally I yearned for two whole movies and I finally got what I wanted for a little while 

anyway as for the rest of the movie, you know the trolley problem? 

they had a couple options for tracks to follow after TFA and TLJ 

and instead they just... steered the trolley off a cliff 

what hit me hardest was the moments where Rey had the helmet on in Luke’s X-wing, and the moment where she sleds down into the Lars homestead 

cute moments! recognizable moments! music cues that helped us recognize them 

but the actual takeaway was that she had received absolutely no development since the first time we saw her put on an X-wing pilot’s helmet or sled down a sand hill 

none of them did 

when people kept asking her in TFA who she was, I never took that to mean “tell us your family name” or “which extremely powerful being gave you your powers” but what is your identity and how do you find it for yourself 

which is a theme that could have been explored if they weren’t busy driving the fucking trolley off the cliff 

what did any of it really mean? what’s the plan for the future? in thirty years does it all start over again when another Sith lord turns out to still be debatably alive? 

also everybody saying “we have to do this or the General died for nothing” like by that point? she had already? died? for nothing??? 

she projected herself through space to distract her shitty son long enough for Rey to stab him! that was the point!!! 

that was the death of her son that she foresaw at the end of her Jedi path! coming to terms with that and making it happen herself for the good of the galaxy could have been a thing!!!

all of these plot points are stupid, but there was a coherent way to connect them, and the movie just kept trying to contradict itself instead

disrespectful honestly 

keeping her corpse under a sheet until Kyle faded away was extremely disrespectful 

also not a fan of how they tried to build scenes around the scraps of extra Carrie Fisher footage they had to work with 

I maintain Leia should have been the one to do the jump at the end of TLJ, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with this bullshit 

Rey should have been a Kenobi

Rey Should Have Been A Kenobi 

but moreover, Rey Should Have Been Able to Forge Her Own Identity Independently of a Lineage

which would have done wonders for the trilogy and put her on equal footing with Finn’s character concept 

if, let’s say, Palpatine was not a thing in this movie, and let’s say she ended up in Transport Tug of War with Kyle anyway, and she still accidentally Force-lightninged the ship and had to deal with that afterward? 

that would have been interesting! grappling with your own capacity for doing evil is interesting! “you have a capacity for doing evil because of your wrinkly granddad” is NOT 

imagine the conversation in the ship after the lightning where Finn says he gets it and Rey says he doesn’t, and Finn says yes, yes he does, because everyone has the capacity to cause harm regardless of the scale of it, but it’s the choosing that counts 

imagine if these characters got to say things to each other that actually mattered to the plot 

what a waste of Jodie Comer

why hire Jodie Comer and only put her onscreen for five seconds 

that’s like hiring Thandie Newton and killing her off after twenty minutes, or hiring Ming-Na Wen and killing her off after one epis--oh wait 

I was listening hard during the Every Jedi Talks At Once bit and it did my heart good to hear Qui-Gon again 

no Chirrut Îmwe though. see? disrespectful 

my beloved Finn 

my beloved Finn 

my beloved Finn is finally confirmed Force sensitive, and there is no time to build on that afterward 

my beloved Finn meets more people who broke First Order conditioning and refused to fire on civilians, who escaped and lived free, and we get a thirty-second conversation about it and it’s never mentioned again 

that should have been the A-plot 

my beloved Finn held. Poe’s. hand. and it was clearly a thing they do regularly 

my beloved Finn was so competent 

my beloved Finn was a GENERAL 

and that’s it. that’s all I’ll ever get of my beloved Finn 

Lucasfilm is not going to mention him ever again 

I am getting emotional now, back to things that made me angry  

what the fuck are they trying to pull with Poe 

a spice runner? a spice runner??? 

no nope no you’re not making him the Han of the sequel trilogy Abrams 

and then the whiplash of him being given command and wishing he had Leia’s guidance again and getting guidance from Lando instead and immediately acting on it? there’s actual Poe! right there! 

I don’t understand who it is they keep trying to convince us he is, but the real Poe always comes through in the end, thank you Oscar Isaac 

the hug 

the hug and the focus on Finn holding both of them and crying with relief 

I sure did miss Rose 

introducing just enough new characters for everyone to have a ~safe~ potential love interest was so transparent

there’ll be a comic book or a novel set decades down the line where some background character will be mentioned in passing as Finn and Jannah’s kid, and that will be that 

that being said now that we have Jannah you can pry her from my cold dead hands 

the fact that they didn’t even talk about why Lando left the fight??? 

the leaks I read were from an earlier cut of the movie where Lando told them he had a young child who was kidnapped by the First Order

he didn’t get to say anything about it this time??? it was implied to have been Jannah but they didn’t even get that much? they want us to believe he’s been hanging out on One Party Every Forty-Two Years Planet just because?????

hyperspace gets more and more watered down with every consecutive movie

it’s to the point where even the purrgils don’t seem that special anymore

the disposability of all the ships was almost as irritating as all the planet-hopping 

ships, just like lightsabers, are entirely renewable resources, there is one around every corner  

my “the Force is really just the ghosts of dead Jedi intervening for the living” theory is still going strong, especially now that Luke could lift his X-wing 

Yoda had to do it in ESB because Yoda had more dead Jedi friends  than Luke :) 

I legit squealed “WEDGE” when he appeared for 1.9 seconds

afterwards my best friend was like “what’s a Wedge? was it that Mike Pence guy” and I lost it 

Leia’s lightsaber was so pretty but I’m sad the blade wasn’t red in this canon 

Disney hopes you enjoyed 1.5 seconds of lesbian representation in a Star Wars movie, now never ask for anything again 

Dominic Monaghan was also there for some reason 

I’m running out of things to say, everything else in this movie was too fucking stupid to even talk about 

especially That 

we’re not talking about That 

at least we’ll always have The Mandalorian (pending any fuckery in the finale) 

[irinapaleolog]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had raised the hopes of Reylos, fans who longed for Rey and Kylo Ren to end up together in the end, healing the wound inflicted on the galaxy two generations earlier by Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker. The marketing certainly hinted at such and, at least for less-invested viewers, the film delivered on its promise of romance: Reylo (and Bendemption) did occur, and Rey and the redeemed Ben Solo shared a passionate kiss, which is why it may be so perplexing for the general audience that Reylos hated the ending. Two weeks after the release, they're still mourning on social media, and demanding for Disney to #RealeaseTheJJCut, a reference to an edit that would have delivered the conclusion they wanted, and purportedly what director J.J. Abrams intended. So, what happened, exactly?

While romance is certainly not a new concept to Star Wars, it was never depicted from the perspective of a woman. However, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi made moves to remedy that: The camera stays with Rey when she interacts with Kylo; the lighting, music and the chemistry between the actors drew in many women. The trope being trapped was "enemies to lovers," a classic of romance literature. In The Force Awakens, Kylo is infatuated with a "lowly scavenger," despite himself and his training. In The Last Jedi, the two characters establish a connection that goes deeper than their pasts, ripe with wedding imagery from around the world, before separating again.

The comparisons with the doomed romance of Anakin and Padmé popped up. If the tragic lovers of the prequel trilogy married in the second movie and died in the third, surely the sequel would turn it around, allowing the last descendant of Anakin Skywalker to fix what he had broken and to triumph where he had failed.

It's easy for a certain segment of the audience to dismiss the power of romance, but it remains most lucrative literary genre in the world. Romance writers master the art of the promise and the delivery, which is a happy ending for the main couple. There are tragic romantic novels in which one or both of the lovers die, but that's not what Disney was promising with Episode IX. From that perspective, The Rise of Skywalker punishes the male lead by killing him the moment he chooses to save the love of his life. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio were going for a parallel with Return of the Jedi, but that movie was never promoted as having romance at its core, and Darth Vader didn't have his entire life in front of him.

The Rise of Skywalker then goes out of its way to show how little Rey really cared for Ben, to the point where, after watching the final scenes, it's difficult to assess what impact he had in the plot. The film also does that to Hux and Rose, but in the case of Ben Solo it's particularly egregious because he's the last of the Skywalker bloodline. If they were going for Return of the Jedi parallels, they could have included either a funeral or a Force ghost, but the audience is denied that, which is a strange and cruel narrative choice.

Even worse, the ending broke the promise made in the promotional material. Yes, there was a kiss, but it's swiftly punished: The heroine ends up alone in a barren planet; the Byronic hero is never mentioned again. The other side of fandom might argue that Star Wars should have never catered to romance, but they would be the first to complain if a film advertised like Fast & Furious turned out to be a family comedy; false advertising elicits the same kinds of reactions in everyone.

Ben Solo's death, isolated from the romance, is also problematic because he was coded as a conflicted, groomed, abused, abandoned and brainwashed child soldier fighting to break from his programming. The ancillary material supports this, and in Marvel's The Rise of Kylo Ren, it's shown he never attempted to kill Luke Skywalker, he didn't burn the Jedi temple, and he didn't attack his fellow students. It was a set-up designed to turn his family against him and place him within the First Order. Han, Leia and Rey work  for two entire movies to try and bring him back. By killing every single character that even attempts to turn around, the film confirms their worst fear -- that the only way out is death.

There'ss another horrifying message lurking in The Rise of Skywalker, however, if you are coming to the film from this perspective: that your family will disown you and forget you the moment you misbehave, replacing you with a "good child." That's exactly what happens to Kylo Ren; despite his efforts to come back as Ben Solo, neither Luke nor Leia nor Anakin help him. Ben has to imagine a conversation with his father to move forward, and in the end, his mother and his uncle replace him with Rey, who becomes their "found child" and assumes the Skywalker name.

But Kylo was filling a different role too -- the monster boyfriend, whose most famous example is Beauty and the Beast. While the original purpose of tales like Beauty and the Beast was to prepare girls for marriages in which they would be under the authority of their (potentially monstrous) husband, the tale evolved, and the monster became a focus for those that society had misunderstood or repressed. It's the grown-up version of little children, who feel powerless most of the time, preferring the Hulk over any other superhero, only with romance, darkness and danger thrown in; it's a way to explore a problematic aspect of reality through fiction. Unfortunately, instead of allowing fiction to play its role for women, the monster boyfriend trope is incredibly policed ("it's toxic!"), a criticism that doesn't extend to monster girlfriends (see Mara Jade's murderous origins and her eventual marriage to Luke Skywalker in Legends).

Many women in Star Wars fandom identified with Kylo Ren for those reasons, and the more the character was attacked on social media ("he killed his father!" "he's ugly, unworthy of being a hero!"), and the more stories about what really happened to him were published, the more affection he drew.

And while we are talking about ancillary material, The Rise of Skywalker contradicts almost every single narrative thread about Kylo published to date, which were hinting at redemption as far back as 2017. Most Reylos engaged with that material wholeheartedly. Despite the amazing talent involved in its creation, those fans view the ending of Episode IX as a slap in the face, and many women feel like they have wasted their time buying into a franchise that ultimately never cared about fulfilling its own promises about happy endings, telling a complete story, or even offering hope and compassion to the characters that needed it the most.

However, all of that might have been better received had the film been generous with the heroine, the first woman to be the primary protagonist in the Skywalker Saga. For two and a half movies, it even looked to be a story in the fairy-tale tradition, with a poor orphan discovering her inner power, defeating an unspeakable evil, forging friendships and, ultimately, finding the love of her life and becoming the leader of her people.

Instead, The Rise of Skywalker leaves Rey effectively where she started, on desert planet, taking with her someone else's droid and someone else's name. She doesn't grow, and she doesn't even confront or integrate her inner darkness. Rey, who had been wonderfully feral up to that point, becomes a creepy Stepford smiler.

That, in a nutshell, is why Reylos are angry, despite getting their space kiss. For many, The Rise of Skywalker felt like a bad punchline after a long con from Disney, and Star Wars has the bitter taste of a franchise that accidentally tapped into women's interests but had little interest in them as intelligent viewers engaging with the material.

[not-majestic-bluenicorn]

The MONSTA X Universe Theory

Hello everyone, and welcome, to my most ambitious theory to this date, in which I attempt to convince you all that I am, in fact, not crazy and that all of MONSTA X’s comebacks can be put into one timeline whole universe. I’ve been working on this for months now, and to be honest I am exhausted, however I decided I needed to put this out before their comeback this next February 18. It’s going to be long, so tighten your seatbelts and pay attention, because we’re going to go deep with this one.

Let’s dive into the theory.

Basic Concepts

Like most companies and k-pop groups, Starship and MONSTA X didn’t to easy on us and introduced us to several interesting concepts like time and space travel and resurrection. You’ll need a basic understanding on how dimensions work for this theory to make sense, so I recommend you to watch this somewhat simple video about it because you’re probably going to need it.

They also make use of a lot of different symbolism, but I’ll explain those along the way because it’ll be easier to fit them with the rest of the theory like that. You might want to know a little about virtues and sins however since those will be mentioned!

The Setting

Before I go on explaining each of the phases of the MONSTA X Universe, I need to give you a bit of setting on how they are connected and why. There’s a vast quantity of in-verse connections but a lot of out-verse ones as well, so in each phase of the theory I’m going to explain each of the clues of both types and how everything ties together.

Almost all MONSTA X videos form part of a same universe that has been divided into several timelines, which can be distinguished by major events that happen inside the story. Not all videos are part of the plot, some of them are merely symbolic, and not all connections will seem obvious at first either, which is why out-verse clues are necessary to this theory as well, and let me tell you that “out-verse clues” is a very wide category.

In any case, now that I have cleared this up, it is time I start explaining the phases of the MONSTA X Universe and how everything ties up together, let’s go.

In-verse

Phase 1: The First Timeline - Origins (Tresspass & Rush)

Trespass and Rush might not seem tied to the theory at first, however, they are; even if they are not majorly relevant to the main events of the story. Both of these releases provide a background to what happens in The Clan, giving the boys’ friendship and origin and a point of comparison to when things start getting so bad they feel the need to go into war. They also show us they’ve been “problem” children from the start.

Phase 2: The First Timeline - The War (The Clan Part 1: Lost & The Clan Part 2: Guilty)

In my The Clan theory (which you can read here and here, and you’ll need to read it ‘cause I won’t go into much detail this time since it’s already there) I established that the boys were very close friends, even before Jooheon decided they needed to start a revolution and formed the X Clan. I believe that Trespass and Rush both happen before the events in All In, again, they’re not very relevant to the theory, but they provide a nice background to how things were before the war broke out.

Given the way they dared military officials and were clearly against the leadership of Hyungwon’s father, it wouldn’t be surprising that they went to jail a couple of times, hence Trespass. Rush is just them being dumb kids, like things should’ve always been. In any case, things start becoming worse and more difficult and Jooheon decides it’s time to start a war, so he forms the X Clan, discovers the magical flower (or the other way around), they make a pact and start the war.

During this war Hyungwon, Minhyuk and Shownu are all captured and rescued. Also, and a very important point, Hyungwon dies. I know in The Clan theory Gina and I said we weren’t sure, but I am completely certain he did die because it’s the only thing that makes him different from the others. Why? Because he’s the only one to be revived by the flower, he’s the only one that dies and comes back to life and frantically that defies the laws of nature. And that is what condemns them all.

We know the plant is magical because it heals their wounds and apparently is capable of reviving them and also of pulling them out of whatever spell Hyungwon and Minhyuk were in during their stay in the hospital. What if the flower can do other things as well? Yes, I am proposing that the flower was what gave Hyungwon his time-traveling abilities. Because the elixir made of the flower is literally what keeps his heart beating now.

Not only that, but the giant heart we see at the end of All In and of Fighter? I mentioned it was a symbol for their new beginning out of the war, but it might be more than just a new beginning. It’s a rift in time-space, the first one actually, and I’m willing to bet Hyungwon was the only one able to cross that door. That moment is the exact ending of our first timeline.

Phase 3: The First Timeline - Interlude (The Clan Part 2.5: Beautiful & Beautiful World Tour VCR)

I discovered the VCRs were important when I went to The Connect World Tour in Mexico and realized a bunch of things, which is what made me look for the VCR of the Beautiful World Tour (BWT from now on) and I was not disappointed. This VCR perfectly connects Trespass (Rush really isn’t that important I promise) and The Clan. You can watch it here.

In the VCR we can appreciate their lives before the war and before the government became rougher. We can also appreciate how they grew to be troublesome kids and even see a glimpse of Hyungwon’s family situation.

Beautiful is a bridge that ties in the symbolism and the stories of the boys in All In and Fighter. But it’s also a video that explains their past and personal fights, everything that made them join the X Clan in the first place (this is explained in more detail in the part 2 of my The Clan theory). Hence why in the BWT VCR the chapter order is Beautiful, Trespass and Lost. Beautiful explains their past, their personal lives; Trespass explains how they came together and became friends, their invasion into a new world; and Lost explains how they lost it all and decided to take action into their own hands. Lost is also the first part of The Clan trilogy, which would then lead to Guilty.

Phase 4: The Second Timeline (The Code)

Our first timeline ends the moment they reach the beating heart. Whether they all go in together or just Hyungwon goes, I don’t really know, but I have a strong reason to believe it was only Hyungwon the one who made it. Regardless, this is what clearly marks the end of our first timeline, because next time we get to see them, they’re leading completely different lives.

While Trespass and Rush hold no contradiction with The Clan, in Dramarama they don’t even know each other, and some of them do not even exist in the same time and space. Jooheon is dead in this timeline as well. Although this could heavily imply they have changed concepts and story, I believe the only way this can make sense is if this is a timeline that occurs after The Clan.

Hyungwon already has his strange time-space travel abilities, yet there’s no sign as to how he obtained them. And even more than that, if it’s clear they don’t remember each other, then why is Hyungwon trying to help them and giving them tools to meet each other (even if it doesn’t work in the end)? If he were just playing the Good Samaritan then surely he would at least give watches to other people right? Yet he doesn’t, we never see him doing it.

Our time-traveling hero has a clear mission here: getting them back together. He’s obviously struggling with this, as there seems to be some sort of agency that catches his activities and stops the people he’s helping? I don’t really think this agency is important to the story itself. It’s just another obstacle to their coming back together. In any case, this timeline is doomed.

Phase 5: The Third Timeline (The Connect: Music Film D)

Destroyer is yet another timeline distinct to Dramarama. We know this because we see different pairings, completely different settings and completely different timelines. Much like the BWT VCR, the Music Film D is divided in three stages: Part 1 The Code (a very obvious reference, this is already letting us know they’re connected), Part 2 Finding the road (if this doesn’t sound like Lost then I don’t know what does), and Part 3 Connected (clear reference to the current album.

D shows us the boys as geniuses, Minhyuk and Shownu are artists, Kihyun and Wonho are science (physics?) prodigies, and Jooheon and IM dominate technology. Through their own methods they all come to the revelation on how to find Hyungwon. Here’s the thing, why would they be looking for Hyungwon in the first place if they don’t know him? This is an entirely different timeline after all and it’s clear Hyungwon is too tired to keep making watches and keep trying to put them back together. He has already worn himself out.

The guys manage to figure it out and find the train station, which could either be a real place in which every timeline and universe converge or just a metaphor for them figuring out how to do the same thing Hyungwon does, either explanation works. They meet each other, they remember, and they go into the train, which marks our second main event in the theory.

Phase 6: Interlude (The Connect: Jealousy & The Connect World Tour VCR)

Jealousy is like Beautiful in the sense that it doesn’t feed the plot itself but helps connect (pun not intended)  and put everything else into place. Through different imagery, Jealousy illustrates how the different timelines push them together and then pull them apart, creating different pairings, but that despite this they still share things in common (the paper with numbers, the recorder, the glass of water).

Another thing this video does is allude to Jooheon’s death in Dramarama through the use of os symbolism. In one scene, a paper with his symbol is being burn, while in yet another, the chair he’s seen sitting on throughout the video is being burned as well and then falls down to the abyss.

On the other hand, The Connect World Tour VCR (CWT from now on, watch it here) functions like BWT’s, it creates a clear and obvious connection between Dramarama and D, revealing to us that they do have memories from other timelines. One thing worth pointing out about this is that they do not share memories of Hyungwon from the timelines shown in Dramarama and D, which means they can only have memories from him from The Clan, there’s literally no other way.

It also provides a clearer scene of Hyungwon crafting the watches himself and of him at the top of the Hero building (something I’ll address in more detail later). We can also see the last scene from Jealousy mirrored in the last few seconds of the VCR, which is something worth pointing out.

Phase 7: The Fourth Timeline? (Take 1 and Take 2)

The real question comes now, are Take 1 and Take 2 part of the MONSTA X universe? Despite the obvious change in theme, I have a lot of reasons to believe they do, part of them are in the Out-verse section that follows, so you should pay attention to that.

The most obvious reference I can think of that doesn’t leave room for question is Hyungwon in the Hero building and falling into the water. We saw this scene previously and we see it once again in the “Previous Film” that recently came out for We Are Here. This makes it clear that Take 1 and 2 are indeed connected to The Code - The Connect in a sense.

Plus, the use of symbolism to represent the sins and the characters is a very interesting reminder of other symbols that have been used since way back in The Clan. Finally, there’s also the narrations, which I will discuss soon in the out-verse. The only thing I am not sure of is if Take 1 and 2 form part of the universe from a plot point of view or only as interludes like Jealousy and Beautiful, we’ll probably have to pay a lot of attention to answer that question.

Out-verse

MONSTA X and May 14, 2015

The group’s name and their debut date are actually quite important in order to explain some of the symbolism used throughout their discography. As you might know, MONSTA means my star, and the ‘X’ represents the variable of a mysterious existence.

Back in Trespass, a number appears: M150514X. Any fan that knows remotely anything about MONSTA X knows this is their debut date, and it makes sense that it is in the video because it is, after all their debut video. However, we see something very similar after a while in D, when Kihyun solves the formula for time travel as X=4155102M which is basically the same number we see in Trespass, just backwards and with the numbers shifted slightly (full year still of only the last two numbers, and one number for the month).

This makes sense, because if X is the variable for a mysterious existence, then May 14, 2015 is the day that existence came to be, and I think it’s an amazing reference to make. Even in Dramarama we see Kihyun traveling back to 2015, the year everything began, even the story they are telling through these MVs, in and out of the plot.

References to Real Life

In Jealousy we see a very important reference that took me a long time to figure out. We see them sharing a paper that has a bunch of numbers in it, these numbers prove to be the members birthdays, which again ties up with the concept of existence, because those are the days they started existing.

Another very important thing about these numbers is that, ever since Jealousy, the comeback dates have been matching perfectly with this numbers. The Connect came out on March 26 and I.M was born on January 26, Take 1 came out on October 22 and Kihyun was born on November 22, and finally Take 2 is coming out on February 18 and Shownu was born on June 18. This is just further proof that Take 1 and 2 form part of the Universe.

The Logos and Individual Marks

MONSTA X have an easily recognizable logo that we’ve all seen at least once: a detailed and complex M and X combined on each other so that the inner lines come out longer on the bottom. This is their official logo and as such is present in all of their albums in some way or another (in the back of the photo cards, in the credits, somewhere), however it is not always the most visible.

As you might have noticed, for The Code and The Connect they had a ‘change’ of logo, which happened again with Take 1 and Take 2. Yes, their original logo is still present somewhere in the album (you can see that in unboxings) however it is not the main logo that takes the covers as it did with their previous releases.

I think the logos, in a sense, mark the belonging of one release into the series, as well as mark the important events in the story that change its course. First, we have the original logo that goes from Trespass all the way to The Clan Part 2.5: Beautiful, then it changes for The Code and The Connect, and then it once again morphs for Take 1 Are You There and Take 2 We Are Here.

These changes match with the two main events I have described so far. After they meet the heart in All In and Fighter the logo changes (let’s remember Beautiful works as a way of explaining their past and characters, so technically the story is contained within All In and Fighter only). And then, after they go through the train’s doors in D (same thing with Jealousy) it changes again. Yes, the logos for Take 1 and Take 2 are slightly different because the colors are inverted, it could be ‘cause of the choice of colors or maybe because they’re “two sides of the same coin”, either way the logo is pretty much the same.

Aside from marking the important changes in the Universe, I also think their logos are a symbols of their own. The first one is the original, it’s their identity and matches well with The Clan, it represents them and their union. The second is the loops they’re trapped in, the infinite repetition of timeline after timeline until they’re able to get back together. The third one is what we know as an impossible figure, it’s a shape that can’t exist in a tridimensional plane because it doesn’t make sense, just like how they’re are trapped and followed by their past mistakes and the sins they carry within them.

As for their individual marks. During The Clan they all have an X tattoo that looks just a bit different for each of them, this symbolizes their union as one team. However, after they break apart because of what happened, they start having individual symbols that are sometimes fused to each other. This is the case for The Code’s stylized initial and The Connect’s initials that were put as clocks. For Take 1 and 2, I think their symbols will be the deadly sin that identifies each of them, but we’ll see.

Album Titles

Although I don’t think the album titles are such an important element, I think it’s worth mentioning the structure they follow. For The Clan, The Code and The Connect they all have a repeating structure of ‘The’ and a word that starts with the letter C. Even inside The Clan we had 3 parts, and for the last two albums we’ve had Take 1 and Take 2, which makes me think there might be a Take 3, but do remember what I said earlier. (I remember reading something about a Take 4 because there’s four versions to each album).

Narration Elements

A lot of the MONSTA X videos that aren’t Music Videos contain in the a lot of narration, Take the VCRs and The Oaths for example. The way these narrations are structured mirror each other a lot, and we can even find some recurring elements between them.

Check these comparisons. The phrases under the same colors are related.

Shine Forever, Newton and Hero

Lastly, I feel the need to explain why I didn’t mention these three much. Newton is the easier one to explain: it is a commercial MV. That’s it, it’s obviously not part of anything because it was a commercial, and even if it were part of the universe I think it would lack relevance to it.

As for Hero, it is mostly just a dance video, but the place is clearly representative of something important since it has been using repeatedly in different eras, so I think it’s mostly just the location rather than anything else.

And finally, when it comes to Shine Forever, it just doesn’t fit anywhere. I desperately tried to tie it with everything else, especially after I saw the lights they used in Music Film D and the car crash in Dramarama, but it just doesn’t fit. Plus, it doesn’t fit within the logo theory, it doesn’t have the first logo anywhere visible and it doesn’t have any variation of the logos either that could explain it as a different timeline or setting, which is why I discarded it, which is a shame cause I love the song and MV.

Conclusions

Ever since the beginning, MONSTA X’s albums have been part of one sole universe that poses the journey of a group of seven boys trying to get back together after they get split apart, probably because of what Hyungwon did in All In. But not only that, this is also a story about them, about their struggles and how they’ve grown up. They’re each other’s friends and family, the value of X is their debut date because that is when they came into existence, they are each other’s dreams because they wanted to become artists and they did so by coming together into one group.

So far, we’ve seen the growth of their strong bond, the separation, the reencounter. But just like the narrations says, it is just not enough. D showed them reunited at last, but their sins follow them even beyond that, and their journey is not quite over. They could be the salvation of each other, or their doom.

I hope you liked this theory, and be assured that I’ll add onto it as more things come out and new mysteries are to be solved. If you have any questions you can hit me up on my Tumblr (@not-majestic-bluenicorn), Twitter (@soft_bluenicorn) or my CuriousCat (@soft_bluenicorn)! I’ll be glad to answer them ^^

[thebigreylotheory]

Belated TROS trailer reaction and thoughts

Painting.

Been doing lots of painting.  Rewatching TFA, TLJ, and Solo and painting.

Ok, wow, originally intended to have this up by May the 4th….but like I mentioned some posts ago, bantha poodoo happens. (Caps is the same :( )

It’s finally, finally time for my TROS trailer reaction, thoughts, and a few theories! (I don’t know about you, but I’m still not over how good it is. Say what you will, Star Wars has the best trailers.)

Breathing is very important to the sequel trilogy. (I would say that Rey that is totally going to be ahead of the game for Lamaze class if we get a sequel-sequel trilogy/book/comic baby some galaxy far far away day.)

I’ve wondered if the movie will take the time to explain how the Skywalker lightsaber has been repaired? My feeling is, sorta like ROTJ, it’ll just be there like Luke’s green lightsaber. So, you’ll either have to make up your own head canon OR we’ll eventually get books and comics for the time gap between TLJ and TROS that will explain exactly what Rey did. Since she’s a scavenger, and mechanically inclined around junk, my feeling right now is, it’s possible she might have gone on a journey for a new kyber crystal and she’s repurposed the hilt. Which I think could be symbolically interesting….almost saying she’s “her own person (crystal)” on the inside now, but externally carrying on the outward mantle of her teacher/master Luke.

Which leads me to: by now, you’ve probably heard the theory that the last name “Skywalker” might transform to a term for the henceforth new Jedi. Personally, I am a fan of this theory. I think it would be useful for keeping the Star Wars eras straight when referencing any potential future Star Wars films/books/comics. For example, instead of saying “post-Skywalker trilogies,” one could say this-or-that takes place during the Jedi era or the new Skywalker era, etc (as well as, hopefully, the Knights of the Old Republic era someday soon).

AND, if Rey dubs herself (and perhaps any future students she has) a Skywalker….then, well, oddly enough, it would fulfill the whole Rey is a Skywalker discussion in the most interesting way possible. (While also keeping the plot open for her to choose whomever *coughcough* Ben Solo *coughcough* she would like to romantically be with someday.) It could potentially mean anyone could be a Skywalker. I’m a Skywalker. You’re a Skywalker. We’re Skywalker. Sign me up.

Luke is everybody’s spiritual father. (And I guess Vader is everybody’s grandfather??)

And, on a kinda odd note, being a Caravan-of-Courage-baby and a long-time SW fan, thinking of the name Skywalker, does anyone else think it sounds like a talent? Or is my brain just connecting Moonwalking with Skywalking? I guess, technically, Rey isn’t Skywalking here, right? It’s more like Skyjumping? Skyflipping? Maybe she’s really a Skyflipper. Part dolphin.

But I slightly digress, back to the trailer.

When this scene hit, I initially thought, from a distance, the TIE was a TIE bomber. Haha, silly me. 

I have fond memories of the TIE bomber toys Revan/Devan had as a kid.

Yay, Lawrence of Arabia will be returning to theaters Sept. 1st and 4th, presented by TCM! I did a middle school history report over Lawrence. Mostly because I wanted to learn about desert warfare so I could write better Star Wars fan fiction. It’s all about Star Wars, people. It always has been.

Now, that’s what I call TIE racing!

Sweet butter tacos, by now I have paused these scenes over and over trying to decide if this is Kylo Ren and/or if the scenes match or they’ve been sliced much like the TLJ trailer. 

HAHA. You trailer editor people are so good. You did it just enough to make me crazy until December. THANKS.

But, I guess it’s safe to say, in this sequel trilogy, when the camera zooms to black gloves, it’s probably Kylo.

Gee, these two just can’t flirt normally. It’s like they thought, “Oh what can we do on our date that hasn’t been done before?” “Oh, I know, let’s play chicken with the TIE Fighter!”

No, in all seriousness, as it’s been said before many times now, this would be a really strange way to try to take Rey out…

Wouldn’t Kylo be a man and just face her? He hasn’t been afraid to face people before.

And, I don’t know…some people I know are hoping that they are working together somehow, which I hope they are, don’t get me wrong,…but at the moment, I just can’t think of why Rey would need to jump on a TIE Fighter/Kylo’s TIE. (Mind out of the gutter!) I mean, if they are working together, practicing even, for some Force trick/feat that needs doing to destroy or infiltrate something, it looks like she could have climbed on the TIE before it took off?

I mean the Interwebs might tell you that she needs to practice her jumping so she can have the high ground later, but I still don’t know.

It could be a dream/vision. Simple enough.

It could be that ForceTime is acting really weird?

Did we really understand or have all the rules of ForceTime in TLJ? Could it be if ForceTime connects and Rey and Kylo hold-on to another they can pull each other to a different location? So for instance, if Rey jumps on the TIE she could be transported to where Kylo is?

That would mean there was a reason Luke told them to stop. Did he know either Kylo would be pulled to Ahch-To in the flesh or Rey would end up at the First Order (before she totally left in the Falcon for the First Order)?

Dunno. That could be getting too “beam-me-up-Scotty” or too “magical” for SW. We’ll see. I’m open to most things so long as they’re done well.

Alternatively, because Caps and I have also been reading SW comics for a few years now, I think it’s also possible that Kylo could be possessed here. 

As in, someone:

Like monkey-hands here, or whomever monkey-hands works for (Palps, Hux, The Resistance, KOR), took Kylo’s helmet and added Sith-y stuff to it.

I want to lean towards the idea of an enemy/frenemy of Kylo’s changing his helmet. I thought it was a little unusual that Kylo would go back to wearing the helmet after smashing it. I mean, character-wise, I figured it would remind him of Snoke’s taunts. It seemed like a step backward. Like going back to a security blanket after you’ve gotten over needing it. Dunno, are they going to capture him and force him to wear it? Making him Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to get him out of the way?

BUT, there again, I guess, I could stretch my imagination and believe that Kylo, might, might, go back to wearing his helmet on his own, if he thought there was some power or knowledge to be gained. And, either, earnestly, he did it to himself or it was a TRAP!

And possibly, in this scene, possessed Kylo is about to crash wherever Rey is, but she saves him by cutting open the hatch, etc? 

(She’s learned to lift rocks, but could she stop a TIE via the Force and climb in and save someone? Maybe, but it, arguably, wouldn’t look as cool or dramatic). And if that were the case, Kylo would be in some serious debt to Rey for saving his life. Girl already spared him once. Twice, if you count she didn’t run him through on Starkiller Base.

Anyways, back to reviewing the trailer chronologically.

Somehow this reminds me of the Lost City of Atlantis. Was there a city on Bespin below Cloud City? According to Wookiepedia Bespin is a cloudy place. Sooo, could be Lando’s entrance in the movie, possibly.

Did I read somewhere that Kylo is tackling a Knight of Ren here? (Double checked and yes.) That’s interesting. I could come up lots of out-of-the-hat-theories as to why. KOR turns against him. Kylo turns against KOR. KOR Civil War? KOR Battle Royale where the survivor of the Hunger Games gets to be Master?

But what’s really interesting, is the fact that Kylo doesn’t slice the guy in two pieces with the lightsaber.

And that, to me, also spawns some theories. Is the tackle just a cinematic scene to show Kylo’s strength? Maybe Disney doesn’t want to go “Darth Maul-ing” people in two pieces? Kylo, for some reason, isn’t killing people on this particular day or any more at all? Or Kylo’s in a super rush and is more focused on getting a certain location in a hurry and whatever, guy was in the way? It made me concerned, mmm, can’t Kylo use the Force in this scene? He isn’t Force Pushing or Freezing the guy?

This week on “This Old Helmet,” Norm and guys add detailing to a once dilapidated helmet. Yup, it was a real fixer-upper. If Mr. Monkey doesn’t work for some VIP, he’s a really strange janitor.

Ok, Finn and Poe are going to, canon, start a boy band in TROS, right? This is a scene from their KPOP-ish music video, right? “‘Cause I want it that way…” If they don’t dance, so help me Star Wars...I’ll make them in a fanvid.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I like D/O yet. The jury is still out for me. Mostly because I thought some of the other concept designs were much cuter. Although, I can’t wait to see the Droid Builders tackle this one. I’m still stuck on a mouse droid.

Aww, yeah, welcome back Lando! Mr. Smoothie! (I wish he’d been apart of TFA and TLJ, but better late than never.) I know, I know the ship should be Chewie’s now, but I secretly hope that Lando is able to donate money to restore the Falcon, like an old classic car. *coughcough* Reylo Wedding Gift *coughcough*

Hmm, moisture farm or temple? Guess we’ll see. I’m loving that the troops possibly have jetpacks and/or sand-speeders?

Dunno, after the whole Rambo C3P0 poster, I’m wondering if someone’s after C3P0 here? BB and R2 have had their “find-that-droid” day, maybe it’s C3P0’s turn?

Aww, the medal. Sweet medal. 

I can give you some out-of-the-hat ideas about this, too. Maybe this is Han’s. Maybe it’s in Leia’s collection of memories and she takes it out for nostalgia, to feel close to Han in spirit, or for the anniversary of his death. Maybe she’s decided to give it to someone else? Or, worst-case scenario, the Resistance needs gold and this is all they got left?

Or, this is Luke’s? And ditto on everything. Maybe Luke left it behind before he left for Ahch-To? Maybe he gave it back to Leia? Or maybe Leia and company find more of Luke’s belongings elsewhere? Maybe Luke was using it as a bookmark in one of the Jedi Texts?

Goodness. When the trailer hit Celebration, this scene filled my heart with the greatest bittersweet joy. 

I’m really glad that the extra/reworked footage of Carrie as Leia looks good. That it will uphold her legacy. It’s been on my mind ever since her passing.

In fact, I was so caught up in being happy that the footage looks great, at first, I didn’t stop to think why Leia and Rey are hugging?

And, at first, I was so vicariously being Rey while watching the trailer, hugging Leia with my own emotional fan tear, that I didn’t consider why is Rey crying?

Well, theory-wise it could be a number of things. Rey and Leia have really bonded, and maybe Rey’s about to go on a dangerous mission? Or the Resistance has had a major setback?

But, I think one of the biggest, most emotional, thing both Rey and Leia have in common is:

Yup. Benny Boy.

And, this thought/feeling opens up a whole new can.

Um, have they heard something about Kylo/Ben that’s upsetting? And, if so, would this scene take place early or late in the film? I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors that Kylo/Ben might not be making it out of this one entirely. Dunno, to me, it almost feels like Rey’s upset that she’s failed at something. I guess, especially, because it’s extra/reworked footage of the reaction to Han’s death.

Again, with the band! It’s like a 90s Alternation Rock cover!

My question is: What is in Rey’s hand? Is it a bag? What’s in the bag? Is she carrying the Jedi text or some other special item? Is it a device? What sort of device?

Have they all been camping? ‘Cause Finn and Poe have bags, too. Do they got thermal detonators in there?

I’m assuming, since they look more angry/focused than shocked, that their on some sort of mission to find this broken piece of Death Star II? That their purpose is to go inside? Or destroy the rest of it? Either way, if I learned anything from Wind Waker, it doesn’t look like a good day for sailing towards it.

Now, in the split second when Luke says “no one’s ever really gone” again…I wanted to believe we were going to get a Force Ghost reveal. Or that possibly, the-Force-killed-Luke was just social media red herring.

I never dreamed that laugh….

Chilled me to the bone.

The biggest “oh Sh*$” moment of my movie trailer watching life.

 Ooo the possibilities. More thoughts on Emperor Palps’ return later.

Until then my Reylos and Star Wars friends, May The Force Be With You!

[douxreviews]

Quantum Leap - Season Five Review

It had been awhile since I watched season five, and some of it was better than I remembered. Unfortunately, some of it was worse.

Celebrity leaps

The Kennedy assassination? What were they thinking? ("Lee Harvey Oswald," 5.1 and 5.2.)

Quantum Leap always played with celebrity encounters as cute little supplemental by-the-ways and isn't-this-fun, like Buddy Holly and Michael Jackson, and honestly, I totally understand their desire to try something new, to do a high concept two-part episode. But "Lee Harvey Oswald" was terrible, uncharacteristically grim and unforgivably dull. Quantum Leap is a science fiction adventure show with a great deal of humor and charm. It is not a documentary.

Not to mention that Quantum Leap's raison d'etre is to fix "what once went wrong." How on earth could they possibly fix the Kennedy assassination without changing a massive event in American history? Having Sam save Jackie Kennedy, who died in the original history, was an interesting twist, but it was also a cop-out. Especially when you consider what Jackie did with her life after Jack Kennedy's untimely death. (No judgment there, honestly. I'm just saying.)

It also felt wrong to see Sam so affected and influenced by the person he leaped into that he couldn't change anything, and it's telling that this was the only way they could make the script work. We all know that if Sam had been himself, he would have found some way to stop the assassination. I understand from the internet that Donald Bellisario believed that Oswald acted alone and that it was the point he was trying to get across. And I will respond by saying that a show like Quantum Leap was not the place to do it.

"Goodbye, Norma Jean" (5.18) didn't work either, despite a good performance by Susan Griffiths as Marilyn and some enjoyable faux cameos by actors playing Clark Gable, John Huston and Peter Lawford. The big question for me again was, why? What did Sam put right that once went wrong? Supposedly, Marilyn needed to live a little bit longer and do one last film, and if The Misfits had been one of the greats, I would get it, but honestly, it's not a great film. If they had to do Marilyn, wouldn't it have been great if Sam had kept her from committing suicide earlier in her life?

The other two celebrity leaps this season were outright fun, though, and those did work.

I loved Scott Bakula doing an actual impression of "Dr. Ruth" (5.14) in an episode that featured the real Dr. Ruth Westheimer. While the double entendres were uncomfortably thick on the ground, it was pretty much the perfect celebrity leap to illustrate the differences between the reserved and prudish Sam, who had a terrible time doing a radio show about sex, and Al, who didn't hesitate to avail himself of free sex therapy in the Waiting Room with Dr. Ruth herself. We also got a timely reminder that Al has been married five times, and that he still loves his first wife, Beth.

I also enjoyed "Memphis Melody" (5.21) where Sam leaped into a young Elvis Presley. It was so much better than Lee Harvey Oswald and Marilyn Monroe because it wasn't depressing, and Scott Bakula got to sing as Elvis. Very nice. Especially his version of "Amazing Grace." (Which is not what they're singing in the photo below.)

Movie tributes

One of Quantum Leap's constant go-tos was movie tributes and/or ripoffs. In "Leaping of the Shrew" (5.3), Quantum Leap did The Blue Lagoon, and they even got Brooke Shields to guest star. You'd think that wouldn't work, but it was actually pretty darned cute. They also did Coming Home in "Nowhere to Run" (5.4), and it even guest starred an adorable pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston. But honestly, the way they got around Sam walking around while he was supposed to missing his legs was pretty darned weird.

Points for trying

I liked the idea behind "Trilogy" (5.8, 5.9 and 5.10), an interesting twist in the formula where Sam leaped into three different people while trying to save the same person, Abagail Fuller. It was almost like they finally addressed the "what happened to the person Sam saved later on" question. But the story acquired a mildly incestuous feel when Sam went from being Abagail's father figure in part one to her fiance in part two. And the idea of Sam fathering a child while not in his own body was interesting, but also weird. Although I did like the idea of Sam's brilliant daughter Sammy Jo helping out at the Quantum Leap project. Were they thinking about casting her as a permanent character? That could have been fun.

I also liked "Killin' Time" (5.5), where Sam leaped into a serial killer and had to explain the truth about the Quantum Leap project to his hostages. The best part about it was that there was actually action at the project in alternate universe 1999 as the killer escaped and Al took off after him, while Gooshie had to replace Al in the imaging chamber. I'll admit that the face paint, neon decoration and strange computer stuff didn't work, mostly because we all know now that 1999 didn't look like that. Maybe I should have taken that to mean that all of Quantum Leap happened in an alternate universe?

I wasn't as crazy about "The Leap Between the States" (5.20), the first and only time that Sam leaped out of his own lifetime, inhabiting his great-grandfather and romancing his great-grandmother back in 1862. It might have been a little better if they'd managed to resist white savior syndrome.

"Promised Land" (5.11) was a nice idea in theory, popping Sam back to his own home town with people he grew up with. Maybe a little hokey, but at least he got to see his late father one last time. But couldn't we have spent time with Sam's family again instead of getting stuck in a bank for the entire episode?

No points for trying

And then we had the evil leaper. (5.7 "Deliver Us From Evil," 5.16 "Return of the Evil Leaper," 5.17 "Revenge of the Evil Leaper")

Okay. I can see where the writers would have hit on the idea of an evil counterpart to Sam, but I thought it made absolutely no sense and was in fact never explained. Was Satan carrying on a Quantum Leap project of his own to put wrong what once went right? Although it was nice to see the characters from season two's "Jimmy" again and the carrying on in the women's prison was sort of fun, it just didn't work for me. Plus Alia's existence made Sam non-unique, which is something you don't want to do with your lead. The evil leaper concept didn't deserve to take up three full episodes of their final season.

The series finale

I hadn't seen "Mirror Image" (5.22), the final episode of Quantum Leap, since it aired, and was really looking forward to it because I remembered how choked up I was by that last scene with Beth and that final card about what ultimately happened to Sam. Unfortunately, I am sad to report that I found the rest of "Mirror Image" to be sub-par.

Sam arrived in a barroom at the moment he was born, and for the first time, when he looked into a mirror, he saw himself. That was actually a powerful scene, and it was touching that his hair had started to become gray. There were many scenes in the barroom in the coal mining town of Cokesburg that included actors from previous episodes playing other characters. I'm sure they were going for some sort of huge metaphorical what's-is with the mine collapse, but I just didn't get it.

I also thought it was sad that, even though the resolution of the series was all about Al Calavicci, we saw too little of him in the finale. Instead, we got Bruce McGill as the enigmatic Al the bartender, who kept giving Sam clues about what's going on. Was this new Al supposed to represent the God who had sent Sam on this strange journey? I suppose so.

We also learned that it was always Sam's unconscious choice to keep leaping, that his leaps would become more difficult, and at this point, Sam could choose to go home. The fact that Sam chose instead to leap back to the end of "M.I.A." and change Al's life forever was by far the best part of this mishmosh of an episode. Sam's ultimate choice was a selfless expression of love for his closest friend. It was also a radical, series-changing choice, breaking all of the rules we've come to accept as governing Sam's leaps. It was emotionally satisfying, though. So like Sam to give such a huge gift to someone else instead of taking advantage of his one last opportunity to go home. Tragic.

That last title card, "Dr. Sam Becket never returned home," really got to me way back when it first aired in May of 1993. This time, when I saw it, the one big thing that struck me was that in their rush to close down their series, they spelled their lead character's name wrong. (It's "Beckett," with two T's.) Maybe they made that mistake because "Mirror Image" wasn't supposed to be the series finale and they were forced to tack on an ending.

While that last scene with Beth, and its implications, were a worthy end to the series, and I loved the idea of Al happily married to the love of his life, the thought of a sad and exhausted Sam choosing to continue leaping forever was emotionally wrenching. In a way, it also negated everything that happened in the entire series. The Al Calavicci that helped Sam on every step of his journey is no longer the same Al Calavicci. I guess I need to remind myself that I must never try to apply logic to time travel stories.

Bits and pieces:

-- The credits for season five featured a new arrangement of the original theme song. It was terrible. Awful. Blech.

-- Notable actors: Neil Patrick Harris, age twenty, in "Return of the Evil Leaper," Stephen Root in "Goodbye Norma Jean," Hinton Battle from the Buffy musical in "Revenge of the Evil Leaper," and Meg Foster of the amazing eyes in "Trilogy."

-- Bruce McGill, who played Al in the series finale "Mirror Image," was also in "Genesis," the pilot episode. That was a nice touch, since I assume it was deliberate.

-- I hadn't known this until I looked it up, but Susan Griffiths ("Goodbye, Norma Jean") has made a career out of playing Marilyn Monroe. And Michael St. Gerard, "Memphis Melody," played Elvis several other times as well.

-- Just a general observation: when I was finished my rewatch, I figured out what years Sam leaped into the most, and which months of the year. There were very few winter leaps, which makes sense since they filmed in Los Angeles. It also makes sense that the writers would mostly choose the 1950s and 1960s because they could do more interesting period stuff. The year Sam leaped into the most was 1957 (seven times).

And in the end:

Despite this mostly negative closing review, I enjoyed rewatching Quantum Leap more than I thought I would. It was a creative series that aired at a time when there was very little quality science fiction on television, and the two lead characters and the actors who played them were exceptional. There's also no question that Quantum Leap is showing its age a bit sooner than it probably should.

There are a lot of series revivals going on right now. What would a reboot of Quantum Leap be like? I bet that in today's "it's all about the arc" environment, they could go in some truly interesting directions.

What do you guys think?

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[kiwi-le-survivant]

Kiwi-Le-Survivant’s Best Games of 2017 Post

I bought a PS4 this year, which means I was actually able to play five new games this year. It’s my hope that people will actually enjoy reading my thoughts, and soon I’ll be able to rival The Game Awards and announced Halo 6 or something right in the middle of my posts. Let’s jump right in.

Top 5 Best Games I Played That Came Out In 2017:

5. Tekken 7 - You know, I think I prefer Tekken to Street Fighter now. Although that might be a combination of me being slightly better at the former, coupled with Capcom having no idea what they’re doing lately. As shallow as it sounds, I think a big reason I love this game so much is the novelty of both a Capcom and an SNK character guest starring in a Tekken game.

Not as big on Noctis, though. I was hoping for either Kazuma Kiryu, or another fighting game rep. Although I guess you could argue Noctis represents Dissidia.

It’s at the bottom because the other games are so good. I hope they keep adding more content beyond what’s already planned.

4. Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony - Apparently opinions on this game are mixed among DR fans, mainly related to the ending. Personally, I liked the ending, and I feel the rest of the game is pretty much in line with the first two in terms of quality. I’m a fan of the new mechanics, like Debate Scrum and Psyche Taxi. The soundtrack is really good, too. I think everyone can at least agree this is a memorable game.

3. Yakuza 0 - I haven’t finished this one yet, but I’m told it’s a fantastic entry point if you want to get into this series. This is one of the few games I can think of where I actually willingly did sidequests, because a lot of them are actually funny, and even heartwarming.

2. Persona 5 - My most anticipated game of 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. I’m a big fan of Persona 3 and 4, and I feel this game is just as good, if not better. I greatly prefer the Tokyo setting to the rural setting of Persona 4.

From the art style, to the setting and music, P5 oozes style out of every orifice. In fact, you could make a case for it being one of the most stylish games of all time. I thought for sure it would be number one, but one game managed to top it.

1. NieR: Automata - I heard this game actually sold really well, and that’s great news. Imagine telling someone that the sequel to NieR would outsell the newest Mass Effect. It’s amazing what an extra layer of polish and removing or altering some of the more tedious aspects of the first game can do.

Honestly, I’m bad at explaining why the game is good. Just play it. I genuinely believe it will go down as one of the greatest JRPGs of all time, and that Yoko Taro can and should be thought of as the next Kojima. If you dismiss it as a Metal Gear Rising/Final Fantasy rip-off that relies on fan service, well, your loss.

Did I mention that both NieR games have strong contenders for best video game soundtracks of all time? It’s true.

This is pretty long, so I’ll include the rest of the awards under the read more.

Top 5 Best Games I Played That Came Out Other Years:

5. Kid Icarus: Uprising - I haven’t played this as much as I’d like, but I’ve greatly enjoyed what I have played. I don’t even really mind the controls, really. I haven’t used the stand yet.

4. Gravity Rush - I started playing this game a few weeks ago, and I already love it. Kat is one of the most likable protagonists I can think of. She should be Sony’s mascot. In all honesty, this is one of the most fun open world games I’ve played. The only thing I’d say is lacking is the combat, but it’s manageable.

3. Va11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action - A game about mixing drinks and talking to people, while trying to save enough money to avoid getting evicted. There are multiple endings, too. The one I got really got to me. 

2. NieR - I’d hate to say it, but for the longest time, the only thing I saw related to the game was the Zero Punctuation review, and I wrote it off as generic based on that. Thankfully, a few friends heavily recommended it, and since Platinum were doing the sequel, I figured “alright, I’ll check it out.” It turns out, generic is probably the worst word to describe NieR, and Yahtzee is an idiot.

NieR is a rough diamond, similar to Persona 3, or the original Yakuza. A game that has more than its share of flaws, but its originality makes up for them. The gameplay is, well, it’s no Bayonetta. It’s not even DMC1, but it’s there to serve the story and characters, which I found myself getting attached to.

I’d recommend playing this before Automata, if you have a say, but it’s not 100% necessary, and Square Enix could have made that option easier, so it’s up to you.

Check out @thathomestar‘s post about it, too.

1. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - I knew of this series by reputation, and it seemed like the fanbase overlapped a lot with other things I was a fan of, but I got spoiled on who the lead villain turns out to be years before I played it, and I thought some of the character designs looked unappealing, so I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy it.

It turned out, I enjoyed it a lot. It scratches the same itch as Ace Attorney for me. I like the characters a lot more now that I actually know more about them. Funny how that works. Except Hifumi. He looks awful, and is awful.

The second one is probably better in many ways (especially the protagonist), but I feel the first game has a certain humility to it. I get the sense that the developers didn’t think it would take off as much as it did, and some of the rough patches kind of add to its charm. I also think the ending was originally planned to be more ambiguous.

Also, I made at least one friend while playing this game. That’s a plus.

Top 5 Games I Want To Play But Never Got Around To:

5. Cuphead - I felt kind of bad for not having any western games on the last two lists, so here we go. Cuphead looks pretty fun, and I really respect how much effort and creativity went into the game’s visuals. It reminds me a bit of Skullgirls. Sadly, I don’t have an Xbox One, and I doubt my PC could handle it.

4. Sonic Mania - Like Cuphead, this is another labour of love. It was really nice to see people being positive about Sonic again for a few months. Then Sonic Forces came out, but oh well. In a similar vein, I’m also interested in the Crash N-Sane Trilogy, but since Sonic Mania is a new game, it gets the edge.

3. Super Mario Odyssey - Looks really fun. I’ve never played either the Galaxy games or 3D World, but from an outside perspective, Galaxy and Odyssey look like a lot more appealing to me than 3D World. Sadly, I don’t have a Switch.

2. NioH - I suck at Souls games, to be honest, but I find this game’s concept very interesting. I think I’d be into in a Souls game where I can play as an actual character, and not just a blank slate.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo has impressed me this year. I think this is the first time a 3D Zelda game and a 3D Mario game have come out the same year. I like this game’s art style, and I’m told it’s a breath of fresh air to a formula that was getting stale. However, no Switch, and no Wii U, either.

Top 5 Most Anticipated Games of Next Year:

5. Kingdom Hearts III - Yup. This is definitely coming out next year. Always bet on Sora.

4. Red Dead Redemption II - I was kind of burnt out on open world games, but if this is even half as good as the original, it’s pretty damn excellent.

3. Dragon Ball FighterZ - I loved Dragon Ball Z as a kid, and if this game came out when I was a kid, I would probably say “holy shit!” and also “who’s Beerus?” I think this has the potential to make Arc System Works a big name with mainstream audiences. Then maybe we can get a Persona 5 Arena with graphics like this.

2. Yakuza/Hokuto no Ken thing - I never read much Hokuto no Ken, but this looks amazing. Right up my alley.

1. Soulcalibur VI - I just really love fighting games, man. There arguably hasn’t been a great Soulcalibur game since SCII, in 2003 (2002 if you only count the arcade release), so I’d love to see this series make a comeback. Put Cassandra in it.

If Devil May Cry V were announced, it would automatically be at the top of the list, but sadly, no. As for Bayonetta 3, I don’t think it’s coming out next year. With that said, while I don’t have a Switch, Bayonetta 3 is potentially a system seller for me.

[samcybercat]

Sam's Top Tens: Professor Layton Reveals

Honourable Mentions

There were so many reveals in this series that I sadly couldn't fit them all into the top ten and even had to whittle down the honourable mentions section so it wouldn't be a mile long. Some of these are closely tied to other reveals that did make it into the top ten, but I thought it was only fair to give them their own mention as well.

Flora is the Golden Apple

I feel a bit bad that this one wasn't in the top ten itself and it very nearly was, but I realised that it'd be unfair of me to not include more of the prequel games, so this was one of the reveals that sadly had to be cut. Still, I enjoy it very much and feel that the first game is Flora's strongest role in the series – since she is the centre of the plot, unlike in later games where it feels like they don't know what to do with her. The Golden Apple is the biggest mystery in Curious Village and many of those interested in it think that they're going after some great wealth the Baron left behind. But the truth is that the Golden Apple is something that was much more precious to the Baron - his daughter, Flora. The riddles that Layton figures out were intended to test and see who would be a suitable guardian to look after Flora after he had passed away (though whether Layton turned out to be a good guardian or not is up for debate...). We know there's been a girl following us in the shadows for a lot of the game, so finding out that she's the one we've been searching for this whole time anyway is pretty cool. Once again, a strong introduction to Flora's character that could have been followed up on much better than it was.

The Truth About the Elysian Box

This is the first mystery that we're introduced to in Pandora's Box and it carries with our protagonists right the way through to the ending of the game. While thought to be a cursed box that kills those who open it, we eventually find out that this isn't the case and that the materials used to craft the box are laced with the same hallucinogenic gas that's in the mines. So Dr. Schrader didn't die when he opened it, he was just put in a coma. I remember that when I first played the game I felt like this was a bit of a cop out, but I'd still rather that than Dr. Schrader actually dying. As well as the mystery behind why the box has that affect on people, we also learn what its purpose was, having been made so that Katia's grandmother, Sophia, could pass on a message to her beloved Anton about why she had to leave him. It was just a shame it took him fifty years longer than expected to get that message...

Don Paolo is Hershel Layton

Look, Don Paolo wanted to be on this list so many times that he wasn't even going to let the honourable mentions section escape him. One of the smaller reveals during a scene that has a fair few reveals is that all the time “Layton” has been travelling with the others up the Towering Pagoda in Lost Future that he has in fact been Don Paolo. Layton suspected that his apparent future self would try to trap him, so he arranged for Don Paolo to pose as him, so he could be ready to save them if this happened. It's such a funny reveal scene and it makes me laugh every time. As well as that, I appreciate that there's some build-up for it, when we see Layton rush ahead of the others before the reach the Pagoda, leaving a note on Flora's back, even if this does seem a little insensitive. It was during that time that he switched out with Don Paolo.

Claire Foley is Celeste

We've seen this mysterious woman pop up throughout Lost Future and we know from Layton's flashbacks that he remembers someone who looked exactly like her from his own past. The woman eventually claims to be called Celeste, apparently the younger sister of Layton's sweetheart, Claire, and Celeste is now investigating the situation behind Claire’s death. Further on we learn that this isn't true, Claire never had a younger sister and Celeste is in fact Claire herself, having been sent ten years into the future by the initial time machine explosion. While I like Claire and her story as a whole, I felt as if the Celeste deal just was the writers stalling for time until Claire had a more dramatic reveal, so that's why this reveal didn't make the list. Sorry Claire.

Luke Predicts the Spectre's Attacks Based on Water Level

While there's a lot about the plot of PL4 that's a little too out there for even my tastes (despite it being one of my favourite games), there were some elements to it that I felt worked. The Loosha vs. robot solution might have seemed like a random outcome, but it did have some build-up and this lies in Luke's predictions. At first we're introduced to Luke as an oracle who can seemingly see the future and, whether Layton believes this or not, its apparent that Luke's actions have saved lives. As the story progresses and Luke starts to feel he can trust Layton, he opens up about how he's making his predictions, which is by his noticing changes in water-level throughout the town reflect on where the spectre will attack. This might seem to come out of nowhere, but they have spent the game putting emphasis on there being canals all through Misthallery and during an encounter with the spectre we see it disappear seemingly into or around the water, so I'd say that there are clues about the water being an element to the mystery for this to pass my test of there being some build-up. Now the part about using mice to help is a little sillier, but heck, the series has long established at this point that Luke can talk to animals. So yeah, while the final outcome still feels a little random (sorry Loosha, I do still love you), this smaller part of would lead to that grand reveal works well enough for me.

A Group of Kids are the Black Raven

...Hey, I might have resisted including this one in the actual top ten, but you can be damn sure that I'm at least going to give it an honourable mention! While they're arguable not a big part of the main plot (though they do play a role in saving Misthallery at the end, so even that's debatable), the Black Ravens are one of the earlier mysteries that the player uncovers in Spectre's Call. Their role is more to introduce the player to the concept of figuring the mysteries out and give you a small victory when you find out the answer. Also, considering it all happened over mostly just one chapter, the build-up is pretty good. We're introduced to the Black Raven, see that it moves too quickly to be one person, notice that the market is predominantly occupied by children who seem placed to watch your every move, even the entrance to the underground auction house is guarded by a child. So when Layton points out that the Black Raven is in fact the Black Ravens, I think many people might have already figured it out for themselves. It might not be the biggest or most shocking reveal, but I think it works as an introduction to the concept of figuring mysteries out for this game, which is what it was intended for. Also, Crow's reaction to being caught out is just funny.

There are Three Ambrosian Songs

The reason why the plot of Eternal Diva happens is because Descole needed Melina to sing the Song of the Sea while he played the Song of the Stars to accompany her, which he believes will raise the sunken city of Ambrosia out of the ocean. But when he puts this into practise it doesn't seem to work. Which is when Layton shouts over, “Oh hey, if you turn the music sheet upside down you get another song, lol!” ...Or something to that effect. This third song is called the Song of the Sun and when Layton played both songs in accompaniment to Melina's singing, Ambrosia did rise out of the ocean. I like this one because it was a dramatic moment, even if it admittedly doesn't have any real build up to the reveal of there being three songs, which is why it didn't make it onto the list itself. But even so, this is one of the few cases where I really don't mind the lack of build up, since it was pretty epic to watch regardless and I enjoyed seeing Descole's anger at getting it wrong.

Angela Ledore is Mordaunt

...Or Mordy if you play the US version, which I think sounds like an adorable pet name for Mordaunt when read out of context. Miracle Mask is a game that gives us a few reveals at the end – Randall is the Masked Gentleman, Descole is Angela and to top them all off we have Angela being Mordaunt. I remember when I first played the game that I was pretty exasperated during the start of that scene, but then when they ask where the real Angela is, only to here her go “I'm right here!” and take off her Mordaunt costume, I just burst out laughing. It was entirely ridiculous, but for once that was the point. We never find out why anyone just happened to have a Mordaunt costume, when exactly Layton found Angela or even why he asked her to hide her identity from the others in such a way up until that moment (other than that apparently he needed Descole's help for a puzzle), which all feels like a massive shame to me. I've mentioned this is other posts (maybe I'll even made a dedicated post about it one day, who knows?) but I feel that one of Miracle Mask's failings is that, because its focus is all over the place, it doesn't spend the time it needs in each area, leaving the overall product with lots of loose ends hanging. Angela being Mordaunt contains a fair few of these, but you know what, it's still funny. And that's why it made it into the honourable mentions section.

Leonard Bloom is a Targent Spy

Ohhh, I like this one a lot. This was one of the few cases in the series where an overhanging plot-thread from one game will lead into the next. Most of the Layton games are stand-alone titles, so their mysteries are usually wrapped up in the same game they're introduced. The exceptions being plot-points like why Don Paolo hates Layton or who Descole is. Even the prequel trilogy, which had a bit more of a connected plot, mostly kept its mysteries self-contained in each game. The reason for this is that they want the player to feel satisfied that they've achieved something by the end of the games. By all means having unanswered questions will keep them coming back in theory, but these should be used sparingly. And Bloom was one example of this being used. We're introduced to him in Miracle Mask, as a seemingly too-good-to-be-true police inspector. Towards the end of the game we learn that he is in fact a mole for an organisation that are also introduced in this game, namely Targent. But Layton and the others don't learn this. They don't even learn about Targent in this game. So we're in an interesting position of knowing information that the characters don't know. When Bloom turns up in the next game, as the player we'll already be trying to rat him out and hope that the others realise they can't trust him. This doesn't actually take long and Layton learning the truth about Bloom takes the role of the early reveal in this game. There's part of me that still thinks it happened a little quickly and the execution could have been better (the writers wanted us to feel Bloom was back into a corner, but if they'd let him there were plenty of ways he could have carried on his side of the argument), however that's just me nitpicking. The double-crossing of Bloom did what it needed to do and I enjoyed it. Even more so when at the end of the game it becomes a triple-crossing and Bloom ditches Targent to form an unlikely duo with Hannah – now that's a team I'd pay money to play games about!

Old Red was just Confused

I won't spend too much time on this one, since I already covered it a lot in Old Red's entry on my Top Ten PL Animal Characters, but as I said before, Torrido was one of my favourite mini-plots in Azran Legacy when it came to story. It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was still a sweet little tale of a giant wolf creature trying to return to someone who helped him and just getting the identity a bit mistaken. We could have had another Loosha tragedy if Old Red had actually died like he thought he was going to, but I'm glad that this time they spared us the heartbreak and Old Red turned out to be fine.

No Women Died in Hoogland

...Or at least not by being sacrificed to appease an angry god at any rate. It's no secret that I'm less than keen on Hoogland or its sacrificing culture, Emmy had the right idea about that village being awful. But I felt that this one deserved a mention because after all of the build-up to the women being sacrificed, it was just a relief to learn that they had in fact been slipping away and continuing their lives elsewhere, hopefully free from all of the shit that Hoogland gave them. I'm at least glad that in the end everyone saw that the harsh winds being stopped had nothing to do with their sacrifices, but even so Hoogland would not be my choice of holiday destination.

The Adults of Mosinnia were Stoned

Before the series is done we get another look at why substance abuse is bad, when one of the mini-stories in Azran Legacy takes us to the city of Mosinnia. Here we're greeted by only children, who reveal to the protagonists that their parents and the other adults have all fallen into a deep sleep that they haven't awoken from. Layton and the others seek out the phoenix that's supposed to be sleeping in Mosinnia to help them, but while they do find this phoenix, it isn't magic that acts as a solution to this problem. The actual solution lies in texts that they discover in the hidden library, which details how some of the local mushrooms can induce sleep, as well as listing a cure to wake the victims back up. Since none of the children were old enough to go to the party, they were unaffected by the mushrooms. And although we're given a happy ending for the people of Mosinnia, an image showing what comes after we leave implies that poor Umid has now been left with the task of making sure none of the adults start eating the mushrooms again anyway. It's not easy being the responsible one.

[prixmiumarchive]

So, Shadowhunters is good, then? I've thought about watching it but have also thought that it looked like it was kind of over dramatic.

***VERY PERSONAL SHADOWHUNTERS DISCOURSE TO FOLLOW***

Cut for length and to avoid annoying people.

My tl;dr answer is: yes, with caveats, a lot of baggage, and a “it is a Freeform show” disclaimer. So, good music, pretty people, pretty lighting, engaging character chemistry… All there. Melodramatic? Maybe, but really, what were you signing up for?

I got into Shadowhunters because my friend @thethirteenthhouse showed me an episode, and I’m still only like five episodes in with her? I enjoy it, though. At the time that she first showed it to me, I hadn’t really made the full connection that it was another attempt at making a film adaptation of The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Cla(i)re.

I realized pretty quickly, though, because they resolve the City of Bones stuff pretty quickly, which was the name of the first TMI book which I had been very, very dimly aware of in high school I guess. I had been put off TMI and Cassandra Cla(i)re (hereafter CC) not by its own content but because of the controversy surrounding CC’s presence in Harry Potter fandom.

I have only recently started to work my way through the Harry Potter series. My parents are not really ax-crazy conservatives, but they occasionally listen to said breed of conservatives, so when I was in the Harry Potter generation, I was denied access to Harry Potter because my parents didn’t want me opening my mind to Dark Magic or something. I mean, we can get into that, but it’s really another story, and I love my parents, and they’re very not-bad-as-parents-go-if-you’re-anything-but-a-heterosexual-vanilla-delight-of-a-human. Anyway, so, Harry Potter is pretty new to me as a person, though I did go through my childhood with a kind of indirect exposure to it. I just didn’t really get to delve in? My parents let up on most of those such edicts after a while, and I did read a few (the first three?) Harry Potter books when I was really into reading in high school. However, I wasn’t really engaging with anyone about it, because I was kind of embarrassed that I was so ‘behind’ compared to my peers who had basically learned to read on Harry Potter. Then, I got sucked into PJO (the first few books of that).

But even though I, personally, was not a Potter kid, my childhood best friend definitely was. She and I had overlapping interests and diverging interests, and she LOVED Harry Potter with no parental chagrin. We used to sit side by side on an office chair and scroll through fansites related to things we liked (GeoCities! Angelfire! Wow.) and eventually got turned onto fanfiction.net as being a thing and other, more restrictive and selective and focused groups and fic archives that existed in the days of yore.

I’m explaining all of that to say that I was actually aware of the Draco Trilogy before all of it was published and when it was popular without a real whiff of controversy having been brought to anyone’s (or at least my childhood best friend’s) attention. If you don’t know about the whole Draco Trilogy mess and want me to do a short fact-finding mission, send me another ask, but I’ll wait in interest of expediency. TVtropes and fanlore websites both have links and information if you just search for “the Draco Trilogy.”

I read excerpts of the Draco Trilogy that had particularly pithy dialogue, funny, or sexy overtones that my childhood best friend wanted to share. I also seem to think that we read a fair bit of Draco/Hermione fic in this manner, which I do not know if CC ever wrote but which I bring up because I was sorely disappointed to find out that Draco/Hermione dynamic that I imagined based on these fics (inspired, in part, by a certain fanon-hopeful interpretation of Draco popularized, at least, if not completely and solely originated by CC) was totally not what I got the impression of as an undercurrent from the films. Basically, the fact that Draco was not as CC imagined him which I had developed a conception of through being-in-internet-fandom-if-not-very-into-Harry-Potter was a major disappointment and probably one of the reasons that HP was not high up on my list of Things To Make Happen when my teenage rebellious ingenuity was at its fullest swing to read Parentally Discouraged Books. And, you see, THAT IS THE THING about CC, The Mortal Instruments, why I kind of like Shadowhunters, and why I will probably never stomach delving further behind the curtain than the Shadowhunters TV series itself, though I know there are loads of people who have done so in ignorance/innocence.

This is a serious case of “I can enjoy a thing while being super-critical of, like, everything about it on a meta level.”

Co-opting some descriptive terms from things I’ve read about the Draco Trilogy, a short summary of its impact on its fandom at the time was, apparently, that it was a fanfiction of such phenomenon that some people began to prefer the Draco Trilogy to the direction canon itself was going. And, as fanfiction power goes, that is like the Holy Grail. It is the Goal when canon is in any way disappointing you and your fellow fans. It’s incredible, it’s impressive, and I’m still sitting here impressed that no matter what hellfire CC has had rained down upon her that there was something in her work that resonated with people to a point that there are many willing to forgive unrepentant and repeated acts of plagiarism and bullying in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance of really loving something that was written by and born from a generally jerkish person.

I say that, consciously, as a person who accepts Moffat Who for the most part in spite of all of the Discourse in that direction, too.

The issue with CC’s Draco Triology was certainly not its plotting, its craftsmanship (in terms of its parts making a whole), its characterization, or anything else that would make it a bad fic. I have yet to revisit the texts, though I have procured them as a funny and fanlore matter of interest for my Harry Potter reading log blog @100privetdrive (which tumblr doesn’t wanna link right now), as someone who knows the controversy, and I never read them in full, but I am led to believe that there are many fans who would still like to revisit the texts but feel bad about doing so because they are tainted with plagiarism and a lot of ugliness that followed. CC’s dedication to her work certainly led her to produce a completed trilogy of interconnected longfics, not to mention her one-shots that she produced for the Harry Potter fandom during her stay. Most of them have vanished into the realm of myth when she retreated from fandom life upon getting her book deal (and upon ducking away from those who were out with pitchforks in the fandom at the time), but the Draco Trilogy was of such renown that it has (for now) escaped permanent erasure from record in spite of CC’s attempts.

What I’m telling you is that people like(d) the Draco Trilogy.

CC’s characterizations of the Harry Potter cast were not necessarily consistent with canon, but they were consistent within what she imagined at the time could be or wished was. It is certainly not the case that her fanfiction and the story she quilted together was devoid of original thought or emotional investment in her characters and what she was writing. The problem was, someone discovered that she was essentially lifting word-for-word passages from some quality-but-then-out-of-print fantasy books for sizeable portions of plot-heavy parts of her story, in addition to much of her pithy, interesting dialogue being straight-lifted from popular television of the time such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Honestly, for the latter, few people would call her out for that. She did credit that she borrowed some dialogue from shows she liked, and when trying to defend herself against accusations of plagiarism, she mentioned a kind of in-joke, intertextual referential humor she shared with her fandom friends. Basically, she was doing the same thing as all those incorrect[series]quotes tumblrs that are pretty popular right now, and she did admit it. The issue was what she would not admit when someone found her out and the bullying and war and response that followed.

There is far better documentation on this situation than I can give you, because the entire thing about this drama is interesting hearsay for my part. Again, if you ask, I’ll go on a brief fishing expedition for you, but it will involve a series of search terms you could just as easily google yourself. If any of my recollection is fuzzy, it is because it is solely recollection of things I’ve read about and become aware of as a fandom resident for more-than-the-past-decade.

Getting back to Shadowhunters, the thing about it is, I never really wanted to like anything CC had anything to do with for a long time for all of these reasons. I didn’t really feel good about supporting someone who made the transition from fan-to-creator in a way that felt a lot like she didn’t care who she hurt in the process. I also felt, a little, like it was a betrayal of the spirit of transformative and fandom work to completely remove oneself from the process (by deleting as much as you could of your fandom contributions) when you achieved success. I know of a lot of active fandom writers who don’t do that if and when they become published. However, those people also don’t plagiarize their own work.

Again, this is a-thing-I-read-about because I have not read the Draco Trilogy in anything close to full or ANY of TMI series except screencaps of pages I’ve seen on tumblr. That said, Jace Wayland is CC’s Draco. Clary Fray is CC’s Ginny Weasley. Alec Lightwood is CC’s Harry Potter.

So here is my complicated relationship with kind of liking and getting into the Shadowhunters tv series at this particular juncture in time, space, and my personal history and observation of fandom: I think it is really cool when works influence and can relate to each other. TMI is a far better example of this than 50 Shades, no doubt. However, there is the load of baggage surrounding CC’s success, unapologetic or deflective attitude toward anything she ever does wrong, and so on. But, then again, Shadowhunters is based on her work. Another recent example that might be similar is the CW’s The 100.

The 100 is another show that I genuinely like-what-I-have-seen-of, though I’m behind the point when some people got mad and wrote it off. It is also based on a YA lit book of the same title. However, its similarities with the book diverge sharply after the first few episodes, and it, as an adaptation, is doing its own thing, unrepentantly. I have been told that Shadowhunters is also doing this, and I think that it is an aesthetically pleasing show. It also has interesting concepts at play in its worldbuilding which I will say to my mind are unique in spite of the myriad parallels to a darker-teenier-edgier Harry Potter that will never go away. I also appreciate that the Shadowhunters showrunners are said to care about how their representation of LGBT people plays. It is not an exclusively-white show. It has pretty music. I like the actors’ enthusiasm for the characters they play and the journeys they seem to be taking. I think parabatai is a pretty neat concept. It’s pretty standard as far as what runes themselves are, but the rune usage and tattoos are pretty cool.

There are a lot of things to like about this show. There are a lot of things about them that, without evidence, I am sure are the brain children of CC. I wish that I could just full on and without equivocation go “kudos” to someone who made such an incredible transformative leap from one fandom into her own worldbuilding. However, the divorce of Shadowhunters/TMI/pretty much any of CC’s work feels incomplete and disingenuous on a certain level, no matter how much I am simply enjoying a tv show with-my-criticisms. I feel that a denial of is direct relationship to fanfiction, fandom itself, Harry Potter, and CC’s own past is just an effort to flatten out cognitive dissonance that comes from liking-what-is-intriguing-about-it that simply doesn’t come that easily.

I am enjoying the show in part because it seems really interesting on some kind of fandom-sociological level. I also like it for all the good-things I mentioned above. I like it because my some of my friends love it with an untainted and genuine enthusiasm. However, I’ve got to say, that I actually find watching the Shadowhunters series with my friend feels non-icky in a way that pledging any kind of allegiance to CC’s little empire that actually benefited it in any way does not.

I enjoy Shadowhunters as, basically, the biggest budget AU fanfic I have ever seen, but I think that on some level it has its own soul, too. But I’d be a lot more willing to credit the cast and crew and the Harry Potter fandom of the early-00s with that than I would CC on her own.

[lindburgsreviews]

Star Wars 30 Day Challenge- In One Day!

As most of you likely know, the first public screening for the new Star Wars movie releases tonight at midnight. You also probably know about my love for this series and I can’t wait to see review it. I found this video series from the Wars YouTuber HelloGreedo where for thirty days leading up to the release of The Last Jedi, he made a short video covering a variety of different Star Wars related questions. I thought it would be fun to answer the same thirty questions in a single blog entry. Feel free to respond with your own thoughts in the comments!

1. My Personal Favorite Star Wars Memory

My favorite Star Wars memory was seeing The Force Awakens in theaters for the first time. I had never seen a Star Wars movie in the theater to that point, and I was giddy from the time the lights dimmed to the end credits. I felt like a little kid and it made me fall in love with the series again.

2. My All Time Favorite Character

This is a tough one  because there are so many great characters to choose from. As a kid I would have said Darth Vader, but as an adult now I’ve grown to love Han Solo. Harrison Ford is so great in the role and he has so many memorable moments and lines. I also love what he brings to the table as a character, a rough and tumble anti-hero who has a greatr arc through the Original Trilogy.

3. Favorite Original Trilogy Movie

My favorite of the Original Trilogy movies is The Empire Strikes Back. I love how it takes a great premise presented in A New Hope and expands it considerably. You learn more about Vader, the nature of the force, and get to meet some really memorable characters in Yoda and Lando Calrissian. There’s so much depth and I would go as far as to say powerful scenes in what on the surface, just looks like a fun science fiction movie.

4. Favorite Prequel Trilogy Movie

This one is also hard because I dislike pretty much all of the prequels, but I would have to say Revenge of the Sith is the one I like the best. There are a few scenes that are true to the original spirit of Star Wars and also a lot of good visuals.

5. Favorite Star Wars Video Game

This one was very easy. The original Star Wars Battlefront II video game from 2005 just might be my favorite video game ever. I got hours of playtime from it when I was in grade school and had a blast every time. The game was so simple in its concept, recreating battles from the movie or ones we never saw on screen, but that’s what I think made it so great.

6.  Favorite Lightsaber Fight

The final dual between Vader and Luke in Return of the Jedi is by far my favorite lightsaber fight in the saga. There is so much emotional weight to the scene as Luke is torn between trying to redeem his own father who is also trying to kill him. You can’t help but feel for him as he is constantly being taunted by both Vader and the Emperor and trying to remain true to the teachings of Obi-Wan and Yoda. His outburst at the end where he realizes he is slowly becoming like Vader is also poignant, as well as Vader’s sacrifice to end the scene.

7. All Time Favorite Scene

I  could probably make a list of just my favorite Star Wars scenes, but the top would have to be Yoda explaining the Force to Luke and then raising his X-Wing out of the swamp in Empire. Yoda’s dialogue is so well written, and John Williams’ score makes the scene feel both mystical and inspiring. I get chills each time I see this scene and there’s no other one like it in the whole saga.

8.  Favorite Yoda Quotation

After a lot of thought, my favorite Yoda quote might be “You must unlearn what you have learned.” It might not seem to make much sense, but part of why I like it might be because it is similar to one of my favorite quotations in real life “It’s what you have learned after you know it all that counts”. They both speak to how nobody every truly becomes a master at anything, and there’s always something new you can be learning. 

9. Favorite Fan Film

In all honesty I’ve never seen a Star Wars fan film. If anybody reading this knows of a good one to check out, let me know. On to the next one.

 10. Something I Wish Was Different

Like I mentioned before, I really don’t think very highly of the prequels. Yes they are what originally peaked my interest in the series as a kid, but as I’ve grown older I’ve realized how poorly made and pointless they are. I wish they didn’t exist at all, only the original and sequel trilogies were made. None of them are all that good, and create a plethora of plot holes that hurt the original movies.

 11.  Favorite Piece of Star Wars Merch I Own

A couple years ago for my birthday, my parents bought me some wooden portraits with posters of the original movies printed on them. One of them was a pretty standard one for the Force Awakens, but the other two are the ones that I really love. One is for Empire, with Darth Vader’s mask floating in space with the cast list underneath it with the title. The other one is for Return of the Jedi, and but it says “Revenge” instead of Return. This was because George Lucas decided to change the title during filming, making the original posters with this small detail extremely valuable to collectors. Even though what I own isn’t a original copy, I think it’s really cool and have them both hanging up in my room. 

12. Actor I Want to See in a Star Wars Movie

There was a lot different names I considered for this one, but the one I feel the best about is Aaron Paul. If you have watched Breaking Bad, he gives a performance throughout the entire series that is arguably as good as the one Bryan Cranston gives. I think Aaron Paul is a terrific actor, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen him in much outside of Breaking Bad. I don’t have a character in mind for him to play but the Star Wars universe is so big and he’s such a great talent I have no doubt he could play a strong role and really excel.

13. Favorite Member of the Rogue One Crew

Another easy one, K2-SO is by far my favorite character in all of Rogue One. Alan Tudyk’s motion capture performance is fantastic in his comedic timing and vocal work, and by far playing  the best character in the movie in my opinion.

14. Favorite Piece of Star Wars Music

Of all the incredible compositions of Star Wars score, my favorite is Finale/End Credits from Empire. It starts with a slow build up to a strong rendition of Han and Leia’s theme before transitioning in to the typical end credits theme that plays in the other movies. What comes after is what puts it over the top for me though, as it features a medley of the different character themes from throughout the movie. Yoda’s theme, The Imperial March, and finally a return to the love theme are all played and works as a nice musical microcosm of the film. 

15. Favorite Vehicle in the Saga

My favorite vehicle in Star Wars is also one of the best vehicles in all of pop culture, the Millennium Falcon. Its design has always been really cool to me and its so recognizable. I like how it seems like you could live in it, and I love how proud Han Solo is of his ship even though the other characters are constantly making fun of it. I also like how its seen all kinds of action, been to the furthest corners of the galaxy and all of its different features.

16.  Favorite Special Edition Change

The change in the Special Edition that I don’t mind is the general improvement of the visuals and audio. I don’t think it hurts the integrity or undercuts the work put in by the original crew, but enhances their work and helps the movies age a little bit better.

17.  Least Favorite Special Edition Change

In my opinion, the worst of all the Special Edition changes is the CGI creatures and backgrounds added in to Mos Eisely in A New Hope. Not only does it look terrible, but it’s ridiculously distracting and one animal even blocks the entire view of the scene right before Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids are stopped by the stormtroopers. It makes no sense at all why all of this was added, and that might be why it irritates me the most.

18. Favorite Star Wars Parody

I admittedly haven’t seen the most Star Wars parodies, so I’ll have to go with Space Balls by default, but that doesn’t mean that it is still a really funny parody. It captures the spirit of the Original Trilogy while also satirizing the merchandising it has become famous for, as well as the logic of movies altogether.

19.  Favorite Non-Star Wars Movie from a Star Wars Actor

My favorite for this one would have to be Raiders of the Lost Ark, featuring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Both of these series have a special place in my heart as they sparked my interest in movies as a kid. Harrison Ford is just as iconic as Indy as he is Han, and the rest of the movie is masterfully guided by my favorite director, Steven Spielberg. It never lets up with action, suspense, an incredible score, and I never get bored while watching it. 

20. Favorite Droid

BB-8 is my favorite droid in all of Star Wars. I love his design, how it looks original but still looks like it exists in the Star Wars universe. I also think its really cool how the creators of Force Awakens were able to make a character that is so funny and lovable but doesn’t have any dialogue, much like R2-D2.

21. Star Wars Game I Wish Existed

I’m not a huge video game fan so I don’t know if a game like this exists, but I think an open world game simlar to Red Dead Redemption in the Star Wars Universe would be really cool. Maybe your character would be a bounty hunter or character similar to Luke in A New Hope trying to find his way in the galaxy, but you make the decisions that ultimately affects his fate. 

22. The Star Wars Anthology Film I Want

YouTube movie reviewer Jeremy Jahns actually had an idea for an anthology film that I would love to see. It would focus on Obi-Wan between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Ewan McGregor would come back as Obi-Wan, but the tone of the movie would be more similar to a western than a space opera. He would be in hiding in Tatooine, riddled with guilt from the fall of Anakin and maybe PTSD from the Clone Wars. He’s on Tatooine not because he feels the need to watch over Luke, but because he just doesn’t want to see a galaxy under the control of the Empire’s iron fist and falls away from his Jedi beliefs. This is where the western theme comes in, as maybe a small settlement near where he’s hiding in the desert is under threat from the Empire or a gang from Jabba the Hutt and he is forced to try and stand up to them. I like this idea because it would be a very different tone for a Star Wars movie and wouldn’t add too much unnecessary backstory.

23. Favorite Force Awakens Moment

I absolutely loved the scene in Fore Awakens where Kylo Ren has just incapacitated Finn tries to use the Force to pull the Skywalker lightsaber out of the snow. He has some trouble getting it out, as it wiggles around and finally comes out, but flies past his face and in to Rey’s outstretched hand. She looks confused and a bit scared after it happens, but the Force theme slowly begins to swell up. I got goosebumps seeing this scene in the theater and me and several other people cheered as it happened. It’s such a great reveal, and it represents everything Star Wars is about, finding something special deep inside you and riding to an occasion with that ability you have. 

24. Favorite Space Battle

Although I didn’t like the movie as whole very much, the last thirty minutes of Rogue One are fantastic. The battles going on in space and on the ground look incredible and are intense, combining new technology with the classic Star Wars action cut scenes from A New Hope. The hammerhead ship crashing in to the Star Destroyer is a great scene and there is a new level of intensity that you don’t really see in the other Star Wars space battles.

25. Least Favorite Star Wars Moment

This might be a cop out, but all of the Anakin and Padme love dialogue scenes are absolutely terrible. They are so poorly written and awkward to watch. I can’t remember the last time I watched Attack of the Clones from beginning to end, but it won’t be again any time soon partly because of these scenes.

26. Favorite Darth Vader Quotation

I think it’s great in Empire when Vader says to Lando “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further”. It fits the character so perfectly, being menacing and pithy at the same time. I also love how Lando tugs at the collar of his shirt after Vader turns away, almost like Vader gave him a bit of a force choke as he left. 

27.  If I Were An Extra, What Scene Would I be in?

I’ve always found it funny how in every Original Trilogy movie, there’s a stormtrooper who gets shot and falls from a ridiculous height screaming on the way down. I would want to be one of these guys, because it would be a funny cameo and just a fun scene to be in. 

28. Director I Want to Direct a Star Wars Movie

Jon Favereau, the director of the first two Iron Man movies, The Jungle Book remake, and Elf would be a great choice to direct a Star Wars movie. He has worked with Disney before so he would be able to work with the corporate aspect but also bring a unique flavor to the story, and some great special effects too.

29. A Prop I Would Like to Own

The burnt-up Darth Vader mask scene in Force Awakens would be a cool prop to have. There’s something intimidating about it still, even though it’s heavily damaged and mishaped. I feel like it represents the new trilogy’s connection to the originals though, and would be a unique piece of memorabilia. 

30. Why I Love Star Wars

I love Star Wars because of what it was and what it has become. I love hearing the stories of how the first movie went over budget and schedule, nobody thought it would be any good, and now it might be the  most famous film franchise in existance. I love the fun, light-hearted moments and the ones with depth and emotions too that I think get overlooked too often by film critics. I also love how it has had such a strong impact on my life, and how I will get to pass on the story and my experiences with it to future generations.

That’s it! I’ll have my review for The Last Jedi as soon as possible after I see it. Let me know what your responses to these questions are!