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autisticshadowthehedgehog · 1 year

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What was up with Chris Thorndyke, anyway?

I think it’s safe to say that Chris Thorndyke is one of the most hated characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, which is... a bit odd, when you think about it. In a world of Ken Penders’s Daddy Issues Personified and Octopus Who Kills Children For Fun (the latter of which basically being a fandom sexyman), why is a twelve-year-old boy so polarizing?

It would be easy to chalk this up to the bad 4kidz dub, but I don’t quite think that’s it. A lot of the complaints I’ve heard can go to “he got the main character slot in Sonic’s show” or “I just don’t like the human characters,” which are valid, but pale in comparison to basically all I’ve seen being: “He’s just annoying,” “I can’t fucking stand him,” etc. That’s basically all I hear, and when asking why, it usually boils down to two things: 1) his extreme attachment to Sonic and 2) his status as a rich white american only child basically puts any and all of his problems at “first world problems” at best. Those also seem like valid reasons, right?

Thing is, while on the surface it seems like this kid has no issues, as a kid with a, how you say, rough childhood, something stuck with me when I watched the show for the first time. I remember sitting through episode after episode, wondering, When does Chris stop being sympathetic and start being annoying? Since, you know, that’s his reputation.

It didn’t happen.

And it slowly became apparent to me that a lot of the things that made Chris “annoying” and “obsessive”... were just obvious symptoms of a traumatized kid.

Join me for my thesis presentation: Chris’s “annoying” traits are not a writing flaw, but an intentional character flaw brought about by severe neglect, which is resolved through his character arc, and why the fandom reaction to him is so furious.

Note: Throughout this meta, we will only be looking over the Japanese version of Sonic X, as it’s the original script and 4kidz did not translate it accurately. So if you see some lines you don’t remember being said, those are from the English subtitles/direct translation.

Once again, it is possible (also likely, we’ll discuss that a bit) that the kidification and cuts to Sonic X did a number on Chris’s likability, but for most of the meta we’ll be discussing his Japanese characterization with only a few references to cut scenes or lines in the dub.

Part I: First Impressions

On the surface, Chris seems like not just a normal kid, but a very privileged one. He goes to regular school with regular friends, but also goes home to a mansion and millions of dollars. His parents dote on him, his grandfather has fun with him, the two servants treat him like their own kid. He should have no problems, right?

Except, honestly, the issues become apparent in Episode One.

You may be saying here, “What do you mean, episode one? The second episode is when Chris gets all his characterization and exposition.”

Except we get all this visually in the final scene of the episode. (I PROMISE the whole essay won’t be this analytic over small scenes but this is important.)

Before Chris rescues Sonic, kickstarting his part in the plot, we see him hear Sonic fall, peer out the window, and then run out to get him.

Firstly, the shots of his room. His room is huge– and we’ll come back to that detail later, so keep it in mind– but it’s also dark. Which tracks ofc, it’s nighttime and the kid’s asleep, but there’s also a lit desk light, which we see when Chris goes to the window. This together gives the audience the visual impression that Chris is in the dark, with the light only coming when he opens that window and sees Sonic.

Let’s get into the bigness of the house here, as Chris runs out of the room. In every shot we see him running, it’s emphasized how small he is. No, not only how small he is, but how empty the rest of the house is.

First the shot in the hall. There’s minimal lighting from a few wall lamps, the rest of the hallway is incredibly dark. Chris is shorter than the height of the lamps on the wall, his positioning keeps him small in the frame despite him running closer. He’s also centered in the hall, and when you look to the walls you can see several doors, implying several rooms, but only Chris is in the hall.

Then the stairwell– once again incredibly dark, but we see more of the grandiose nature of the house. A painting taller than Chris, a Grandfather Clock maybe twice his height. He also runs down the stairs with the railing up to his shoulder. It’s all finely detailed, which of course reflects the Thorndyke luxury they live in. But it’s still dark, and Chris is still so small.

A shot of him running across the floor. It’s shot from above, and we see that the tiles on the floor are bigger than his whole body. This shot is even darker than the rest, only a few lights reflecting on the ground. The above-shot also shows a ceiling fan in front of us, which makes it look bigger than it is, also dwarfing Chris in the shot.

There’s a shot after that of Chris running to the pool– it is actually near-impossible to see him here, but if you look he runs off the back porch. Once again the world is huge, everything around him is huge, and everything is dark, except the pools. The pools where Sonic is, not that he knows that yet.

The pool still remains brightly lit as Chris dives in and saves Sonic. The first shot we see is him diving in, and then grabbing onto Sonic’s wrist. This is repeated multiple times later in the show as they reach for each other’s hands. It’s not only the first time we see this kid make contact with someone in the show, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time we see Sonic. In the first bit of the episode he’s only hitting robots, in the second bit he’s fleeing from everyone who comes near him. This first contact thus subconsciously establishes itself in the audience’s minds as important for both of them.

We finally see Chris clearly after he pulls Sonic out, where the two of them are lit by the pool’s light. Despite the long shadows coming off of them, they are both fully visible and sitting amongst the lit tiles, meaning Chris is now in the light.

This opening scene also establishes something important about Chris as well, and that’s that he’s... not a rich asshole. This kid woke up in the middle of the night, and for all intents and purposes saw nothing in the pool– he saw the ripples stilling, but that could’ve been anything. Could’ve been a frog. Could’ve been a bird taking off into the air. Could’ve been a bird shitting. But Chris still investigates anyway and immediately dives in, presumably once he sees something still in there. As he dives in, he also reaches for Sonic instantly, meaning it wasn’t just pure curiosity that drove him forward, but a deep desire to help whatever was in there. Likely he saw it moving and leapt in to save it without a second thought.

It’s established in the next episode that Chris knew full well he was not allowed to do this and it probably wouldn’t be safe; he’s not allowed to go outside at night or swim in the adult pool. Not to mention he’s also probably still half-asleep and wearing pajamas. Without hesitation he jumps in anyway because there’s something that needs his help. When he pulls Sonic out, he can clearly see this is a weird fucked-up thing he doesn’t recognize, but without even reacting to that fact he just asks if he’s okay. He only starts showing his surprise when Sonic begins talking. Even then there’s no screaming, he just introduces himself politely and then. Takes Sonic inside.

The next episode opens already in the next morning, and with Sonic still there we can assume Chris just hid him for the rest of the night without telling the other adults in the house. After Sonic mentioned people chasing him, Chris probably figured it wasn’t safe to tell anyone and took it upon his 12yo self to make sure this little guy didn’t get spotted.

Which, if it weren’t for Sonic’s impulsiveness, would’ve been incredibly easy.

The second episode opens with another panning shot of the huge mansion, with a voice overlay from Lindsey. The first thing we hear from Chris’s mother is that she’s sorry, but she won’t come home til “next week.” But she’ll send him a ton of gifts, so it’s okay!

Our next interesting shot is as she continues talking, and we see a ton of family photos tacked onto the wall. This immediately gives the impression of, of course, a family that really loves each other. It then immediately pans to Chris, alone on the balcony, talking minimally into a phone.

Chris then has another character beat of apologizing for diving in the pool. It seems like if he hadn’t mentioned it, nobody would’ve known, but he does anyway because he’s just like. A good little kid. Either that or it’s anything to keep his mom on the line longer.

Another thing to note is that Tanaka briefly enters during this scene, but doesn’t even look at Chris as he drops his food off and leaves.

When she hangs up, we hear a little kissing noise, and then Chris kisses the phone receiver and rubs the back of his head. His expression doesn’t seem embarrassed, though, especially as he didn’t notice Sonic staring at him until the next shot. He looks perhaps relieved, a soft kind of happy, perhaps at the compliment she gave him immediately before her abrupt goodbye.

Sonic then asks why Chris referred to him as a cat; he doesn’t seem upset, just a little curious. Chris’s reaction is interesting here– the first thing he does is ask if Sonic is mad at him, and then immediately launch into an explanation.

After Sonic seems calm, Chris then curiously asks Sonic where he learned to talk. They’re interrupted by the phone ringing, and Chris seems incredibly confused that it rung. He answers almost robotically, and immediately grows excited upon hearing it’s his dad, though his voice still indicates surprise. You can really hear it in the line delivery of his og actress, Sanae Kobayashi.

Chris continues smiling blankly as his Dad talks about how his mom told him that a cat got into the estate and maybe he should update security. Chris swiftly assures him that it’s okay, and then says, “But more importantly, you’re very busy, aren’t you?”

Basically he already knows that this conversation will be less than a minute long, but he’s still smiling until his dad’s already hung up.

The rest of the scene plays out as Chris googles what hedgehogs eat, tries to feed Sonic cat food, and then rightfully freaks out when Sonic leaves to get a chili dog, considering he’s a fugitive. And while his face and mannerisms at the end of the scene does effectively display this worry, they really do hold on that shot for a while as he fades back into a sadder expression.

These scenes both serve as introductory scenes to Chris, and both visually and through dialogue, we have established:

Chris is constantly alone.

His world is dark until he finds Sonic.

He has a kind personality and doesn’t seem to be at all jaded or spoiled by his privileged upbringing.

His parents love him but are so absent that he doesn’t even bat an eye at the fact he won’t see his mom for a week. He is surprised when his Dad calls but immediately puts his work before his own well being.

He’s relatively calm, but only freaks out when he thinks Sonic might be mad at him, and when Sonic leaves.

I’d love to do a fucking scene-for-scene analysis of the entire show, but we’d be here for like twenty years so instead let’s uh. jump ahead a bit.

We slowly unravel Chris’s backstory and mental state throughout the first two seasons, in a slow way that I think is very effective and won’t be effective enough through this essay, but I’m gonna try my best.

Anyway, let’s jump ahead and cover his whole... thing.

Part II: The Backstory Scene that 4kidz Cut

The youngest we ever see Chris is in the season two penultimate episode. There’s a flashback to him as what seems to be a toddler, or just out of toddlerhood. This scene, right here, was cut in the English dub for... no real reason I can think of. In fact, it just makes Chris look less sympathetic.

The first shot we get is of Chris and his parents. Much like the Chris’s first scene, he is tiny, even tinier. But unlike that scene, everything is bright. It’s blinding, actually, as the doors are open and Chris’s parents stand in front of it. This is obviously from baby Chris’s perspective, representing his emotional state. With those doors open and his parents in front of him, he is covered in light. Covered.

His parents are quite formal in their parting words. “We’re leaving now,” his dad says. His mom then says, “I’m sorry, Chris. Make sure you behave until we return.”

Once again, I mentioned that this scene is from baby Chris’s perspective, so maybe they weren’t as formal when this actually happened. But that’s how it came across to Chris.

Sidenote, but honestly? Considering his age, this could very well be one of his earliest memories.

Little Chris says, “If I behave, will you come home right away?” While of course operating on little kid logic, this also reflects on how much he loves his family again, as all he wants is for his parents to be home with him.

His parents look at each other, confused on how to answer. They then give the worst answer– “Of course.” We see how happy this makes him, but it’s only a temporary happiness. They’ve just made a promise they cannot keep and they know it, and at baby Chris’s age, he will NOT understand that.

When they turn to leave, Chris’s face falls. They once again have a formal goodbye, and as they leave, the doors shut, and the light is gone, and he stands there for again a long time. I don’t think I need to explain what this symbolizes.

The next shot, we see Chris is reading a picture book by himself on the couch. Once again a small little guy in a big world; the book also seems to be The Little Matchgirl, which... oof. The story is about how a lonely orphan dreams about having a family as she slowly freezes to death, in case you weren’t aware. The two shots we see from the book are first of her freezing, and then of her looking in a window and imagining a family. As Chris reads this, he repeats that if he behaves, his parents will come home.

He then hears the door about to open and immediately leaps up and smiles widely.

It’s not his parents, it’s Ella, but she has presents from his parents!

Despite being a little kid who would normally be ecstatic at the prospect of new toys, Chris just looks numb as she speaks.

He takes no joy in the toy either, because his parents aren’t there with it.

So. I have worked at a daycare and as a babysitter for about... seven years now. Kids? They have separation anxiety. They will sob and scream and shout and kick and run if their mom is out of their sight. I recently babysat a kid who learned how to unlock the door so he could try and run after his parents which was terrifying for me tbh.

Chris’s reaction of just immediately falling into a numb depression isn’t something I saw in the kids I watched. At this age, they cry at the very least. Chris doesn’t even do that, he’s just staring. We get one voiceover at the end of this scene, as Chris just says, “It never came true.” Obviously referring to the promise– he behaved, and his parents still stayed away.

What impression does this give a kid that age? One of two things, if not both at once:

I am not behaving enough and I need to behave perfectly.

Mom and Dad don’t care enough to come home.

From knowing Lindsey and Nelson, we know this is not true. They’re busy, and they hope to show their love through gifts. But Chris’s love language is very much not gifts, it’s quality time. And he doesn’t. Get that.

From anyone.

Part III: Chris’s Abandonment Issues

As I’ve made it clear, Chris’s parents are never around. He doesn’t bat an eye at his mother saying she’ll be gone another week, and is surprised that his Dad even bothered to call. We saw all those family photos, but looking at them again, how many of them were taken at the same time, one of the few times his parents were home? How many is Chris standing stiffly, properly, instead of relaxing like a kid?

Another line from episode six really drives his home, one I think a lot of people miss.

Upon being told his parents are coming home, Chris remarks that it has been months since he’s seen them. Months.

Later in the episode, Chuck remarks on how it’s a miracle to see them both at the house at the same time. They laugh this off, and spend the rest of the episode anxiously waiting for Chris to get home because, yeah, they do care. When Chris gets home he immediately calls for them and gets tackle-hugged. As they do, he stiffens upon the physical contact, and looks awkward the whole time, like he’s not used to physical affection.

He’s then later surprised to hear his parents were worried he was late.

The next episode, Chris’s dad has already left by the next morning. When he hears his mom has unexpectedly left, he is upset, but not surprised; he immediately resigns himself to this and sighs before leaning back on the couch.

When he brings this up to his uncle, Sam immediately remarks that his sister is never home.

This is where Cream breaks, because she has seen Lindsey herself break down over not being there for Chris. Chris has not seen that. All he knows is that his mother was there and then was gone, despite their elaborate dinner plan, despite knowing he was bringing a guest to meet her.

Once again, he’s not surprised. Neither is Sam.

Similar with his Dad; in the previous episode, when they were worried, Nelson implies that he has a guard service making sure Chris doesn’t get abducted. They’re two seconds away from calling the US Military to find him. But they stop short of going after him, because they don’t want him to think they’re being overbearing.

We’ve firmly established this by now, okay? His parents are never home and haven’t been since he was, what? Three? Four, tops.

Nobody else was really there, either.

Ella and Tanaka seem to have done most of Chris’s raising. And while Ella and Tanaka are amazing, and definitely care a lot about Chris, it doesn’t change the fact that they are paid employees and Chris knows this. They’re paid to hang out with him. If they weren’t getting paid, Chris has no idea if they would even give a shit about him. Even with that, there’s not a ton of evidence they like. hung out with him outside of making sure he was alright. As mentioned, in the second episode Tanaka doesn’t even look at him as he delivers food. Not for lack of care, but probably because they’re busy as only two servants in a huge estate. This isn’t their kid, too, they’re under no obligation to raise him. Ella is the cook and Tanaka is the butler-bodyguard, they’re not childcare experts.

What about his grandpa? Sorry to break this to you but Chuck wasn’t around, either.

In episode 51, which we’re gonna keep coming back to as it’s the culmination of Chris’s arc, Chuck says this while reprimanding Nelson and Lindsey. He says, “I never blamed you for neglecting your household because you were too busy with work. That’s because I also did whatever I wanted and continued my research.”

Back to the second episode, when we first see Chuck, you notice on the second watch that Chris 1) doesn’t trust his grandpa enough to tell him that he’s hiding a fugitive in their house, 2) didn’t seem to expect him (or ANYONE) to walk in on them in the LIVING ROOM, 3) seems to not know a ton about his personality. He’s surprised when his grandpa closes the door on Sonic, and surprised that he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie. It seems that instead of spending time with his grandson, Chuck spent most of his time in his shed tinkering with machines.

His uncle? Seems to visit on occasion, but has a government job. You know he’s never around, either.

So Chris is growing up in a huge house, which is serving to give him a constant reminder that nobody’s home. There are two servants going around working and sometimes saying hi to him, there’s a grandpa in the shed somewhere who might come in once or twice to watch TV, and there’s photos on the wall of parents who aren’t home. He’s like that for at least eight years.

OH, and let’s talk about the friends argument which I’ve confusingly seen. He’s got two friends at school. His parents seem to recognize Danny’s name, so Danny might have been a longtime friend, or at least friend he talked about before. But Danny and Frances, being barely in any episodes, we can assume they also have their own lives and things going on and thus don’t, like, hang out with Chris after school a lot. He uses Danny as an excuse for being late in ep6, but the fact that nobody seemed to expect him to be late implies this is not a usual thing. And of course it is ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY not on the shoulders of these other 12yos to emotionally support another kid, but it’s not like they’re immediately moving into his house and giving him attention 24/7. They’re friends. Which is all they need to be. But for a neglected child like Chris, they’re just another part of his life that comes and goes. Him having two buddies at school that he shares a table with (thus probably just. friends by proximity) doesn’t negate the neglect.

Looking at the photos on the wall again, there’s one photo of Chris with some kind of sports team, probably baseball. Considering how bad Chris played in the baseball episode, he probably didn’t stay there long, and considering we never see anyone even resembling the kids in that pic, we can assume they didn’t stay long-lasting friends. The other photos, they’re dressed in suits, like they’re taking professional photos. Once again stilted, stiff.

But I hear y’all on twitter now. “Oh, boo-hoo, his parents weren’t around. He was still living fancy, it’s fine.”

So let’s talk about the effects of emotional neglect on the childhood psyche.

Part IV: Connie Read Actual Research Papers and Scholarly Articles For This Instead of Doing Actual Work

So, here’s something that’s been seen recurrently in neglected children: kids are psychologically dependent on parents or caregivers throughout their whole childhood and adolescence.

From New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research by the Committee on Child Maltreatment Research, “Children who have experienced abuse and neglect are therefor at increased risk for a number of problematic developmental, health, and mental health outcomes, including learning problems, problems relating to peers, externalizing symptoms [aggression or conduct disorder], and posttraumatic stress disorder. As adults, these children continue to show increased risk for psychiatric disorders, substance use, serious medical illnesses, and lower economic productivity.”

Let’s talk mainly about the mental health outcomes. Without a present caregiver, neglected children often fall behind on the abilities to regulate behavior or emotions. Several parts of the brain will end up altered due to early childhood neglect, including the stress response system, the emotion processing and regulation system, the learning and memory system, etc.

The stress response system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortial axis, aka the HPA. The HPA is incredibly sensitive to early childhood experiences and an uncertain childhood can effect a lot of things, such as sleep patterns and hyperactivity. Abused children will often have higher spikes of cortisol, a high enough number of which can cause damage to the brain and premature aging.

The behavioral regulation is also most commonly affected in these victims; neglected children will often show “behavioral and emotional difficulties that are consistent with effects on the amygdala, such as internalizing problems, heightened anxiety, and emotional reactivity, and deficits in emotional processing.”

Other mental health issues are also seen; children with trauma experiences will show similar mental patterns as those with ADHD, and can have serious issues with inhibitory control– aka, controlling your impulses.

Then there’s the corpus callosum. (Insert SnapCube dub joke here.) The corpus callosum manages communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. Several studies have found that abused children have a much smaller corpus callosum than non-abused children, even those who are mentally ill; these effects are also more pronounced in boys than girls, which is relevant to our analysis of a 12yo anime boy from 2003. This means that their brain development will often be behind that of their peers, and it could take a while for them to mature.

That was long and boring Connie. Give us the tldr.

Okay don’t worry, the article got to that right about now. Children dealing with neglect will show several issues related to the interrupted development of these parts of their brain, including:

Extreme Deficits in Executive Functioning

Difficulty in regulating attention: As a note on this, 18.6% of abused and neglected teens are diagnosed with ADHD. Compared to 5% of other children. That’s like three times the amount!

And, most interestingly, the behavioral outcomes:

Difficulty forming trusting attachments to caregivers

Both Disorganized and Insecure Attachment Issues, usually getting severe Attachment Disorders

Reactive Attachment Disorder: Inhibited or emotionally withdrawn behavior, rarely seeking or responding to comfort

Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder: Basically the opposite; it’s marked by a pattern of overly familiar behavior with strangers.

Emotion Regulation: infants learn how to deal with distress via their parents– how their caregivers handle stress, how they take care of problems and slowly introduce the ability to deal with them. Without that, abused and neglected children will often fail to develop effective strategies for regulating emotions. This will probably cause a lot of the following.

This also includes recognizing emotions in others. While abused children will identify anger quickly, neglected children tend to be worse than non-neglected children at identifying any facial expressions.

Their emotional issues can also cause them to feel isolated from their peers, as their peers do not understand them and do not act like them.

Anxiety

Depression– nearly a 3x chance compared to non-neglected kids

Dissociation

Conduct Disorder

PTSD

Physical issues include stunted growth and motor development, and lower health.

Note that these do not appear in all victims of neglect, these are just common symptoms.

Part V: Every “Annoying” Thing Chris Does is a Fucking Symptom

Difficulty forming attachments to Caregivers

In episode 43, Chris deals with a situation that’s obviously alien to him: his parents coming home to care about him.

His parents hear that he’s sick and drop everything to come home. This is clearly something that’s unusual, judging from both Chris’s and his grandpa’s reactions to it. Chris is confused and embarrassed, kinda numb and still, until his grandfather and father start arguing. Even then, he only reacts when they bring up Sonic.

He then yells that he hates his family and orders them to leave him alone. This doesn’t last long as they’re immediately attacked by more badniks, but it’s a beat they definitely put in there intentionally.

Also, he doesn’t seem to trust Chuck as an authority either. He really just sees him as an impulsive adrenaline junkie at best; in the cruise ship episode, Chuck is drunk the whole time and Chris doesn’t seem to care. It also says something that while Ella and Tanaka are present, he doesn’t trust them to tell them they might be finding an alien in the attic until they find out for themselves.

Difficulty Understanding Others’ Emotions

This one’s gonna be easy, as I talked about it earlier in the essay. When Sonic asks, “Was the cat supposed to be me?” Chris immediately assumes he’s upset and tries to placate him with an explanation. This happens throughout the show as well; let’s take Mr. Stewart for example, that man is obviously spying on him and inserting himself into his life and Chris thinks it’s maybe a little weird, not that much though. He also spends most of his time hanging out with Shadow standing there in complete obliviousness as to what Shadow is thinking or feeling. He doesn’t even seem to really register Shadow as a threat, instead throwing himself at him in hopes that he can convince him to help Sonic. In doing so, he also doesn’t think that Tanaka would at all be worried about him, and is surprised at their reunion that Tanaka was upset.

Aggression / Delinquincy

This was very underplayed, but in the Sonic Battle arc, we literally see him start to rebel. He tells Sonic that he’s sick of being the perfect rich kid, that he wants to be a problem on purpose sometimes. Sonic seems to completely understand that, as that’s a point Chris needs to reach. He has to realize he cannot be perfect and that’s okay.

[except that dialogue was all cut in the 4kidz version no im not bitter]

Only Chris explores his imperfection in a really bad way.

And now. Let’s get into the attachment.

And to do that, we need to get into...

Part VI: What Sonic Represents

This is a fascinating part of Chris’s psyche since I think it occurs both subconsciously and consciously, but when I drew attention to Sonic bringing the light back into Chris’s life? Yeah, that’s cause he did.

Everything changed only after Sonic arrived. Suddenly Chris’s parents are... visiting??? For once??? TOGETHER??? His grandfather wants to spend time with him! His friends at school are hanging out with him more and he’s even made new friends! And most importantly, he has the mobians around him constantly. He’s got constant attention from all of them, and while he quickly takes on the figure of the Responsible One, he’s still WITH PEOPLE. He’s gone from being alone all the time to surrounded by a rowdy-ass found family.

Most of all is Sonic. Chris seems to have attached himself mainly to Sonic, likely because in his mind Sonic represents the moment when everything changed. Of course, Sonic would probably have been the worst of the gang to get attached to, seeing as he runs off all the time. The first several episodes, even after they stop hiding from the public, Chris is noticeably upset whenever Sonic leaves. He only calms down after several, several episodes, after assurances from every character that this is just a thing Sonic does, he never sticks around anyway, don’t worry about it.

But still, he definitely attaches himself to this hedgehog for better or for worse.

And it gets worse.

Part VII: Even More Trauma

First we gotta talk about the end of Season One.

At the beginning of the arc, Chris is noticeably... incredibly depressed. He’s also disassociating hardcore. He’s constantly staring into nothing, his face upset, but as soon as someone snaps him back to reality, he forces a smile on his face, acting happy despite going through a ton of negative emotions at once. Almost like he’s trying to behave perfectly.

Chris realizes throughout the episode the attachment he’s gotten to the mobians, and especially Sonic, but even then he still does his best to help them. He steals a chaos emerald and runs off to Eggman in order to get them home, because it will make them happy! Nevermind if it doesn’t make Chris happy. He’s never worried about that anyway.

Of course this backfires and Eggman kidnaps him, and then Chris has to go through the serious trauma of. Well. Being strapped to a wall, forced to watch helplessly as Sonic fucking dies.

And he’s blaming himself for it too.

MAJOR shoutout to Kobayashi’s acting in this scene, holy crap. But he just screams, and then... BREAKS THROUGH METAL?? And GRABS the Chaos Emeralds despite them ELECTRIC SHOCKING HIM???

And then of course we get this incredibly subtle dialogue.

"I will not let you have it. I will not let anyone have it. They’re only mine. Only me. Sonic... Sonic, you’re staying with me forever.”

Immediately after this, Chris almost fucking dies, and is only saved by Super Sonic. When he sees Super Sonic, he reacts by... begging. He drops down, clinging to Sonic and screaming and crying that he is nothing without Sonic.

Chris literally yells that he can’t do anything without Sonic, because that’s how he felt before Sonic. He could not do anything to get anyone to care about him, it only happened when Sonic arrived. So that’s how he sees himself: useless, worthless.

Sonic of course stays, but then dips for six months. When he gets back, a fucking god attacks Chris’s neighborhood, destroying his city. He gets sent away for a month, but that’s interrupted by Sonic being declared a fugitive from the government. Then Chris ends up with Shadow. He gets kidnapped by the goth clone of his emotional support hedgehog. He bonds with the goth clone. He gets the shit beaten out of him begging the goth clone to help save the world. It works, and Shadow runs off to save the planet. And then DIES.

You can tell how traumatized Chris is by this in the next episode. He’s disassociating again, staring at nothing, and eventually asks his uncle if he thinks they can actually live in the same world.

Which is followed by...

Part VIII: The Season Two Finale

We get the rather worrying scene of Chris having to write an essay for his school about his ideal future. Literally all he can think of is that he wants to stay with Sonic forever. He has no other ideals for the future. Just being attached to Sonic.

Only to go downstairs and find out that Sonic HAS to leave. They ALL have to leave. Their dimensions are caving in on themselves and they need to separate.

So he enters the Denial stage of grief.

He seems... dazed. Like he’s in a trance, as he argues that Sonic can’t leave, that all he wants to do is be with Sonic, that he can’t be apart from Sonic because he’s only been able to do things since Sonic got here. This was the first time he’s had agency in his life and he places it all on Sonic.

He decides that it must be Eggman’s fault and literally tracks him down. When he finds out that it’s not Eggman’s fault, he is distraught, and what’s interesting to me is that Eggman seems to get it. He just tells his robots to let him go. Let him be alone. Let him accept it.

Chris then falls back into the depression/disassociation during the entire farewell. He doesn’t emote, he just stares ahead. Something they cut in the English version is that while Chris is politely saying goodbye, throughout the whole scene you can hear his inner monologue screaming. Crying not to let them leave.

So he doesn’t.

The penultimate episode of Season Two is the culmination of Chris’s arc and they do it so beautifully.

Sonic knows Chris is going through a breakdown, and he lets him figure it out for himself. He lets him run off with him, he lets him make the decisions about where they go. Chris starts to realize this but says nothing. They see his tearful parents on TV begging him to come home and he... groans and leaves.

The episode also subtley shows Chris doing things himself. Climbing up the mountain, picking their roads. Sonic is slowly trying to let Chris know he has his own agency. That he is his own person.

They get to the campsite that meant a lot to Chris in his childhood, one of the only times that his parents hung out with him, and he breaks. Asks Sonic why he doesn’t hate him. Why he hangs out with him. If he only hangs out with him out of obligation.

And he comes to the conclusion himself that no, he can’t keep Sonic here. He can’t keep Sonic away from his world just because he has attachment issues. It was what he knew was right in Season One but couldn’t get himself to understand no matter how hard he tried. But now he gets it. And now he can let Sonic go.

The episode is soooo good, sooo fucking good. And then in the season finale, when we see the aftermath of that, when Sonic takes him on one last run and... he sees Sonic crying? Realizes that Sonic does love him and still lets him go? It’s impactful. It’s emotional.

Then when his parents come get him and he just smiles? Because he realizes they did come for him? That if Sonic can love him without obligation, maybe other people do too?

Chris’s severe attachment issues and trauma from being neglected culminated in this episode, and he made a bad choice. And then he made the right one. And that’s so good.

Part IX: Some Season Three Notes

Chris’s inclusion in the third season was... weird. It felt like they didn’t want to animate his adult model so they shoved him into a child body and made an excuse for it. But honestly, after traveling there, you can kinda... tell how much Chris has grown.

He was trying to get back to Sonic, but not because he needed him, but because they were friends. He and his friends wanted to see their friends again. He only went alone because he had a sense Sonic was in danger. And even in the twelve-year-old body, he’s an adult now and he acts like it. His only real emotional issue is that he is upset he can’t fight as well in his kid body, but then he figures out he can be useful with his inventions and finds a place with Tails. He’s basically parenting the rest of them for the rest of the season, telling Cosmo that her impulsiveness reminds him of his younger self. He offers to give up a way to return home because he knows the Metarex problem is bigger than himself.

At the end, when Eggman offers him a way home, you can tell they expected him to freak out about it. They’re shocked when he just says thank you, cries, and leaves immediately. They clearly not only will miss him, but they expected him to freak out like he did at the age of twelve. But he’s not twelve anymore. He’s spent the last six years surrounded by people who love him, healing from his trauma, and becoming his own person. So now he isn’t unhealthily attached to Sonic, and he can say goodbye if he has to. That growth, so subtly in the background of the season, really impressed me.

Part X: Fandom Reaction

On June 24 2022, I posted this meme to both twitter and tumblr.

On tumblr I got no pushback and a few agreements. On twitter I got a tidal wave of discourse, which tells you a lot about the two sites but regardless, this is the first time I get to ratio my commenters cause as of today, it has 23.4k likes and only 161 replies and 156 quote tweets. So that’s barely over 300 people (TOPS, considering several replies were positive) arguing against 23,400. So I may not be the only one thinking this!

But even still, with this being my most viral post atm, I got so many people bitching about Chris still. Even after all these years, he’s despised for being so annoying. And what is it? Is it really the fact that he got main charactered over Sonic? Really, I thought that was a plus of the show, that Sonic was a static figure that influenced what was around him. It doesn’t work for every Sonic property, but it did for this one. Was it just a hatred for humans in the franchise? Probably not, everyone loved Helen and the recent movies.

I really do think a vast majority of it is his realistic reaction to the trauma of neglect. “Ugly” trauma symptoms, like attachment issues, impulsive destructive behavior, aggressiveness, and selfishness, they are not looked upon kindly. Just look at how TikTok picks and chooses cute parts of mental illnesses and calls the rest “toxic.” And yes, sometimes mental illness can cause you to be toxic! And sometimes you’re just mentally ill! Sometimes you just have bad days and bad decisions and horrible mental states, and sometimes, life gets better. Sometimes life gets better and you begin to heal, and that’s what Chris’s arc was about, about him slowly gaining his own agency and starting to heal from his abandonment trauma. And he does this through the help of others. But with him having several moments where he reverts, several moments where his healing is non-linear, viewers see it as an annoying personality trait, not a trauma symptom he is trying to overcome. And one that he does. I cannot emphasize enough that he does overcome this and that the narrative specifically focuses on it. I’ve seen so many people say it was a writing flaw, that they never criticized Chris for his attachment to Sonic... it’s the focus of two season finales, what are you talking about? I think at that point, it’s just you.

Just think about why you find him annoying. You do not have to like Chris as a character but please recognize that his arc is a realistic portrayal of a neglected child and that’s why he is the way he is.

Part XI: Conclusion

I was gonna write a full-ass conclusion here but tumblr’s already trying to kill me over wordcount so uh. tl;dr Chris isn’t annoying he’s a traumatized child and this is something the narrative notices, examines, and resolves. What this means is that it’s not a writing problem, it’s a character flaw brought on by trauma that his character arc makes him heal from.

Leave him alone.

#chris thorndyke #sonic x #sonic meta #chris thorndyke meta #sth #mine #connie writes #connie goes ape

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welcometothejianghu · 4 days

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Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 重啟之極海聽雷/Reunion: The Sound of the Providence/The Lost Tomb Reboot/this thing has too many names

Reunion (I'm just going to call it that) is a 2020 action drama about the most specialest little babygirl in the tomb-raiding world, his two husbands, and the cadre of assorted weirdos they pick up as they try to follow a set of directions left by a dead (?) man in the thunder.

Imagine if someone showed you the Mandalorian, and you were like, gee, that was a neat little sci-fi one-shot! because you'd never heard of Star Wars. That was basically my experience watching this show, having no idea that the Lost Tomb franchise (DMBJ) was even a thing. Turns out that not only is there a whole big continuity out there with these characters, but that Reunion takes place a few years after the main story's resolution. Don't worry, though -- Reunion doesn't spoil you for that resolution. It doesn't spoil you for much, period. Look, DMBJ has a weird relationship to endings, okay?

I have written a more thorough where-to-start guide for DMBJ as a whole, so if you want to consider other entry points, well, that information is there for your consideration. Yet it is my opinion that this is the best entry into the overall franchise, and a fun thing to watch just in general, and I'm here to make my case for both of those.

The rest of this rec will assume that you have no familiarity with the DMBJ series. That's okay; you don't need any. All you need is to trust my five reasons you should watch this.

1. Old Man Yaoi

As you begin this show, you are introduced to the Iron Triangle. That's them in the picture up there. Left to right, you have: Xiao Ge, magically tattooed immortal hottie who just got back from ten years in [scene missing]; Wu Xie, our protagonist, who's just a little guy and it's his birthday; and Wang Pangzi, the literal best.

(And yes, Wu Xie is in his 30s and Pangzi is in his 40s, which is not technically old man anything, but ... look, if you watch, you'll see why I think I'm justified in calling it that.)

They are extremely married. They are a disaster trio of disasters so disastrous that no one else should ever be subjected to their chaos. They're going to make sure lots of people are, though, don't you worry about it. Sometimes those people even deserve it.

However, because the show (tragically!!) decides that Xiao Ge has somewhere else to be like 95% of the runtime, most of the relationship you get to see is between Wu Xie and Pangzi.

I'm saying this now as an old gay nerd who just this year celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary: I have never, never felt so represented in media as I have watching Wu Xie and Pangzi interact. There's a little wake-up song they sing together near the end of the show, and it just ... it packs so much character development into thirty seconds. These boys have been living adjacent lives for so long that they've made up their own little shared songs about the mundanities of daily living. That is just what happens when you marry your best friend and then decide to get old and weird together. Ask me how I know.

Look, if you want to know whether this show is for you or not, watch to the end of the first episode, to the part where Pangzi flips over the table. If your heart is filled with joy (as it should be), keep going.

Love makes a tomb-raiding syndicate family.

2. A fun-filled action-packed romp of nonsense!

If you're familiar with Hellblazer canon, this will make sense to you: Reunion is Dangerous Habits. If you're not familiar with Hellblazer canon, try it like this: Reunion is a terrible place to start because it plays on your extant affection for a character who gains a terrible status effect almost immediately. It's a also great place to start because it throws you right in the action with measurably high stakes and gives you a reason to build that affection very quickly.

I'm also going to warn you right off the bat: The plot of this show got cut to ribbons by censors.

See, the DMBJ books, being books, are allowed to get away with supernatural shit! So you've got zombies and ghosts and curses and monsters and immortality and all your other standard ooky spooky semi-urban fantasy trappings. But the DMBJ adaptations, being live-action, are heavily regulated in their content. This is why, in the early Reunion episodes, our heroes are menaced by human-looking creatures that are actually ancient mannequins made of leather that are piloted, mecha-style, by evil clams. Because evil clams are more scientific than zombies. I guess.

So yeah, the plot of this book already had to get mangled into a more "science"-compliant shape even before it made it to filming. The real problem is that a whole lot more of it got cut after it was all filmed and put together. I have read an explanation of what the actual storyline was supposed to be, and yeah, if you know what you’re looking at, you can see (and hear) the scars where major elements got hacked out with a weed whacker.

Therefore: You cannot expect this plot to make sense.

But that's okay! You're not here for the plot to make sense! You're here to watch some characters you love run around through ridiculous and sometimes beautiful labyrinths, trying to solve puzzles you're never given enough information to understand, all in search of the resolution to a mystery that had half its guts torn out before you got to see it -- and you are here to love it. If you have ever laughed and cheered your way through a Mission: Impossible film without pausing to care too much about the plot holes it’s dodging left and right, you are in the correct frame of mind to appreciate this. Just believe that whatever engaging nonsense the show tells you is correct for the time being and go with it.

You cannot watch DMBJ and care about the laws of physics. You simply cannot.

Do not, however, let me give you the impression that the shoddy plotting is accompanied by equally shoddy performances. A major part of this show’s incredible watchability comes from how the cast is shockingly good. There are some serious heavy hitters among the actors. A major part of why this Wu Xie and Pangzi are my favorite together is the incredible chops both Zhu Yilong and Chen Minghao have, to say nothing of their real-life affection for one another. (See that scar on Wu Xie's neck? That scar is there because Zhu Yilong commits to the bit.) Effortlessly charming Mao Xiaotong turns potentially irritating wunderkind Bai Haotian into a perfect precious weirdo baby. Wu Erbai's entire second-season character arc could have been unintentionally comedic, but veteran of queer cinema Hu Jun sells even the undignified moments as relentlessly tragic. And of course Baron Chen absolutely kills it with...

3. This giant fucking loser

This is Hei Xiazi. That's not his name, but it's close enough. Allow me to do a dramatic reenactment of my watching his first scene:

[camera pans over to him]

me: Ugh, I recognize this kind of wannabe badass character design. I hate his type. He's self-important, hyper-masculine, and just a big jerk, and the show thinks he's soooo cool. Barf.

[thirty seconds later]

me: Oh no. I was so wrong. I love him forever now.

This is because he is (as indicated above) a giant fucking loser. Yes, he's a good fighter who knows lots of things. He's also a wet potato chip of a man. Sure, he can get you into a headlock, but he can also annoy you into submission, and that's honestly more fun for him. My wife has used the phrase “Vash the Stampede-coded” to describe him. My wife is not wrong.

And the kind of ridiculous thing is, being such a loser is what wraps back around to making him cool again. He's a loser because he just doesn't fucking care. His masculinity is the opposite of fragile. You tell him to wear a dress and makeup, he'll do it -- and sure, he'll complain, but only because he enjoys complaining. He has no dignity. He’s tits-out. He's gender. He's the worst and also the best.

Hei Xiazi is a major character in the other installations, to the point where he and his boyfriend (more on him later) even have their own movie. But of course, I did not know this on my first watch, so I kept expecting the show to explain his whole deal. It does not, but you don't really need it to. He sees better in the dark. He doesn't age. He's a thug for hire. There, that's all the bio you need.

One of the things that makes him great is that he is the least sexually threatening person ever. Across all the properties he's in, he spends a fair amount of time with women -- sometimes in very close quarters -- and they are perfectly safe around him. I actually wrote a whole post about it once upon a time (warning for tiny spoilers for a series that isn't this one) wherein I claim that not only Xiazi but Reunion in general is the television equivalent of the shirt that says I RESPECT WOMEN SO MUCH I DON'T HAVE SEX WITH THEM.

That said, this loser does get a sort-of romance plot here -- and honestly, I find it very cute! It's not even the only instance in this series of a bisexual guy in a long-term same-sex relationship getting a girlfriend, and I like that other one too! Look, the handle of my DMBJ sideblog is @katamaricule because I joked that Wu Xie treats polyamory like a katamari, and if you don't move fast enough, you're going to be rolled right up into his gay little cuddle puddle.

This is not a show for exclusive ships; this is a show for inclusive ships. The Jiumen Association is a polycule. You don't even have to know what the Jiumen Association is to know it's true.

4. The power of friendship

This show has a lot of characters.

I'd say the supporting cast is divided into three categories: characters who have been in previous installments, characters who have not been in previous installments, and characters who probably should have been in previous installments (or at least mentioned) but who were only created for Reunion so we have to pretend like we've known about them all along.

There is no way to tell which is which -- which is part of my argument that this series makes a good entry point to the franchise.

Take Huo Daofu. Huo Daofu is a brilliant doctor masquerading as a donut stand operator who treats Wu Xie with all the cold disdain of a man confronting the person who left him at the altar years ago. On the one hand, yes! We do know Huo Daofu from a previous series, and we've known he's both a doctor and a bitch. On the other hand, oh, we have no idea why he's like this about Wu Xie, and we probably never will. The show just treats it like it's for an excellent reason, and you know what, from what you know about Wu Xie, it probably is.

Consider also Jiang Zisuan. One of the show's principal antagonists, Jiang Zisuan turns out to be the brother of ... well, let's just say it's someone whose having a brother really should have come up before this. It has not come up. (And that's even before we get into the issue of his surname.) His stated identity as that person's brother is so bizarre that my favorite interpretation is that he isn't actually that person's brother -- all the flashbacks we see are just his delusions about a relationship he's completely invented. But there's no way you'd know how fucking weird this is on your first run.

Then there's our friendly little support himbo, Kanjian, who shows up to all occasions with two tickets to the gun show and not a thought in that beautiful head. (His name just means "vest," which is par for the course when it comes to the author's naming conventions.) He was a lot more menacing in the last series (where they kept putting sleeves on him, geez), where most of what we learned about him is that you can loan him out to other tomb-raiding families. Now he's a golden retriever with great aim and a slingshot. It's an upgrade.

The trick is, you cannot be surprised when someone shows up and the show treats them like you should know who they are, even when there's no possible way you could know who they are. I mean, for heaven's sake, Liu Sang arrives in the middle of an obvious beef with Pangzi, the origins of which are never satisfactorily explained, while also having a giant do-I-want-to-fuck-him-or-do-I-want-to-be-him crush on Xiao Ge, which is also never satisfactorily explained. Whatever, you just roll with it. He's got good hearing, a bad attitude, and questionable taste in idols. Now you're good to go.

(I should throw in a special note here that Liu Sang is many, many people's little meow meow, and not undeservedly. For a fuller explanation of why that is, please consult this other post I made.)

Part of the fun of this big cast is the adorable interactions you get. All the characters have appropriately big personalities, and the show loves letting people you wouldn’t expect bounce off one another. It’s not your typical action-hero show where nothing happens without the protagonist in the room. There are lots of exciting combinations and tons of charming dynamics! Unlikely friendships form all over the place! Enemies become allies! Allies become friends! Friends become friends with other friends! Some friends become enemies again! You'll need a scoreboard to keep up!

This is not to say the show treats all its characters perfectly or equally -- one of the precious few main female characters doesn't even get a real name, for heaven's sake, and the less said about the brownface racism, the better. It is, at its heart, a dude show for dudes made in China, with all the troubling decision-making that implies. Where it does deserve credit, though, is in understanding that its supporting characters are actual people with personalities apart from their function in Wu Xie's narrative. Sometimes the show just asks "what if [random character A] and [random character B] had to interact?" and has fun considering the answer! Which is almost always a delight to watch, and sometimes even breaks your heart.

5. Amazing rewatch value!

And by this I mean the experience of watching this show is remarkably different once you have any understanding of the rest of the DMBJ universe.

For instance, there's a point where two characters are scuba-diving past some submerged coffins, and one character tells the other whose coffins they are. Working only on information Reunion has given you, you're like, oh, that's where they buried the guy who built this creepy place, that's a little weird. Once you recognize that name from other series, though, your reaction is far more, excuse me, they did WHAT to WHOSE corpses?

Or another point where a character you've already met is on a train, and there's a handsome gentleman who just happens to be riding with her. He hands her his business card! Aw, that's sweet, he seems like a nice guy! Well, no, Xie Yuchen is not nice, but he is one of our allies, and he's Hei Xiazi's boyfriend, and a lot of what he's doing hits real different when you have a fuller grasp on why he's doing it and for whom. (Honestly, a major reason to watch Reunion first is so you're not fully and appropriately upset by how your black/pink gays merely have one teeny tiny scene together.)

From the way the series treats the persistent absence of Wu Sanxing, Wu Xie's third uncle, I absolutely, 100% assumed that he was a completely new character to this installment of the series, an extremely long-lost relative that we've somehow conveniently managed to never talk about before now. So imagine my gobsmacked surprise when I went to watch a different series, set much earlier in the timeline, where the opening scene prominently features Wu Sanxing as an actual character in the present-day narrative! ...Well, sorta. Look, there's a lot of fuckery with his identity in earlier parts of the story, and fortunately you need to know none of it to understand Reunion. But when you do, it suddenly makes a lot more sense why Wu Xie talks about someone who was a major part of Wu Xie's adult life like he died when Wu Xie was nine.

AND THE FLASHBACK SCENE WHERE A-NING GETS KILLED BY THE SNAKE, AND YOU'RE LIKE, OKAY, AND THEN YOU WATCH ULTIMATE NOTE AND IT WASN'T LIKE THAT AT ALL look, I know there are kinda reasons for this, different production companies and all, but seriously, what the fuck

All of which to say is that the experience of watching Reunion the first time is, hey, this self-contained romp is a lot of fun! The experience of rewatching it after watching any of the other DMBJ installments is a transcendently wonderful head-clutching avalanche of one moment of recognition right after another.

And here's the thing: You will watch more. Reunion is a gateway drug. If you are interested enough to make it through all 62 episodes, you're going to be interested in watching more. Which is great. The English-speaking fandom needs more people. Come down into the tombs. It's great down here. We've got snakes and arguably unintentional homoeroticism. Join us. Join usssssssss

Are you ready for an aventure?

There are a couple different ways to watch the first half, but there's (weirdly) only one way to watch the second, so for both of them, I'm going to send you straight to iQiyi: Season 1 (32 episodes) and Season 2 (30 episodes).

And just so you’re ready when Reunion is done, here’s how you find the rest of the DMBJ series, in the absolutely non-chronological order in which I, personally, think you should watch them:

The Lost Tomb 2 (AsianCrush, YouTube)

Ultimate Note (iQiyi)

The Mystic Nine (iQiyi, Viki)

Sand Sea/Tomb of the Sea (Viki, WeTV, YouTube, also YouTube)

Also, there's a lot of movies and side series and other pieces that are worth seeing, and even a couple of full series I've left off the list, and you can just slot them in wherever. And maybe we'll get Tibetan Sea Flower someday? Look, hope springs eternal.

They're so perfect. Perfect triangle. Perfect boys.

#dmbj #重启 #重启之极海听雷 #盗墓笔记 #Reunion: The Sound of the Providence #the lost tomb reboot #rec post #i made this

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tilvcei · 1 year

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► 𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐓

⭢ In which: you and your boyfriend, including your friend get attacked at the house. but you get brutally injured. and one ghostface in particular seems to regret hurting you but— for some reason is mainly after your boyfriend.

☆ | warning(s): blood , stabbing , gore[?]

☆ | note: I really didn’t know how I was going to do this but I made sure to add some extra details to the whole setting and stuff. also, your boyfriend name is Mandy, go with it please :D [i tried lol] also, enjoy!

☆ | gender: they/them (reader)

☆ | REMINDER: Mandy is NOT apart of the scream franchise, he’s just an add in and an oc of mines!! this is all fiction which is not real, don’t take this seriously.

It was just a normal night at sam’s house. it made you a bit more safer, having Mandy — your boyfriend with you, add that as a extra point cause he was protective of you. Ethan was here too, probably as a tag along or a friend, you didn’t know.

But, for some reason— he was extremely nice to you. well, you don’t see it as weird it’s just..odd. you’ve known him for a minute but other than that there was nothing between the two of you.

Mandy has been with you since day one. even after what happened in woodsboro, everyone getting killed. the Amber and Richie situation, and all that crazy stuff.

Anika turned it to the news station, you just found out that Jason carvey had died and someone else, was it all happening again? this is the main reason you had ran away from woodsboro. to get away from this bullshit.

Mandy wrapped his arms around his waist, pressing a kiss to your forehead. if you had seen Ethan’s intense stare at the both of you, then you’d feel a shiver run down your spine.

Oh, how much he hated how that wasn’t you positioned in-between his legs sitting there. it wasn’t fair. why couldn’t that be him? why? it wasn’t fair.

"So, it’s happening all over again?" you questioned, a tremble in your voice, showing how truly scared you were. Mandy placed a reassuring hand on your shoulder.

"No it’s not. we’re gonna be fine. I swear." Mandy whispered to you, you wrapped your arms around his arm and squeezed it tightly.

Ethan glanced over at Mandy while taking a swig of his beer, then he looked away with a scoff.

Mandy turned to him, "somethin’ wrong landry?" he questioned, he’s been suspicious of Ethan since— forever. Him and Chad being the only two males that were friends and then Ethan decided to come in the picture? kind of odd.

"Oh? n-no! uh, nothings wrong." Ethan said, blushing a bit when he noticed you staring at him with a small smile, "leave him alone Mandy, he’s just watching tv." you said with a little giggle.

Ethan felt a smile form on his lips from your giggle, god he loved hearing your voice so much. which is why he was annoyed Mandy got to hear it all the damn time.

"I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, sorry man." Mandy apologized to Ethan, Ethan nodded, "Nah it’s cool, you did nothing wrong." he replied.

Then something clicked, "wait a sec, aren’t you supposed to be at econ?" asked Mandy.

Well shit. there’s a little mess up right there.

"Ah, shit. right! thanks man." Ethan said and grabbed his jacket and backpack, hurrying out the door.

You watched as he left, a frown appearing on your lips. you just hoped he was okay, that’s all. nothing more to it.

———

After a few hours of watching the news, a scratch was heard from the front door, making you stop in your tracks. where the hell was that coming from?

"Hey, guys?" you called out, everyone who was in the kitchen looked at you in confusion, Mandy was the first to stand up and walk over to you, then next was tara.

Tara put a hand on your shoulder, "what, what’s wrong?" she questioned, you didn’t answer and felt your hands shaking in fear. why did you feel so scared?

Something didn’t feel right.

Chad, Sam, Mindy, and Anika appeared too. Mandy turned to you with a look of concern, if anything his freckles were distracting you.

You gripped his hand tightly and pointed at the door, everyone followed your gaze and their eyes landed on the door.

"I hear something. I don’t know what it sounded like but I heard screaming too." you explained, but then you jumped when more banging sounds came from the door and screaming.

Was a massacre happening in there or what? Mandy pushed you behind him while you were still holding his hand tightly.

"Run." Mindy said. and right after she said that, the door busted open and you saw Quinn’s dead body fall ontop of Anika who screamed.

There stood ghostface in the door way, making his way towards all of you. your feet moved faster than you thought it would as you started running.

"This shit again?" Mandy muttered under his breath, annoyed that nobody could get a break from this thing.

He himself started running, ghostface turned his attention to mindy and Anika, mindy tried hitting him but he/she dodged it and stabbed her in the arm, you heard her scream.

Mindy fell to the ground and her back hit the couch, "Get the fuck away from her!" yelled Anika as she wrapped her arms around his leg and hitting it.

Ghostface looked down at her, even though you couldn’t see it you knew somehow he/she was glaring.

Ghostface grabbed Anika by the neck, cutting off her oxygen as he/she did so, his/her grip getting tighter around her neck. you let out a horrified gasp and watched as ghostface brought his knife out.

he/she aimed it right at her stomach, plunging the knife in and twisting her guts while he/she did so. you felt like you were about to throw up, her screams echoed in the room.

Do something. stop standing there.

you searched the kitchen for a knife, when you grabbed it- you had so much fear that you even accidentally cut yourself.

You ran back inside the livingroom, you slipped on one foot but you caught yourself, "leave her the hell alone!" you yelled, stabbing ghostface in his/her shoulder.

he/she flinched before turning to you, his/her actions were slow, like he/she was eyeing you up and down to see if you were a threat. and you could’ve swore..you heard a deep chuckle- was he/she, laughing?

He/she dropped Anika to the ground, the girl groaned in pain and you could hear her sobbing.

Ghostface was slowly starting to make his/her way towards you now. but no, you weren’t gonna let your guard down that easily. not at all.

Mandy appeared with Sam, they were watching ghostface closely, if he or she were to attack they’d be prepared.

"On three..we attack, okay?" Sam whispered to Mandy, he nodded, "got it." he replied.

Ghostface grabbed you by the arm and threw the knife to the ground, "to hell with it, now!" Sam yelled, Mandy and Sam came from behind ghostface and attacked him.

Sam put ghostface in a headlock while Mandy got the knife out of his hands— but somehow this ghostface seemed to be stronger..? as well as more aggressive.

"(Y/n), go, run now!" Sam yelled, you hurried and started running. you heard what sounded like a 'No' come from ghostface.

Mandy froze and so did sam, what did he/she just say? how-

This gave ghostface a chance to hit sam with a right hook to the face, knocking her to the ground. Ghostface swiped Mandy underneath his feet causing him to fall.

"Pretty boys die first, huh?" said the ghostface, tilting its head, Mandy didn’t respond and instead punched him/her in the gut, "fuck you, man!" Mandy yelled.

When you heard Mandy yell, you stopped in your tracks, Anika and Mindy where hiding in a room and trying to get the window open, Anika sat on the bed, clutching her bleeding stomach.

No, you couldn’t leave him. he was the only thing keeping you sane.

Running out of the room you grabbed a brick and started running towards ghostface who was sitting on Mandy’s waist, Mandy tried getting out of his grasp.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" you shouted, before anyone could process anything, you hit ghostface in the head, you watched as he/she fell to the ground.

You helped mandy up, sam helping you as well. Mandy was quick to wrap his arms around you in a hug, "you okay, (Y/n)?" he asked, you nodded.

Sam wrapped a protective arm around you and mandy, watching ghostface closely to see if he/she would get back up again.

And he/she did.

The knife was supposed to aim for mandy but instead…

It hit you. right in the stomach. you let out a scream in pain, the ghostface was quick to recoil in surprise.

"Shit, run! Mandy, get the knife!" sam yelled as she sent a kick to ghostface as he/she fell back

You ran into the room Mindy and Anika were in, Mandy holding you in his arms as he was applying pressure to your wound.

"We have to go, sam you first. also your, uh, Jiminy cricket boyfriend is there." Mandy joked, "it is not the time to be joking mandy. But I’ll admit; it was funny." Sam said with a small but quick chuckle.

Sam was the first to go, mindy was holding the dresser against the door so ghostface wouldn’t get in.

you didn’t have much time because the quicker he or she was in here, the quicker he/she’d slaughter you all in this room.

"M-Mandy, you go. I’ll be right behind you, ok?" you said, groaning in pain when the pain from your stomach didn’t stop.

Mandy shook his head, "No, no. you go." he said, you turned to him with a irritated glare.

"Now is not the time to be the hero. just go, please!" you begged, mandy felt tears form in his eyes as they fell down.

You only nodded at him, he placed a quick kiss to your lips before making his way to the window.

he hurried and got to the other side, not even looking down. Sam and her boyfriend helped her inside.

Next was mindy, you didn’t hear her and anika’s conversation. you sat there in the corner clutching your stomach painfully.

"(Y/n), y-you have to go. th-they’ll be in here soon, go." Anika ordered, you made your way over to her before pulling her into a hug, "I’ll be right behind you." she whispered.

once you let go, you made your way towards the window. Anika did was she told you, she said she’d be right behind you.

You moved back a little to let her go first, she gave you a curt nod, even though the ladder was creaking you had to go. and you couldn’t look down either.

You noticed sam, mindy, and Mandy’s eyes widen, "(Y/n), anika, you both have got to hurry right now." Mindy said frantically while she was sobbing.

Your stomach was still hurting, "c’mon (Y/n) I’m right here, okay? don’t look back either." Mandy said, a sob escaping his mouth as tears fell from his eyes.

"Mandy, I’m scared." you said. even though you didn’t want to continue you knew you’d have to.

You weren’t supposed to turn around but you did, and when you did you saw ghostface right there. staring you and Anika down.

"(Y/N), ANIKA, YOU BOTH HAVE TO HURRY." Mindy yelled, you tried crawling but your hands were staring to slip.

And that’s when you felt it, a hand wrapped itself around your ankle in a tight grip, the grip being so tight it caused your ankle to bleed.

"No, let me go! let me go!" you yelled, ghostface started dragging you backwards and towards him/her, whoever the hell it was.

"C’mere pretty thing." The voice was raspy and rough, who the hell was under that mask? you started sobbing.

"Get away from— me!" you yelled, kicking the person in the face. Anika pushed you in front of her and this seemed to have enraged whoever was under that ghostface mask.

"Come on, I got you." Mandy whispered, holding his hand out for you to reach, you desperately tried grasping his hand, but your fingers kept slipping each time.

Ghostface started shaking the ladder and pushing it side by side, anika started screaming, "I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die!" Anika screamed.

Then, as the ladder kept shaking, it tilted, causing you to almost fall. Anika on the other hand…she wasn’t as lucky.

You heard her scream and then a loud bang was heard, she fell to the ground with thud.

Mandy and sam held onto your hand and hauled you up and into the window, you hid your face in Mandy’s chest. his arms wrapping around you as he placed a kiss on your forehead.

He felt eyes bore into the two of you, he slowly turned around to see the ghostface staring at you two. he could feel the anger radiating off of the person.

Who. was. that?

Part two? Idk, hope you enjoyed!

#ethan landry #ethan landry x reader #scream 6 #scream 6 x reader #scream vi #x reader #scream

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giveamadeuschohisownmovie · 1 month

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Looking back at the older Saw movies, I’m wondering now if the series would have a better reputation if it had been treated more like an anthology. Because the two best movies in the franchise (1 and X) are the ones that could stand on their own, while the lower-tier ones are the ones that deal with the convoluted timeline.

I’m thinking something along the lines of Scream in which it’s the “same” villain, Jigsaw, but with different people in the role. There was a different Ghostface in every Scream movie, which worked for that franchise. Maybe Saw could’ve done it like that.

In fact, just off the top of my head, here’s how Saw could’ve looked as a semi-anthology:

Saw 1

* It’s the same

Saw 2

* It’s mostly the same, but John Kramer has to die at the end of it (he probably dies from Eric Matthews’ beatings). Saw 2 ends conclusively, as if this was the end of the franchise.

Saw 3

* Takes place two years later.

* Jeff and Lynn Denlon are the subjects.

* The story is centered around a copycat Jigsaw, who is revealed to be Amanda Young. Amanda secretly became John’s apprentice and has now taken his place.

* Amanda escapes at the end.

Saw 4

* Takes place simultaneously as 3.

* Daniel Rigg is the subject.

* Here, it’s revealed that Amanda was working with someone, meaning there were 2 copycat Jigsaws the whole time. The ending reveals that the 2nd copycat is Mark Hoffman, one of the lead detectives.

* Mark gets away and picks up Amanda, who has just left the game from the previous movie.

(NOTE: I want to emphasize that even though this takes place at the same time as 3, this movie is meant to be seen as a standalone. You don’t have to watch 3 to understand 4 is what I mean)

Saw 5

* Takes place a few weeks later, brings together the events of 3 and 4.

* Amanda and Hoffman put together a new game (the five-become-one teamwork trap) while trying to avoid the police.

* The movie ends with Hoffman betraying Amanda and shooting her dead, only for him to fall for one of Amanda’s booby traps (the closing walls trap that killed Strahm). So, 5 ends with Hoffman getting smushed as Amanda bleeds to death.

Saw 6

* Takes place a few years after 4 and 5.

* Detective Zeke Banks is the subject.

* A new Jigsaw copycat - also known as the Spiral Killer, to distinguish them from the other Jigsaws - pops up. The ending reveals that the new Jigsaw/Spiral is William Schenk, one of the detectives working the case.

* Schenk gets away with his crimes, setting up the 7th movie.

Saw 7

* A direct continuation of the 6th movie.

* William Easton is the subject, but has more of an involvement with Jigsaw/Schenk.

* Schenk dies at the end of it, but not before taking Easton down with him.

Saw 8

* Takes place a year after 6 and 7.

* The subjects are Bobby Dagen, his wife Jill Tuck-Dagen, and their family and friends.

* First twist: Just like the original series, Jill is revealed to be John’s ex-wife.

* Second twist: This Jigsaw is revealed to be Melissa Sing and that the reason why she’s testing Bobby, Jill, their family and their friends is vengeance for her husband’s death (Detective Steven Sing).

* Bobby and Jill survive while Melissa is arrested at the end.

Saw 9

* At least takes place several years after the 1st movie. The timeline isn’t as important for this one.

* Revealed that Dr. Gordon from the first movie did survive since John saved his life. Instead of asking him to become his apprentice, John allows him to return to his life. However, his life since surviving the bathroom trap has been horrible, leading him down a downward spiral.

* Main story: When Gordon learns his colleagues have been involved in a scam targeting the terminally ill, disgusted by their actions, he decides to put them through a series of brutal tests.

* Basically, in this alternate timeline, Gordon became a Jigsaw copycat through his own volition rather than John recruiting him.

* Gordon escapes at the end and decides to retire from the Jigsaw role.

Saw 10

* Takes place a few weeks after the 9th movie.

* Focuses on a manhunt for a Jigsaw copycat (assumed to be Gordon). It’s only at the end that we learn Gordon was in an entirely different state during the events of this movie.

* The new Jigsaw is revealed to be Logan Nelson, the coroner who appeared earlier in the movie. Since Melissa and Gordon were one-off Jigsaws, Logan is set up to be the new main Jigsaw.

You can read the revised, semi-anthology timeline like this:

The John Kramer arc is 1 and 2

The Amanda and Hoffman arc is 3, 4, and 5

The Spiral Killer arc is 6 and 7

8 and 9 are standalone movies

10 is the beginning of the Logan Nelson arc

Even though the movies do lead into each other, the arcs are meant to stand on their own and the timeline is much less convoluted. Also, not everything ties back to John, which I feel would give the franchise more creative freedom.

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animentality · 4 months

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the main reason ds9 isn't remembered as well as the original series or tng by the general populace is not just because it wasn't the very first trek or the most popular trek (tng's popularity was what really brought trek into the mainstream).

it was hated by Rick Berman, who was the head of the franchise at its height, and who deliberately spited it by never including its canon in other treks.

and that effect has lasted to this day, as modern writers who only bother to watch Star Trek movies never seem to remember ds9 even exists. the way the Pine-Quinto movies mention Archer and his beagle, and trek movies and shows make multiple references to TOS, and newer treks center entirely around tng plots or the Borg.

the way they brought back seven of nine before literally anyone on the cast of ds9.

there's a reason that the damn tng movies had a million references to Voyager, with Janeway and the EMH actually having cameos, but ds9 never even got a passing reference, even where it actually would've been appropriate.

Berman hated ds9 for its focus on serialization, i. e., connected storytelling, rather than syndication, i. e. episodic storytelling, because he was a money grubbing misogynist and homophobe, who thought all the money was in syndication. he hated the writers/other producers of ds9 for going behind his back and doing their damnedest to make quality star trek.

one of my favorite spiteful Berman stories is that in star trek first contact, the 2nd tng movie, he wanted to blow up the defiant and destroy it permanently, just for no reason at all.

and the ds9 writers were upset because no one had asked them about it. so they said you can destroy the defiant, but we're just gonna keep using the defiant and pretending it didn't blow up if you do.

which is why Worf asks Picard, in a completely thrown in line, what's the status of the defiant, and Picard says adrift, but salvageable.

and this particular movie is funny to me also because in that period, Worf is technically supposed to still be serving on ds9, and bringing him into the movie was basically justified as something of a side quest for him, being dragged off the station for a little tng romp.

so you see the crew of the defiant, but... again. Berman spite. rather than letting ANYONE on ds9 cameo in the first contact movie, even though that might've been cool... they just have some randos. one might be Adam Scott.

and remember that JANEWAY AND THE EMH are in that movie.

so berman deliberately wanted to spite ds9 by destroying the defiant, stealing worf (even making fun of him for his role on ds9 in another thrown in riker line) AND snub the entire crew of ds9 by having none of them anywhere in the movie, even though they COULD HAVE CAMEOED TOO, or at least been mentioned...

and to me that's pretty funny, because Rick Berman could have as many tantrums as he wanted behind closed doors, and hate the staff of ds9.

didn't make a difference. they'd still keep defying him, and you know...

not to be a total prick but... ds9 still has a thriving fanbase to this day. tng does too, and so does tos, and star trek in general is doing pretty well...

but out of all the old treks, ds9 has aged the best, not just in how it looks, but also in how it bridges the gap between, old world optimistic charm and more gritty, humanistic sci fi story telling.

it balanced syndication and serialization really well, and had great standalone episodes AND a fun connecting overarching narrative that made the world of star trek feel richer and more lived in. I also want to say that for modern audiences, who are accustomed to serialization more than syndication, ds9 is a far easier entry point into the world of star trek than any other trek.

Rick Berman can go fuck himself, is what I'm saying, in summation.

ds9 will stand the test of time.

and you know what?

both tng and voy succeeded in spite of Berman. not because of him. everything that makes those two shows work, is in defiance of the Roddenberry mandates that both Roddenberry and Berman constantly tried to uphold, even though it was to the detriment of the stories.

#star trek #tng #tos #voy #ds9 #ent #rick berman #star trek aos

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whencartoonsruletheworld · 1 year

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i feel like we’re finally at the age of information transparency on the internet that studio head execs are showing their own asses in an unprecendented way. like we all knew they were bigoted old farts who hate minorities and animation as a medium BUT now we have the entire hbo max tobacle, and that’s only the most obvious.

recently two tv shows for wings of fire and phoebe and her unicorn were cancelled– the first because of netflix budget cuts and the second because “nobody wants to watch a female-led show.” as for the latter, that’s so obviously not true that it’s laughable, what with basically every disney animated show being female-led and extremely popular incl. owl house and amphibia, legend of korra being revered rightfully for its badass queer woc main, the female-led infinity train seasons being just as popular as the male-led, my little pony getting a terrifying number of fans... i don’t even have to explain this to y’all i don’t know why i am, it’s just obvious that isn’t the case. the reason i lumped it in with wings of fire though is it shows that these execs literally have their heads so far up their own asses they don’t realize that they’re literally throwing away money. both wings of fire and phoebe are EXTREMELY popular with their target demographic– i work at a library and go to bookstores like, once a week, and wings of fire is THE kids’ series right now– every library and bookstore has a dedicated shelf just for it, every kid in the us and canada reads these gay lil dragon books. i don’t know much about phoebe but i do know that i have to shelf her graphic novels every goddamn day so they’re getting checked out constantly. making these shows would give these studios an immediate HUGE audience but they don’t want it because.......... ???? honestly the only thing i can think of is bias against animation, but also i do know that while WoF is very cishet in the first few books, later books add quite a few queer dragons and that could def be a reason.

netflix also recently told craig mccracken, creator of some of the most beloved kids shows of the 2000s, that “original content doesn’t sell anymore” and they need to do reboots and remakes instead. which is funny coming from the company that made stranger things which, while nostalgia-bait for the 80s, is an original fucking story. also the owl house and amphibia are disney’s top shows rn. the most popular kids movie right now is encanto, a completely original story. and that’s just in KIDS MEDIA, do i need to bring up the popularity around everything everywhere all at once, squid game, the knives out franchise, etc? we’re in an age of remakes and reboots yeah but original stories can still make money and gain fans if you make a good fucking product. but netflix doesn’t care about that, as evidenced by how fast they cancelled first kill and also every other show that was good.

and idk what it is but something about the state of the internet right now means that we’re all seeing this in a way we hadn’t before. we’re all seeing how fucking dumb these execs are– well, dumb or actively malicious. or even trying to commit corporate suicide for some reason. it’s just interesting to me that all this is happening now when in the past we were just kinda like. stuck with whatever we got

#mine

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canonicallyobserving911 · 8 months

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Overall Assessment of Season 6

I’ve completed 15 detailed “Constructive Criticisms” posts regarding season 6 and I wanted to wrap everything up with an overall assessment for the entire season.

Even though 17% of the season’s 18 episodes were ok, overall, the majority of it wasn’t anything to be excited about especially since 9-1-1’s had some awesome seasons in the past (season 3 was the best). There were three good episodes but the rest could have been sent in an email or yeeted to the sun.

6x3 “The Devil You Know” had great cinematography and the acting from the main and recurring characters along with the guest stars was superb but in my opinion the storyline should have been included in a different franchise. Mainly because it was so dark and heavy that it seemed like it would have been a better fit for “Law & Order: SVU” especially since Tonya Kingston was a special victim. One thing 9-1-1 did EXCEPTIONALLY WELL BEFORE SEASON 5 was balance the lighter storylines with the heavier ones but for the past two seasons they haven’t done a great job of it. Season 5 was heavy enough with Maddie’s PPD and Eddie’s PTSD storylines, therefore the third episode of season 6 shouldn’t have been that heavy and dark. On a positive note, it was part of Athena’s origin story regarding why she became a cop and it properly closed out her storyline even though it started back in season 2.

6x6 “Tomorrow” was good but someone didn’t fact check a lot of the details for it and they didn’t ensure the continuity was there. At the end of 6x5, the promo for 6x6 included Karen calling 9-1-1 but that scene was NOT INCLUDED in the episode. Also, in CANON it was never mentioned that Chimney orchestrated Hen and Karen’s blind date. Finally, the closeout of Hen’s medical school storyline wasn’t fact checked either since in 2x6 she said the reason she became a paramedic was because she got shot when she was 16 and the paramedics who came to help took care of her. Then in 3x9, she told Karen the woman they saw at the spa, Stacy Mullins, was the reason why she became a paramedic. So which one was it or was it both? The audience will never know especially since she didn’t mention either option at the end of 6x6 during her explanation to Karen regarding why she decided to drop out of medical school.

6x13 “Mixed Feelings” was my favorite episode overall because it included A LOT OF BUCK & EDDIE, BUCK & CHRIS AND THE BUCKLEY-DIAZ FAMILY. FULL STOP! Their relationship was missing for 99% of 6A; therefore to see Buck and Eddie side by side along with the Buckley-Diazes spending time together again like they did in 6x1, it was absolute PERFECTION. I’ve already explained in post “#15 – Buddie” how Buck and Eddie’s relationship is the main reason why I watch the show so I won’t elaborate.

All the other episodes didn’t meet the expectations that 9-1-1 established during previous seasons.

6x10 “In a Flash” could have been one of the best episodes of the season but IT WASN’T because the Buckley parents’ and Sang Han’s presences ruined it. It was supposed to be about Buck being struck by lightning (which was shoved into the last 5 minutes of the episode) but they spent the first 40 minutes showing more of his parents, Chimney’s dad and Albert’s mother than they did showing the 118, Athena, May and Chris. Also they SPOILED the majority of Buck’s injury a month before it aired with all the stills and promos they released.

Overall, my biggest criticism about the season is the show didn’t commit to anything. Everything seemed like it was a false start which is kind of sad since they "thought" (I still don’t believe they thought it was the last one) or wanted the audience to believe it was going to be their final season. My false start metaphor can be compared with a “false start” in a track meet. When runners are on their marks and one of them starts before the starter pistol is fired, everyone must go back to the beginning. That’s how I feel about season 6 because every main character was sent back to the beginning instead of showing how far they’ve come. No one, not any individual character or their ships were shown to have moved forward. The finale was a rushed mess and none of it made any narrative sense.

Basically, it appears there was no real purpose for season 6 and if there was one, it got lost in translation since things were discombobulated and all over the place. Storylines were unequally distributed, recurring characters’ arcs were rewritten to make them likeable and the metaphors just kind of fell apart in the end. If there really was a purpose, what was it? The items below are overall assessments for the nine main characters.

Athena needed more storylines than what was provided in 6x3

Bobby’s AA sponsor storyline was atrocious and shouldn’t have been included

Buck’s gazillion storylines should have ended better

Chris deserves his own storylines. He’s a main character but he never gets his own storylines even though Denny (bio dad) and Jee-Yun (Maddie’s engagement ring) had individual storylines this season

Eddie NEEDED MORE STORYLINES! (I’ll keep screaming it because EDDIE DESERVES BETTER!)

Hen’s, Chimney’s and Buck’s quest for interim captain should have been handled better

Hen’s medical school storyline should have ended better

Maddie and Chimney deserved a better plot for their proposal storyline than that raggedy IRS Income Tax mess

May had one main storyline for the whole season but after that, she was barely there

After 6x18 aired, it seemed like someone had an idea about where they wanted the season to go but they didn’t know how to execute it in a way that would make the audience want to return after the HIATUS. Additionally, a lot of time was spent copying storylines from other shows and it appears they didn’t think anyone would notice but it’s apparent from the comments that were left on social media sites, some viewers who watch similar series did notice and they were vocal about it.

In the past, 9-1-1 was unique but somewhere along the way they lost the thing that made them special. In the wastelands of network TV, it was refreshing to watch a show that included everything instead of having separate shows for the police, firefighters and dispatchers like other franchises.

When the season ended, I asked myself the same question I asked after 15 of the 18 episodes aired; “Is that it?” Maybe my expectations were too high but I don’t believe they were since I still watch episodes from seasons 2-4 (3x2 - 3x3 – the Tsunami were fantastic and 4x13 - 4x14; Eddie being shot still haunts me but I love Eddie so I'll watch all the episodes where he gets the screen time he deserves).

Was season 6 supposed to be their legacy? If so, then it was filled with a bunch of raggedy storylines that focused primarily on Buck while ignoring the rest of the main characters. It was like they didn’t want to commit to anything risky or something that would have cemented the show as a groundbreaking TV series that would have audiences talking about it for the next decade or maybe even longer.

This is my overall assessment of season 6 and whenever the show returns, hopefully it will have returned to being uniquely 9-1-1 instead of some knock off version of the other 3 or 4 firefighting shows out there in the already oversaturated market of emergency television shows on network TV.

I’ve included links to all the “Constructive Criticisms” posts below along with their topics.

#1 - Lack of and/or inconsistencies with interviews, promos, stills, trailers, etc.

#2 - Recurring Characters OVERSHADOWED Main Characters

#3 - Undeserved and Unearned Parent Redemptions

#4 - Unequal Distribution of Storylines

#5 - Continuity Errors and Forced Narratives

#6 - Season Six or Season of Sex

#7 - Stereotypes in Season 6

#8 - Lack of Professional Development and Growth

#9 - The use of Metaphors, Themes and Theories

#10 - Bathena

#11 - Henren

#12 - Madney

#13 - Evan “Buck” Buckley

#14 - Edmundo “Eddie” Diaz

#15 - Buddie

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duhragonball · 9 days

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End of Evangelion: 25'

Yeah... that's...

"You don't understand!" is pretty much Neon Genesis Evangelion in a nutshell.

Or "You do (not) understand! (true²) Director's Cut" is how the franchise would put it.

Let's just get on with this.

I watched End of Evangelion last night. Well, early A.M. I took a nap and woke up at midnight and it seemed like the right time to watch a thing like this.

I did not enjoy the movie. I'll explain this, of course, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. There are positives, sure, but I went into this thing hoping for a more satisfying conclusion than what was presented in the TV show, and I didn't get it. Both endings suck. There you go.

Let me back up a bit. So the TV series ran from 1995 to 1996. The final episodes, 25 and 26, were controversial because they were expected to wrap up the whole story, but instead they went in a bizarrely abstract direction. Both of those episodes apparently take place inside Shinji Ikari's mind as he struggles to accept being part of a collective gestalt of every human mind on Earth. This is the result of the "Human Instrumentality Project" a concept mentioned in Episodes 1 -24, but never adequately explained. The final episodes just skip past the part where Human Instrumentality was achieved and shows the result, without bothering to discuss the background or the cause, or the long-term ramifications.

From what I gather, the main reason Episodes 25 and 26 were Like That was because the studio was short on time and money, so a more satisfying conclusion was not practical. But since the series turned out to be so successful, they were able to take another crack at it with End of Evangelion. The film is very clear about its purpose as an "alternative" to Episodes 25 and 26. It's divided into two sections, numbered 25' and 26'.

I'm not sure the viewer is expected to pick one over the other. The original 25&26 take place in Shinji's mind when Human Instrumentality happens. 25' and 26' take place in the outside world, showing the events leading to Human Instrumentality and the aftermath. There may be some continuity issues to iron out, but a fan could easily accept both endings as canon.

That's not my problem here. The problem is not that there are multiple endings, or that the endings are too "abstract", or that the endings aren't "happy". Fundamentally, my gripe is that the endings are confusing. Perhaps it might be said that the endings are pathologically confusing.

I think this is one of those Big, Emotionally Raw Works, where you can't really discuss it without revealing something about yourself in the process. So let's do that. End of Evangelion makes me feel stupid. There's parts of the movie where I'm just completely confused and I have no idea what is happening or why. It feels less like entertainment and more like I'm about to take a test I didn't study for.

Except I did study, because I've literally been taking notes on this thing for the past three weeks. I was looking forward to this, and last night I'm near the end of the movie wondering what the hell I'm going to write here, because I don't understand what the hell happened in the movie.

So I poked around a fan wiki for a bit, trying to get a handle on some of the major concepts, and as I read the articles, I realized that a lot of this information just stone cold never made it into the TV show or the movie. There was one thing I looked up that had to reference a Playstation 2 game that released six years after the movie premiered.

It's not that I'm too stupid to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's that the franchise appears deliberately designed to hide information from the viewer. You're just supposed to roll with it, I guess. Or spend days researching all this side material. Read the manga, read the wiki, read fan commentaries. I hate this. I hate this so much.

So maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe the anime was just badly designed. That would be comforting, except I still feel stupid for investing so much time into trying to understand this thing that seems purposely rigged to defy understanding. It's not just the ending. That's what everyone talks about, but the ending is just a symptom of a bigger problem. The beginning is really slow. Then the middle starts to get weird, and there's a lot of mysteries and subplots and lore that gets set up with the implied promise that "we'll explain later". And the ending(s) drop that ball. The surgery was a success, but the patient died.

I feel stupid because I got a reply to one of my liveblog posts, I think Episode 12, in response to some comment I made about all the characters having the same backstory. Ritsuko has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother. Misato has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist father. Shinji has a complicated relationship with his workaholic scientist father. Is that a theme or did they only have one idea? My point is that eventually it stops being clever and starts being redundant. Later, we learn that Asuka has... a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother.

"What, are you stupid?" asked the reply guy to my wry observation. They deleted it a few minutes after I saw it, so maybe they felt some remorse over the comment. Normally, I let these things slide. I might respond if I get legitimately hot about it. But this one got to me. "Am I stupid?" I asked myself last week. I seem to be complaining a lot about this show, but it's supposed to be a classic. Am I not giving it a chance? Am I missing something here? Am I just not smart enough to appreciate this thing? Am I just not trying hard enough?

If you're reading this, Reply Guy, please know that I didn't take it personally. I'm not upset with you at all, but I am trying to be honest with myself about this. This Neon Genesis Evangelion business has been frustrating me all month long. Now I'm at the end and it all feels very hollow, like I wasted my time.

I think that's my philosophy on life. I try to seek out new things to explore, usually stories, and sometimes they don't work out the way I wanted them to, and that's okay, because it's the journey that counts. Shinji Ikari keeps shutting down throughout his story, asking why he should bother doing anything, because he's too terrified of the possible outcomes of his actions. My thing is that bad stuff happens all the time no matter what, and you just sort of have to recover and move forward, because that's the only way to see what happens next. So I'm not sure if I can relate to Shinji or not.

Anyway, let's talk about Shinji masturbating in a hospital room over Asuka's comatose body.

I had heard about this scene, but I didn't realize how long and pathetic it is. Asuka had a nervous breakdown in Episode 23. This movie has to follow up on that, becuase Episodes 24, 25, and 26 each refused to pick up on her character arc.

Meanwhile, Shinji is wracked with guilt and dread over his battle with the 17th Angel in Episode 24. He had to kill Kaworu, but in spite of Kaworu's betrayal, he was still a friend to Shinji when he needed it the most, and he was such a good sport about getting killed, you know?

So this movie has to get us back to that moment, when Shinji and Asuka are at their lowest ebb, and I guess they decided that Shinji should go see her in the hospital because he's desperate to talk to someone about what's he's been going through. But Asuka's unresponsive, so he starts shaking her like he's trying to wake her up. Instead she just rolls over, which somehow exposes her half-naked body, and Shinji is so overcome with lust that he rubs one out right there and then. Doesn't even get a Kleenex, doesn't find a place to sit, he just whips it out and goes to town right in front of her.

I guess this is supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't land. It's not even a matter of the joke not aging well. Yeah, this is a 27 year old movie, but Shinji admits this is terrible behavior almost immediately. The "joke" didn't age at all. It was stillborn. This is like when you go to a graveyard and you see one of the tiny graves and the dates are from the same year. That's how funny this is.

The most charitable reading I can give this scene is that it represents the hypocrisy of Shinji's whole deal. He constantly insists that he can only do as he's told, because he's afraid of people not liking him if he makes a mistake or thinks for himself. But here he's doing some pretty disgraceful shit, and I sure as fuck didn't tell him to do this. did you? Did anyone? Of course not. He goes limp for most of the rest of the movie, but not here. Nossir. Seems pretty sure of himself in the minute or so it took him to finish his business.

The other aspect of Shinji on display here is that his ideal social interactions are one-sided. He's most comfortable with people when they can't see what he's doing, when they can't touch him back. That's why he wished for isolation in Episode 25. Here, with Asuka unresponsive, he's basically got the same thing.

I suppose the flip side of this is when Asuka kissed Shinji in the TV series. Her hangups are kind of the opposite of his, where she wants to be in charge of everything and everyone constantly showers her with praise for her achievements. She wants to kiss Shinji but she can't be vulnerable enough to admit that, so she orders him to just stand there and be kissed because she wants to "pass the time". And she makes him hold his nose shut because she doesn't want to be breathed on while she does it. I mean, they both have intimacy issues, but at least Shinji had a chance to consent to her weirdness.

In the NERV base, the crew wonder why they're still on alert status, since the last Angel was defeated. There should be no more threats, and it kind of makes sense for NERV to be disbanded. The only business left is the Human Instrumentality Project, and none of these ham-and-eggers know what that is.

But Misato has some information about it, which she mulls over while she's in her car. I guess? Let me explain this in more detail, because the movie never totally gets into the "why" of it all.

Okay, so the SEELE group has access to something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls". According to the NGE wiki, SEELE got it from the two angels that came to Earth, Adam and Lilith, in the distant past. SEELE has used the information contained in the scrolls to establish themselves as the secret rulers of the whole world. And they founded NERV, and its predecessor organizations, to study the Angels and figure out how to preserve the human race.

They talk a lot about Second Impact on this show, but they never explain exactly what caused it. Second Impact was not a meteorite strike or a rampaging angel who self-destructed, or even a lab accident. It was caused deliberately by SEELE, as part of an effort to contain Adam, who lay dormant in Antarctica.

If I understand correctly, this was necessary because at some point, Second Impact would occur anyway, and then Adam's children, the fifteen Angels we saw in the TV series, would come looking for Adam's body and unite with it, triggering a Third Impact that would definitely wipe out humanity. This is all supposedly explained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So SEELE's play was to trigger Second Impact deliberately, so that they could confront the Angels on their own terms. This gave NERV time to develop the Evas to fight the Angels, and to shrink Adam down to a more manageable size so he'd be harder to find.

Once the Angels were all defeated, SEELE could then trigger Third Impact. See, the TV series made it seem like the objective was to prevent Third Impact, but that was never possible. Third Impact is inevitable, I guess, so the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to evolve humans into something that can withstand the disaster. Thus, the Human Instrumentality Project, which will combine all human minds into some sort of disembodied superorganism at the moment of Third Impact.

However, throughout the TV series, SEELE has butted heads with the NERV Director, Gendo Ikari, about how this plan is to be implemented. Gendo wants to transform humanity into something new. But SEELE seems to want to retain their human nature and just use the plan as a lifeboat until the disaster has passed. At least, I think that's the disagreement here. Like I said, I had to learn about SEELE's agenda from the description of the PS2 game. It's not exactly a shock that the cabal of worldly oligarchs should want to save themselves and hold onto their wealth and power at the same time.

Gendo, on the other hand, seems mostly fixated on reuniting with his wife, Yui Ikari, who apparently died in 2004 during an experiment with Eva Unit 01. In the TV series, it was heavily implied that Yui lives on inside of Unit 01. Since Gendo's version of Human Instrumentality involves drawing up human minds into a noncorporeal union, I guess he figures that this will include Yui's mind, even if she has no body. It's unclear in this movie if Gendo actually intends to include anyone but himself and Yui in this merger, but in Episodes 25 and 26 of the TV show, Human Instrumentality is presented like it's all humans, even dead ones, and Gendo Ikari talked about it like that's what his version of Third Impact was supposed to be.

I suppose the only thing keeping Gendo and SEELE from turning on each other was the Angel threat, but now that this is over, SEELE attacks. First they try to hack NERV's supercomputers, but this is foiled when they recruit the aid of...

...Ritsuko Akagai, who betrayed NERV in Episode 23 when she destroyed all the Rei clones they had in storage. But she's the only one smart enough with computers to block the hack, so she crawls back inside one of them and uses her dead mother's notes to build a more robust firewall or something. I think she j-pegged a RAM or something, I don't know.

Ritsuko wonders why she's even bothering, since she already turned on Gendo. They had been banging on the down-low, but she got fed up with him when she realized he loved his dead wife more than Ritsuko or her mother, who also used to bang Gendo on the down-low.

With that cyberattack fended off, NERV now has to brace for an actual attack. Admiral Clownshoes notes the irony of NERV defeating all those Angels, only for their final opponent to be the humans they were trying to save.

Tactically, the entire battle is a formality. SEELE runs the whole world, and they can send wave after wave of soldiers into the NERV facility, which is already badly weakened after months of Angel attacks and budget cuts. NERV's defenses were designed for dealing with Angels, and their greatest weapons were the Evas, except Unit-00 was destroyed in Episode 22, and Unit-02's pilot has lost the ability to sync. Nonetheless, Misato wants the pilot kids secured, since she knows SEELE's goons will try to take them out first. She orders Shinji to deploy in Unit-01, and even though Asuka's in no condition to fight, she has her put in Unit-02 and then sent to the bottom of the lake. It's not much of a hiding place, but at least she'll be safer there than inside the base.

Where's Rei? Well, no one can find her, but she's gone down to the room where they keep Lilith and she's soaking in that orange goop they have down there.

Perhaps anticipating this, Gendo excuses himself and orders Clownshoes to take over the defense of the base. Clownshoes seems to know what he's up to, and sends his regards to Gendo's dead wife.

At this point, it's basically a race to see who can trigger their version of Third Impact first. SEELE wanted to use the Lance of Longinus and Lilith somehow, but since the Lance is in space now, they now plan to use Unit-01, the only Eva created from Lilith. That's what makes it special, apparently. Units 00 and 02 were made from Adam, I guess?

Anyway, Gendo plans to do it by combining Adam and Lillith together. He's got Adam's body within his own, and he wants to join with Rei, who contains some essence of Lillith. This was Rei's main purpose all along, I think.

Meanwhile, Misato leaves her post to find Shinji, who was sulking in some corner instead of reporting to his Eva like she ordered. She saves him from some goons, but they're cut off from Unit-01, so she has to find a way to get him where he needs to go. She also has to convince him to cooperate, since Shinji's completely gone to mush in the midst of this new crisis.

As she drives him to where they need to go, she explains (most of) the necessary backstory to him. Second Impact was triggered deliberately to buy time for Human Instrumentality, and humans are descended from Lilith, just as the Angels came from Adam. So in that sence, the human species is collectively the 18th Angel, just another candidate to inherit the future of Earth. Humans, like any of the fifteen Angels spawned from Adam, have the opportunity to trigger Third Impact and secure their place as the dominant life form of Earth, but we had to beat all the Angels first to do it, and then find a way to survive Third Impact when it finally happened.

And while Gendo plans to do with with Adam and Lilith, SEELE wants to use the Eva series, somehow, so it's vital that Shinji use Unit-01 to destroy all the other Evas.

Speaking of destroying Evas, Asuka finally wakes up in Unit-02, which is currently getting battered with depth charges. She still can't control the Eva, and she just keeps whimpering that she doesn't want to die. Eventually, she hears her dead mother promising to protect Asuka, and she realizes the truth: that Asuka's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin, was absorbed into Unit-02, much the same way Shinji's mom was absorbed into Unit-01.

Now, at long last, Asuka can operate her Eva again, and she goes apeshit on the SEELE troops. They sever her power cable, but she doesn't care, boasting that five minutes is plenty of time to take out these creeps. This is honestly the best part of the movie, because they had reduced Asuka to a pitiful shell for so long, and now she's finally taking charge and whoopin' ass.

It won't last.

With the conventional forces beaten, SEELE sends in nine Eva Units of their own. These are units 05 through 13, but they all look the same, and I'm not even sure they have pilots. It's a pretty cool design for a "bad guy" Eva, but they don't figure into the plot very much. They're here to destroy Asuka and Unit-02, and Asuka has to destroy them to stop SEELE.

Meanwhile, Misato has almost gotten Shinji to the Unit-01 launch bay, but she got shot, so she tells Shinji he's on his own from here. Shinji continues to resist taking any responsibility here. He says he's not worthy to pilot the Eva because he hurts people. He killed Kaworu, and he "did something terrible to Asuka". So at least the movie recognizes that. I guess it was included just to show the audience that Shinji isn't exaggerating when he doubts himself like this.

Misato refuses to indulge his self-pity, and she doesn't care how much he cries or tries to use his past actions to disqualify himself. She tells him she's made plenty of her own mistakes, but she still learned something about herself anyway. Hey, I guess Misato kind of gets what I was saying earlier. I guess this makes her my favorite character?

Well, yeah, but I don't like how she gives him a long kiss goodbye, then promises they'll "do the rest" when he gets back. I mean, she dies immediately after he leaves, so I think she was just feeding him empty gestures to motivate him while she still could, but... that's kind of fucked up.

Meanwhile, Gendo and Rei reach the room where Lillith is to begin their attempt at Third Impact, but they find Ritsuko waiting for them. She pulls a gun on Gendo and tells him that she sabotaged the supercomputer while she was reprogramming it to stop SEELE's hackers. Except... when she tries to execute her plan, the computer doesn't do it. This is because it's been imprinted with the mind of its original creator, Ritsuko's mother, and apparently mom still carries a torch for Gendo, even after Gendo screwed both Akagis over. Gendo then pulls a gun on Ritsuko, and says "I truly..." but the sound cuts out as he says the rest of it, so we don't know what he wanted to tell her.

In any case, she calls him a liar after she hears it, so either he told her he loved her and she didn't buy it, or he said something really cruel and she knew he didn't mean it. Either way, Gendo shoots, her which normally would suggest his true feelings, except I think this Human Instrumentality business works on dead people too, so life and death kind of becomes meaningless in this movie. We see a ghostly apparition of Rei as Ritsuko falls into the LCL fluid. We also saw ghost Rei when Misato died, so this seems to be a thing now.

Meanwhile, Shinji makes it to Unit 01, but it's immersed in Bakelite, which Misato had ordered dispersed through the base to impede the invading goons. I'm not sure how it got here, though, unless the bad guys used Misato's own trick to secure Unit-01. So it looks like Shinji can't get in the robot, even though it's not a robot, and he doesn't even have to be inside the stupid thing to control it. He literally proved that on his first day on the job. Yo, Shinji, get in the robot, your mom loves you.

Meanwhile, Asuka seems to be doing just fine killing the bad guy Evas without Shinji, but just as she finishes the last of them off, the Lance of Longinus suddenly flies back to Earth and improbably stabs Unit 02 through the face. Uh... how? Why? What the fuck?

Also, all the Evas Asuka defeated suddenly reactivate. With her battery drained, Asuka is helpless to stop them as they crack open Unit-02 and eat it. I'm pretty sure Asuka herself is killed during this, but we don't see a body.

I guess this was the catalyst to get Unit 01 off its duff, as it finally breaks out of the Bakelite and grabs Shinji like it's gonna put him in. Unit 01 busts out to join the battle, and it's thig big impressive spectacle. It even has angel wings now.

But it doesn't actually do anything. Shinji just gets a look at what's left of Unit-02's mangled corpse and screams.

And that's the cliffhanger for 25'. There's a credits sequence, then a dedication note from the director, and then the second half starts as Episode 26'. So this is a good place to take a break.

If you're curious, the part where Eva 05-13 show up to confront Asuka is about where things ended in "Evangelion: Rebirth". But 25' is about twenty minutes longer than that, so I'm not sure what the significance of that cutoff point was supposed to be. I guess it works as a cliffhanger, but it's kind of dumb to have Asuka finally wake up and kick ass, only to get utterly destroyed a few minutes later. Then Shinji shows up to set up the real cliffhanger.

To be fair, this half of the movie is better than the second half. Mostly, it benefits from the parts where they actually show the characters recovering from Episode 24 and beginning to move to the next phase of the story. This was what the TV show failed to do with its Episode 25. Now, we get to see the SEELE vs. NERV battle that was only implied before, and we get to see how Human Instrumentality is arranged.

We also see why it needs to be done. In the original ending, it seemed completely arbitrary, like Gendo Ikari just decided this was a cool thing to try and he just did it to the whole world without asking anyone's permission. Here, it becomes clear that if Gendo doesn't pull the trigger, SEELE will, and it's just a race to see who can get their vision accomplished first.

And we actually get to see the other characters in this version. Asuka wakes up and gets her groove back, Rei's part in the drama is revealed, and Ritsuko and Misato get shot. Seeing this stuff makes me even more irritated that the TV series just jumped right past it all.

Still, this half of the movie has problems. For one thing, a lot of runtime is spent just showing troops slaughtering NERV personnel, and showing Misato leading Shinji to his Eva. Also, there's a healthy dose of Gendo and Rei just staring pensively at Lilith without actually doing anything. A lot of the footage doesn't actually progress the plot, and only Misato and Shinji's scenes are useful for providing exposition. Gendo and SEELE's words are too cryptic to be of much use.

The main point of this installment was to reinforce things we already knew: Rei's important to all of this somehow, Shinji is a sad sack, and Asuka is helpless. And maybe it needed to be reinforced in July 1997, more than a year after the TV show ended, but I don't think it needed to be hammered home this much.

And like I said from the start, this whole thing relies on a lot of ridiculous stuff that I feel like I should have been told about in the TV series. How did the Lance of Longinus come back? SEELE couldn't have arranged this, since they were the ones who were so upset about losing it in the first place. Why are there two methods to trigger Third Impact? How did Asuka's mother get sucked into the Eva and yet she remained in human form long enough to go insane and hang herself? Why did the bad guy Evas suddenly recover from their injuries when it was convenient for the plot?

Perhaps most critically: Why are they just treating Third Impact and Human Instrumentality like the same thing? Like if you do one, then the other one just automatically happens? Is that how it works? Then why were they so worried about the progress on that project? It could be done at will, right?

Oh, and how did SEELE figure out how to do all this stuff? They have their own fleet of Evas, which seem to work better than NERV's. They made their own Angel in the form of Kaworu. They seem to know how to make Third Impact happen, without Gendo's help. And however they got this far, they seemed to pull it off without anyone from NERV knowing about it. So why did SEELE even need NERV in the first place? As it currently stands, the only reason Gendo's ahead of them is because he's physically closer to what he needs to work with. SEELE could have nuked the base from orbit and hauled Eva Unit 01 from the wreckage.

Again, the whole movie just makes me feel like I missed an episode, except I didn't. I watched the whole thing, which leads me to assume that the next chapter will clarify everything, except it doesn't, as we'll see next time. See you there.

#neon genesis evangelion #2024ngeliveblog #end of evangelion #shinji ikari #asuka langley soryu #rei ayanami #misato katsuragi #ritsuko akagi #clownshoes

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nerissalmao · 3 months

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I’m back on Tumblr, so it’s time to talk about GAY FROZEN! The movie is gay. All of it.

Okay, not all of it. But a lot of it!

Daily reminder as I yeet myself back onto Tumblr that Elsa is freaking gay okay? That’s how we’re gonna start this and the main thesis of this bullcrap will be Elsa’s obvious gayness.

I’m sorry, but in this scene (only moments before Elsa is shown talking to Honeymaren while holding her hand and gazing at her face) there is clearly some gay stuff going on. Note the absolute HOPEFULNESS on Honey’s face when she looks at Elsa and says “you belong here, you know?” in an extra hopeful tone? And the way Elsa actually does stay there with her?!

And earlier in the movie when they’re talking to each other it looks just like that scene from Tangled where Rapunzel is talking to Eugene! If it was a girl or boy the calm and wholesome way they talk to each other while maintaining steady eye contact and all that wholesome stuff would be read as a romantic connection, yet here it’s just shrugged off by the people who watched it as friendship. Yes, it could be that, but it also could be more and y’all aren’t even willing to suggest that alternative simply because they’re both girls.

Let’s talk about Oaken! He’s gay and has a husband and kids, and it’s clearly seen in the first movie.

Yes, I’m aware the tall girl with brown hair could be his (snore) wife. But all the kids honestly look more like the possible mother other than the blonde hunk, so it doesn’t make too much sense. If that woman was the wife and mother, why does she look just like all her kids except one, and the one doesn’t even look like her or Oaken? It would make much more sense if the blonde guy, who looks older anyway, was his husband and the kids were adopted. Yes, realistic genes usually don’t mean much in animated films, but then why are Elsa and Anna and their family designed to look related? And Honeymaren and Ryder from Frozen 2 look related as well. So yeah.

BACK TO ELSA! So, you see, if Oaken is gay, it would be perfectly reasonable for her to be given if this is true the franchise has tackled gay characters before. A gay Disney Princess would be awesome and given the first two movies showcased Elsa’s own personal journey and journey to mend her relationship with her sisters, a third movie could in turn have her beginning a romantic relationship with someone who very well may be a woman, and very may well be Honeymaren given the way they behave in the second movie. It seems to me like the Frozen 2 interactions are like Raya and Namaari from Raya and the Last Dragon— homoerotically toned friendships that seem to all but outright say that the two characters are gay. Except with Honeymaren and Elsa their friendship is shown a lot less given the movie is about Elsa’s self discovery. Unless, you know, Frozen 2 is merely setting up the building blocks for them to get in a relationship later. A girl can dream.

Did any of that make sense? I hope so. Because come on, Disney. A lot of people don’t like you know and some of your actions have gone to crap, but you can at least try to fix things by ceasing to support genocide and just maybe hearing us out and giving us a gay Disney Princess— hopefully Elsa, because that girl is gay-coded as all hell.

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skull001 · 4 months

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Amy hot takes.

Amy's Sonic Advance gameplay is still THE superior 2-D gameplay for Amy, and the only reason it hasn't been revisited in newer games is because Sega are cowards still stuck with the "one-button" approach that only works for Sonic and Tails.

Even when games like Origins Plus and Sonic Superstars nerfed down Amy to just two moves, she is still more fun to play as than Sonic.

Amy's gameplay in Sonic Advance >> E-122 Psi Amy hacks >> Amy Mania by Troop Sushi/Codename Gamma >> Sonic Supertars >> Origins Plus.

Sonic X's Amy is the full package of how Amy should be like. Even with her flaws, she was one of the most fun characters to watch, and surprisingly got plenty of moments that humanized her and even explore a bit of how she saw her relation with Sonic, proving she isn't deluded about it like her detractors claim.

Giving Amy a toy hammer is one of the best things Sega did, and wish the full potential of what she can do with it was more explored in gameplay terms.

The tarot cards should be only a back-up weapon, never the main one. Story-wise, the can guide her in her quests, providing the player with hints that they have to interpretate.

IDW's characterization of Amy is alright. The issue if anything, is that she, like the game characters, are hardly the focus of the stories, nor are they allowed to be shown in a more personal manner. Don't care if it's because Sega is too strict, or if the writers only use them to get to the characters that THEY really want to write for. Either way, the situation sucks for the game cast.

I think Amy is better suited to be the franchise's co-protagonist alongside Sonic. She is very versatile as she isn't restricted to be by his side 24/7, and as long as she sees Sonic as her prince in shining armor, there really isn't any reason to keep her from growing into a stronger and more beautiful heroine.

I'd like to see a story where Amy tries to help a character find redemption, but is ultimately unable to, betrayed by them even. I think this would be an interesting change of pace because, even if let down by those Amy tries to help, that she still remain kind of heart would be proof of just how strong her heart is.

Superform. Of all characters not named Sonic, Amy's noble and compassionate heart should be more than worthy of awakening that miracle.

Morio Kishimoto really should go all out with exploring more of Sonic and Amy's relation. I think he is one of the few people capable of doing so and pushing the status quo to ot' limit whole keeping things fresh. After the let down of that last Tailstube where Amy's feelings were again the object of mockery from american writers ( especially HIM), I'd more than welcome the more respectful approach from Japanese writers towards the dynamic of these two characters.

Amy IS part of the main cast, and should be treated accordingly to her status as lead female character. That means, not giving away Amy's roles to less important ones. Wether it's things like her compassion (which Tyson Hesse mentions to be unique) or being the most adventure loving of the girls.

Don't make Amy be "mature" by becoming a party pooper who dislikes fun. This is a very outdated stereotype of women that honestly, doesn't apply to the real Amy. She would join the boys in doing dumb things, while still doing girly things with other girls too.

Enough of sad face Amy. Why the hell is Sega afraid to show an Amy that, no matter what, can be a beacon of hope for those who have lost their faith. Further more, why is she not expressing faith anymore on Sonic? I swear ever since Sonic Boom, only Tails is allowed to do this as an artificial means to push the bff thing, in contrast to previous games and even shows, where Amy did this. It saddens me how in Prime, she complains about Sonic not sticking to the plan, while Tails is the one who reminds that he has never let them down. Like, helloooooo? Amy also knows this, so why treat her like she doesn't?

Sonic, Tails, Amy & Knuckles >> Sonic, Tails and Amy >>>>>> Sonic, Tails & Knuckles.

Writers shouldn't be afraid to show/play out Amy's flaws. I like seeing characters make fools of themselves once in a while, as long as they are also allowed to get out of their mess by also playing out their strengths and positive traits.

#amy rose

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e-adlirez · 3 months

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Trolls Band Together musical reading

Hiiiiiiiii so guess who got ratgrabbed and yanked down into the abyss yesterday as of the time I'm very impulsively writing this--

I went in not expecting much but a couple minutes in they were able to win me over with the plot and the surprisingly strong moral core despite the very simple narrative

And I dunno why (prolly because uh spoilers that I'll get into in a bit) but I wound up reading the movie through a musical lens, which is what this post is about :D

So if you haven't seen Trolls Band Together and don't think you want to (either because you're not optimistic due to the past two films or because you're by some chance a Disney elitist who's somehow trying to trick us into thinking Wish is somehow better than this banger), MAJOR SPOILERS for Trolls Band Together, you have been warned :]

Aight so the main reason I wound up with the music-based reading on first watch is because of the mention of the Perfect Family Harmony, which is what the protagonist boyband BroZone is trying really hard to hit, and I just so happen to be into music (I play drums :]) and just so happened to have been practicing harmonizing in recent times so I guess it lined up just enough for me to look at the film in a musical light, which was a lot of fun :3

Now, the plot of TBT is a very simple one: it's a big "hey guys how about we work together" kind of narrative, which we've seen before in every group-related franchise ever. However, the one thing that I found extremely fascinating was the fact that this story wasn't just being told by narrative, but by music. Specifically BroZone's harmonies and how they develop throughout the film :]

(Fair warning I'm not gonna be able to go Howard Ho levels of detailed, I don't even know how to distinguish chords by ear :'D I'm just gonna be talking about what I hear)

During the intro sequence, we see that John Dory (who I might end up calling JD for simplicity in this essay) has this thing about the Perfect Family Harmony (the PFH) and is trying to get his band to hit it. Obviously, his tactic for this is perfection and pushing his brothers to be perfect for the sake of hitting the PFH on their tour debut, and insisting that he takes the lead, which none of his brothers agree to while knowing that JD is not gonna be hearing any of their protests. This part is very important, because I'm sure that all musicians would know from rehearsals, if the group can't agree on whose lead to follow and wind up not listening to each other, the result is absolute chaos. Not literally as chaotic as BroZone's stage malfunction, but it do sound like that when none of the parts are working together :D

However uh, there's one thing I also want to point out with both BroZone's tour debut and when BroZone has their first full rehearsal together. When they sing their songs, the harmonies are very subdued and very simple, which is particularly shown in Perfect. There are very little facets to the harmonies, to the point where at any given bar in the performance, the line between backing vocals and main vocalists is extremely clear. The backing vocals even sound distinctly softer than whoever's leading at any given point, minus when the boys are singing in unison. Speaking of which, I could be wrong, but I think the parts in the song are like two at most and on occasion it's just the boys singing in unison? More musically attuned readers are free to correct me on that front, but that's what it sounds like to me.

Anyway the main point is, the brothers are forced to maintain these very fixed and restricting harmonies that more or less sound the same, and of course they are-- JD (if he composed the songs) wrote them and he insists that his brothers follow them to the letter, meaning they can't improvise or go beyond what we hear in the film. Granted it's prolly because of their specific genre of music and the fact that the boys are supposed to be teens at eldest and literally a baby at youngest, but the harmonies don't ever diverge or serve to give the song more layers. They remain exactly the same, more or less perfectly in unison, and even during their first group rehearsal with the band back together in (almost) full (could be wrong can't really relisten to that part of the movie rn), their harmonies are perfectly in unison but lacking in dimension, just like how they were during their disastrous concert.

In these, it is very clear that JD hasn't changed a single bit since the last his brothers saw him. He's still obsessed with the idea that he's the leader (even though a BroZone superfan like Poppy remembers him better as "the old one" and it even took her a bit to remember his part in the band), even though in reality, he's kinda nothing without the other members of the band. Which kiiiinddddaaaaaa shows seeing in Perfect his voice sounds very similar to Clay (I bet if I listened to the soundtrack first I wouldn't have been able to pick out JD's voice), and even his part in the PFH is the same as Floyd's.

As I mentioned earlier, due to the circumstances behind this extremely impulsive rant, I can't really check BroZone's first rehearsal after reuniting rn, but I bet it would've been the same case, because what I DO remember about that scene is that JD was being the same old JD, and everyone was trying to tell him that they've changed since they last saw him (contrast to him not changing a bit because he's trying to maintain that illusion of perfection he's been chasing this whole time). From what I remember, anyway, their harmonies were basically in the same boat as Perfect: clear, subdued, restrained against the singers' will to follow a lead vocalist at all times.

Now, we're gonna shift our gaze from the brothers for a second and take a look at the twins Velvet and Veneer. Yes they are iconic and yes their songs are iconic, but one thing I wanna point out is that when I first listened to Mount Rageous on the soundtrack, I had a really hard time picking out Andrew Rannell's voice because it was backing vocals-ing so hard that it was near impossible to not hear Brianna Mazzola's extremely dominant vocals (no hate to either, Brianna Mazzola SLAYED as Velvet), and the comments section of the video I was listening to for the soundtrack seemed to share my sentiments about wanting to hear more of Andrew Rannell, but hear me out:

We know from the film that Veneer is the nicer sibling. He's a material gworl with a heart and he genuinely doesn't like hurting Floyd, especially when you listen to how they address each other and converse with each other in the film. Now, seeing just how much on speaking terms Floyd and Veneer are on, how conflicted Veneer feels about keeping Floyd hostage and torturing him, and how Veneer is always worried about Floyd's health... it would make sense for Veneer to use Floyd's music essence or talents very sparingly, wouldn't it? With that, compare him to his diva sister Velvet, who squanders Floyd's essence even for dress rehearsals, and always sings for the back row and flexes as many riffs and runs and belts any and all opportunities she gets (hence why she CARRIES Mount Rageous). Makes Andrew Rannell's more subdued and in-the-background performance as Veneer more deliberate, doesn't it? :3 (Still wanna hear his voice more tho, it'd be nice to hear what Veneer can do on his own)

Something something the Veneer siblings are direct foils of BroZone something something Velvet is a direct foil for JD and Veneer is a direct foil to Floyd something something Rageous Twins-Floyd angst anyway back to the thesis of this thing--

Now, you'd think that JD keeps up his perfection shtick all the time, but he very obviously doesn't and it is shown first in his jam session with SpBruce and Branch in Bruce's family restaurant-cafe-lazy Susan thing, through the harmonies. At first I thought it was just because their voices had clearly matured since their childhood (which it partially is), but the other reason is the fact that their harmonies are so much fuller than they were in Perfect. They even give Pentatonix vibes in their little vocalizing bit, that's how full and multifaceted their harmonies are in the song; and the main reason is because in that jam session, everyone's in it just for fun, therefore everyone is free to add their little bit of vocal flavor into the song.

If you listen to JD and Bruce's harmonies in the chorus, you'll find that they sound more full and multilayered than ever in such a way that they didn't need five entire band members to pull off. And most importantly, the line between the leading vocals and the backing vocals are a little blurrier in the sense that leading and backing vocals for the most part are on the same volume, and they opt to sing a multilayered unison for when Poppy joins in, who is also adding her own mezzosoprano piece to the song and is given the room to do so. Everyone is given the room to do so-- Bruce's bass and Branch's tenor in particular get to shine while JD provides support with his baritone-- and of course they're given room for every single one of them to shine, because this isn't a concert, it's just a fun little jam sesh that also serves as a bet to showcase BroZone to Bruce's kids. It's ironic how the one time JD doesn't feel the need to be perfect, is the time you can really see why BroZone is such a good boyband that everyone fell in love with during their time.

Now, I did mention BroZone's first rehearsal (and I don't have much else to say about the rehearsal besides the fact that JD's obstinance means that they're doing a repeat of the tour debut), so I'll talk instead about the next time they manage to work (or in this case, sing) in harmony: A Better Place and its iconic pre-chorus.

Now, first of all I will mention the moment prior where the group has that little heart-to-heart about the PFH and how they don't need to be perfect to hit it, they just need to be together. While this is a very cheesy line, it's actually very true if you think about it from a technical musical perspective: when you're singing, you technically don't need to be perfect to sound good, and the same goes for if you're singing in a group. The most important thing about singing in a group is that you're all together, you're all on the same page, and you're all in agreement on who's going to take the lead for everyone to base their singing off of; and they have all three of those things. All of BroZone is together and able to communicate with each other, and they're all on the same page because they're all agreeing to follow Branch's lead. Ignore for a second the poeticism of Bitty B now taking up The Leader position in the vocals, the fact that the group was able to agree on who'll lead and who the others will listen to is not only a good showcase of what having a good team and leader is like, but also what it takes for a group to be able to sing together and not sound like a house of people trying to sing Happy Birthday. (It's also an achievement with this bunch but I digress.)

In A Better Place, we get to hear everyone put their own bits of harmonies into the song: we get to hear Clay's beautiful vocalizations in the pre-chorus and the chorus, Anna Kendrick joining in with her soprano is always a treat for the eardrums, Camila Cabello's improvisations are very tasteful, the LAYERS that make the pre-chorus so addicting to listen to, we even get to hear Crimp adding a bit of ukulele and it's very cute and she looks so happy you guys <:], Floyd's little vocalization at the end sounds heavenly even though the poor man hardly had anything left in him Lord bless him-- and under all of this, Branch's voice still sounds prominent enough to act as a baseline that doesn't overpower but ties all the other voices together, like a concertmaster of an orchestra being the one to set the pitch and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Everyone is listening to each other, everyone is adding their own flavor to the song, and everyone is in harmony.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk :3 if you managed to stick it out to the end then uh holy crap I commend you soldier, your brainrot must be as severe as the Trolls tag on Tumblr made yourselves out to be :D /j

#trolls #dreamworks trolls #trolls band together #brozone #one thing I'd also like to mention is that #velvet's vocals are so perfect for her character #she's a diva so she feels like her voice needs to be heard by everyone but her voice is cracky in song and in conversation #which could be an effect of her flexing “her” vocal talents every moment she gets to do so (which is every song)#and her physical vocal cords not being accustomed to all this exertion #wonder what throat lozenge brand is her fav if she does those at all #also also branch showing his abandonment issues by the van argument being an emotional repeat of the tour argument #to the point where he's in the exact same physical position he was in as bitty b that night #and he ends up calling all his brothers' asses out and leaves so he doesn't have to deal with the pain that will eventually come #when the bros return to their normal lives and leave each other again #and in branch leaving he gives them a taste of their own medicine and inflicts on them the same pain they inflicted on him when they left #abandonment issues </3 #ramble #rambles #and i don't mind if the world spins faste--

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rose-tea-and-strawberries · 5 months

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Trey: *Trying to explain Riddle is that way because of his mom*

Me: Give me a minute as I pull up my ‘Trauma Doesn’t Excuse Sh*t Behavior’ PowerPoint.

Say it with me, everyone: an explanation is not an excuse 😊

You know, the other day I was watching one of Ryan George's Pitch Meetings and when Producer Guy asked Writer Guy how the audience would root for the villain of the franchise and the response was "he's handsome" which basically explains most people's reactions to fictional men.

Prepare for incoming rant that has little to do with the ask

This probably might come as a shock because one of the main appeal of twst would be the whole villainous aspect/Disney Villain fanbase but I don't really like villains that much, at least, not romantically. Like don't get me wrong, I think that they're incredible characters and it would be so fun to sit down with one and have a conversation with one. Villain songs are so fun (I was literally singing ‘This Day Aria’ to myself the other day I haven’t heard that song in like a decade) and you can tell that that characters like Scar or Hades or Shere Khan or Jafar or Maleficent are having so much fun being deliciously evil and even the more serious, complex ones like Loki or Frollo are fun to pick apart so yeah I understand the hype. I just always rooted for the heroes and I guess heroic characters have always been more my type.

My mother absolutely loves Erik Destler and is forever salty that Christine chose Raoul (despite my many many attempts at arguing why Raoulstine is the superior couple - smol primary school me could not understand why my mum liked the chandelier dropper and was deeply concerned), my best friend has been in love with Heathcliffe since we were eleven, and my little sister has literally told me that her type of fictional men are the toxic red flags (not exactly word for word but she did explain why she likes bad boys over good boys when I was complaining about how my type (wholesome soft boys) always get sidelined for the arrogant, snarky bad boys - we're also very diametrically opposed on our views of friends to lovers (my s++ tier all time favourite and her loathing) vs enemies to lovers (I can't really stand it - Pride and Prejudice is the only exception - and that's literally all she consumes) so that might also be a reason).

Like, I understand the appeal of a Byronic hero (Mr Darcy has far too much power) - a closed off, broody man that hates everything but you? And will burn down the world to keep you warm? I can respect that there are people who dig that. But their not really for me.

The mild bout of insanity thirteen year old me had where I spent two months attracted to Edward Rochester is an outlier and should not have been counted (though that was during my wattpad phase so...)

But I can admit that I have yet to shake off my feelings for Dr Henry Jekyll, Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray (though to be fair, Mr Gabriel John Utterson the lawyer and cinnamon roll artist boy Basil Hallward do own my heart). And yes, Jeremy Jordan did make me question my morality as he did make my feelings for Light Yagami be too positive to be sane for a brief moment (Touta Matsuda is still my man, don't worry). But apart from them, literally all of my faves are what you'd call your traditional, morally upright heroes.

Basically what I'm saying is that my perception might be skewed because I've never had the whole 'villains are cooler' mindset when it came to stories. Yes, I love the villains as characters but I always liked their heroic foils more (goodness is just so attractive to me). You get lots of amazing heroic protagonists that have horribly tragic backstories and they're the ones I always fall for because the idea of being a kind sweetheart despite the world being anything but is just *chef's kiss* that's a kind of strength that's so swoon-worthy.

I guess that's why it's harder for me to look past the characters' actions in twst is because, well, they chose to do everything they did. They made a conscious choice to be terrible, despite understanding the consequences. Riddle may have been brainwashed into becoming a tyrant by his mother but he still admitted that he knew he was being horrible - he understands the concept of morality, of good and bad, and he willingly and deliberately did everything he did.

I suppose this text post I found on Pinterest would explain my point better:

#twisted wonderland #twst #asks

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ljones41 · 1 month

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Looking Back at "STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS" (2008-2020)

LOOKING BACK AT "STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS" (2008-2020)

Lucasfilm's 2008-2020 animated series, "STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS" had become a big favorite among fans of the STAR WARS franchise over the past decade-and-a-half. Set during the tail end of the Prequel Trilogy, many fans regard it as superior to the three movies produced and directed by George Lucas between 1999 and 2005. Not only that, many regarded it as a necessity for STAR WARS to understand that particular trilogy. After viewing it, I can honestly say that I do not agree with these fans.

Fans had expressed two other opinions about "THE CLONE WARS", aside from it being superior to the Prequel Trilogy movies and being needed to understand it. They still believe it did a better job of conveying Anakin Skywalker's journey from loyal Jedi Knight to the young Sith apprentice who had betrayed his former Order. Many fans had also complained that the animated series did something that the Prequel Trilogy had failed to do - namely convey a full narrative of the Clone Wars.

Disagreement Over Prevailing View

When I had stated that I did not agree with the prevailing view of "THE CLONE WARS", I meant it. Do not get me wrong. Overall, I liked it. I especially enjoyed those story arcs that centered around the clone troopers, especially the story about ARC Trooper Fives in Season Six. But there were other story arcs that I found interesting - including the one regarding Jedi padawans Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee, and Count Dooku's conflict with his former apprentice, Asajj Ventress. The latter proved to be one of two characters introduced by "THE CLONE WARS" that I enjoyed watching. I also became a big fan of the cunning, yet hilarious space pirate known as Hondo Ohnaka. But I never became a major fan of "THE CLONE WARS".

Unlike many fans and critics, I never regarded the series as better than the Prequel Trilogy. Just about every STAR WARS production I have seen (movies or television) had its share of flaws. Personally, I believe "THE CLONE WARS" had suffered from more flaws than the Prequel or Original Trilogies. The two trilogies served as parts of a saga about the Force-sensitive Skywalker family, with the Clone Wars, the decline of the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic, along with the Galactic Civil War serving as the saga's backgrounds. For me, "THE CLONE WARS" was like watching a series that could not make up its mind about its main narrative or theme. The only aspect about "THE CLONE WARS" that seemed to be consistent was its setting - the three-year civil war withing the Galactic Republic known as the Clone Wars. Otherwise, the series spiraled into different arcs and stories with very little connection - whether they were about the war itself; the decline of both the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic; the downfall of Anakin Skywalker; the development of his Jedi apprentice, Ahsoka Tano; the Mandalorian Civil War, which involved Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi; the re-emergence of Maul, former Sith apprentice of Darth Sidious; and other arcs that centered around characters like Count Dooku aka Darth Tyrannus, Asajj Ventress, the Mandalorian clone Boba Fett and especially the clone troopers.

A Necessity?

Since many fans and critics had claimed that viewing "THE CLONE WARS" was a necessity in understanding the Prequel Trilogy. Really? Why? I do not understand that opinion. The reason I do not understand it is because I never had any trouble understanding the Prequel Trilogy. As I had stated earlier, I realized that it was mainly about the downfall of Anakin Skywalker, in which the Clone Wars and the downfalls of both the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic played major roles. I get the feeling that many had wanted the Prequel Trilogy to be more about the Clone Wars, instead of the Skywalker family saga.

If that is how they feel, why not complain about the Original Trilogy's limited portrayal of the Galactic Civil War? It seemed to me that the Original Trilogy seemed more about Luke Skywalker, his circle of companions, and his father Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader more than the actual civil war that served as the trilogy's background. Perhaps Lucasfilm should create a series that feature numerous stories and character arcs set during the Galactic Civil War? Especially the four-year period between 1977's "STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE" and 1983's "STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI"? Sure, there have been productions about the early years of the rebellion - before the events of "A NEW HOPE". But these productions have only appeared in the last ten years. And they were released or aired as individual productions, not the sprawling monolith that became "THE CLONE WARS". But I did not need these productions to understand the Original Trilogy anymore than I needed "THE CLONE WARS" to understand the Prequel Trilogy.

Portrayal of Anakin Skywalker

If "THE CLONE WARS" was supposed to be a production that helped fans understand the Prequel Trilogy, who was the series' main character? Seriously. Was it Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker? If so, I was not impressed by the series' portrayal of the character. Many have claimed that Anakin's portrayal in "THE CLONE WARS" was an improvement over his portrayal in the Prequel Trilogy. I do not agree with this assessment. In fact, I found Anakin's portrayal in the animated series rather troubling. One, he seemed to be a cross between a juvenile delinquent and a borderline Sith Lord. There were moments when the series seemed to be rushing him toward his role as Darth Sidious' Sith apprentice . . . before the events of 2005's "STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH".

The 2005 movie's first half hour had revealed Anakin's continuing guilt over his massacre of the Tusken Raiders who had killed his mother Shmi Skywalker in 2002's "STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES". Not only did Anakin experience three years of guilt over that act, but also expressed regret for killing Darth Sidious' previous apprentice, Count Dooku aka Darth Tyrannus, when the latter was defenseless in "REVENGE OF THE SITH". Anakin even managed to express both horror and disgust for helping Sidious kill Jedi Master Mace Windu in the movie's last half hour. Following the Jedi Master's death, Anakin had ceased to feel any genuine remorse over those he had killed. However, "THE CLONE WARS" was set during the three years between "ATTACK OF THE CLONES" and "REVENGE OF THE SITH". And yet, I cannot recall the series ever conveying any of the guilt Anakin had felt toward his destruction of the Tusken village. Between that (over which he had felt guilt) and his roles in Dooku and Windu's death (which he had express regret and horror respectively), Anakin had harmed a good deal of individuals in "THE CLONE WARS" without any regret or remorse. This seems very odd to me to this day.

For me, the Anakin Skywalker of "THE CLONE WARS" seemed to be some Force sensitive version of Han Solo. In fact, someone had once given Anakin the nickname, "Jedi Han Solo". Many fans had complimented the character for his lack of whining and being more powerful. If these same fans were referring to Anakin's bouts of whining in "ATTACK OF THE CLONES", then what the hell were they expecting from a nineteen year-old padawan? Complete self-assurance? Some James Dean version of Anakin Skywalker? Well, instead of James Dean, they got some variation on Han Solo. And Anakin's attitude toward Padme seemed completely different from his relationship with her in the Prequel movies. Aside from that ugly moment in "REVENGE OF THE SITH" when Anakin had been blinded by unsubstantiated jealousy, he had never been aggressive toward Padme in the movies. The Anakin of the movies would have never tried to control Padme or dominate her the way he did in "THE CLONE WARS"'s Season One finale, (1.22) "Hostage Crisis" in which he tried to convince (in reality, coerce) her to stop work in order to provide him with "tender loving care" during his furlough. The cinematic Anakin would have shown more respect toward his wife. And as for that whole "Mortis" from Season Three . . . oh God! Why did Lucasfilm believe it was necessary to shove some ham-fisted narrative about Anakin bringing balance to the Force? I realize I should go into more detail about this particular arc. Needless to say, I did not care for it. It was like watching a series of over-the-top metaphors and allegories flashing before my eyes. And as I had earlier stated, I found it necessary. One has only have to observe Anakin's personality and his arc to notice the complicated nature of his character.

Ahsoka Tano

Then . . . Lucasfilm gave Anakin a padawan learner - a Togruta female named Ahsoka Tano, who was five years younger than him. Why did the Jedi Council assign a padawan for Anakin to train so soon after becoming a Knight? Yes, the Council had allowed the newly knighted Obi-Wan Kenobi to serve as Anakin's new Jedi mentor near the end of "STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE". But Anakin's recruitment into the Jedi Order and his role as Obi-Wan's new apprentice had occurred under unusual circumstances, due to a promise the latter had made to his dying former Jedi master, Qui-Gon Jinn. Obi-Wan had chosen to take on a new apprentice at the ripe age of 25. He had not been ordered to accept a padawan learner, like Anakin. Who had been 19 to 20 years old at the time . . . and recently knighted like his former mentor. Why did the Jedi Council, whose opinion of Anakin had always seemed to be in a state of wariness, had assigned a padawan to him? Why did Lucasfilm? If they had wanted Ahsoka to be one of the series' major character so badly, why not make her Obi-Wan's next padawan?

Now that I think about it, why bother creating the Ahsoka Tano character in the first place? In "THE CLONE WARS", Ahsoka had been close to Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padmé. Yet, the trio and NO ONE ELSE had mentioned her in "REVENGE OF THE SITH". I realize that the 2005 movie had been created first. But if no one had mentioned Ahsoka, someone who had been so close to Anakin, what was the fucking point in creating her for "THE CLONE WARS"/? Or . . . what was the point in making her Anakin's padawan? And it is a damn miracle that her character never became a Mary Sue. At least not completely. Ahsoka had made her share of mistakes throughout the series. But considering that she seemed to be the only Force user capable of using two lightsabers at the same time, I sometimes found myself wondering otherwise.

By the time "THE CLONE WARS" ended, I found myself wondering who was supposed to be the series' main character. Did the series actually have a main character? No one was more surprised than myself to discover that the series' last eight episodes focused on Ahoska Tano. After all, her character had left the Jedi Order in the Season Five finale, (5.20) "The Wrong Jedi". She never appeared in Season Six. I had assumed that Season Five was the last viewers would see of Ahsoka. Oh no. She came back with a vengeance and practically dominated Season Seven. The latter had twelve episodes. Out of those twelve episodes, four of them featured Ahosoka's adventures with a pair of smugglers known as the Martez sisters and the last four centered on her experiences with Darth Maul and Order 66. Eight out of twelve fucking episodes. At this time in the story, Ahsoka was no longer a Jedi - padawan or otherwise. Why did Lucasfilm and Dave Filoni thought it was necessary to bring her back and allow her to dominate the series' final season? Why was it necessary for us to see Ahsoka survive Order 66 at a time when she had not been a Jedi since the end of Season Five? After all, she was alive and well in "STAR WARS: REBELS", the series set right before the Original Trilogy. And once Order 66 began, the clone troopers not only targeted Ahsoka, but also . . . a captured Maul. WHY? In the name of God, why would the clone troopers target two people who were not a part of the Jedi Order?

Other Characters

*Darth Maul - What made the series' final season so problematic for me was not only did it focus heavily on Ahsoka Tano, but also Maul, Darth Sidious' former Sith apprentice. After being defeated and cut down by Obi-Wan Kenobi in "THE PHANTOM MENACE", the Nightsister Mother Talzin resurrected him and he became obsessed with the man who struck him down. How can I put this? I believe Darth Maul should have remained dead. I realize George Lucas had plans for his resurrection in the Sequel Trilogy films, but I do not care. I was never able to generate any real interest in his arc, following his resurrection in "THE CLONE WARS". And I found his arc in both "THE CLONE WARS" and "REBELS" and death in the latter series, an exercise in futility.

*Padmé Amidala - Thanks to Ahsoka Tano's presence in "THE CLONE WARS", Padmé ended up being regulated to one of the series' supporting characters. Granted, the series featured the occasional episode about her missions for the Galactic Senate or some political situation, her relationship with Anakin barely received any attention, aside from the Clovis arc . . . or perhaps one or two other. I am not sure. Nevertheless, I believe the heavy focus on Anakin's relationship with Ahsoka came at the expense of his continuing relationship with Padmé. I have one other issue with Padmé. I did not find her as interesting as I did in the Prequel movies. It seemed as if a good deal of her complexity had been stripped away.

*Obi-Wan Kenobi - It seemed to me that the young Jedi Master did not suffer from underexposure on the same level as Padmé Amidala. As one of the military leaders of the clone troopers, it only seemed natural that his character was focused upon. For me, Obi-Wan's most interesting arc proved to be the Mandalorian rebellion and his relationship with the pacifist leader, Duchess Satine Kryze. It seemed like the only time Obi-Wan came close to being the complex man he had been in the films. Otherwise, the Jedi Master spent most of "THE CLONE WARS" being portrayed as this ideal character. If Obi-Wan had truly been the ideal character many have claimed he was, I would have found him boring. Uninteresting. And Obi-Wan has never been boring to me in the films produced by George Lucas.

*The Jedi Order Council - My memories of the Council seemed to be a bit sketchy, aside from two arcs. I do recall arc that Jedi Master Mace Windu played a major role in an arc about him and Jar-Jar Binks rescuing a queen from a cult headed by the Nightsisters' former leader, Mother Talzin. Somewhat. And there was the late Season Six arc that featured Jedi Master Yoda exploring the origin of the Force and through a series of visions, discovering the true nature of the Clone Wars, the possibility of the Jedi Order's downfall and later, its resurrection. This particular arc seemed like nothing more than a ham-fisted attempt at foreshadow. Also, Yoda's conclusions following this arc seemed to contradict his actions during the last act of "REVENGE OF THE SITH" - namely his attempt to kill Darth Sidious.

*The Sith Order - I suppose I have no real complaints about the portrayal of the Sith Order in this series. Count Dooku's character seemed more fully explored in "THE CLONE WARS" than it did in the second and third Prequel movies. Darth Sidious remained a shadowy figure at this point in the series. I found his constant evil smiles (when no one was looking) rather annoying after two or three episodes. Hell, I can only recall this happening once in "REVENGE OF THE SITH". If there was one story arc regarding Sidious that I truly dislike was the Season Two episode, (2.19) "The Zillo Beast Strikes Back". The Sith's decision to entrap a dangerous Zillo beast and study it escaped to the streets of Coruscant struck me as one of dumbest ever made by a Sith Lord. Especially once as intelligent as Sidious.

*Cad Bane - I might as well say it. I dislike the Cad Bane character. No . . . I despise him. I despise his faux Southern accent. I despise that ridiculous hat that he wears. But what I really despise about Cad Bane was how George Lucas, Dave Filoni and Henry Gilroy made him such a tough adversary for the Jedi characters. Despite being a ruthless, yet greedy bounty hunter with a fast draw, Bane has been able to defeat powerful Jedi characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan . . . despite lacking any Force abilities. This guy was practically a villainous Gary Stu. And I never thought I would actually see one in a television series, let alone a movie.

I could go on about many other characters in "THE CLONE WARS", but my main issues with "THE CLONE WARS" seemed to be mainly focused on the series' narrative. Many of the stories and arcs rarely connected, if not at all. And I am at a loss on how this was supposed to help filmgoers understand the Prequel Trilogy. Perhaps many STAR WARS were unable to understand the Trilogy's main narrative. But I did. I was also aware that both the Original and Prequel Trilogies were part of the Skywalker family saga. Events and conflicts like the decline of the Galactic Republic, the Clone Wars, the fall of the Jedi Order, the ascension of the Sith Order, the rise of the Galactic Empire, the rise of the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Civil War all served as backdrops for the family saga. While many fans had criticized the Prequel Trilogy for not focusing more on the Clone Wars, these same fans praised the actual series for doing just that.

The Prequel Trilogy was basically three chapters in the Skywalker family saga. Not two or three chapters in the detailed account of the Clone Wars. All one has to do is watch the Original Trilogy movies and see how the Galactic Civil War had merely served as a backdrop for another set of chapters in the Skywalker family saga. Yet, I do not recall anyone demanding a television series or a collection of movies depicting that particular conflict in greater detail - to the point of excluding the main characters of the family saga.

Once I had complained about the sprawling nature of "THE CLONE WARS"'s narrative online. Someone had explained that it explained the series' rarely connected arcs and stories was an indication that it was an anthology series. Strangely enough, I have yet to encounter a website that includes that description for the series. A part of me suspects that Lucas, Filoni and Gilroy had created "THE CLONE WARS" to satisfy those fans who had expected Lucasfilm to convey the conflict in full detail in the Prequel Trilogy. I find this laughable, because the Galactic Civil War had never been portrayed in full detail in the Original Trilogy.

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twistedtummies2 · 3 months

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