#everything is so lazy. I don't know if its the budget or what but the animation is lackluster the pacing is just. so bad.
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Kung Fu Panda 4-All the budget went to the animation (spoilers)
Hey all, its me, the guy who everyday make a tour around this site but almost never talk. How are ya?
Two days ago something arrived to the cinema's screens, something that me and everyone were waiting for since 2018, the fourth film and the begginig of the new kung fu panda triology.
You know? When I sat on that theather seat with my friends to see what Dreamworks had prepared for us, I told myself; "Maybe that post I made a while ago throwing shit at what seemed like Kfp 4 was going to be was a bit hard, I hope I can come out regretting what I said that time"
And as soon as the credits ended, it was clear to me, I dont regret a shit. Maybe it was a little exaggerated, compared to what a megamind fan would think about the terrible sequel they made, but still: the film is crappy and boring most of the time. But why?
I'm going to explain some points.
1- Po? Is that you?
I don't know you guys, but i don't think the panda we knew in the end of the third film is the same as this one. Seriously, he share more comparisons with the Po from the legend of awessonless than the one from the films, maybe its a personal thing but it feels that way. At least in the beggining of the film feel like that.
And I don't know what he was thinking about when he decided to follow a thief he doesn't know at all and who tried to steal in his own palace, and that suspiciously know who is the chameleon, whose were her plans, her past, where she lived, where exacly they had to pass through avoiding all the guard inside her home, why the others thiefs of the city hate her so much... With Po's experience with criminals this is like a chef throwing water on a pan with boiling oil, it's obvious what is going to happen.
2- Zheng- Female Nick Wilde but without charisma or half of his intelligence.
I knew it from the first moment I saw Zheng's desing, the people who know me can corroborate that; her facial expressions, her tone while she talk, her animal race, her position as thief, her final when she is part of the justice same as the protagonist... it's clearer than water I think.
Everyone could say this is forgivable if she's smart, but surprise, she's not. This character is just an absurd try of this company for """"conect with infant audience""""(I don't know in what sense, I supose for the cute design, idk). But the point is, the supposed objective of the hollywood companies is give the new generetions better things than we got at their age, but what I see is laziness for write a decent scrip only for take an advantage of a known IP and make easy money. Even the children have quality standars, this is not the dragon warrior and of course this is not kung fu panda.
And talking about the dragon warrior, having our deep and lovely Tigress with her magnific development or Tai Lung back from the spirit realm... why in the hell this character exists?! Oh yeah, for being trending topic in twitter for three days. Yay...
3- The furious five and Shifu, for us : our pretty boys, and for Dreamworks: living jokes.
What made Kung Fu Panda what it is, is not the fucking panda, it's them. They're the inspiration for Po, their allies, the royale representation of kung fu and the ones which everything started with.
Po's a comic relief, and his mission is show his development in part using his humor, but the humor in this film barely works because of the lazy script. Something that even the talented Jack Black himself can't fix, beacuse his only role there is dublin his character, unlike the rest of the residents of the Jade Palace except Dustin Hoffman.
Seth Rogen (Mantis) himself even said that he wasn't even contact by Dreamworks in the first place, only for make a scream in the credits, that's sad beacause he really wanted to see Mantis on the screen. And I know and I understand that the five are expensive, but cmon, they could just simply change the voice actors and offset it with a good script but that's not the case of course. Their role in the film is being a counter for Po's constant jokes, for not to saturate the spectator with jokes, now that's not in there anymore, thank you Dreamworks.
4-The chameleoooohhn and her "motivation".
I can't say much, basically because out of her design she's nonsense. She says that because of her size, she was reyected for being a kung fu warrior.
Yeah of course but only one little thing, what about Shifu? Viper, a warrior without tips? Mantis, literally a dawn insect? Master Oogway, a TURTLE? The masters goose? C'mon even there's a fucking master chicken! Don't talk shit chameleon!
Her importance for the plot? Its almost a lie, the others villains had links to important characters; Tai Lung (with his link to Shifu's past), Shen (with his link to Po's past) or Kai (with his link to Oogway's past), all of them related to important characters. And her? To zheng's past and present I guess? But again, anyone know this character. She's like a villain from a Disney show, you know the type of villain who say a lot of things but at the end, she don't support nothing to the lore.
And her personality is like a mix of all the previous villains, and this sounds good right? HAHAH nope. Do you remember when as a child you mixed all the plasticines of all the colors to create the final color and you ended up with a color similar to poop? well that's exacly how her personality feels like.
5- Po's dads; the only reason they're there is because they ran out of characters to make the film.
The tittle itself tell everything, they don't do anything for the script in all the film, and their objective could be done since the start.
The script of the film except for the final looks like a draft which they didn't know how to complete, everyone who watch it can see it perfecly. The animation, the music and the backgrounds are the only things notable here.
6- Tai Lung and the cheapness nostalgia.
Fan service is not necesarry bad, above all if is used in a good way, they sold us Tai Lung as a miracle but his importance for the plot feels just like a Stan Lee cameo, I like Tai Lung I can say that. But this is too weak, Shen and Kai are only characters in the background who don't do nothing except being defeated or make facial expressions (I don't even joke that Shen would show respect to Po considering what we saw in the second movie, and Kai wasn't supposed to be destroyed as a spirit, what the hell is he doing here again? *sign* I'll to stop trying to make sense of this).
By the way, anyone else think that the dragon warrior role is understimated? I mean Shifu obligated Po to transfers the role to another one just because yes, i mean he only has been the dragon warrior for less than 5 years and now they want to replace him with a random. Everything just for at the end, he choosed a thief with at least 30 crimes registred and who was a traitor during the 75% of the movie.
7- The """""""""humor"""""""", except they forgot the parts where I must to laugh.
Seeing nonsense hits only beacuse yes stopped of being funny a long time ago, and no, I don't want to talk about the bunnies of the portrait because I would get sick. I had to go to the cinema drunk to endure the filler that the movie had, no joke, it was the only way to laugh at those jokes.
So I think about applying the same method as in any movie with bad jokes, ignoring the jokes. I tried to do the same thing but with the pace that the film managed, such a thing was impossible, the pace of the movie seems to be made for Tiktoker children with attention deficit. From the chaos in the quarry until Po takes the bitc... uhg fox out of prison, only 10 fucking minutes pass, all of that for what? So that you feel like the baseless information and the nonsensical plot that they tell us is of any use? they could simply make a non-canonical short and that's it, but no, yes or they were going to tell us a story written by rotten old men who spend the entire day watching Tik Tok. It's not going to be that the child who sees this doesn't get bored, we know that much today's children don't have many neurons as they say, but even to make movies for them you have to have a certain talent.
In some point at the beguining Po make a joke about the ausence of the furious five saying that at least he had them in cardboard posters, and this would be a good joke. Only if the stupid film could be prove that the franquise can do something memorable without the furious five, but again, that's not the case.
Don't have any respect for this movie, look what it had with you. I understand that it is enjoyable because of the animation but it does not go beyond that line, it destroys important things about the canon and spoils its teaching about the need for change by treating it in a terrible way.
Coclusion: KFP 4 is just another Po's adventure as Shifu says, it won't tell nothing to you or make you feel different, it's a shame but after Megamind 2 I imagined something like this. It's a dark era for film, expecially the animated one so like Scar said; Be prepare, there're worse things waiting for us.
Do you want something with real quality? You don't even need kung fu panda 1,2 or 3, for make it easy to this film let's take this marvelous example; kung fu panda: secrets of the scroll (2016). You'll say; "An animated short, this is not like-" Shhh Just watch it, you won't regret it.
If you think I'm wrong in something, just rewatch the film. And if still you aren't agreed with me, well, I respect you and I'm happy you like it. I wish I could love it as you do, but that doesn't mean that the movie isn't bad, because if you watch it with your brain on or remembering the previous movies it's terrible.
. Me? I've to write a story, I love you all. Except you, Dreamworks, I'm mad with you, expecially when you do this at the same day as Akira Toriyama's death :(
#kung fu panda#secrets of the scrolls#kung fu panda 4#kung fu panda 2#tigress#furious five#akira toriyama#dreamworks#po ping#lord shen#tai lung#general kai#kung fu panda 3#the lion king
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After looking into the writers predicament and how it all led to the strike it made me realize that perhaps one of the reasons for the decline in quality media is becuase writers have been given less and less incentives to create good content, do you have any thoughts?
I don't think it would be exactly incentive. I would think in a certain amount of cases it would be down more to demotivation. Generally, writers for film and TV and such genuinely WANT to make a good story and, much like fanfic writers and fanartists, will do their best for very little thanks simply because it's what they DO. But not ever show or movie is going to be a passion project, in fact most of them won't. And if you're working for Disney especially, who owns 38% of all film (not counting TV and other media) so you most likely WILL end up wroking for Disney, you are going to have a TON of studio meddling on every level of writing.
As I mentioned in the other post, Mr Rick And Morty (sorry I don't know his name and I'm too lazy to check) wrote the story for the Dr Strange and the Multiverse of madness at LEAST twice when the movie's FIRST story and script was scrapped by a previous writer. The first script he wrote was heavily rewritten and changed and reworked by the studio. and then the studio just THREW OUT that script and he had write a brand NEW script 2 weeks before shooting started using all the props, sets, outfits and CG segments they had already made. And the thing is this is now STANDARD PRACTICE in working on a big budget Disney film.
Part of the reason the Barbie movie is written as well as it is, is because Mattel were almost completely hands off with the film's writing. (the only changes I heard about was them censoring one Barbie saying the word "Motherfucker" which they censored in the film by putting a Mattel sticker over her mouth) and various other things like the removal of a narration in one scene and one or two jokes were cut. You know! NORMAL screenwriting practices!
But Disney is so paranoid and controlling with literally everything they put out it is a death sentence for any kind of creativity. Even ignoring the fact that they hire brand new writers who they can control and push around easier, I imagine even if you were NOT a new writer just happy for a big break, it must be extremely demotivating to try and write a good story when you know Disney is just gonna shred it to ribbons.
This is absolutely not the ONLY reason of course. Velma's writing is so godawful because people who had only worked in live action cable comedy thought they could do the exact same thing for an animated show and it would work without knowing anything about the medium they were working in because they were arrogant, lacked restraint, and had gotten where they were thanks to being friends with the right people. HGS is so badly written because Raye Rodriquez had shopped around his story idea to EVERYONE and got rejected by all of them until Crunchyroll needed fodder to justify opening up its own studio to create "originals". Many times modern cartoons are badly written because the actual people writing the show are animators who haven't had any formal training or education in creative writing.
There are a thousand and one reasons for WHY something ends up badly written. But as for why we have gotten SO MUCH that is badly written recently I would chalk up to studio execs and the business side of Hollywood choking the creativity out of the writing process in an attempt to maximize profits in the short term.
That's an EXTREME simplification but that would be my opinion. Hell the only reason AI writing is even a conversation regarding film and TV is because it's the kind of thing these studio execs are SALIVATING over the thought of. A writer they have 100% control over that they don't have to pay and don't have to deal with all that "creative vision" or "artistic expression" bullshit which they don't like because it represents risk to sure fire income.
because most Studio Execs are businessmen who have no concept of creativity whatsoever, have no idea what being creative even means, and yet they think because they know how to make money in a corporate sense, they know how to monetise creativity to maximum efficiency.
It's like a fisherman getting rid of all the fish in the sea because they're getting in the way of him monetising the ocean.
Anyway this ask is a mess because this is a complex issue I am trying to express a simplified opinion on. But I hope you get what I mean.
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You make very good points comparing book and tv Alex, thanks for replying to my ask! I clearly have not reread the books in a while so I should go do that :)
And you are very right about tv!Alex being naive. Yes, I felt he was more mature than book!Alex in the way he presents himself generally, and maybe this is partly due to his appearance on screen vs what I used to envision of book!Alex. But you are right that a lot of his actions and decisions are very naive.
Going to scorpia knowing it's a literal terrorist organization and not only not wanting to kill anyone but not even trying to pretend he's into it so that he could go in undercover? He's lucky Yassen had his back or he'd be so dead.
There were many moments in the show where I did go, 'Alex, come on,' when he was doing something stupid. But maybe I have rose tinted glasses on or expect little, because I love the show enough that I'm like, 'okay they have low budget, I get that they can't film everything, I can look past this plot point/plot armor/lazy writing because I know they don't have the time/budget for everything.' But hey, again, maybe I should have higher expectations anyway haha.
Like having Tom and Kyra somehow so easily show up on Malagosto and do surveillance without getting caught. The department leaving the flash drive in the computer for no reason. Alex getting into Mrs. Jones' apartment so easily, and conveniently having no earpiece so that Yassen couldn't hear what happened?
I spotted all of that and the rest, but let it go. I think I am just so glad we have this show that I'll take what we get 😅
It makes complete sense to assume that TV!Alex is more mature than book!Alex! TV!Alex isn't as sassy as his book counterpart and mostly comes across as calmer and more mature. This might also have something to do with the fact that we don't get to hear Alex's thoughts like we do in the books.
Yes, he is incredibly lucky Yassen had his back; otherwise, I'm not sure what TV!Nile would've done to him (Nile is another character who is very different from his book counterpart, but someone else I believe already talked about that)
Believe me, I utterly adore this show! It made so many improvements on the original material, which is also why I think it's important to point out the parts where it stumbled. Those are also often the bits that generate interesting discussions. But also, those faults can be explained very often with a little suspension of disbelief.
And yeah, I can absolutely see those things as faults, but it's also not very fun when Scorpia has all the cards and knows how to block their plans perfectly. Scorpia needs weaknesses that can be exploited! An all-powerful organisation that makes no mistakes is honestly boring and no fun.
Some of these things make sense if you consider that Scorpia, specifically Julia, feels complacent and overconfident. They managed to make the world believe that they were dead and gone while they continued to work in the shadows. Why would they worry so much about guarding one of their hard-to-reach training facilities against two untrained teenagers?
Also, it's nice to show off that Alex isn't the only one with skills since the TV series so heavily emphasises the importance of friends, family, and teamwork.
I fully agree with you about the flash drive issue. They tried to excuse it later but come on, you should be more paranoid than that!
Alex getting into Mrs Jones' apartment so easily is almost exactly like it went in the book (as far as I remember), so that is on Ahorz. And Alex can have a little competence as a treat before his breakdown 🙃
I honestly hadn't considered the idea of Yassen giving him an earpiece! I think it would've been caught by the metal detector, maybe? But this can also be chalked up to Yassen trusting his boy.
So yeah, it may have its issues, but I also genuinely believe it is one of the better adaptations I've seen in a very long time despite the many changes, and I couldn't be happier with what we got!
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Yarrow, do you happen to have any good vegan recipes that you'd be comfortable sharing on tumblr at all? Have been trying to eat way less meat and am somewhat hankering for more recipes than my two vegetarian cookbooks have. (Hope you're doing well!)
sure thing! it might get a bit long because i really like food. you know how some dogs are primarily food-motivated and will do anything to get a treat? i am one of those dogs lmao
i'm really bad at making decisions, including what to eat, so lately i've been "stealing" some recipes from Purple Carrot. the whole meal plan/food delivery thing doesn't seem practical to me, but they post all their recipes for free online and i really enjoy a lot of their ideas, just modifying them a bit for my own needs. for example last night i made this Crispy Harissa Tofu, except a) didn't have fresh mint available so i used dried basil; b) had raisins in my pantry already so i used those instead of currants; c) couldn't find harissa locally so i literally just used sriracha, and made a separate dijon mustard-based glaze for my husband who can't handle spice; and d) i'm okay with honey so i used that instead of agave. (maple syrup or simple syrup works too as a vegan sweetener) ...so a lot of my cooking is stuff like that, finding a recipe and only vaguely following it. i've been modifying Purple Carrot ideas for maybe the last month and a half or so. only having 8-15 recipes to choose from helps a lot with my decision fatigue so i might be doing this for a while xD
here's some more websites that i like to look at for inspiration:
From My Bowl
The Buddhist Chef
Minimalist Baker (not everything here is vegan, but still a lot of good, simple ideas)
Cheap Lazy Vegan (the title of this one says it all <3)
Shane and Simple (i don't agree with the whole diet-culture flavored "oil free" thing, but i remember really liking a squash casserole i made from here before)
Plant-Based on a Budget (i followed some of their meal plans back when i was first going vegan and they were very helpful! i got sick of oatmeal real fast though and am only in the last few months enjoying it again)
Pinch of Yum (again, not all vegan, but still plenty of ideas)
Holy Cow Vegan
Rabbit and Wolves
Here's a few easy staple dishes that i fall back on regularly:
-spaghetti: you can spruce up canned marinara by first cooking onions and garlic in margarine before adding the sauce, and get some protein in there by either using plant-based "meatballs", lentils, or textured vegetable protein. you can also make a nice mock-parmesan topping by adding walnuts, nutritional yeast, onion powder, and garlic powder to a food processor and pulsing it until its crumbly. or just use a generous amount of nutritional yeast. i know i'm being that stereotypical vegan by hyping up nooch but it's SO good and life-changing i swear to dog
-tofu stir fry: press extra-firm tofu to get as much moisture out as possible and cut it into cubes. fry in sesame oil with seasonings of choice. (salt and pepper, of course; if you can get or make a Chinese Five-Spice blend that works really well; otherwise i would probably fall back on a blend of cumin, cinnamon, anise, and ground ginger). cook the tofu on high heat for about 3-5 minutes and set aside, then dump a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables into the same wok or skillet and continue to cook on high heat. add in minced garlic (i keep a jar of pre-minced garlic in my fridge because i'm lazy), ginger paste (again; lazy), some brown sugar (or other sweetener), a hearty splash of soy sauce (or tamari), and some lime juice (or other acid-- i was out of lime juice the other night so i used rice vinegar, and that worked well) ...you can see i don't really "measure" things lol. cooking is an art and baking is a science which is why i don't bake serve cooked vegetables and tofu on top of rice or noodles
-rice bowl: rice and beans!! canned beans because who has time for beans!! very good with roasted broccoli, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, or butternut squash(you can roast most vegetables straight from frozen) and topped with a creamy sauce. if you're in the Pacific Northwest of the US and can get your hands on it, i highly recommend Yumm Sauce. i am addicted to this stuff and go through it too much so i've had to start to looking for alternatives because it is admittedly a bit pricey for how quick i can go through a bottle. a lot of vegan creamy sauces will call for soaked cashews, which requires a level of forethought i can't usually commit to, but is worth it when i remember to soak the cashews beforehand. other than that, tahini is my go-to base for a creamy sauce; i just whisk it together with lemon juice, syrup, garlic, some water, salt, and pepper.
creamy root vegetable soup: start by sauteing your aromatics (onion, garlic, leek, shallot etc) in olive oil. add Root Vegetable (carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beets, celery root, whatever you have on hand) and continue to saute for about ten minutes. add vegetable broth and a can of coconut milk. bring to a boil then reduce heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. add some acidity at the last minute, with vinegar or citrus juice. you can use an immersion blender to make it extra creamy or just eat it as-is
salad: arugula, spinach, or a spring mix for the greens, plus nuts and dried fruits, and some mock-chicken strips if i'm feeling fancy. make an easy vinaigrette dressing with olive oil and balsamic or red vine vinegar, plus a bit of salt and pepper and maybe some dijon mustard
general vegan tips:
-most tofu recipes are best with extra-firm tofu. just press it first by placing it on a plate, covering it with paper towels or clean kitchen towels, and then put another plate on top and let it sit for a bit. but if you're pressed for time, in my experience usually just firmly and thoroughly patting it as dry as possible before cutting works good enough
-while i love cooking, i'm also aware that i'm liable to run out of spoons at any moment, so i allow myself to take as many shortcuts as i can. pre-minced garlic and ginger paste, pre-made spice blends, even pre-cut and frozen produce, etc
-salad greens can last up to two weeks in the crisper if you put a paper towel in with the bag/box
-mushrooms last a lot longer if you store them in a paper bag
-oat milk is my favorite plant milk because it's very creamy and is much more neutral tasting than soy or coconut. if you're trying to replace milk and fat is one of the main things you're getting from that milk, try not to use almond milk because it's thin and sad and flavorless
-cooking oatmeal with oat milk is existentially weird but overall tasty
-there are a lot of great meat alternatives out there nowadays! Gardein has good frozen meatballs and chicken strips; Beyond Meat makes good burger patties and sausages; Field Roast also makes sausages that i enjoy; and Tofurkey has some good chicken alternatives. if you can find it, young jackfruit makes a really good alternative to pulled pork. i made some tacos with it a while back and it was uncanny how meat-like it was. the only thing with jackfruit is you might want another source of protein with your meal, since the fruit itself doesn't have much i don't think
-any balanced meal imho should have a combo of carbs, protein, and fat. mix-and-match plant-based macronutrients to find what works for you. grains are a good source of carbs: i love white rice (easy to cook), couscous, millet, and even the occasional quinoa; legumes and nuts provide a good amount of protein; nuts and seeds are also great for fat, along with coconut and avocado
-nutritional yeast nutritional yeast nutritional yeast nutritional yeast nutritional ye
-oreos are vegan thank god for oreos
hope this little ramble was helpful! :3
#answered#fannish-snailien#like. i really AM food motivated#i make meal plans for each week and it's absurd how much it helps with my depression#like...having yummy stuff to look forward to is enough to get me out of bed and semi-functional lmao#fuck diet culture#if food is my motivation for living a good life then GOOD i have a reason to live bitch!!!#my other piece of advice is related to this: if you're going to plan recipes make sure they're recipes you're excited about#don't feel obligated to eat something if it's healthy but not appetizing#idk my two cents#long post#food#recipes#vegan#plant-based#veganing on main#resources
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Hi!! sorry for the late response, you answered my ask about jpop idols, thannk you so much for such a thoughtful answer!!!
Honestly when i was younger i was really into mostly hello!proyect, so i know that they had literally child groups with berryz and cute, whose younger member was 8 years old! It was pretty creepy how they would make those photobooks with them posing on bikinis as soon as they turned 13 or 14.
I also really loved perfume, it used to be my favorite group, but like you said nakata got lazy and started prioritizing other acts around the level 3 era, and it really got cemented with cosmic explorer, which is when i started to lose interest in them. Their costumes also used to be so good, creative, and designed thoughtfully for each girl, but now its always the same costume except achan gets the longer skirt, kashiyuka the shorter skirt, and nocchi gets the shorts. Even the fabric is visibly cheaper. I feel like the only one who still cares is mikiko as her choreographies are still good.
But i dont know who that artist you mentioned is, but i'm interested in hearing the story 🍵
Japan is EXTREMELY problematic when it comes to child sexualization and the fact that rightoids who are constantly blaming the left for entertaining sexuality degeneracy....have no problem sporting anime pfp/watch anime is everything you need to know about how much of clowns those people are 🥴 They don't care about child abuse, they just pretend they do to dunk of their political opponents.
They try to cope saying it's "cultural" but Japan is currently recording an increase of sexual crimes, so...why would they defend a culture suspected of increasing sexual assault coming from a country struggling to contain their own sexual predator? 🤔 Also why the "it's cultural" argument shouldn't be used for honor killing and child marriage then ? Oh my bad, it's Muslims so this time we can finally admit it's a problem 🤡
To be fair with Perfume, they've been around since ~20 years now, so it makes sense their concepts are starting to become more rehashed. Nakata is a VERY derivative artist (even when he tried something new after he discovered future bass, he shoved this sound in everything he made around that time, whether it was on his own album 'Digital Native' or Perfume song "If you Wanna" lol.
The concept of them having distinctive outfits (as you said, longer dress/skirt for A-chan it's said that's bc she has wider hips which aren't considering a good feature in Japan, shorter dress/skirt for Kashiyuka, and shorts for Nocchi) goes back to their debut, and I think it's incredible they sticked to it for so long (especially since they also have respective hairstyle code - Nocchi has never been able to have hair longer than her chin for most of her life.... 🥲), but yeah, after so many years.... it's starting to get old. But they're basically idols I don't think doing an イメチェン (= drastic change of style) would be well received...
In the era of streaming, the lowering of budget for music videos is global. Perfume last outstanding MV (great costume + set design + extras on set) was "Cling Cling"... which was released almost 10 years ago🥴 but other Japanese artists had a drastic drop in MV quality, included Ayu Hamasaki (the artist I talked about in my first reply).
She is Japan best selling artist of all times and her "Jewel" MV has been for a while listed in the most expensive music video of all times🥶💎
Ayu story is quite endearing because her dad abandoned her when she was a child and was edging on delinquency. She's from an era when random girls were being scouted in karaoke and producers propelled them into stardom, tho very few of them made it beyond one single (which was the case of Ayu who started... making rap LOL) but by an odd turn of events, she got another chance where this time she did pop and things eventually took off. What's interesting with Ayu is that despite being marketed as an idol at first, she from the start had control over her music/image: she wrote all her lyrics, choose to display her own (very distinctive) personal style, etc. By her sophomore album, LOVEppears, she endorsed a more daring image and in the following one, Duty, she dropped the cutesy idol thing to become more diva like and confident ...
That's also the time she started pulling out very disturbing music videos. There are A LOT of them, but I'd say "Ladies Night" is the one who stuck the most with me (which is weird bc the song is pretty positive : celebrating girlhood support)...but the MV is just unecessary creepy and dark. It starts off cute & goofy...only to become more and more scary & nightmarish 😰 WHY?
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Her '(miss) understood' album era is pretty dark tbh ALL the MV of this album have this sad, dull, gloomy energy... Excellent album, but very dark energy
Thankfully there is "Fairyland" (which was also one of the most expensive MV of that time) to brighten up that energy
- Her 'Duty' and 'Party Queen' album booklet + SURREAL MV features full on sex kitten programming (it's interesting that "SURREAL" has subliminals about her -then- hidden relationship with Tomoya Nagase (another popular male entertainer of that time) and has a frenetic vibe which is very reminiscent of hypnosis/trance. I hate that it's one of my favorite MV of her 😓(the scenery is just soooo pretty).
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- dissociation in "RAINBOW" and "Don't look back" MV
- mind control in "Alterna" and "Marionette"
- "Free & Easy" MV is a gigantic nod to Joan of Arc and apostolic martydom
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- transhumanism in "Real Me" MV
Now that music videos don't have the same budget as they did 15-20 years ago, Ayu's MV aren't nowhere as elaborated as they were before (also her music has gone down to the toilets - she should've retire after her 10 years best of). But it's obvious she sold out to achieve this level of fame and success, therefore she had to shove all these twisted messages in her MV.
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BMG did know and did their job. But Louis can be a terrible stubborn bully and I can say for certain he insisted on this huge tour. How do I know? Because BMG said that his fanbase is very young. They studied his fanbase. You can't make the financial plans for people who have to ask their parents for money so BMG are not stupid. They did fan oriented promo & merch (cheap) and even indulged him in his one time festival events. Promo budget was relatively small which is reasonable. Because of his 1D past they could still book primetime tv with the old producer friends 1D had so BMG pulled those strings, they'd be stupid not to. Louis definately self- financed the entire documentary, both festivals, his live concert during covid. So BMG had no financial worries since he payed himself for the expensive stuff himself. Might be Louis provided part of promo budget to get those billboards on different continents. BMG work with both legacy artists (with older fanbases able to buy and having similar strings to pull) and breaking artists with very young fanbases(unknown with no industry ties). Since others don't complain about them it means Louis's own arrogant decisions is why this crashes and burns so hard. I can bet he only dictates and refuses to listen. It's why everyone in the industry shuns him after they work with him beside him bullying his crew. No amount of money can force them to stay or even fake support (Liam G lol). His hired band jumps the ship as fast as they can. And Louis really does despise the fact that his fanbase is 90% or even 95% larries (exlarries are still the same conspiracy theorists) while the very few louies are being bullied by the conspiracy theorists. But he never hid it. He did everything he could to show them he is who he always has been. Louis is constant in who he really is. Bullied kids back in school. Never changed. No remorse or shame. He hated the way he was forced to pretend to be someone else in 1D. Even then he managed to be the biggest bully, to burn all the bridges. Its why he and Zayn were so miserable together. They both hated having to pretend when alcohol, drugs, partying, being lazy while making easy money off royalties is what they truly want to do. And they had to hide their views, they both are so aggresive.
Plenty of perceptive points here! Zayn really did torpedo his own career in order to laze around on a farm smoking weed. He's more of an introvert who doesn't crave the adulation of lots of underage fans, let alone their actual physical touch, like creepy Louis.
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I understand why a lot of people don't like AI art. I will be just as miffed when people start using AI-generated background music on podcasts, YouTube, TV theme songs etc. instead of paying actual musicians.
But as a filthy casual hobbyist musician, releasing everything on Bandcamp with a minimum price of FREE, I have spent orders of magnitude more on gear than I will probably ever make in sales, because I enjoy it and am doing it for myself as much as anything. If a similar hobbyist artist were to hear my music and offer up cover art for free because that is *their* hobby and they *want* to, fantastic! Until then, or until I decide I want to get serious, I'll cobble together what I can from twigs & berries and AI is just another tool.
Also, the "art" is pretty bad. Anyone choosing to use it at its current level is not a lost commission; they wouldn't have paid well, for lack of budget and/or taste.
FWIW my opinion on AI generated music is similar: it's bad, and anyone using it wouldn't have paid for better anyway, but it's a tool.
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What Did I Watch: #19
What a joy to watch something that was beautiful to look at even though it's still dumb at its center? But even with archetypal story, I love Semantic Error. It was your typical enemies to lovers. It was believable to the point, yeah it could happen to the most of us. Unless well we're not gonna come across somebody like Jang Jaeyoung for god's sake. It was too good to be true.
Despite the conventional trope, I must say this series has one of the most gorgeous frame out there. I'm not only talking about the framing, but the lighting, colors, focus, and the movement, everything seemed had meaning in which correlating with the characters. The colors sometimes in your face and sometimes sneak through and fades away before you know it. I respect those who knows how to deal with their camera regardless of the minimum budget. Super proud of what they did for the entire episode 7. Purple was all over the screen and not once I felt irritated. It was necessary to show audiences their heart eventually leads to one another. Because blue is belong to Sangwoo and Red is Jaeyoung's color. Red plus blue means purple. Genius.
Whoever designed beautiful shots on this deserves to get raise. It was so thought out and you just can feel it every frame has meanings. It could generate discussion, hell you could just use some of its takes into film studies.
And I might say, this is one of the best that Korea offered. It's going to be tough to beat this (fingers crossed on To My Star S2 though).
There had been discourse in here, regarding that twist in Enchanté. You know what I'm talking about. For me personally, I like the twist, it was rational, it brought a new depth to the characters. It certainly a thing that moves the plot forward and now I rather skeptical with how they're going to end the story in 2 episodes.
Back to the twist, I don't really want to call it a twist because I kinda already predicted it would going that way, instead the other way. Because personally if the twist went the other way, it just lazy writing. But, the twist itself it wasn't genius per se. At least, it gave Theo a motivation from the beginning and a realistic reason for him to did that. What I'm trying to convey is at least it does not make us feel stupid and not mocking our brain ah. That's the least a goddamn series should do.
Perhaps the problem was laying on how dialogue evolved after the revealed of the twist. The confession was written badly because it was just too ordinary. I could find hundreds of copycats in straight movies. For 2 people like Force and Book who got the acting chops and explosive chemistry this was easy. Way too easy. Even the kiss, it was hot but got edited in some kind of soap opera-ish and I was like P' Film l, you could have done it better.
Anyway, I don't really have problems with Enchanté except it still fall into the usual BL trope you always watched. It's predictable.
And that's bring me to Cutie Pie. Oh my god. I can choose not to watched it. But sometimes, we people keep making bad decisions for ourselves.
This is yaoi. This is your manga in early 20s, which is not my cup of tea. I prefer my BL when it isn't making an effort to become a proper BL. Not Me for example. Or all the danmei adaptation from China. Because the story can still work even the romance is being subverted. The story does not stand on the usual BL trope. Meanwhile in Cutie Pie, the romance is taking on the front row and when you taking that out, you got nothing left.
Maybe I'm watching too many gritty and realistic stuff but the premise itself is just doesn't make any sense. Unless, come back to point one, you're living in yaoi manga pages. Or you're feeling nostalgic. Yet, I don't grow up in full blown yaoi household. My encounter with yaoi wasn't come from manga. It was from manhwa, which yes a lot of grittier, darker, and full of mentally unstable characters. We know for sure that yaoi was created by straight female and sometimes fetishize the whole gay community and this one probably doesn't have any different. It's clearly written by straight female to cater straight audiences.
I like Zee, he was good in suits and that's my shallow reason why I watched Cutie Pie. But lord, I was struggling to finish it. I'm still on episode 1 3/4 going to 4/4. I wonder, when will I be able to just sit and watch without asking why the fuck this and that happened on the first place?
I mean if you grow up with yaoi manga, you sure want to check this out, either way you're going to end up like me perhaps. It's okay but I have so many conflicted feelings. Maybe if I can resort my feelings in order, perhaps I could resume this. Maybe I just need to watch Zee's face and not feeling so much guilty when the plot literally crashed.
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Apritello Express Evidences, part 1
Greetings, Apritello enthusiasts and attention! Here comes a loong post is written by totally nerd. You've been warned. Here we go.
The thing is that Apritello is a double-edged sword. The series shows us established friendship of these two, give us a lot of content with them. We can see development of relationship through interaction between the characters, their reaction about the situations they are put in. We can sense their synergy and bound through the show.
Donnie and April have incredible chemistry, and both options, brotp and otp seems fine to me.
But let me tell you why I ship them.
Apritello is the kind of pairings, which consists of small details, hints, that's hidden, but if you're sharp and attentive one, you will notice that. Apritello has a strong foundation: the best friends trope.
And from the very beginning, it works as planned.
When I start watching show, I could say that April and Donnie are best friends. It is worth noting that April is like an older sister to the other brothers, more of a sisterly figure than a friend, but with Donnie she behaves somewhat differently, namely, as best friend. Obviously, she sets him apart from his brothers, although girl tries to pay attention to all of them equally. And Donnie behaves as well.
Dee's battle shell designs for April needs as well as his. His shell transform into comfy spot for taking ride for April. Special and only for her. Because his bros are not supposed to use it (at least, he carries no one on his back), Donnie carries them by his techno-bó or his limbs.
This tiny detail shows his special treatment to her. April is a very, very special occasion to D. Don does care about her comfort, he accept the way she is. Donatello does not try to prevent her from participating in their affairs because he respects her decisions and is pleased that April can be shoulder to shoulder with him.
D is glad to be at her service.
Yeah, Dee's still playing cool, he has image to perform as tough and coolheaded guy. So Don doesn't show his intentions, interest and feeling to other people (he's tryin', but fails). Because his actions matter. They are always small, hidden, but meaningful.
April, in return, trusts Dee and depends on his tech, even knowing what his inventions are the opposite of success (usually).
Go on. Look at Donnie's facial expressions and body language when April is near.
Donnie seems more relaxed when she's around, happier. His emotional response is always different from his brothers ones.
Oh, and look, he wanted to be first to give her a high three.
They worry about each other. Look at Don. He does worry about her way more than his brothers. Yeah, they all want to protect her, but Donnie is more expressive.
Mayham has no particular sympathy for the brothers: he is afraid of Raph and behaves aggressively, he is indifferent to Leo and Mikey. Mayham immediately takes a liking to April. And then the details come back: he let Donnie touch his neck. The most vulnerable place for any living creation, for a second. Let him to study an important vial without any hesitation. Mayham depends on April trust for Donnie. When everything goes wrong for Don, the little doggie comes to his rescue, just as April would have done. Is the hint transparent enough?
We can see links with "A mystic library", wherе Donnie begins to look for solutions to save April's pet. Yes, this may seem like his next leap, "sit down, I'm smart, and now I'll solve all the problems, watch and learn," but Don says one phrase that opens up the veil of the second plan, what happens behind the scenes. "My illiteral colleagues and I was conducting a mustic research, with a life of the beloved pet, hanging in a bounce".
Strange wording, Donatello. Beloved pet? Not yours, as we can see. I can say, that everything in this sentence is true, but Donnie and Mayham has something more.
Continue. Next episode "Origami tsunami". Interactions are kept to a minimum, as April herself appears for a maximum of 5 minutes in the series itself. But devil is always in the details, dear friends.
When April was attacked and hung up, the only one who excitedly called out to her was Donny. Raph is furious that the thieves have escaped, Leo is frustrated that their plan has failed, and Mikey is worried about the salami.
Yeah, we didn't see his worries about her when she fell, because Donnie is on the mission and must be coolheaded turtle, and second, he's calm because now April life is safe and sound, out of the danger.
Dear passangers, Apritello Express arrives to the next station - episode "War and Pizza".
Bare facts:
1. April has Donnie's number on an emergency call.
2. "Anything for you"
3. Donnie is the reason why Alberto knows April's name.
No one calles April by her name (except for Donnie, while phone call, but Alberto wasn't nearby) it was "Captain O'Neil" by her chief, her badge seems blank. And yeah, you can say, that's just economy of budget, but I assure you: in the first episode we were shown the name of the delivery guy. The animators were not lazy bones and wrore "Stewart" on his badge. So if something isn't there, then it either shouldn't be there, or it really isn't, that's how this show works.
So, the reason explained in the episode. When Al has short circuit, parts of its new code flashed through its mind.
Info about April was in its memory, in its code. Alberto was a lame animatronic, and it seems somewhat outdated. I do really doubt about Alberto is being something smartass machine with complicated AI like Freddy's Pizza's ones. Quite questionable. Donatello fix Al's brain and wrote code, synchronize with his remote control. He put information about Cap O'Neil into animatronic's head. All this pictures are kind of massage: "You was created for birthday celebrations. You are machine, and there concepts of "life" and "birth". Do great party for this birthday kid and April won't be like this". Or, something like that.
So Alberto did - do a memorable party. And he do what his creator programmed him to do, but in his way.
4. In other words, Alberto was a tool to impress April. Don flaunts himself in front of her, stating how he did the upgrade while doing the upgrade, even though April is fully aware of his tech wizard. And his abilities supposed to help Cap O'Neil to finish the birthday party, so she will stay at her job, not fired. All thanks to Donnie and his upgrade Alberto. (Or not)
By the way, Donnie was the last to leave April in ruined "Alberto's". And it's not an isolated case, it is a pattern.
5. They understand each other without words.
First, Donny came at her at the speed of light. Second, she hadn't even finished speaking before Dee was taking Al apart. Third, their chaotic, well-coordinated work? Donnie was a distraction (although he wanted to just take a break from the battle or let Alberto's guard down, while April just knocked him out). Donnie and April are great team, and sometimes the DonniexApril team is much more precise, coordinated, and interdependent than the DonniexBrothers one.
D&A feel each other and anticipate each other's actions, their skills complement each other, creating an incredible synergy of their interaction. They act as a whole, while it's not always possible with his brothers, even though they're family and know each other the way more Donnie know April. And Dee hasn't trained with cap O'Neil.
Donatello didn't show his crush for April. No puppy, loving eyes, no lovey-dovey speeches, no planning schemes (at least, the audience don't see one) . He just want her attention, but stays cool and hidden. D is already her BFF, but still.
The same thing is claimed in 5B episode - Mascot Melee. Donnie has no problems with interaction with idol of his childhood - Atomic Lass. She'd put Leo in a stupor, but Donnie? He playfully challenges her to a dance duel. Yes, he adores this character, who may have become his measure of the attractiveness of others to Donatello, determined his type. But still, he's playing all cool and confident guy, he's really smooth with girls, so you will never see a puppy loving eyes from him. Only two things can betray him at this point: his voice and his body language. Remember, how's soft his voice became for Atomic Lass? Now I want you to remember the scene before, in turtle tank, when April sent guys a meme.
D is the first to respond to the message, despite the fact that Mikey is sitting closest to the screen. And the responding is a little too emotional for this situation, don't you think?
And this face of his. And he comments it. He likes her sense of humour.
The only difference between April and Atomic Lass is that the first one is a real girl who is a friend of their family, practically a member of it; and the other one is just a fictional character. It is easier to say about love for a fictional character, because it brings less problems for a teenager, especially when he is living with three brothers and a father who likes to tease as well. Donatello needs to be careful and outline the area of emotions he could show, so that he does not get hurt.
Now, dear passangers, we are returning to the previous episode, shall we?
Donnie presents to his brothers his precious Turtle tank, but she's gone, and it's really necessary to find out, who has taken her. And the first person to suspect is April.
Something is odd, don't you think? Yeah, Raphael has taken tyre for their "Midnight special", Leo claimed that Donnie's stuff is common, but they are D's beothers. It's natural for family to borrow(stole) stuff of each other. But this trend was not observed in April. She would never steal anything from Donnie, much less steal anything from him.
Actually, there is a good, logical and solid explanation here. April was number 1 in Donatello' suspect list, because he simply told her about Turtle tank. His brothers didn't know he were working at Moon buggy, except Mikey (Orange helps Dee get the vehicle from Repomantis), but they didn't know what exactly Donnie was working for. They didn't know he build the Turtle tank, he kept it a secret, to surprise his brothers. But April knew.
- Alright you! Where's our turtle tank?
- Hi, DONNIE. You have 9 seconds to say, why are you just broke my door.
- Someone's stole Donnie's turtle tank.
- Haha-ow, I see. As your best friend, you naturally suspect me.
- She gets it!
- Oh-ho, don't give me that! You're the only one could taken it!
The only one, because she knew about it.
As Splints said in this episode - "April is not a snitch"
Donatello does trust April and share with her both, sorrows and joys. But we are not shown this directly. We do not see the action itself, we do not see their calls and conversations on the phone late at night, we only see the consequence. We have no choice and take it as a given.
And the way she cooled him down? Fast, efficient, and Donnie seems to used to it. Moreover, she slapped everyone, but still, she throw Don out of window the last. However, why such a large time delay between him, being slapped and him, was throwing out of the window?
And my favourite scene. It was obvious that Donnie had taken the hardest hit (judging by his scream and the way he was putting his knuckles back in place). Don then claims that their inner circle is secure, Mikey tries to make amends for everyone, and April agrees, blowing them a kiss and closing the window. Cute and mean, isn't it? (You're cute! but mean! why do I always go for your type?! - ep. War and Pizza)
Nota bene: Donnie wouldn't apologize to April. Tough, not caring badass boy image, remember? Even to best friends. It's hard to him to express his feelings by using words, he cannot do it in proper way. But he has Mikey, who is so alike inner him. Michelangelo apologizes not only for himself, but for D mostly, because D starts suspected April.
Let's continue: the episode 8B: Hypno Part Deux
• Donnie put "Donnie's blocker" at April's phone to protect her.
It's common thing that your friend install some programs or apps on your device. But you will always ask your friend to do such a favour, and you will always know about what, when and where were installed on your phone.
And April didn't know Donnie had done something with her phone. It was a real surprise for her, to see blocker with "Donnie says no-no-no".
And you know, the interface of his app. The way he tell this current phrase. Donnie could put a huge banner "THE APP YOU WANT DOWNLOAD TO IS A REAL PIECE OF GARBAGE", as usual antiviruses do. But no, voice interface. It makes the app more personal and thoughtful. Because when Don made gifts for his brother, the program was voiced by a computer-generated female voice. Yes, the tank's interface is voiced by Donatello himself, but his voice sounds more like Google than the real Don. And, we talking about HIS BABEY, for a second. Bit still, the point remains.
• Also, Dale.
Dale is nerdy boy in purple, wow, how convenient for making a parallel with certain purple turtle.
But thing is, April doesn't like Dale. He's clingy, remora guy, who has a little obsession with April, even he's not harmful, still, such behaviour freaks girls (and not them only) out. Her classmate is usually tell her what April O'Neil is "his favourite person" and he loves her. There is little that is attractive about this behavior.
So, there is nothing new and unpredictable here that Dale was rejected. Because April didn't, doesn't and won't like him because of his lame personality and strange behaviour. Our girl in yellow do right thing: she clearly sets personal boundaries and does not allow any dubious personalities to invade them. So that's the reason she refuses to go on a date with him at the end. He's weird, obsessed, and she doesn't like him.
Donatello, as far as I concerned from different versions of TMNT, was always a little obsessive with some things. And, you know, putting a blocker inside your best friend's phone seems a little weird, because it's, in simple words, violation of privacy and personal space. And there are people who may regard this as stalking or sorta.
Yeah, for the most part, he gets away with it, not only because April's focus is in a different area, but also because their bond is stronger than April's with anyone else at school.
She has known him for years. Donnie is her best friend. I can't say that it's fine to her when Dee violates her personal space - her phone, but April can accept Donatello's personality in general.
And he does really have good intentions. Donnie installed this blocker, developed by himself only for one reason: to protect personal space April from fishy apps from nowhere, from being hacked and etc. Don knew her too well, how much she depends on stupid apps that will distract her. He also knew well, that he can't be with her 24/7 to fix problems with April's phone, so Dee put a part of himself to prevent any harm in the future.
And again, "Donnie's gifts"'s vibes. Donatello genuinely cared about April, because he wrote, coded, developed, designed, and dubbed it, turned on the database, and installed it all on April's phone. 'cause, you know, writing programs in general is a bit of a hassle, but writing an antivirus is much more difficult, because viruses are changing, and questionable applications are finding ways to bypass. Do you feel how much effort Dee put in for her?
But Donatello didn't mean to fix April, as he tried to do with his brothers. Purple turtle accepts this girl the way she is, and tries his best to play smoothly with April, by adjusting, not being passive aggressive jerk. It's his outstanding way to show his caring nature, soft side.
Remember, small but meaningful actions.
Maybe, Donnie also can foresee that April may be forced to download some suspicious program, but still, it work: he managed to prevent April being hypnotized, even if couldn't be physically with April at the this moment - Dee was working for Repo Mantis, building dog's paradise for Todd. That's why, by the way, Leo and Raph were dragged into this whole situation. Mayham would teleported literally anyone to help his hostess. Donnie just wasn't at the Lair at the moment.
And on this note, we'll take a break for now. Stay tuned, expect parsing of the series, there's a lot to discuss.
Part 2
Part 3
#rottmnt#rise of tmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja#rise donnie#rise donatello#rottmnt donatello#hamato donatello#april o'neil#rise april#rottmnt april#aprilxdonnie#rottmnt apritello#apritello#lonnnnnnnng post#sorry not sorry#zero regrets#apritello express
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Tangled Salt Marathon - No Time Like the Past
While I wouldn’t call this the worst episode of the series, there are several others I dislike more, I would call this the most ill conceived story in the show.
All the other bad episodes have potential but are let down by poor presentation, boring predictability, or sloppy planning. This one however, is fundamentally flawed in it’s very basic premise and so ranks in the bottom of most fans lists. Even people who are far more forgiving of season three and than I am, and are hardcore New Dream stans, still dislike this episode. That’s how bad it is.
Summary: Rapunzel discovers Old Lady Crowley tossing out Cassandra's things. She is upset and demands that they be left alone. She then has Lance and Eugene help her save all of Cassandra's mementos and personal belongings, but she becomes saddened when Eugene reminds her that Cassandra turned her back on "her". Rapunzel takes a box of her things along with, unknowingly, a mysterious hourglass. As she examines it, she accidentally drops and smashes it and she and Pascal find themselves sent back into the past. They run into a teenage Eugene and Lance who keep calling Rapunzel "Sideburns". Rapunzel realizes that she and Pascal have inhabited the bodies of the Stabbington Brothers and decide to recruit the young thieves in getting the hourglass from the castle back.
Fun Fact! That Dummy is Rapunzel’s Doing
Minor nitpick here, but Cass had nothing to do with putting Eugene’s face on her sparring dummy. Rapunzel voluntarily did that back in Under Raps. Cas never requested it nor even expressed any joy over receiving said ‘gift’.
Basically the show is attributing one of Rapunzel’s mistakes/flaws to Cassandra in order to introduce a very nonsensical plot point later. So I need ya’ll to keep that in mind as we go along.
Lets Talk About the Episode’s Ordering
We don't have production codes for season three like we did for the previous two seasons. So we can’t know for sure what order everything was originally planned in, but I would argue that this episode should have came before Return of the King.
For starters this is a “bottle” episode; it takes place mostly in the past and the only present day characters who show up are Eugene, Raps, Lance, and Crowely. As such you could potentially slot this episode in anywhere before Cassandra’s Revenge. You can’t really do that with most of the other episodes so it could have been easily moved around when airing.
Therefore, I would argue that it should have been the first episode after Rapunzel’s Return for three key reasons.
It would have given Edmund time to travel to Corona and give Raps time to start up big building projects like fixing Old Corona. In fact she’s already approving building plans for the capitol city at the start of the episode. Which could even explain why she took so long getting to the castle repairs if she was taking care of the stuff that the Saporians messed up else where.
Rapunzel’s stance over wanting to keep Cassandra’s things makes more sense early on, both in universe and in a meta context. Raps would still have hope if Cass has only been gone for a month or two instead what would now be four or five months down the line. It also makes sense that Crowely wouldn’t wait around for that long. And from a meta standpoint, the audience would still be oblivious to what the heck Cass was up to and could theoretically side with Raps better; or at least empathize with her view point more, even while disagreeing with her.
Events in this episode better explains Eugene’s decisions in Return of the King and gives the audience more context for certain stuff.
So Why Is There a Random Magical Time Traveling Hourglass in the Storage Vault?
Slowly but surely the series has abandoned all pretense that there’s any logical world building in the show. Magical things just appear randomly now without any explanation whatsoever. Worse than that, things like the hourglass and map to the cursed tomb are treated as if they were always there, unlike the magical beings that they happened to run into in past seasons.
The problem with this is a lack of consistency. You can’t have sceptics like Eugene and Varian if magic is so common and wide spread that anyone can run into it at anytime. Not to mention it diminishes the specialness and importance of the sundrop and moonstone if powerful magical items can be so easily found and stirred, undermining important plot points and the tension surrounding them.
But most frustrating of all, is that this could have been easily fixed by just stating on screen at some point that magic attracts other magic. Meaning it’s only Rapunzel herself who routinely runs into these things and not just everybody and anybody.
None of This Stuff Holds Any Meaning
Show don’t tell!
At several points through out season three, both Raps and Cass morn over Cassandra’s left behind things. They tell us constantly that these objects hold significant meaning to them, but I, the viewer, have no damn clue as to why.
We were never shown on screen what was so special about these things other than the fact that it was junk Cass collected. There’s no story attacked to these assortment of objects nor any previous indication that Cassandra valued them beyond their usefulness. As such, any scenes involving her stuff fall emotionally flat.
Eugene is the One in the Right Here.
Eugene’s right.
Any well adjust and mature adult will tell you he’s right.
If someone doesn’t want a relationship with you, than that’s it. There is nothing you can do but to move on. It sucks, but its life. To ignore that is to ignore someone else’s boundaries and personal autonomy; while also devaluing yourself and you’re own needs.
In a competent show this would be a set up for Rapunzel to learn something about letting go and taking care of oneself emotionally.
But this isn’t a competent show.
But Lobster is for Poor Folk
Food history time!
Lobster, and shellfish in general, have been considered low class food for centuries. Especially around costal areas like Corona. It’s easy to attain, cheap, and not regulated like hunting was in much of Europe. In America, specifically, lobster was fed to prisoners and there’s historical accounts of riots being started over it.
Heck, less than forty years ago, no one lived on the coast but poor people. That’s why there’s historical communities of black people living on the southeastern islands in the US and why my father grew up in the swamps of Alabama during the 50s and 60s.
The gentrification of coastal property and seafood, like lobster, is a very recent phenomenon in human history, starting in the late 70s early 80s with the booming tourism industry and increasing globalization.
So while I understand that the joke here is meant to be reflective of our current understanding of lobster being a status symbol, in universe, it’s the equivalent of Eugene getting excited for chicken nuggets instead of his usual bowl of cereal because the story takes place before the 20th century.
This means that these kids are so poor that fucking mcdonald’s fast food would be considered a rare treat compared to the slop they usually eat. Yet again what is meant to be a lighthearted joke turns suddenly dark when you stop to think about it for all of two seconds all because the writers are so flippant about their world and characters.
This Wasn’t Planned Out, So the Timeline Doesn’t Add Up Anymore and Resources are Wasted
Remember the flashback in The Return of Strongbow?
Now I need you to remember that season three is two years later from season one and the movie. Eight years ago then, would be ten years ago now.
The Eugene and Lance in the bottom picture is suppose to be roughly the same age as the Eugene and Lance in the top picture; give or take a few months.
I know teenage boys can grow fast, but not that fast.
Eugene at 16 looks the same as he does at 26. All because the writers were too lazy to preplan things out ahead of time.
We should have seen the teen models with recasted voices back during that first flashback if they were going to tell this story later. Or the previous plot point should have been less than eight years ago.
In fact the first flashback no longer makes any sense being so many years ago given Eugene’s engagement and recent breakup with Stalyan, and the later reveal that he was working for the Baron during the original movie.
Sloppy planning like this not only makes for a confusing timeline but it also wastes limited resources. I like the new models, I like the actors cast for these younger roles, and I do like the concept of seeing more of Eugene’s past. But going through all of that trouble and money for what amounts to one throw away episode is mismanagement of the budget and work schedule.
Baby Varian Is the Episode’s Only Saving Grace
I know people are divided on the deign here. Some love it and some hate it, but that’s a personal taste thing. The actual scene itself is golden either way, because it’s such a funny eater egg. Fans on both sides made memes out of this for days. It’s legendary.
Personally I’m more in the ‘love it’ camp, though I can see the issues people have with the design. My main defense of it is more the fact that we got kid designs for the other OCs in the show and it’s only fair Varian got one as well. The fact that he’s in smaller versions of the S1 clothes doesn’t bother me anymore than when Lance ran around for two seasons in the same outfit, including when he was a kid.
So if I like it, then why am I talking about it a salt review?
Cause the most memorable part of an episode shouldn’t be a throw away gag!
People bring up baby Varian way more than they do about anything else in the episode, and no it’s not just because the character popular. It’s because most would like to forget what comes after this scene.
Where is Quirin, by the Way?
Why is your six year old son running around the big city unsupervised?
This wouldn’t get talk about as much it wasn’t for the fact that Quirin being neglectful in season one was a motivating factor in his conflict with Varian. A conflict that was suppose to be resolved back in Rapunzel’s Return but we the audience have yet to visually see any difference in behavior since then.
Quirin’s absence here in the past highlights his absence in the present day and reminds the audience aware that we’ve not been given a satisfying conclusion to one of the most important arcs in the series.
Lets Talk About Wasted Potential
Like I said, I like the idea of exploring Eugene’s past. But we should have gotten that back in season two when it was more relevant. Part of why this episode fails is because Eugene has reached the end of his original character development. He’s now on an identity crisis arc which has nothing to do with this episode.
But you know who still hasn’t finished developing? Rapunzel.
Rapunzel has lots to still learn and viewing her past through outside eyes could have turned this story into something really special. Especially with the ‘inhabiting another body’ plot point.
You have no end of options here,
Have Raps inhabit Cassandra’s body for a day and gain insight into what motivates her. It could have been either before or after they met, both offers up possibilities.
Have Raps inhabit Eugene’s body and experience what he had to deal with growing up and come to see his point of view. (This could have also worked with the Sabbingtons set up had the writers not been stupid.)
And my personal favorite, send her back to right after Queen for a Day and have her stuck in either Varian’s or Ruddiger’s bodies. Force her to see what she did to him and have her acknowledge she was wrong.
And those are just the most obvious choices, there’s other more out of left field things you can do that would still work with good writing. Like exploring Lady Caine’s past, inhabiting Arianna’s body and learning how to be a real queen, get dumped into actual young Gothel and lay out clues to the future Zhan Tiri plot, or possess one of the Brotherhood and experience the final days of the Dark Kingdom; the list just goes on and on and on.
But I Thought You Didn’t Put Kids in Jail Frederic?
Remember that Raps and Pascal are possessing the Stabbingtons who are still teenagers here. They can’t be much older than Varian.
This means that Varian isn’t some special case. Teens have received harsh and deadly punishments in the past for non-violent crimes like theft.
Also teens are called kids still by the majority of the cast. They’re aren’t considered adults with the same rights as someone in say their twenties, yet they can be punished the same as an adult would. Which is horrendous in any time period.
So in conclusion, Frederic is a fucking liar!
Tangled the Series can’t decide if it’s in the far past or a reflection of the modern day. As such it winds up supporting the worst of both worlds. Barbaric practices like hanging for minor crimes and prison slave labor are treated as the norm and never called out for the horrific things that they are; treated as a joke even, but we’re suppose to accept that this world also somehow views adolescence through the lens of late 20th century sensibilities even as it forces minors to go through such atrocities.
Like what are you trying to say show? What is your message on the transition of adolescence to adulthood regarding rights and responsibilities? And don’t tell me ‘it’s not that deep’ because this is suppose to be a coming of age show! That’s the entire premise of the series!
So How Old Are Stan and Pete Again?
I was always under the impression that Pete was a newbie guard, closer to Cass and Eugene’s age than say Cap or Frederic. That’s why he screws up so much because he’s inexperienced, why he seemed to be the closest thing to a equal colleague Cass had in the guard when she was also just starting out, and why I assumed those braided girls from the movie were his sisters.
I mean there was nothing on screen previously that would necessarily contradict this reveal, it just doesn’t feel right, that’s all. I guess he could be like 20 here and be 30 in the show. That would make him only a few years older than Eugene, but still doesn’t explain why he’s so useless a decade later.
I’m fine with Stan being here though. I always thought of him being the older of the two. In fact I headcannon Willow as his mysterious wife that he talked about back in Monty’s episode during season one. (She’s Stan and Pete’s beard, and they’re totally in a open poly relationship. That’s why they’re allowed to stay in the royal guard despite being so incompetent cause they’re technically Ferderic’s in-laws and Rapunzel’s uncles. Just no one ever talks about it cause it’s a minor sandal for a princess to marry lower class and Willow’s hardly ever there.)
And Why Does Xavier Have All Those Plot McGuffins?
I know we’ll never get an answer, but at this point Xavier’s exposition fairy powers border upon ridiculousness. It’s just lazy and a waste of character.
So How Does Time Travel Work In This?
There are three types of time travel stories in fiction.
First is the ‘Changeable Past, Changeable Future’. You see this in Back to the Future. What you do in the past will change the future, i.e. your present. You may or may not remember that you did it, but be warned you could change things too much and break stuff. Like erasing yourself from existence, or ruining your love life ect. The only way to fix it is to go back in time again and change stuff again. But beware of paradoxes or you may destroy the universe altogether.
The second is the ‘Alternate Timeline’, where changing things creates new realties and it’s a matter of finding the right reality again. The tv show Sliders is a great example of this. Each new timeline is a different dimension. What you do in one won’t effect your original point of origin, only that particular world. The challenge if often getting home again because the probable diverging timelines are infinite and the changes of getting back are a zillion to one.
Third is the ‘Closed Time Loop’. No matter what you do nothing will change. The future is inevitable and whatever you do in the past was always meant to happen anyways. Gargoyles handles this really well. You can also have ‘fix points’ where certain important things are set in stone but small things can be changed like in several Doctor Who episodes. Braking a fix point breaks the universe once again, while paradoxes are often the solution rather than the threat.
So which type of time travel is Tangled dealing with here?
Scenes like the conversation regarding Pete’s and Stan’s mustache or the ones involving Eugene working on his smolder suggest a closed time loop. Yet the ending to this episode reveals a changed future. Further still the grandfather paradox revolving around the hourglass would make you think an alternate timeline yet, we’ve no indication that anything else changed other then Eugene’s opinions on Cass, and Raps shows no concern about getting back to her original point in time indicating that it actually isn’t another dimension.... so what is it then?
You don’t have to have a tightly plotted time travel story to have an entertaining piece of media. Endgame is riddled with plot holes and contradicts itself constantly, but what it lacks in coherent plot it makes for with fun characters, emotional story beats, and good pacing that manages to balance the action with the drama while hiding the cracks just enough that you don’t lose immersion.
Tangled however fails at even this because it gets the character beats so fundamentally wrong. Like you may dislike where the characters ended up in Endgame, but can’t say that those developments didn’t match the characters’ previous storylines and logical trajectory. Tony finally becomes the selfless hero by committing the ultimate sacrifice, Steve learns self care as a mirror to Tony’s arc as they were always parallels to each other, Bruce learns to accept himself, Thor processes his grief and lets go of the role he was assigned at birth but never truly fit into, and Nat becomes the leader she was destined to be rather than the sidekick.
What happens to the characters in this episode however makes no sense.
This is Another Missed Opportunity to Explore Eugene’s Past
The other problem behind the episode is that we don’t actually learn anything new. If you’re going to promise a story focusing on Eugene’s past then I expect to actually glean some new insights.
We still don’t know why he’s working with Baron or how he fell in/fell out with him, what his relationship with Stalyan is like, how he became so cynical; not just the general basics, like the orphanage, but that point in his life where decided that survival meant giving up his morals and ethics; where did he first learn his better ethics that he originally suppressed (cause it sure as heck wasn’t Rapunzel), and when did he and Lance become separated?
This are questions that series decides to raise by making allusions to them and building conflicts off of them but never wants to explain the details of where they originated from. It’s super frustrating and wholly unnecessary. If you didn’t think the story of Eugene’s past worth telling then why did up repeatedly bring it up Chris?
Why Are You Surprised by This Rapunzel?
Rapunzel you know Eugene’s past. You know what he used to be like. You were literally there in the movie and saw him being an ass before this. You didn’t start to like him until he dropped his guard down in the flooded cave back when you both where about to die.
You fell in love with him when he showed you his real self and he fell in love with you when you proved that you were accepting of that. You earned each others’ trust. This here; angrily yelling at him and judging him, when you’re already hiding who you really are from him both literally and figuratively, is a breaking of that trust.
Who the fuck are you any more, Rapunzel?
Cause you’re not the same character from the movie. You’re not even the same character from season one. But whoever hell you are now, it’s not an improvement I can tell ya that.
So How Did The Hourglass Go From the Treasury to the Basement Storage, and How Would Raps Know It Was There At This Point and Time?
I’m guessing the implication here is that Crowley put Cass’s stuff in the vault, but like why the fuck would she do that? We’re not talking about a family attic here, but the royal safe. The most heavily guarded room in the castle with the kingdom’s most priceless treasures and antiques. Nothing Cass owned was that valuable.
Rapunzel Is Full of Shit
Oh let me count the numerous ways in which this whole lecture is stupid.
Rapunzel left Varian behind. Rapunzel left Varian behind multiple times, including that time he was thrown in jail. She was not a good friend, and no, this is not a case of her learning from her past because not once has she ever admitted that she was wrong to do that. So this scene just makes Raps look like a hypocrite.
Eugene does not need to relrean a lesson on being a better a person. He did that during the movie and has progressed beyond that point. This ‘lesson’ is a waste of time and a misuse of the characters.
This reframes Rapunzel as being in the right during her argument with older Eugene at the beginning of the episode, even though she’s not. In fact this is such a counterintuitive plot point that it boggles the mind.
Who structures a narrative this way? Why so blatantly point out how the main character is wrong if not to have her learn something? Why frame the story to make the person who’s personal conflict isn’t even the episode’s focus, into the one who needs to learn something? Especially if that something is already a lesson that they’ve learned on screen beforehand.
And why, oh good heavens why, would you teach children such a toxic message?
Like on the surface it sounds like something you’d hear in a children's show, but the context of it is justifying harmful behavior where you selfishly ignore other people’s wishes and boundaries just to satisfy you’re own personal desires.
And finally, Eugene and Lance do not work as a parallel to Raps and Cass. Cassandra is an adult who left of own free will. Lance is a teenager who was arrested due to Rapunzel’s own actions. Eugene isn’t the one who is responsible here, its Rapunzel. Who also left them both behind in her carelessness.
Secondly, Eugene’s decisions are spurned by years of trauma and a healthy fear of dying, while Rapunzel’s is wrapped up in her own need to always be right and to keep her immature and fanciful outlook of the world intact. As harsh as it seems, what Eugene did was based off a predetermine agreement and presumably Lance would have acted the same way or been pressured to act the same way by Eugene.
In short, Eugene’s cynical world view as a teen is not the source of his disagreement with Rapunzel but an adult perspective back by common sense and a respect of others choices. It makes no sense for present day Eugene to ‘learn’ anything from this misadventure that he didn’t already know and for Rapunzel to not learn anything that would actually tie the parallel together.
Locking Another Teen Inside a Jail Cell With Another Adult as a Joke, Does Not Erase the Inappropriateness of Varian’s Story
The episode tries to add another joke about Shorty sneaking into the prison without the guard knowing, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact someone had to have tossed Lance in there with him on purpose. Otherwise Lance wouldn’t have assumed Shorty was a fellow prisoner if he or the guard that locked him up saw Shorty sneak in before then.
Furthermore Lance’s nonchalant response suggests this is not an out of the ordinary occurrence. Nor do any of the other guard comment upon the irregularly of teens being jailed with an adult. Now add in the fact that the show fails to clarify that previous ‘cellmate’ line from Rapunzel’s Return and now gives us more confirmation that Varian was underfed and malnourished for a year with that gruel joke and you have a horrifying picture.
Shorty might be non-threating, but that doesn’t mean Andrew, a known attempted murderer and manipulator, is too. Nor any other adult who previously was housed with a teen before then. This is still very much not okay and no amount of ‘jokes’ will suddenly make it right.
Raps, Who is an Adult, Just Physically Threatened Two Teenaged Boys and It’s Played as a Joke....
How many times do I have to say it? Humor does not fix bad writing. I’m not laughing when a heroine at age 20, threatens a couple of kids for merely annoying her. Especially when said heroine has a history of abusing children; because let me repeat once again, neglect is abuse!
This is a Lie
No you wont.
Rapunzel never tells Eugene what happens on screen. I suspect that if she ever did, they would no longer be together, because what she wound up doing here was a violation of trust and boundaries in the worst possible way.
And This is Now a Time Paradox
A Grandfather Paradox to be specific. How can Rapunzel be here in the past to break the hourglass if the hourglass that sent her here is broken?
In a competent series this would be the point of a future conflict and not the actual resolution. It’s not a closed time loop because of the paradox and the changes we’ll see in the future.
So either she’s in an alternate timeline/dimension and just doesn’t gives a shit; leaving the real Eugene, Lance, Cass, ect. to go on without her; or she’s just broke the universe and everything is slowly unraveling around her; galaxies are dying as she whines about being dumped, people in the future are being eased from existence, and God is cursing her name for ruining his creation, all the while she carries on oblivious to the destruction in her wake, as usual.
That’s it. Those are you’re only two options now. Is everyone from here on a fake copy or is Rapunzel the damned destroyer of worlds? You decide.
So This Confirms That the Stabbingtons are Indeed “Family”
Another reason why I place this before Return of the King; it explains why Eugene considers the Stabbingtons ‘family’. Though if it was Rapunzel he actually bonded with and not the real Sideburns, then how much of his feelings are real and how much of them were fabricated by her? How much agency did this episode steal from him?
So What Exactly Did We All Change?
Well the dummy no longer has Eugene’s face, but Cass’s painting of the three of them still has him ripped out of the photo, soo... Keeping in mind that Raps painted the dummy anyways and considering that Moonandra tries to kill him later on; I’m going to guess that Cass’s feelings weren’t actually altered. If anything their relationship might actually be worse now, cause Cassandra keeps acting like she’s never had friends and Eugene has taken up Rapunzel’s blind devotion.
All that development in season one is just, poof, gone. Also it’s quite possible that the first movie as well has now it has been erased from existence as Eugene got his needed character development eight years too early. How the hell that’s suppose to work, I don’t know.
Outside of the that we get no confirmation how anybody else was effected, even though a more brainwashed Eugene running around would undoubtedly have caused a butterfly effect. Don’t expect that to be explored anytime soon.
Though, it would explain why he’s suddenly such a doormat in season three, if this was the second episode as theorized.
No! This is the Wrong Lesson!!!
Let me explain narrative promises.
Everyone, on some basic fundamental level, understands how stories work. We hear them recounted to us over and over again from the day we're born to the day we die. It’s integral to how we communicate as human beings. Everyone knows innately how to tell a story even if that person couldn’t tell you how stories or structured or what certain literary terms mean, but they do it every day just through speaking. And while most audiences can’t always pin point what upsets them about a story they can for sure notice when things are off and not satisfying to experience.
Now that doesn’t mean that everyone can write an awarding winning novel, that study of a craft isn’t important, nor that every amateurish critique thrown at any given media is valid. But it does mean that people have come to expect certain storytelling practices and can pick up on narrative cues. We’ve familiarized ourselves with the language of film, novels, comics, ect, into order to comprehend what’s going on.
Rules of writing are just following that established language so that the audience can keep up. You can break these rules, sure, but unless you know what you’re doing and have a good narrative reason to do so, then you can easily lose you’re audience. And if you’re making money off said audience that’s something you want to avoid.
A narrative promise is a cue; a set up that lets the audience know that ‘hey this is important, pay attention to this cause it’ll come back into play later’. Now that the audience has been alerted to the plot point they expect fulfillment of the promise. If you break that promise, either through poor set up, lack of follow through, or by breaking an established convention of writing for no other reason then because you just wanted to, your audience is going to walk away unsatisfied.
The argument at the beginning of the episode was a narrative promise. It was a cue that set up the interpersonal conflict of the main character. For add context, I know that this is a coming of age story. Convention would dictate that the protagonist would resolve this conflict by learning they were wrong.
That’s not what happened here.
Convention was subverted. It wasn’t the protagonist who grew and change, it was the person they were in conflict with who did. And it wasn’t subverted because of any greater narrative reason, or future pay off, or even as effort to be shallowly ‘clever’; it was subverted because the author just didn’t want to hold the main character accountable for anything. Because said character has now become his avatar for his wish fulfillment fantasy and having the main character admit fault would be to admit fault in ones own self. Rapunzel doesn’t feel like Rapunzel this season because she’s just Chris in a wig.
The episode broke a narrative promise to the audience; both within the episode and in the greater premise of the story, because of ego.
I don’t claim this episode is bad just because of personal taste nor because I find it morally repulsive (even though both those things are true), I call it bad because it exhibits bad writing. Plain and simple.
Way To Undermine The Entire Point of the Original Movie, Show
Speaking of breaking narrative promises....
TTS is suppose to be a squeal to the original movie. It’s even in the title of the show; both of them. In one fell swoop, the series has managed to sabotage it’s very reason for existing, as it erases Eugene’s motivation and the inciting incident that kick started the film.
Way to fucking go.
To further twist the knife, it diminishes the duel protagonist of said film in order to prop up a series original character, who isn't even present in the episode itself.
I don’t mind Cassandra’s existence. I don’t even mind her being the new deuteragonist and one of the main villains; even though she wouldn’t have been my first pick to fulfill those roles given her lack of set up. But I do fucking mind it if she upstages other characters and/or derails their character arcs in the process.
This is the Death of New Dream
I was still in denial when this episode first aired. I honestly believed that this and The Return of the King was build up to a third “betrayal” where Eugene finally became fed up with Rapunzel’s bullshit and joined forces with Zhan Tiri. I thought the end of the series would have Rapunzel apologize to everyone she did wrong, Varian, Cass, and Eugene, in order to break ZT’s hold on them, and that true love’s kiss would reunite the sundrop and the moonstone and that would just tie everything together into a neat little bow and give us a truly daring character study of a Disney hero.
Oh dear merciful heavens, was I ever wrong.
How did we go from season one’s challenging and mature storyline, complete with Disney’s first real anti-villian, to this?!
What the hell happened!?
Rapunzel not only disrespects Eugene’s opinions, violates his privacy and trust as she manipulates him as a teen, and then brainwashes him to think like her (even if accidentally), but doesn’t even have good grace to tell him. She instead has the audacity to look all happy and self congratulatory because she got want she wanted. She, and the show at large, doesn’t care what evil thing she does to get the desired outcome Rapunzel wants.
Rapunzel in this show is a spoiled brat. And the image of her and her now lobotomized boyfriend staring dead eyed at a picture of the creator’s previous waifu OC with plastic smiles on their faces, sums up this series perfectly.
Conclusion
This isn’t even the worst episode of the series guys. I don’t know if it would even make it onto a bottom five list. That’s how much crap I have to wade through when it comes to this show. This is however the most damaging episode to the franchise as a whole.
Not even the most hardcore of New Dream fans want to acknowledge the existence of that final scene, and Rapunzel stans won’t defend her beyond, ’well she didn’t mean too, it’s the writing that’s bad.’ Yeah, the writing is bad, that’s why the character can’t and shouldn’t be defended, not here and not in other badly written episodes where she also does bad things and never makes up for it.
Anyways I’m finally caught up to where I left off, before the move, though sadly I don't think I’ll get this series done by the end of the month like I had originally hoped. But if you would like to help out I have a ko-fi you can drop a tip into if ya want.
https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines
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I just read your Arkham City post. You have interesting thoughts on that game! How do you feel about the boss battles of Arkham overall?
Y'know something, Anon? I was actually eager to do one of those tier list dealios, and you just inspired me to whip one up. Soooo here ya go!
You can see more of a proper rundown below:
In a nutshell, I think City and Origins had, bar none, the best boss fights in the entire series. They're all mostly imaginative, have a wide variety of attack patterns and utilize different strategies for defeating them. Best yet, unlike Asylum, you aren't just fighting the same one monster that resembles Batman villains as much as tanks resembled bosses people wanted in a Batman game. Origins gets extra marks over City because it manages to create proper mano-y-mano showdowns in a way people said was impossible, thanks to the brawler mechanics. Deathstroke and the first showdown with Bane are easily the most badass one-v-one showdowns, while Mr. Freeze is one of the absolute best stealth action bosses in the entire genre.
The rest in Asylum and Knight can be summed up as either unremarkable at best, or dreadfully disappointing or lazy at worst.
For example, I know a LOT of folks loooooved Croc-o's "boss fight" in Arkham Asylum. Problem is, that entire sequence doesn't feel like the boss fight. It feels like the first phase of a larger fight that never happens. Which applies to most of the bosses outside of City and Origins.
And what's sad is, looking back, I'd take even THAT crap over literal one button takedowns for half the quote unquote bosses of Knight.
I have theories for why Knight's bosses were complete garbage compared to City and Origins, namely the age old dilemma of "oh shit, we are WAY behind schedule and implementing this fucking Batmobile ate up so much of our dev time that we went overboard with that we don't have time to give this game any actual bosses. Because Rocksteady knew what they were doing with City. It's not like they just suddenly forgot how to do bosses. After all, we've heard so many stories of this crap happening when games are in development hell.
It's the same reason Electrocutioner was a joke one hit takedown despite being billed as one of the eight main bosses of the game. When the money and dev time ain't there? You gotta cut corners where you can. Hell, Arkham Origins Mobile gave him an actual boss fight which would've been great in the console game. Origins, to me, deserved the full Arkham treatment instead of being the "Portable Ops" of the Arkham series (a spinoff designed just to give players something to chew on before the main event). And like MPO, a big part of why the game was so much copy & paste is because it didn't have an ounce of Rocksteady's budget.
Same with Deadshot, who was just an alteration of Two Face / Harley's predator fight. But the reason I rank Deadshot as great is because his fight is infinitely harder than theirs, and his ricochet attack is a lot trickier to evade, so you actually feel like you have to use stealth to avoid his line of sight. And when it's just you and him, you CAN take him head on, rolling around to avoid his shots, which can feel gratifying and action packed. :P
So yeah! I adored Arkham City's four main bosses, enjoyed its lesser bosses, absolutely loved most of Origins' main bosses, really liked some of its side bosses and at least had fun with its lesser bosses...aaaand minus Poison Ivy and Scarecrow, kind of hated everything Asylum and Knight tried and failed to do with its bosses. (I don't HATE Croc's fight in Asylum or Knight, but the former just doesn't feel like a full boss fight, and Knight doesn't even let you ACTUALLY fight Croc so much as you do jump around him, punching his goons so you can do QTE's to do damage on Croc instead of doing the damage yourself.)
Yeah, I'm a gaming nerd, folks. These are facts. XD
#non kink#batman#arkham series#arkham asylum#arkham city#arkham origins#arkham knight#boss fights#tier list#oh yeah blackgate exists#that game was...interesting#it had a bunch of unique bosses#and there were some pretty good ideas there#but half of them just feel like predetermined puzzles instead of actual boss fights#the other half are just way too basic to be fun#it's the one and only game that gives joker an actual boss fight#i actually liked that one#and kinda wish the deadshot fight was the first phase of his fight in origins#but neither one was in the tier option#also penguin's was alright#it's an actual fight instead of a takedown#seriously there was soooo much you could've done with these villains#god i hope gotham knights doesn't suck#and has tons of boss fights#don't be marvel's avengers dc edition#that game fucking suuuuuucked#hey you know what i like fighting in avengers games?#a ton of generic robots and scientists piloting generic vehicles#who wants to fight actual comic book villains in a comic book game?#neeeeerds that's who!
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All the petty things I hate about fate!winx and their shitty universe/world building because
I'd added most if these in tags of other posts but I'm still so mad lmao
The way characters, Aisha and Mrs Dowling specifically make references to explicitly human or American things like instagram and Harry Potter
These people are from a different dimension for ffs why are they concerned with or are even aware of this very earth-specific shit? Do they teach earth classes at school over there?
I understand not wanting to have them be oblivious so Bloom wouldn't have to explain it to them, but it simply could be ✨omitted✨
Why would you go out of your way to date your work like this lmao ew
Ms. Dowling calling Tinkerbell an air fairy.. I cannot breeve with the stupidity why did they keep that in there
Why is Ms. Dowling.. the headmistress.. teaching classes? Where are the other teachers?
We ended up with a trio of antagonists (I guess you could call them that?) by the end of the season anyway so why not give us the trix, why have the characters play double roles as friends of our protagonists and also the villains/bullies? They clearly wanted a delinquent trio, in which case they could've gender bent the trix if they wanted to keep all the unnecessary sexual tension.
It just feels like the production team was lazy, they didn't want to hire more actors, they didn't want to bother with making the world immersive or lived in or believable at best, they just didn't give enough of a fuck
They wanted to make this show and attatch Winx to it for.. what? Like did you even google the main plot points? The abridged version or sparknotes to get details on the very literal, basic characteristics of our main characters or their roles or the world they inhabit????
It lacks wonder and intrigue.. I mean Bloom moves to another dimension, a school for fairies and we don't see her marvel once at anything.. and that's because she might as well have been in Switzerland because she's in exactly the same environment she would've been in over there anyway.
They could've said Alfea was in Europe and I'd believe it because nothing about the setting makes it feel otherworldly. I'm sorry but I'm not impressed.
Why do the teachers and graduated specialists communicate via facetime ?? In the magic dimension. ??? Why do they text each other and those texts then appear on screen like .. oh look, like a bad netflix teen movie ????? HELLO ??? it's the way technology and magic could've blended in so seamless into the world THE WAY IT WAS ALREADY DONE/SHOWN. Missed opportunity. it just takes you out of it imo every time you see the ugly, bland, gray text bar. Some fucking flavour pls I'm begging
How stupid the specialist must feel clonking around with the skinniest shreds of armor, plastic swords on their backs and battery powered flashlights and cellphones in their bags. R we larping?? I know I'd be laughing and asking why we hadn't already come up with something more effective .. idk like guns. I'm surprised I ain't see one gun in there.
In the beginning Ms. Dowling says some nonsense about fairies having lost the ability to transform to explain why there are no wings, which means they could've transformed before. So are we to assume that this supposed to be set in the time proceeding the original then?? Because something is not adding up with where they should be as a magical society technologically if that's the case
How does the production team want to keep the dark academia vibes with torches lining the walls and also want them to be face timing each other, presumably from miles and miles away in the dark forest???
Pls pick an aesthetic and stick to it everything was so unnecessarily dark. Where do they charge their phones since it's the only device we see that is the slightest bit modern and dont fucking tell me they charge it with magic I will punch you in the face
Why is there only one major monarchy that we are shown? Why are Solaria the only ones contributing to the efforts to defend the school and where is this mysterious battalion we never see lmaoo it's all so bad its laughable.
Is this set in the kingdom of Solaria? And why does the queen of an alleged interdimensional superpower monarchy pull up in black SUVs??????????? Why does she pull up with Andreas?? Is he not the king of Erakleon?? Where are his soldiers and his battalion and just?? Huh!? The world just feels empty like nobody lives here fr
Are we supposed to believe that the specialists get paired up with fairies just as a normal occurence and that they have to 'trust each other' and not because the plot demands it suddenly half way through when all we've seen so far are the fairies doing normalish school and homework, and the specialists outside, being physical everyday all day. This was never even implied that they'd have to work together apart from when we see the faculty as youngins with Rosalind. But even then.. it's like well why are they even together lmao? Is this a special team formed from Rosalind’s protégées? Were they formed after graduating from Alfea or what is this?? Are they the ONLY team of specialist/fairies hunting every single burned one?? What?
Are we now supposed to buy that Musa is being switched to 'support' because that's where her strengths lie and not in combat?? Are we supposed to believe that these girls know hand to hand combat?? When was this established? We see Terra wrapping some baby vines around a dude and I'm sorry is that the practical application of her power? Is this what the fairies are supposed to do once they graduate? Or is it just a switch in curriculum because of the threats outside the barrier?? This is never made clear.
Because if not then what's the point of this?? Why do they suddenly have endless classes together when the expectation was never set for the fairies to be like soldiers or out in the field fighting ?
Where exactly are they supposed to be what was the purpose of including Aster Dell and why is it a joy ride away from Alfea lmao?? Where Bloom is from and also not from?? Plot pls make it make sense
Why are fairies from another dimension vaping or smoking weed?? They are not human so why are they engaging in specifically human vices, yol couldn't come up with anything else to characterize 'delinquents'?? Very lazy very como se dices.. no effort. Nothing a little more spicy yol could invent, at least change the name and some properties holy shit did yol even try ??
So its fairies everywhere, having a lil party in the east wing of a phat castle.. and they are playing beer pong and dressed in t shirts and jeans..
Can you hear me screaming? Can you hear me vibrating with rage?
Not one floating decoration or magical anything in sight. Just purple lights and subpar vibes
Stella's costume design: tragic. I won't discuss further because we don't have the space or time but just know that it was absolutely atrocious and I hated it. Giving very debutante vibes
The entire budget going to that lame transformation sequence that was not a transformation sequence and those horrible, barely-there fire wings
Edgelord bloom and all her fucking leather jackets. Why do 30 yo, white cis men think girls exist in a binary? They could keep her earlier characterization and make her a hothead.. Bloom literally screamed herself into a couple power upgrades in the original come ooonnnn
Let girls be feminine without it being a character flaw what is wrong with yol its 2021. They could make her more mature, more angsty or whatever the hell else and not style her like that
The way Aisha's abilities flipflop between episodes and scenes. Very inconsistent. One minute she's struggling with a drop of water and the next she is moving an entire body of water for her bestie Bloom to fake transform because the plot demands it. Why even add in her struggles at all if you're just going to ignore it?
Why was Stella with them in that scene? She didn't do anything literally.. Aisha pulled the water and she did .. nothing.
Who the fuck is Rosalind? Why would they add her in,, to add nothing to story? The company of light was a thing, they could've plucked one of them hoes to be the antagonist. Why did the winx club need their own Delores Umbridge? Valtor was right there if you wanted an evil educator type character.
The camera work was so bland during the down beats, stagnant and fixed during a fairy party and erratic and ugly and disorienting during the fight scenes
I'm not getting over the fairy party because it was a good opportunity for the production and everyone else to show the differences between where Bloom was and where she is now but instead it just looks like a regular teen high school party?? This could have been set in Switzerland fr.
Everyone's just kind of standing?? You mean to tell me these people are from all different places in the magical dimension and their customs are all the same? They all throw parties like this ??
White and flavorless I am very bored
I guess the main question or takeaway I have is just.. who is this for? Because everyone, including the showrunners keep saying that it's for us, the fans of the original. But apart from the characters sharing some names, there are really no other similarities. So again, who was this supposed to appease or placate or satisfy? Because it sure as hell wasn't the winx club fans.
Overall, this feels very much like something I wrote and probably published on ff.net when I was 13 because I thought girls couldn't be taken seriously if they liked pink, and injected angst into everything that didn't need it and had no idea how to structure scenes or dialogue. It's just bad, objectively and N*tflix will keep making shit like this because apparently some people have bad taste??? Idk yol, be easy
#im never gonna stop i dont care i dont care#and i dont even usually make my own posts i just be reblogging and vibing#but im passionate abt this because he originak was the reason i wanted to learn how to draw#it was the reason i wanted to learn how to write and tell stories#it shaped a lot of shit for me because it was the very first one of its kind id ever seen#i ran home from school to watch it and argued with my friends about who got to be flora#i forced them to make cardboard wings with me and to perform the opening song during a school talent show#thank god we didnt get to perform otherwise we would all have died of embarrassment in hindsight#but ye i just hate to see things that obviously are very dear to a lot of people be treated with such casual indignity and its a disservice#a disservice to the fans and to the people who had probably want to create it as a passion project#to the people who spent hours and hours in rewrites and fanart amazing fanart and post series continuations#no one is saying the original is sacred and cannot be touch#this fandom actively calls out the bullshit rainbow has done and continues to do to the characters we love.. i havent spoken to one fan who#doesnt have an alter dedicated to their downfall. we found a piece of ourselves in these gorls and they were stripped and caricatured and#played for laughs so netfilx can make money and its just very upsetting to see.#so again fuck you brian young fuck you ignio and rainbow and fuck whoever the costume designer was#mine#text#fate winx club#fate: the winx saga#f:tws#winx club
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its always time to indulge in husbands, and i bring you domestic setting
i know you like to cook, but whats yours and his fav meal(like super produced and everything)?? and on a lazy day? also do you let him enter the kitchen while youre cooking? team throw you a knife if you step onto my kitchen here
I really do like to cook and god what's a grosser love language than wanting to cook your spouses fav meals and feed them 😩 eww that's so lovey dovey and gross of me 😩😩😩
ok but seriously- and I have to contribute this headcanon to @rae-ryuuguji-sano bc she's a little shit and now I can't unsee it. Hanma loves barbecue and more specifically he loves hamburgers.
just recently I've been mastering meats on the grill irl and 100% I feel like Hanma would be vibrating with excitement with my foray into the world of barbecue. It's not about the sides, it's not about the vegetables or starches, for him it's all about the meat. Doesn't care what it is either I want to try grilling he will try it, even some meats that he tends not to eat in other dishes. If it came off the grill he's the first to try it. But his utter favorite thing is hamburgers. Going as far to say this is his comforter food, his birthday dinner of choice and his immediate suggestion if I ever ask for meal ideas. Given being told hamburgers all the time does get annoying but hey he's trying and that's what counts.
lazy meals? aka the day my periods the worst and I can't cook or think of food to save my life? Those day dinner consists of take out. Even in the beginning when we're on a tight budget and crap. Hanma keeps a stash every month set aside so that he can go pick up a little mini buffet of fried chicken. I always want fried chicken, I could make it yes but lazy meals generally mean pms meals in this house. He's not really a cook, lets be honest, he might manage mac and cheese or spaghetti (as long as I made the sauce previously) so when it's truly a lazy meal day and I don't want to touch a utensil, the go to meal is fried chicken that Hanma always makes sure he has enough money to cover when I'm not feeling the cooking spirit.
as for being let into the kitchen? *grits me teeth and grips the edge of the table* He's....allowed in my kitchen at certain points. If there's at least one thing he's semi decent at (besides knocking people's teeth in) it's following instructions. Hanma is an adequate sous chef but banks on the fact I do tend to do everything myself and how I want it done. His job is drying my dishes, putting them away and cleaning up my work space if I'm spread out on a fairly in depth recipe. But in terms of touching my meal prep/fucking with my food as I make it? I will kill him
#the ones not allowed in my kitchen though? fucking deku#deku atsumu kageyama and francis are not allowed in my god damn kitchen#francis is allowed on the peripheral like leaning against the furthest counter away from me#deku atsumu and kageyama are kill on sight if they set foot in my kitchen bc they will NOT leave my shit alone#baji's allowed in my kitchen bc he can sit on the counter and i let my baby taste everything 🥰#kazutora and mitsuya are permitted kitchen privileges similar to hanma's#unironically and i say this with spite...i will cook with draken#its the only time we're civil to each other#mikey is also a kill on sight in the kitchen but rae knows this and has trained her husband to steer clear of me#lemon#🍋.♡#three.talks#hanmee.♡
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Have you written anything about what specifically you dislike about Gigantitan? I tried searching for it on my own, but Tumblr Is Not A Functioning Website
I haven’t talked about it much at the time of posting, so don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything.
“Gigantitan” is my least favorite episode of Miraculous from a strict watchability standpoint, being the only episode that I wanted to quit watching outright (and would’ve had I not been watching with someone else). There are episodes that have worse writing from a plot/character view, but “Gigantitan” is the only episode that I firmly believe has no value whatsoever.
[Lolliplot]
I have no problem with filler in concept. Filler can actually be very important to a show’s runtime, letting shows rake in some more views for the more high-budget episodes by filling in story gaps with fun little snippets about nothing.
But this episode isn’t fun. It’s just nothing.
Let’s start with what this episode actually offers for future plot points. Firstly, it confirms JARM (Juleka, Alix, Rose, and Mylene) being already aware of the fact that Marinette has a crush on Adrien.
We didn’t need to know this. Everyone could’ve guessed that anyone in the class already knew. If I’d skipped this episode completely and seen “Frozer”, I wouldn’t have batted an eye at JARM already knowing and making suggestions about what Marinette should do about Adrien.
The other thing this episode does is show that an akuma can switch targets, which happens later in “Zombizou” anyway. Not only that, but I don’t know how genuine this moment even is, because it’s just a “comedic” ploy to get a reaction out of Hawk Moth. I can see the result in two ways: either this is relevant because this is going to happen later (actually making this episode pointless because it’s going to happen in a later episode) or this was a one-off and no one will ever know if it was a legitimate thing or a comedic detail.
It just leaves me confused.
Point being, I don’t want to hear brags from the writing staff about how this season has “no filler” because it’s a cheap way to generate hype when all they really did was sprinkle in crumbs of establishing plot into this particular episode. If one were to ask the question, “Why couldn’t it be established that they know about Marinette’s crush in a different episode?”, the only answer would’ve been, “Because this episode would’ve been filler otherwise.”
It’s lazy. Simple as that.
[Don’t Cry Me a River]
I don’t talk about myself often on my blog, but I’ll have to say a little bit to get my point across. See, some things I’ve never mentioned about myself before are that my ears are pretty sensitive, my eyes don’t like saturated colors, and I’m easily disgusted (not amused) by gross-out humor.
Already, my next problem with this episode is obvious.
I don’t like babies. I hate them, in fact. Don’t like looking at them, don’t like holding them, and every scream feels like sharp nails being jammed into my brain. They’re gross and loud and I have no maternal instincts whatsoever.
As a baby, August has no personality. He has no traits and his shtick is “he’s a baby.” That’s literally it. He cries, he screams, he’s easily distracted, and he’s completely unintelligent.
An akumatized person isn’t even supposed to be the same exact thing as the person they akumatize, but that’s exactly what Gigantitan is; August, but with powers.
And those colors blind me. The neon pink and green are hideous. One might say that it’s the idea because Hawk Moth akumatized a baby (and those akumatized might get to pick their looks), but that doesn’t change the facts that they didn’t have to akumatize a baby and that the design is still terrible to look at even if there’s a reason for it.
And the model is disgusting. I outright gagged at the scene with Adrien’s bodyguard and the saliva and just–EUGH, EW, GROSS!!
Once the timestamp hits the point where August turns into Gigantitan, it’s nothing by baby humor for eight straight minutes.
And Hawk Moth can’t just, y'know, release the akuma, because that would end the episode.
Hawk Moth’s even been shown to be able to torment his victims to some degree to get them to do what he wants but oh no we can’t have that because it’s a baby.
Personally, I would’ve drop kicked this obnoxious little menace into the Seine like a sack of rotten potatoes.
[Character Dos and Don'ts Except It’s Actually Just Don'ts]
No one has their head on straight in this episode. No one is safe from the “Gigantitan” go-with-what-the-script-says flu.
Alya setting up this huge elaborate plan instead of focusing on Marinette’s actual problems concerning Adrien.
Rose not understanding the flower naming theme despite being rarely shown as incompetent, which is also something no one does anything about because everyone’s so hooked on using codenames.
Adrien’s bodyguard calming down out of nowhere right when the akuma shows up.
Hawk Moth not just releasing the akuma and accepting that this was a bad idea.
Adrien brushing off all of Marinette’s stuttering despite this being a thing he should be concerned about by now and instead just being like “OKAY BYE YOU SEEM STABLE TODAY”
It’s all just set up so the episode goes exactly how the show wants it to and it drives me nuts.
Alya can’t be smart and realize that codenames aren’t a good idea (given Rose’s confusion) or the plan couldn’t mess up in “hilarious” ways.
Hawk Moth can’t do anything intelligent or the episode will just fall apart.
Even just the little things, like the fact that Alix brushes off Marinette’s fear that the boys know about her crush as “nah of course not because they’re boys.” That annoys me because I don’t like the suggestion that the boys are oblivious about love just because they’re boys. This escalates further in “Glaciator” with Ivan and I’m constantly frustrated about it because there’s already a logical, actually sensible reason for JARM to know and none of the boys to: them being closer friends with Marinette and thus seeing more of her than the boys do. I don’t mind specific characters gender-stereotyping, but not when it’s the show itself doing it and imprinting that on the characters themselves to make it true.
On another note, Adrien’s bodyguard is also extra infuriating because he has to get over his rage immediately or he’d be akumatized instead of the baby, which would’ve been actually fun. I’ve said it before, but one of the worst sins an episode can commit is presenting a more fun and/or interesting idea than what they actually go with.
Heck. Adrien’s bodyguard in general is pretty inconsistent. He gets upset about everything going wrong for him, then calms down almost instantly. You’d think the latter is because he sees Adrien, but when Marinette’s talking to him, Adrien’s bodyguard starts honking rudely at them instead of letting Adrien finish a freaking conversation. This is why I hate this guy so much; he’s so inconsistent and constantly swaps between caring about Adrien’s desires and just being irritating.
And, oh boy, that ending scene. I already complained about it in “Treatment of Marinette (Season 2)”, but it drives me up a wall.
Marinette stuttering was not her fault. It was the writing’s. It’s so blatantly obvious, especially on Marinette’s second attempt where she rejects riding home with Adrien.
Yet, the episode still has her friends get annoyed with her. There just comes a point where things stop being Marinette’s fault and start being the writers tripping her up and tugging at her pigtails because “No, bad Marinette, you’re not allowed to make progress even if it’s completely in character for you at this point.”
Marinette goes through this whole plan (and I frankly don’t care if the intention was to get Adrien’s bodyguard in trouble because screw him, honestly), even stopping at one point and almost ruining everything because she wanted to help a baby, and for what?
Nothing. Marinette embarrassed herself in front of her friends, embarrassed herself in front of Adrien, and she gets teased.
I don’t have to wonder why Marinette is constantly fumbling and afraid of screwing up, because her friends and others are always teasing her for being clumsy/stuttering/etc. Alya teases her at the end and Marinette looks so embarrassed at what she’d said, but then the end card just pops up as if we’re supposed to forget about Marinette’s issues and anxiety. They go completely unaddressed and this episode is the worst example I can think of when imagining episodes that try to brush off Marinette’s problems as “you just gotta get it right this time.”
And of course, Alix makes a comment about how Marinette knowing Adrien’s schedule is “creepy.” Like, ‘k, cool, so if she does believe that, what is she gonna do about it? Confront her? Just accept it because she’s her friend and saying anything would’ve forced this episode to not happen?
The is one of the few times Marinette’s schedule (that she has only ever used for purposes of confessing/taking a confession back/tracking down Adrien for crucial reasons) has been brought up, but the show doesn’t want to dwell on it. The show doesn’t seem to want anyone its audience to think about, but it still wants to crack jokes at Marinette’s expense.
And instead of addressing Marinette’s core issues, all five of her friends just waffle around them. If this was actually fun, I probably wouldn’t mind, but with this being the unpleasant experience that it is, I feel like the glaring flaws are constantly being shoved in my face.
[Predictakillity]
This is probably the fourth-ish time I’ve said this in my blog’s lifespan, but one way to send my interest into a downward spiral is when I can predict an episode. There are exceptions, like when I see a scene or hear a particular line and go “Yes! This is probably leading up to [x]”, but most of the time, it’s negative.
And, from start to finish, I could predict this episode. After every scene that happened, I could predict what was going to happen next.
The second I saw this elaborate plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work. Even more insulting was when they threw the fantasy sequence in, because that made it even more obvious. After all, why would they show us what’s going to happen later in the episode instead of building suspense and then having us see the happy moment when it’s actually real?
Not only that, but the fantasy sequence is doubly terrible because it was some top-tier Adrienette and it’s fake. It just brings down the next Adrienette scene that follows it in whatever future episode because now they have to beat “having ice cream together” or it becomes underwhelming.
And that’s exactly what it did, because “Glaciator” was the next episode with Adrienette in it and it had the gall to set up the exact same premise without even letting them have ice cream together. It tore me up too because I knew that’s what they’d do; I knew they weren’t going to show the audience what they wanted to see because the fantasy sequence in “Gigantitan” already showed it. I wanted to be wrong and I wasn’t.
Back to “Gigantitan” itself, most of the jokes and dialog are so drawn out that it felt impossible to not know where things were going to go. They hold on jokes for way too long and everything is so in your face that things become obvious.
The second Rose started messing up the codenames, I knew she was going to be a weak link in the plan.
The moment Juleka got stuck, I knew most of them were going to have to swap jobs and be stuck doing something they weren’t good at.
The instant August appeared on screen (with spoken dialog from the mom, no less), I immediately pointed and said, “That’s who’s getting akumatized.” No amount of Adrien’s bodyguard getting annoyed fooled me because I knew it would be a red herring.
At the very first mention of August wanting a lollipop, I knew that it was going to be important to take him down when he was akumatized.
When the akuma went into August’s bracelet, I knew Hawk Moth would just run with it and wouldn’t give it up.
Even with the lucky charm, which is typically one of my favorite moments in episodes because Ladybug always gets stuck with the most random stuff, I knew what it was for before Ladybug’s Lucky Vision even went off.
And at the final moments of the episode, where Marinette wanted to just get straight to the point, I knew; I knew she wasn’t going to be able to do it. I knew this episode wasn’t going to let her have her moment. I knew her friends would get irritated with her. I knew the writing would just brush it off.
When Marinette’s friends kept asking, “Is she going to do it?”, I was pleading for them to just be quiet because it made the outcome so obvious. Everything’s obvious. When I realized that August was the next akuma victim, I knew that this episode would be nothing but baby humor and gross-out.
I hated that I knew. I didn’t want to know. With every passing minute, I kept begging–hoping–that the episode would throw me some sort of twist.
One wrench in the predictability. One instance where something wasn’t what I expected. One nanosecond where all the characters just looked at each other and went, “Hey, maybe everything that’s going on right now is actually really contrived?”
I got nothing. Once the episode was over, I got into a three hour conversation on why it was the worst thing I’d seen out of Miraculous from an enjoyability standpoint.
And every time Gigantitan shows up as an akuma again, I feel all that annoyance come right back. A full 26 episodes haven’t even passed yet since his episode and Gigantitan has shown up three times.
I hate this episode so much. I hate it because it’s a combination of nearly everything I could hate in an episode.
Character destruction.
Gross-out.
Babies.
Obviousness.
Predictability.
And worst of all, the promise–the set-up–of progress that the protagonist deserves but doesn’t get in the end despite all the garbage they’ve been through and WILL go through.
I think back to this episode and I just find myself unbelievably frustrated. In a way, I feel like I should be glad about how pointless it is. After all, its pointlessness means that I have no reason to ever go back to it.
But also, it didn’t need to exist, and those 22 minutes could’ve been spent doing literally anything else that this season desperately needed.
Instead, it’s 22 minutes of nothing.
#((Rare occasion where I'm actually heated and not just stating facts.))#category: salt#((Super Salt.))#((Mega Salt.))#((Ultra Salt.))#episode: Gigantitan#other: ask and answer#category: long post#word count: over 2000
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Where is My Mind?
Stress can make you feel like you're going crazy.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Long-term, persistent and intense stress well above your baseline levels can make you feel like you're losing your mind.
Life is stressful and when I think back to when the intense periods of stress started in mine it gets a bit ridiculous because I grew up in a domestically violent household with severely mentally ill parents in a country on the brink of civil war with one of the highest crime rates in the world. So I have been kinda stressed for a very long time. However, in more recent months, the level of acute stress I've been experiencing has made me feel disconnected from reality. I've experienced derealisation a number of times due to Lyrica withdrawal and accidental cannabis highs. But this one is different. The depersonalisation I’ve been experiencing is from pure, unrelenting stress. I really did question my sanity more than once.
In July, I saw my psychologist to describe this feeling to her. She very helpfully drew a diagram which explained the neuroscience of why we feel this way when we've experienced high levels of stress for a long time. It was really helpful to see that because it reassured me that what I was feeling was, as much as this can be said, "normal", given the amount of strain I was under. But the stress hasn’t let up since then and I have been well above my baseline for much too long.
Long story short, I haven't really recovered since my family visited me last year. 2018 was a year from hell. 2019 hasn’t been much better but for different reasons. Basically, the hardships I’ve endured being the leader of a non-profit all these years reached critical mass and finally, at long last, broke me. After 8 years of pouring all my heart, soul and every last spoon I had into it, I quit last month…and to very little fanfare at that. 3 people turned up for our final meeting, and only because we needed to hand them the organization’s physical assets. We had a little unplanned dinner out and that was that.
I'm grateful to the handful of people who have reassured me they will continue its legacy beyond my departure, genuinely I am, but overall I think I stayed in that position at least a year longer than I should have. I feel incredibly jaded and cynical about the whole thing.
And I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but screw Sydney’s activists. The vast majority of them can barely call themselves that. I have never been in such an apathetic, vain, self-centered and lazy city when it comes to political activism. This migrant has had enough of trying to get Australians to care about their own issues. (And yeah, the people I handed the non-profit over to? Also migrants).
It is telling that the final meeting was also the night before we moved house (because we always had to wrap our own lives around the goings on of that organisation, not the other way around, which is another major reason we quit). So after an hour and a half’s drive into the city, we had to get home late to get up early the next day to start that fun process.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we ever got to moving day, we first had to find a house. If you haven’t done it before, let me tell you, the process of house hunting on a tight budget in a hostile market is disgustingly stressful.
We were looking from June. The property market in Sydney is unbelievably expensive and even though it experienced a so-called "correction" for a year, (meaning that house prices stabilized instead of continuing to rise), that ended just as we entered into the property hunt. I am extremely grateful that we got the house we did at the price we did, but my God, getting to that point nearly killed me. I keep explaining to people that it felt as if my partner and I ran full blast over broken glass to the edge of a dock, leapt several metres and grabbed onto the barnacles of a departing ship by our fingernails. I really do think we may have been among the last millennials that got on that “property” ship, and it was only because, at long last, we had help from my partner's extremely wealthy parents. After shaming us for a decade for not being able to afford impossible house prices (“ok boomer…”), he finally relented and helped us out. Again, I'm grateful, but also disgusted that this is the world we live in. Housing should be a human right and we shouldn't have this intergenerational greed and infighting over something so basic. Forgive my inner socialist.
Finding the house was only the first part of the equation; moving into it was the next step.
The moving process was incredibly arduous. At the time we should have been packing up the house, my partner's work decided to send him interstate for business on multiple occasions. By the time moving day came round, we were not ready and we couldn't afford to pay removalists. We enlisted the help of two amazing friends and Joe's brother-in-law. Again, super grateful that I had their help, but my God, was it intense. It took the better part of four days to move everything. We had to pay off the mortgage and the rent for the previous place for a two-week period, putting considerable strain on our savings. At the same time, we needed to get some work done in the new house so that was being done while we were trying to sort out the old house. The rental laws in this country are a joke and are widely considered to be abusive to renters, including by many of my American friends who now live here. I doubt we will ever see our bond returned, even though we were treated like crap living there for three years in a house that was not sealed, had no insulation or air conditioning, leaked and was draughty, didn't have proper doors et cetera et cetera. I mean, we had maggots falling from the ceiling… twice. The place was rotting and rotten but because my partner couldn't completely colour match the paint when he tried to cover up what was absolutely reasonable wear and tear on one of the walls, I'm sure we will lose all that. As usual, the landlord will claim it costs our entire $1800 bond to get a $50 an hour painter in to patch up one wall. They always do this. In your contract it says reasonable wear and tear are a few knocks and dings on the wall and that the tenant is not expected to pay for that. In reality, in every rental we have ever lived in, the landlord has refused to refund the bond when there’s been even the slightest bit of damage, even if we had a record of being model tenants. It was almost comical how hard my partner was trying in the middle of the move to cover up a few scrapes on the walls from moving furniture in and out. It all came to nothing because for love nor money he couldn't find the correct match of paint. And then of course he had to mow the entire grounds of the last rental when he really wanted to be using his weekends to sort out and unpack the new house. Good God, it was awful.
My partner and I barely spent any quality time together during this period and he was extremely stressed out and distant from me. I totally understand why but the whole thing flared every single one of my conditions and I needed him as my carer. But he couldn’t really do that, as he was trying to do literally everything else. Moving house is hard on a healthy body, never mind one with two chronic pain disorders, irritable bowel and generalised anxiety disorder. And then (because of course), a family member of mine (one of the abusers) picked that moment in time to start harassing me, thereby triggering my PTSD which led to a nervous breakdown which led to intense depersonalisation, insomnia and nausea. Everyone and everything seemed unfamiliar to me, even my partner. I started to doubt whether or not I loved myself or anyone else anymore. I just felt so completely and utterly disconnected from the world. I began to lie awake at night terrified that I was fading away, that I could no longer feel anything other than fear. All the time, people kept saying, “congratulations on the new house! You must be so excited!” But all I could feel was sickness and dread.
Two weeks after moving in, I had to drop my Lyrica one more time. This drop has been very difficult. All of the stress has led to some dark thoughts in the back of my mind which of course Lyrica then co-opts and exaggerates. I have had a more than a few moments of suicidal ideation. Everything in my life on paper has improved. We are now homeowners, we live in a beautiful part of the world, we've made some new friends lately, things are settling down et cetera et cetera. But I feel like I'm in shell shock after this year and last year. I haven't even had time to process that I am no longer the president of the not-for-profit I founded and formulated an identity around. I just haven't had the time to process literally anything. I've been more exhausted that I have ever felt. Oh, I'm sure everyone will say, “this too shall pass”. But I do not believe that bullshit. Yes, this individual stressor will pass but more horror will come and I know that makes me sound super negative but I just cannot remember a period of time when things were calm for… I can't remember. I just feel like I've been in a hurricane forever.
So yeah, I'm writing this post while experiencing Lyrica withdrawal which makes me depressed and anxious. It's probably colouring my vision on everything. Fine. But I have been going through Lyrica withdrawal for two years, so it’s kinda become my normal. My final drop is on 26 December after which I will experience two more months of withdrawal and hopefully, after that, some semblance of sanity again. In the midst of all this I have to study for my citizenship test which is at the end of this month. I don't get any government support for my disability until I have been a citizen of this country for eight years, and as I’d like to survive my 40s, I need to get citizenship now. But yeah… studying an eighty-page textbook with an addled brain is just so much fun.
Of course, during this time we haven’t have Internet because we had to disconnect the old place and it takes an age for it to get reconnected at the new place. We only recently acquired it at the new house. So there are piles of emails waiting for me. Many of them are from friends and I'm glad for that. But there is also a lot of life admin I now need to do. I have to change my address on every account I hold, which is really tedious. We have also had to organise time with family. Because my partner's family helped us get this house, we feel especially obliged to go to every single one of the family events, of which there are many. He comes from a big Catholic family so every relative who comes to visit, every party that's being held, every birthday, wedding, funeral and religious holiday, we’re now expect to attend. We have several in the next few weekends, taking up most of the time we *needed* to be unpacking the house. We’re obligated now.
In all this negativity, though, I want to say that I am genuinely grateful to be one of the lucky ones to have a house. I know it sounds like I am whining about a good thing. It's not that I'm not glad for this (I know how ridiculously privileged we are). I just haven't been able to really feel it yet. I think that regardless of what happened this year, I’d be feeling this way. Something broke in me last year and just hasn't really come back. I feel shattered.
And all my chronic pain conditions have been wearing me down too. I found out this year that the operation that cost me and my friends so much money (to remove that nerve in my foot) had failed. Or rather, the surgeon had completely botched it up. I have PTSD from that surgery. Just the thought of going back to have it done again fills me with heart racing terror and cold sweats. I’ve had numerous surgeries before that one and been fine, but the reaction I had from the anesthetic last time was so severe, and the recovery so long, that I genuinely fear it more than almost anything else. And yet I need to go in for that nightmare all over again in 2020. I'm going to be asked to trust a different surgeon to do the same so-called “simple operation” to restore some functionality to my left foot. My right knee is probably also going to need surgery since it has been resistant to any physiotherapy rehabilitation. And on top of all this, my poor partner's health has also taken a hit this year from the stress which is worrying me. Because I can always do with some more worry…
But hey! This too shall pass! You should be happy! Life is great now! Yay yay yay!
Fuck, sometimes it just want to be allowed to feel shit and to have other people say “okay you can feel shit now. Yes, some good things have happened but right now you need to process the bad and that's okay too”. My lord, if people could just do that for me. If they could just let me feel what the fuck I need to feel.
What I feel is exhausted, scared, freaked out, traumatized, weird, sick, angry, overwhelmed and fed up. And I need to feel those things before I can feel anything else.
#rant#Fibromylagia#chronic illness#chronic pain#chronic stress#stress#overwhelmed#personal catharsis
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Ferris bueller's day of, the outsiders, better of dead, dangerous liaisons, young guns? Sorry if its too many, you don't have to answer all of them! :D
What’s your guilty pleasure? - Hm, I have lots, but the ones that popped in my head right now are 1. I drink tea like a Brit (cream & sugar, with extra love), which is super weird down here in Texas, where people only drink hot tea when they are sick. 2. I read unhealthy amounts of fanfiction, and don’t even pretend otherwise. 3. I walk barefoot everywhere. Everywhere.
Why is your best friend your best friend? - (I knew you would ask that, lol) Because they are absolutely amazing. I can talk about literally anything (things on my mind, things going on in life, things that I dream about, health issues, literally anything) and not feel weird or judged. They are the only person on the planet I feel like I can talk to like that, and I only hope they know that they can also talk to me about anything. Plus, the insides jokes are great ;D (💜)
Why did you last laugh so hard it reduced you to tears? - I really don’t remember the last time that happened, since I actually do laugh a lot. But, the last time I do remember doing it to the point I actually thought I was dying from laughter was the first time I ever watched Monty Python and The Holy Grail with my family, and I couldn’t even breathe through the bit at the beginning with the llamas and the great moose or whatever. I know I’ve done it since then, though, I just don’t remember.
Which language would you most like to learn? - If I actually spent the time, I would absolutely love to learn Russian, German, or Finnish. But really, most languages would be cool to learn.
What’s one style that you love on others, but would never try yourself? - Everything. 😂 Nah, I’ve always been a sucker for anything sort of gothic, grunge, or more like....darker schemed styles. But, I don’t have to budget to look like that, so I just wear thrift store clothes. :D I do love colored hair, but I would never do it because A. I’m too lazy, and B. I already look like trash, and colored hair would make me clash with even more stuff.
Thank you for the asks :D
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