giving it up for my fellow memory issues girlies-- we love never being sure of our memory of information or an incident we love having 0 faith or reliability in our remembering a responsibility, task, or plan and we especially love being commonly blamed and asked to apologize for it 😬👍

real talk though-- fellow bad memory girlies im here for you and whatever shit youve gotten, blame you've taken, for a brain disability out of your control, you didn't fucking deserve it, and you aren't a bad person for it. There are people out there though who WILL take "i have memory loss/problems" as an answer and Will be patient with you and love you and you will meet those people and it will be so relieving.

Oh god what happened with Punisher season 2? I haven’t finished it yet.

MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR spoilers, and also a REALLY LONG POST

the writing was really just a bunch of whatever. character motivations change from one episode to another, as many others have said; the writing is just shoddy and they try to marry two plots (Billy’s mental health and spin into just off-the-walls villainy, and Amy + Pilgrim’s religious homophobic blackmail plot) that were never going to come together, and in the process end up writing off a lot of it or not addressing point of interest At All

key themes of s1 were given up for just shitty tropes, like this gross joker/harley plot that billy/dumont were given. and speaking of dumont, her character was arguably as predatory as arthur, billy’s “good samaritan”, and their relationship is sold as romantic - as a good enough reason to simply ditch all morals and elope, that they could have had a happy ending had it not been for madani - despite her being predatory and absolutely unprofessional and their relationship being built on generally gross grounds

frank, the main protagonist, doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. his character as the punisher is unclear - don’t get me wrong, jon bernthal absolutely does an amazing job with what he was given, but it’s not enough to forgive the horrendous writing. he’s depicted as protective, but also that he loves violence - that he “needs the excuse” to be violent, to kill - in a later episode, in a hunt down for billy he shoots up a room full of women, and admits to himself that he would’ve killed anything that stood in his way. it’s revealed in exactly the same episode that billy was the one who actually pre-killed these women. 

what, pray tell, was the fucking point then? if you’re going to question frank’s morality and the blurred line between “good” and “bad” killers, WHY do you immediately resolve it? WHY is it never brought up again? additionally, frank DESERVES to be questioned like this - he would’ve fucking shot those women the way he did when he turned his rifle onto the room and they would’ve been dead by his hand anyway? ??? ?? ? ?

it’s also more apparent in this season that the women in this show are to act as propellers for the male characters and it fuckin. sucks. madani in particular is written SO BADLY - they want her to be a badass so bad but it just falls through because (1) her motivations are once again all over the place, there was no reason for her to bring frank to NY when she initially wanted to “bring billy to justice” and frank wanted to kill him, (2) even when talking to another woman the scene can’t pass the bechdel test; she has to talk about billy and/or frank and is, in general, barely seen to show any self-reflexivity. it sucks!! like i WISH we could’ve seen a better written WoC this season, but it was somehow WORSE than s1

AND. there’s an episode in which frank and amy (a 16 year old girl) go to like, this photoshoot designed to have photoshoots of young girls, with a guy who’s very clearly a pedophile as he insinuates that frank can like, Have His Way With Her in here if he wanted; what the fuck was the point of this part if not to showcase giorgia whigham in That Outfit (i.e. kinda childish girly clothing)? they really couldn’t have picked a different way to show that frank can be swayed by his daughter figure? that he’s protective over her? HELLO???

furthermore, they try to make us care about pilgrim and this weird russian vs the american catholic alt-right plot, when it was a simple blackmail plot made way more confusing and convoluted than it had any right to be. i don’t CARE. the scenes are all over the place, the season literally forgets about pilgrim for like 4 episodes, i SINCERELY do not CARE when the plot of billy has already been introduced.

anyway, sorry for the long ass reply - i have a lot of complaints about this season and i’m just SO disappointed because it could’ve been so much more. they could’ve talked more about frank’s internal dilemma about what he does as the punisher; they could’ve had a redemption arc given billy doesn’t FUCKING REMEMBER ANYTHING and is shown to want forgiveness and vulnerability instead of an abusive manipulative therapist; they could’ve had madani doing literally anything aside from OBSESSING over billy or doing it for herself as opposed to doing it in order to make HIM feel something. SO MANY THINGS. WE COULD’VE HAD SO MANY THINGS, STEVEN LIGHTFOOT

So, I just binged the new She-Ra, and I thought I'd give a few initial thoughts based on the complaints that I remember from the conversation here about the designs.

First, to those worried about it being an "SJW show" - it's not. Unless you call every single magical girl show SJW, then I don't see how you could call this one that. It has the same feel as things like Winx on the surface, y'know? A frilly, girly cartoon with magical stuff.

Beneath that it has some interesting characters and plots - I think that the backstories, the workings of the Hoard, and so on tended to be quite a bit more interesting than the actual main plot and main characters at times. Like, I was a lot more intrigued by the dynamic between Catra and Shadow Weaver, and by Entrapta in general, than whatever Adora was doing.

A lot of stuff did seem put there for an older audience - not that it was too mature for kids or anything, just that I feel like the pretty flowers and friendship stuff was there for the kids, while the child abuse and manipulation was probably meant to be spooky but mostly go over their heads.

As for the designs, the stills make them look a lot worse than they are - stylistically, the main world looks quite smooth and, I guess, pretty. There's some nice contrast between that style and the sharper and darker style of the Hoard and of Entrapta's home, and the angular but still "pretty" style of the old tech. The atmosphere of the show was captured pretty well by each setting, by the use of colour and light, and so on.

Some people felt that the stills made characters look overweight, and worried about the impacts of various changes like that and race changes. Firstly, again, the cartoony style looks better when it's all in motion rather than still and stood next to the more detailed older designs. I wouldn't say any of the characters look "fat" - Glimmer, for example, has chunky legs but she looks muscular, not overweight. The changes to race didn't have any impact on the show... it isn't the "Look how inclusive we are!" move that people worried it would be, at least within the show (I haven't looked into the creators to know how they act about it). It's also not unrealistic for them to have different skin colours to each other, given that it's set on an entire planet and they come from kingdoms all over said planet.

The animation is good but it isn't anything to rave about - it's got the same size issue as Voltron and especially Steven Universe seem to have on occasion, and it makes me wonder how much time these teams actually spend on like... just making scale models or cut-outs and standing them next to each other or something. It doesn't ruin the show or anything, and you don't really notice it unless you're looking for it.

If this show was written by SJWs, then I get the impression that they didn't want the show to be a preachy political thing, and they actually know how to laugh at preachy political stuff - there's a joke with a talking horse who wants equality and justice for horses.

All of the characters have flaws and strengths. There's a character who's basically a pyromaniac Jack Sparrow, and he has a pretty interesting relationship with the one princess (she's portrayed as kind of detached and... a typical "Yeah, whatever." kind of person, while he displays a more overt affection for her, and at first the show had the opportunity to portray that as him being creepy/obsessive, but instead of doing that the show took it in a more interesting "that's just how their relationship is" direction). Oh, I'm not necessarily using "relationship" as romantic there - that much is left up to some interpretation.

My main complaint is actually something that I've been paying more attention to since I heard it mentioned in a review of Sky High, which is that the majority of the characters are special because they were born special. I feel like this show makes even less of an effort than Sky High to say "Okay, the plot is that s/he's special, but look other people can be too without being born that way!"

There's the character of Bow, who seems to lack powers - he encourages three other characters without powers to engage in a brief fight in one episode... and I don't recall seeing those three come back after that episode. A couple of background characters do things in the background, but... all of the important characters besides Bow either have powers by the circumstances of their birth/destiny, or are part of the Evil Hoard. The pursuit/acquisition of power is also painted as the motivating factor for the Evil Hoard's evil, and is often painted as an evil thing.

I'm not the biggest fan of the message that specific people are just born good and powerful, destined to be the good guy and all that... I mean, it's made clear that there's no way that Catra could have been the one who became She-Ra, not because she wasn't kind or wasn't strong or because of any actual qualities of her character, but just because Adora was born to be She-Ra. That's a trope that I was hoping they would subvert.

Anyway, I'll link that Sky High video here, I don't agree with every word of it (I still like Sky High, and I think the review does understate some of the good qualities of that film... I also still like She-Ra) but it is an interesting dissection of some of the issues with this trope: https://youtu.be/iIdbLUm-ez8

So no, the show isn't full to the brim of real world politics (in fact, there isn't really any), and the politics of the fictitious world are actually pretty interesting. It's worth watching if you enjoy these kinds of cartoons - it's no masterpiece, but the characters are pretty good, the story is sufficiently intriguing, and I like Entrapta and Catra.

~ Vape

Because I feel like it, I'm gonna throw in my two cents about the new poster. Feel free to reblog or comment with your thoughts or agree/disagreements!

Honestly, I'm torn. Like 53-47. I am more on the why a girl and why a light fury side, but at the same time I’m kind of excited. The only reason that I'm not majorly on one side or the other, is because I prefer to wait until I watch the movie to decide. Like, y'all can complain and get all your initial feelings out (I will later in this post), but there’s no changing it. This new dragon is going to be in the movie no matter what. Might as well get used to it while you can.

My split:

47% -- I’m so ready for this movie!! I’ve been in the fandom since the first movie cam out, and I’m just happy for the next installment. I also (finally) took the time this year to finish watching Race to the Edge and that was great too. I hope some things from it are mentioned in the movie. But who knows? I’m only casually in the fandom, so I have no idea if the show is officially cannon or not, but I think it would be cool if it was.  As far as the poster goes and the released character designs, I am very much ready for this movie. It’ll take some getting used to (especially tuff) but I am glad they’re aging up these characters again. And just the poster in general! 😍 I love the idea of a Hidden World and can’t wait to see what shenanigans happen there and what dragons are discovered! On that note, while I'm not the hugest fan of the “light fury” I still like the general idea of it. We finally know that Toothless isn’t the only one of his kind!

(There’s really not anything super negative I'm going to say - most of it you’ve probably seen already - but I'm putting it under a read more incase there are people out there that don’t want to see anymore complaints) especially this early in the game

53% --  At this point we don’t really know, but it can pretty much be assumed that it’s a female. And this is what’s pissing off a lot of us fans. What is the point of a female? Just a ‘love interest’ for Toothless? I hope not, but give me a break. And why is she white? To make her more girly? Idk, I honestly don’t think that’s necessary. I’m pretty sure since the first movie came out, there have been girl clothes and toys for this franchise. So it’s really not super necessary to have a girl dragon just to market to girls.....also, Stormfly is a girl sooo? Like I said, I love the idea of the “light fury” but I'm apprehensive. For basically the reasons I've stated above. I have read a few other posts and found the most interesting to be that maybe she’s just an albino, or that she’s evolved into an underwater dragon (due to lack of nubs, etc on poster). If either of these are the actual reason, I'd be happy with that. I also saw some that said something about her basically being a “day version” of Toothless - hunting during the day and hiding in the clouds, etc - which honestly makes no sense to me. They’re called night furys for a reason. I understand that that’s the whole reason she’s being called a light fury, but still. Not down with it. These are obviously all head canons at this point, since we still don’t really know anything. but that will change when the first trailer drops next week!! it probably won’t answer many if any of our questions, but it’s still exciting! I think I may have read this somewhere too, but I can’t remember...it is also one of my headcanons though. What if she’s a baby?? Or at least younger that Toothless? Maybe night furys gradually turn black/don’t turn completely black until a certain age? Because while night furys can camouflage into the night sky, they’re clearly not nocturnal. This also explains the lack of nubs. If she’s young, maybe they’re small or haven’t grown yet.

And while we are all assuming she’s a girl, nothing has been announced, so it may be a male (but I doubt it). Basically my main thing is that I hope that she’s not just a new dragon for fan pandering purposes or for Toothless to make heart eyes at.  Anyways, those are my thoughts. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.