#literally I need to rewatch the original so fucking bad
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Hello I have been insane about the Toph and Zuko friendship that never was since I first saw it at the tender age of 12 and it changed my brain chemistry forever
Disgraced rich kids with complicated (at best) relationships with their parents
Grew up spoiled and sheltered and can now wield this as a Weapon
Daddy issues
MOMMY ISSUES
Also grew up lonely and isolated, had to learn to survive on their own
I feel like they’d bond over their visible facial abnormalities, and I think Zuko would be kind of fascinated to meet someone who didn’t see the scar first, and then see him like as an afterthought.
I just love the Fun and Feral + Grumpy and Serious dynamic, especially given that they share a deep love for sarcasm
Do I even need to go on? Because I will
I think Zuko is just aching for a sister figure. He managed to kind of fill the father figure void with Iroh, but there’s a huge sister-shaped hole in his heart and Azula will not be filling it any time soon
I think Toph was so lonely and isolated for so long that she doesn’t even know she wants or needs a brother figure until she has one in Zuko. I think the amount of age difference between them is so perfect for fostering this kind of dynamic
I also think it’s so huge and very telling that she was the first to seek him out in canon, I think that would really mean a lot to him and he’d never forget that she did that (regardless of how it turned out)
ZUKO AND TOPH BEST FRIENDS SUPREMACY!!!!!!!!!
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just muttering to mutter cuz I find it fun to have meaningless opinions but having watched the trailer for The Fall of the House of Usher, I really just feel like everyone should sit down and read What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher instead
#it's not even long! it's less than a hundred pages! and it is fucking incredible!#WHERE IS THE EPONYMOUS FALLING HOUSE. THE POINT IS THAT THERE IS A LITERAL HOUSE FALLING ALONG WITH THE FAMILY.#to be clear this is not 'don't pit two bad bitches against each other' this is 'one of them understood the assignment and one did not'#I have adaptation opinions okay. and I AM fucking qualified to have them.#to be clear it doesn't look like a BAD show by any means! it just looks like...... every other mike flanagan show.#which isn't Bad it's just like. he's very much a one trick pony okay. he's very good at his one trick! but I need a little more than that#also like. it feels like otherwise rewatch succession? idk man. what are we doing here.#the variety plot summary reads like they decided to slap a poe name on it so the sacklers couldn't sue them for libel#and I'm like. the sacklers couldn't. and if they tried they would lose bro.#the more I think about this the more incensed I am about it#like this is a different concept entirely my dude!!!#stop trying to back up all of your shit with existing IP and own the fact that you're trying to do something original#it straight up feels like original content has become a crime in hollywood and I am SICK OF IT
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Why is the art so unappealing in lore Olympus now Persephone looks like a highlighter and maybe it’s just me but the proportions like the fingers in arms are soul over the place I don’t think they used to be this bad. Am I just looking at it with nostalgia or am I crazy ?
Honestly, nostalgia does play a huge part in it, even to this day there are times I look back on old S1 panels and go-
Actually here's a great example that literally just happened yesterday in the ULO Discord that nearly had me on the floor LOL This is from Episode 70:
Like I didn't even believe that that was real until I was told what episode it was from and I was just. Astounded and flabbergasted. The over-shading of the blanket that just makes it look like a really bad edit. Insane.
And yeah, there are a lot of old panels that hit different now that the rose-colored glasses have been removed, crushed, and thrown into the trash compactor.
I think that's why it makes it all the more amusing when people come into my inbox and ask me "wait, why did you like LO to begin with?? It's always been ugly as shit, I think you're just romanticizing it" because like... there's something to be said about art and subjectivity, even if something is ugly to one person doesn't mean it isn't beautiful to someone else. It's why I try not to be too mean towards the fans of this comic for still enjoying it, because while I definitely have strong opinions about how "LO has gotten worse" and what kind of following Rachel has cultivated (cough cough), there are also just as equally valid arguments that LO has never begin good to begin with that I can't necessarily disagree with now that I'm looking back on it with a more critical eye.
That said, there's tons of media that I enjoy that is objectively awful. Like y'all, you don't need to take my opinions about a dumb pink x blue fantasy romance comic seriously, I like Starfox Adventures-
Like yeah it's a badly made rushed piece of shit that was developed right on the ass end of Rare's glory days and was really an original IP (Dinosaur Planet) that got Frankenstein'd into a Starfox game so it could "sell better" for Nintendo, but I don't give a fuck, I love Starfox Adventures and some day I wanna be in the top 10 speedrunner leaderboards for it, which I know doesn't mean much because no one is speedrunning Starfox, but I do and no one can take that away from me dammit-
Anyways. Lore Olympus has, in many regards, always had "bad art". But "bad art" can and should still be enjoyed by those who find joy in it.
And in LO's case, the world it existed in when it launched was a lot smaller than it is now - more specifically, the world of Webtoons. We can look back and see how 'bad' LO looks and reads now because there are genuinely way better comics surrounding it. It was unique and refreshing and experimental back then... now it's just "that stupid blue and pink comic for horny teenagers".
In most cases I would consider that "cringing in hindsight" feeling a good thing because normally it means something has grown and that it seeming "bad" in hindsight would mean that it's outgrown itself and moved onto bigger things. But LO has the more unique problem of "its current stuff is shit and it's making us want the old stuff more, even if the old stuff wasn't good either". In that regard, LO is closer to being like Harry Potter. Remember when The Cursed Child came out at the height of Rowling being exposed for being a TERF and even people who liked Harry Potter didn't like The Cursed Child because it was just objectively worse overall (with or without Rowling's bullshit attached)? It made a lot of people go back and re-read / rewatch Harry Potter with a more objective lens and go "wait a minute guys, I think we only adored these books so much because we were 12 when we read them". Often times it's the good memories we have surrounding certain things that make us have the opinion about them that we do.
Of course, LO is definitely not as politically weaponized as Harry Potter is, so that's where that comparison ends. But my point is that LO is definitely in a situation where it's been riding off the same privileges it had back in 2018 - having an 'experimental' art style while also utilizing tropes and characters that were VERY popular at the time (remember that 2017-18 was when Tumblr was at its height of H x P "Hades was a chill accountant guy who wore socks and sandals and didn't cheat on his wife like Zeus did" fantasizing) - and thinks that those same tricks and tropes will still work today.
Because of this, the art in LO really, really hasn't aged well, even the stuff that we look back on fondly. But I think it's the panels that we specifically think of when remembering "old LO" - the ones that stuck in our memories the most - that are the ones that make us miss or just not care about the panels that don't look good (the panels that make people question why we ever liked it to begin with).
We liked it because of how it made us feel to look at panels like these-
Those genuinely wonderful panels that we think back on the most don't exist separately from the bad panels, they exist in spite of them. Even if we can look back on panels like these and pick out problems in the lineart or the proportions or the color travelling outside of the lines, that can't and shouldn't change how those panels made us feel at some point or another. And that's why when people ask me "why were you even into LO in the first place" I don't have any one answer, because I can't fully explain how something made me feel to justify why it's good to someone who can see from the outside - without rose-colored glasses - that it evidently isn't. It's very much a "you had to be there" type of thing.
Unfortunately, nowadays even the 'best' LO panels in S3 still don't come close to what the S1 panels accomplished - because for many of us, the rose-colored glasses are gone, we can't appreciate the good among the bad because we know now how bad it truly is and so the good just feels like wasted attempts at trying to recreate something it can no longer be. It "came back wrong" so to speak.
LO came back just regular. But our journey to resurrecting it changed us to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to us. Sorry dude.
This is still probably one of my favorite panels out of the entirety of S3 for being as close to "old LO" as I've seen since S2, and even it feels like a mistake, an accident, how could a panel like this exist in S3 when so much of it is a dumpster fire? It's like a flower growing in the ruins of an apocalyptic wasteland.
But wasn't that always the case? Isn't that 'always' what LO has been, since the very beginning? A poorly cobbled together mess of writing and panels that, every now and then, manages to leave an impression that makes you feel something? Did we ever truly know LO? Or have we just been relying entirely on an idea of it that we've built up in our heads that when it does do exactly what it's evidently always done (even if not made apparent until looking back on it in hindsight) we think it "came back wrong"?
#anyways sorry that was a way deeper response than it oughta have been#welcome to the AMA roulette game of “ask puff a simple question which they may or may not respond to with an introspective essay"#lore olympus critical#anti lore olympus#antiloreolympus#ask me anything#ama#anon ama#anon ask me anything
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SOME GOOD SHOWS THAT I LIKED IN 2023! (AND SOME THAT I DIDN'T)
I watched A LOT of stuff that did not originally air in 2023 by dint of my Old GMMTV Challenge. This list is inclusive of this recognition!
THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: HE'S COMING TO ME
I have no other words: this is my favorite Thai BL of all time. Perfect length, perfect plot, perfect celebration of Thai culture, perfect acting, the greatest coming out scene of all time, the BEST of the best BL moms. Perfection.
THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: BAD BUDDY
I don't even want to think about how many words I've written on Bad Buddy this year, but they're well deserved for this REMARKABLE show. I've got a thing for shows by Aof Noppharnach that feature Ohm Pawat, what can I say!
THE MOST INFLUENTIAL SHOW(S) I WATCHED THIS YEAR: LOVE SICK AND SOTUS
The influence of Love Sick and SOTUS can be seen in SO MANY Thai BLs, even through today. Without having watched these two shows to start my OGMMTVC project, I wouldn't have the context for what later shows like Bad Buddy and Theory of Love were commenting on by way of their content and structures. Love Sick in particular was a HELL of a lift -- but I am damn glad I watched it, and I certainly feel nostalgia for it today.
Honorable mentions of influential pieces that had impacts on Thai BLs: Love of Siam and Dew the Movie
MY OTHER FAVORITE OLD SHOWS I WATCHED: UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN AND THEORY OF LOVE
BANGERS!!!
If New Siwaj ever tops Until We Meet Again, I'll fly to Bangkok and give him a gold medal. That long-ass show, 17 EPISODES, I WANTED MORE! OhmFluke's chemistry was great, the story delved SO deeply into historical homophobia and how culture and acceptance changes over time -- scrumptious. Theory of Love, man, the way this show ate up implicit compassion bias and gave it right back to us. I loved it. KHAI FOREVER!
THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: MOONLIGHT CHICKEN
Not only was Moonlight Chicken my first real live fandom experience on Tumblr, it was a hell of an amazing show, incorporating so much of what I love particularly about Thai BLs, and how many Thai BLs do not shy away from celebrating Asian cultural touchpoints. From exploring Jim's internalized homophobia by way of his rural upbringing, to juxtaposing Pattaya's spiritual symbols with growing development that upends older strains of local culture, Moonlight Chicken offered a lovely commentary on what it means to be queer in an ever-changing Thailand.
THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY?/KINOU NANI TABETA? SEASON 2
BRILLIANTLY ACTED by literally the best actors in the Asian BL game: we are blessed that Nishijima Hidetoshi and Uchino Seiyou have given so much to this franchise. It's hard to write about this show because it's so perfect -- it needs no extraneous words. Plot, pacing, acting, character development, gratuitous food shots. It has it all.
THE OTHER OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: I CANNOT REACH YOU
Just like Bad Buddy looked at Thai BL tropes in the eye and said, "over my Nong Nao," I Cannot Reach You asked Japanese BLs about the efficacy of almost every trope we've gotten used to, and questioned them with efficiency. The biggest shocker for me? REAL COMMUNICATION, encouraged by the CIPHER, Hosaka, that allowed the two lead protagonists to confirm their love and understand each other. It was straightforward and FUCKING GOOD.
A SHOW THAT AIRED IN 2023 THAT I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ABOUT YET, THAT I NEED TO REWATCH IN CHRONOLOGY, THAT ALSO DID SOME TROPE/GENRE ASS-KICKING THAT I'M STILL THINKING ABOUT: LA PLUIE
La Pluie was FEARLESS. The show had a LOT to say about romance and soulmates not being as much of a realistic thing as content-makers... and, frankly, majority society would like us to think. La Pluie made its characters WORK for love and understanding, and had us viewers face our implicit biases about how romantic content should and could work. I watched this show out of order of the OGMMTVC watchlist to see it it was one of the best of the year, and it certainly is. I'm planning a deep rewatch for early 2024 to pen my words on it.
A SHOW THAT ALMOST TOPPED MY 2023 LIST BUT GOT DOCKED BECAUSE I ENDED UP LIKING THE NOVEL A LOT BETTER: I FEEL YOU LINGER IN THE AIR
@neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan know that I flipped THA FUCK out over this show -- FABULOUSLY acted by Nonkul Chanon and Bright Rapheephong, FABULOUS cinematography, great story up until the end of the series. My fangirling led me to read the original novel by Violet Rain, and -- I found out that Jom was a lot more damn sassy than we got in the show! Tee Bundit's penchant for sadness won. This is not to dock the show, but the novel had more than enough material to carry the series through without repeating themes in the end. So it fell on my 2023 list, womp womp. BUT I STILL LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS SHOW, DON'T GET ME WRONG.
TWO SHOWS THAT I'M SUPER GLAD I CAUGHT UP WITH WHILE THEY WERE AIRING: THE EIGHTH SENSE AND BE MY FAVORITE
Be My Favorite looked at Krist Perawat's checkered past as a BL idol and said: we are going to examine this and make an honest BL out of inspiration from it. It wasn't a perfect show, the time travel shit didn't end up adding up in the end, BUT -- excellent acting from two GMMTV VETS made up for those tangles, and I loved the contextual philosophical references throughout the series. The Eighth Sense looked at the tug-of-war that Korean BLs have with K-dramas and their tropes and said, actually? We will have these dudes full-frontal kiss, and placed that energy against commentaries on mental health, both topics that Korea hasn't quite embraced as quickly as other countries.
HONORABLE MENTIONS OF OTHER AWESOME SHOWS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE AIRED IN 2023
Make It Right, Our Dating Sim, Dark Blue Kiss, Gay OK Bangkok, Dirty Laundry, 10 Years Ticket, I Told Sunset About You, I Promised You the Moon, 3 Will Be Free, Lovely Writer (underrated?!), Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars (UNDERRATED!), and Manner of Death.
And the shows that are airing that I know will stay with me well into 2024: Last Twilight and Cherry Magic Thailand.
I had fun!
WHAT ELSE, WHAT ELSE: THE "NO" SHOWS: THE PROMISE AND STEP BY STEP
I'm not even hyperlinking my thoughts on these shows, nor gifting them with gifs. Insert Bugs Bunny NOOOOOO gif here! We got Man Trisanu, though.
THE SHOW I WAS THE MOST OBVIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED BY: ONLY FRIENDS
Despite my passionate disappointment for this show and how it ended: in the context of the OGMMTVC, Only Friends is still an incredibly important inclusion to the list. Some amazing Tumblr bloggers offered commentary that the bias against sex that OF contained within the show was actually importantly and culturally contextual to the still-conservative state of acceptance that Thailand is currently in (here and here for more reading).
Only Friends reminded us that despite any kind of marketing that we here on Tumblr, as a majority non-Thai audience, may receive about a Thai show -- that we are still not fully plugged into the non-verbal expectations of what a show like OF could promise to do, and to be okay when it doesn't reach those heights. In light of the seemingly pro-sex marketing blasts that previewed the series before its airing, OF ultimately seemed to want to take casual sex, chew it up, and spit it out. There might be reasons why that happened that we just don't know about as outsiders to Thailand. But as an Asian-American viewer that was hoping for neutral -- and maybe even supportive -- commentary on single folks having casual sex without judgement, OF did not deliver for me.
I'm ending the year reading Dr. Thomas Baudinette's book, Boys Love Media in Thailand, the first book-length ethnographic study on the impact of BL on queerness, media, and more in Thailand and across Asia. Baudinette comes from the world of Japanese queer media studies -- as someone who came to Thai BLs this year from Japanese BLs, I appreciate his trajectory. It's clearly a necessity for me to read this book in the context of the OGMMTVC, to understand how Thai BLs have changed over time, and to understand the incredibly larger impact of heterosexual/heteronormative media and themes on Thai media as a whole, as larger and larger swaths of Thai, Asian, and international societies welcome and watch BLs with open arms.
All of this feeds into my ever-growing body of knowledge about the impact of Thai BLs, both in Thailand and across Asia, as Baudinette writes about, and how these shows have and are developed/developing over time. It's been an AMAZING YEAR of watching old and new dramas for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the genre grows even more in 2024.
I also made AMAZING FRIENDS on Tumblr -- y'all know who you are! What a year of growth and discovery for me: this has been a fabulous experience, and I'm looking forward to even more growth in the new year!
#my favorite shows of 2023#bl superlatives for 2023#he's coming to me#bad buddy#love sick#lovesick#SOTUS#moonlight chicken#what did you eat yesterday?#kinou nani tabeta?#until we meet again#theory of love#the eighth sense#be my favorite#i feel you linger in the air#ifylita#i cannot reach you#la pluie#only friends#only friends the series#turtles catches up with old gmmtv#the old gmmtv challenge#ogmmtvc#best of BL 2023
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Things I Have Noticed/Remembered from my MCDiaries rewatch
I will be updating this as I continue my rewatch, currently everything listed is out of order, cause I've started writing this as I am on episode 64 of season 1 and I don't feel like fixing it to be in order, so sorry!
What the fuck was Garroth's "plan" he mentions to Zenix in the first episode 😭
Zenix seems to be younger then Garroth in Diaries, considering the way that Garroth talks about him, but I think in MyStreet, Zenix is either the same age or slightly older then Garroth, so far this is like, the only obvious age difference between the series (besides Travis and everyone else of course)
I forgot how entertaining Brendan's character is, he's far less annoying then I remembered
ZANE AS AN ACTUAL BAD PERSON, I LOVE HIM
I love Vylad, but I legit forgot how much he was in Diaries season 1, I thought he was in it far less
Currently at the stage of Diaries where there is no lgbt+ people, i'm very disappointed by this (we haven't even reached the queerbaiting)
KC's character is....not as bad (racist) as I was expecting, still not great though. I'm choosing to believe that KC is from Tu'lu and Maid Cafes are a thing there, and "Kawaii~Chan" is just a stage name for her work.
Y'all know how Cadenza went missing and she was actually turned into a chicken? Yeah, the way Hayden, Castor, & Laurance talk about her to Aphmau makes it sound like Cadenza is a small child. But then it turns out she's the same age, if not older, then Laurance and Aphmau.
Aphmau should've just made Joh and Hayden lovers, I'm so serious, it would make the whole Cadenza and Laurance being "close like siblings" in season 1 to I think actually being called as siblings in season 2 and in MyStreet a lot easier to understand and make a lot more sense.
Why does Kenmur have like, some sort of romance with all the girls from Meteli??? He was engaged to Sasha and is stated to have feelings for Cadenza.
I love when the episodes open from Sasha's POV, and she goes and talks to Gene and there's just no voices. I love having to pause to read what they're saying. (this point is sarcasm)
The way literally everyone reacted to learning Laurance was blind was....icky. Like, I understand Cadenza and Aphmau reacting as like "we need to find a way to bring his sight back", but the fact that it was literally EVERYONE who decided he needed to get his sight back was so weird.
I don't mind Laurance ACTUALLY getting his sight back, but I wish it was done differently. Like, personally, I'd have him like, have to wash his face with the water of the fountain of Lady Irene.
Emma & Corey, Dale & Molly, and Logan & Donna are very sweet couples.
After Zoey and KC were able to turn Cadenza back to her human form, Zoey mentions that she "recognizes Cadenza from somewhere", but I don't think this goes anywhere???? I'm assuming it was supposed to hint at like, Cadenza's backstory.
ngl, I kinda wish we got more of Zane and Kiki's relationship, I really wanna know what side of Zane Kiki actually saw.
Anyway, Kiki is currently expecting.
Nicole (my beloved) has showed up. I've decided I won't question the logic behind her iron fists being able to break bedrock, and instead say that her referencing her iron fists just made me think of Ace from One Piece and Natsu & Gajeel from Fairy Tail.
I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT NICOLE'S FOX, ROXY, AND ABOUT THE WYVERNS IN GENERAL 😭
I need to mention that in one episode (before Aphmau went to Scaleswind and learned about Lady Irene), Garroth says to Aphmau "by the seven", which I think she was hurt, but the use of "by the seven" is similar to how the same phase would be used in Game of Thrones or to how irl lots of people say "oh my god", so I'm really wondering if there were originally supposed to be 7 Divine Warriors instead of 6.
The way when Aphmau found Levin and decided to keep him and Garroth IMMEDIATLY decided he would be Levin's father figure.
The way when Laurance found out that Aphmau had a kid, his response was to play with Levin and say to Aphmau "you didn't tell me you had this little buddle of joy/energy".
That's all for now, I'll like, update when I have more to add.
#aphmau diaries#aphmau minecraft diaries#minecraftdiaries#minecraft diaries#mcdiaries#mcd aphmau#mcd#aphmau mcd#aphblr#aphmau#aphverse#garroth aphmau#garroth ro'meave#mcd garroth#zane ro'meave#zane aphmau#zane mcd#aphmau zenix#zenix mcd#brendan aphmau#brendan mcd#vylad ro'meave#vylad mcd#kawaii chan#kawaii chan aphmau#kawaii chan mcd#nana ashida#nana aphmau#nana mcd#cadenza zvahl
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So, I rewatched the trailer over and over again, I stepped back, organised my thoughts, and I think I get it.
So first the Bad, then the GOOD, because there's actually a lot to like here.
The Bad:
So, the trend of companies kicking actual voice actors onto the curb and replacing them with celebrities continues. I remember being really angry when they first announced the voice cast, and I still am. It's quite literally the most boring, generic casting possible. You can not get much more white bread, milk toast than a Chris and Scar - I want to play an Asian woman and trans man - jo. Also, why is Chris Hemsworth here? Do he really need the money? Did Thor 4 damage his pockets that bad? There are so many talented voice actors that could've been Orion, David Kaye is a prime example Animated Optimus and Beats Wars/Unicron Trilogy Megatron, beloved by fans, if he was announced people would've been over joyed. I love Brian Tyree Henry, and he actually has some experience with va work as he voiced Jeff Morales in Spider-Verse, my original criticism still stands.... And Kegan, oh Kegan, I love you so much, Key and Peele was my childhood, and the Toad performance was perfectly fine, endearing even. But as Bee? I'm sorry, but no, that's not BumbleBee that's just actor/comedian Kegan Michael Key, I can't hear anything else. And it doesn't help that he's handed the worst lines.
Which brings us to the comedy. First impressions are EVERYTHING. And if you fumble that that hurts your film, and the perception of your film. I think that's really the problem here, it's a bad trailer not necessarily bad content. Packing the trailer with jokes for the sake of jokes and having that samey Hollywood liscensed music cringey feel to it. Like the guitar riff that played when the 'This Fall' card came up just made me turn off the video immediately. That's why I recommend watching the trailer without sound. Bee's jokes don't really land for me, I'm sure kids with love it tho, and that's good. But I'm sure all the jokes won't be bad, the final door gag is actually really funny. So I think it was just a bad joke that soured out feel of the tone at the beginning, which is unfortunate because like I said first impressions are everything. Because this is Josh Cooly, of Up, Inside Out, Toy Story 4 fame, I'm sure the film will have an emotional core to it.
A minor thing I don't much care for is having Bee be in the same age range as Orion, in my mind he's always constructed during the war at like the half way mark or near the end, he's the little brother of the group, and now he's old enough to remember Op and Megs before the war. Also he sounds way too old.
Oh, also I don't like Orion's personality.
Good:
Now for the good; I think the animations style is gorgeous. Would have I liked something Spider-Verse/Mutant Mayhem-esk, of course, but what are you gonna do? The stand out here is the environments, a visual feast. This might already be my favourite Cybertron, it's so different yet reminisant of the Cybertron we know. The fact that the surface transformers and shifts and changes is genius, very IDW Phase 2 inspired. And the fact that Cybertron is a techno-organic hybrid world ala Beast Machines is crazy! I love that, and wildlife! I bet that's how we get the cassettes. The character models are great too, you can actually tell what emotion is happening on a person's face. Gone are the days of faces being made up of razor blades and mandibles BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT INSECTS FUCK YOU MICHAEL BAY. THEY'RE PEOPLE! There's the nose, the lips, the eyes, and I can tell where one begins and ends. The eyes are gorgeous and detailed, and the face surface detail has smuges, wear, specs of dirt, metallic texture. Like, you nailed it! It's a person but a robot, you got it!
We see what we assume are the 13 Primes, Alpha Trion being the only survivor, maybe they were killed by the Quintessons and they took over. D-16, a ref to IDW and his toys designation in the toy catalogue, he'll obviously name himself after Megatronus ala TF Prime. He seems to have the Decepticon insignia before meeting The Fallen so maybe Megatronus' face is some sort of religious iconography, the Primes are a religion on Cybertron after all. It's all so fascinating, I can't remember the last time I was so excited to learn more about a new TF continuity.
Orion and D-16 are both miners and or workers, that's a refreshing take, no coptimus here. They've suffered the same way together, I bet story will be about dealing with that pain, what justice means, how far one is willing to take it and where justice stops and injustice begins. I know people are mad that the origins are a little different, but I ask you, different from what? Which continuity are you talking about? TF has never had a consistent singular timeline, and that's what I love about this franchise! It builds on itself with each new continuity! Take a bit of the old, mix it with new ideas and create something fresh, then that old guard leaves and a new team takes over and does the same and the franchise continues to evolve or should I say transform. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get, and new incarnations always give second chances to improve apon what came before. No Reboots, no risks means no Skybite, or Nemesis Prime, no Stasis Pods, Sparks, Protoforms, Energon ore, no Star Saber, Hot Shot, Knock Out, Airachnid, no All Spark, no Sari, no Bulkhead, no old grumpy Ratchet, none of that. Reboots are a part of this franchise's DNA. I sense the people that are complaining are the people who only value one continuity and discard all others.
It's really neat this universe's version of The Cast System is lower class worker protoforms being denied a Transformation Cog, it seems like it's reserved for the higher classes, the very thing that makes their species special and unique is denied to them. Also I didn't notice it the first time, but Alpha actually pulls the t-cogs out of the dead Primes which kind of signifies a passing of the guard, the old Primes failed, now it's your turn, and of course history repeats itself with the downfall of Megatron.
I like how Trion is covered and intertwined with moss and vines and has a beast mode, showcasing that he's of an older era now gone and forgotten.
Some other smaller stuff:
The sun looks like a holographic simulation, which makes me wonder, Cybertron doesn't usually have a sun, but there's plant life now, so what's up?
The cave that the dead Primes and Trion are in kinda looks like a Dweller.
Megatron's black helmet is a ref to Marvel G1.
That spin kick where Elita twirls her entire waist around is sooo satisfying. I love it.
AIRACHNID!!?!!!! MY QUEEN HAS RETURNED!!!!!!!
I think that's a good point to end on. So, yeah, v excited.
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The whole Kiki and Zane situation
Major Content Warning for sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, and lack of consent
Yeah this is a thing. That we need to talk about. I'm keeping the whole amulet thing the same, I actually have a lot of thoughts about these amulets, where they came from, and why they do what they do, but in this situation I think it works. But we are not going to gloss over this situation at all.
I am necessitating downtime after the first major fiasco with Zane. I literally don't know what happens after that but there is as much time as I want for characters to just process that whole fucking ordeal. Especially Kiki. Give her time to process the physical trauma of having a child under such extreme circumstances, maybe show her going to the Irene Statue to pray or getting healing potions from Zoey or eventually Lucinda to help her body deal with the after effects.
Let Kiki be emotional about it. Let someone ask her how she's doing and that time she can't lie about it. She can't hide the miserable look in her eyes. She's tried to hide this from Leona, she doesn't want her daughter to have to deal with the burden of her origin and what it did to Kiki, but deep down Kiki knows she can't stop that from happening. She knows Leona will always be affected by this and she's completely shaken at the mere thought of having to explain it to her later in life.
And let other characters express thoughts on this!! I feel like canon absolutely ignores a lot of characters feelings, especially people in Season 1 Phoenix Drop, and will just focus on a certain part of a series of events while ignoring or rarely bringing up another. Like I honestly forgot this whole subplot happened when I went in for a rewatch a year ago and was absolutely mortified by how little the story focused on a fucking traumatizing experience that it just shows on screen.
Garroth shows up at Kiki's barn because at this point, the jig is up. Everyone in Phoenix Drop knows who he is and who his brother is. And most people know he despises Zane and that Garroth is fundamentally a different person. But he still shoulders guilt for how bad it got for some people. Especially Kiki. He saw the way Zane looked at her, the way he fancied her. Even when he and Irena both warn her about Zane, Garroth still feels like he didn't do enough to prevent this.
He agonizes over how to talk to her and ends up pacing near the staircase up to her second floor while he tries to work it out. Garroth forgets that his armor is fucking LOUD and Kiki can hear him in her echoey ass barn, so she just yells at him to come upstairs and get this over with.
Garroth is eventually coaxed into revealing how guilty he feels about this happening. He starts to blame himself for it, and Kiki very quickly shuts that down. The only person at fault is Zane. There's no way Garroth could have known the depths of cruelty his brother would go to, and she doesn't want anyone being blamed for this other than Zane. She decided to keep Leona and raise her as her own, in spite of the man who helped create her.
Garroth apologizes for trying to shift the blame and resolves to instead ensure Zane isn't able to get that close to anyone he cares about. And he takes his role as Leona's uncle very seriously. For the time he gets to before the season 1 finale, Garroth often spends time around Kiki and Leona. Sometimes he'll baby sit so Kiki can get some rest, or he'll tell Kiki stories of what his youngest brother was like as a child. He quietly omits any mention of the middle brother.
Irena and Kiki have long talks about parenting and how Kiki plans to raise Leona. Irena keeps giving her this sad look, and Kiki admits that she's much more damaged than she lets on. But Irena has enough on her shoulders. Kiki admits that she's been processing a lot of this with Brendan and Donna, who she considers her very dear friends, and that while she's so happy Irena cares so much, it isn't her problem to worry about. She isn't allowed to blame herself for it, and she isn't allowed to try and take more onto her plate for Kiki's sake.
Gods I love Kiki so much. She's such an underrated character and I really want to explore her and other underutilized members of the village quite a bit more in this rewrite. Really make Phoenix Drop into the incredibly fucked up found family it was meant to be.
And let's be clear that even after 15 years, 15 years of healing, of loving, of having a life without Zane, of having a life with the daughter she adores, Kiki is still healing. There are scars on her stomach that will never go away. She's fairly confident she'll never be able to give birth again and has come to terms with that. She doesn't let herself be very intimate with people anymore, and anyone who knows her isn't pushy at all. They're just grateful that Kiki is incredibly strong and unbelievably stubborn.
One day Leona comes downstairs and some of her hair is covering her eye the same way Zane's did. Kiki tries to hide how tense and uncomfortable this makes her, asking Leona in a fairly roundabout way how she'd feel about a haircut. Even if Leona isn't fully aware of the situation at this point, she can tell that something's got her mom acting a little off. And the long hair is harder to maintain when she's trying to hunt.
Short hair Leona. That's it.
Even if it takes forever to get to this point, there's something fundamentally healing about Garroth getting to meet Leona. A lot has changed in the time he was gone, but Irena prepared him for a lot of it. What she couldn't have prepared him for is how it would feel to see a 15 year old Leona racing around the island chasing after some other kid like a feral beast. Like I'm so serious Garroth is so close to crying when he meets her.
Once Leona realizes who he is, she's ecstatic because she's heard so many stories about her uncle Garroth from her mom!! She's always wanted to meet him!! Garroth has a massive complex around his family and their impact on the lives of those around him, but when he gets to see how happy Kiki and Leona are, it kind of just melts away and he gets to spend an afternoon playing with his niece in the forest.
#zane gets middle child erasure but he deserves it#not afraid to admit it#i cried while writing this#more than once#I literally love Kiki so much#minecraft diaries#minecraft diaries rewrite#mcd rewrite#mcd kiki#garroth ro'meave#mcd garroth#minecraft diaries garroth#mcd leona#mcd headcanons#writing#aphblr#aphverse
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2016 season summary
Alright let’s get the general stuff out the way first because we all know this is mainly gonna be about brocedes anyway.
General stuff :
First of all F1 really fucked up with trying to change quali and with the incredibly stupid radio ban. Also they’ve been sold to Liberty media so you know things are gonna change.
At the start of the season Ferrari looks pretty good but they’re not winning the development war. For RedBull : there’s the controversial swap with Max making it into the A-Team after just 4 races. The relationship between Daniel and Max is interesting. There’s a clear time when you can tell Ricciardo starts feeling threatened by the kid. They’re getting closer and closer to Mercedes as well. And of course there’s literally a whole rule added by Charlie because of how Max drives, i.e. dangerously.
Okay now let’s get to the main topic, brocedes :
Look. It’s gonna be difficult to write this because what hasn’t been written about it already? I’m not gonna have a smarter or original thing to say, so I guess all I can do is give my own outlook on things.
First of all, I do agree Nico probably would not have won a title if it wasn’t for Lewis’ bad luck. But it doesn’t actually matter. Luck is part of the sport. In 2015, Nico was the unlucky one out of the two. That’s just how it is : you need a good driver in a good car with a good strategy but if your driver is unlucky none of it counts.
Reliability is also not the only problem Lewis faces that season. Because of it and because of the mechanics swap (which imo was a very poor managerial decision btw, way too radical), he gets very very deep in his head. Adaptability is truly not his best trait, to this day. He’s very unhappy about the swap, and then he gets paranoid with the reliability issues, even suggesting some conspiracy theory at some point (Malaysia - and yeah I absolutely do not believe the official Merc version that he was alluding to a higher power rather than someone sabotaging him). He just can’t get over himself, not that it would have changed much of anything to his engine repeatedly failing.
Thus, Lewis’ self-narration progressively goes from “I’m heroically battling the odds and not giving up” to “he’s only winning because I had reliability issues” when it becomes clear he’s only gonna beat Nico through actual divine intervention. He’s absolutely unable to recognize Nico’s work. Even after Nico has won, he keeps saying “I don’t wanna take anything away from him, he did everything he had to this year BUT”. And he just can’t let go of that “but”. He says it every single time. He can’t accept that he lost, or maybe he can’t accept that Nico won. I know I keep saying it but once again : Nico won against someone he saw as better than him, and Lewis lost to someone who he saw as not as good as he is. And he can’t accept it. And that’s why to this day, Nico is able to talk freely about their rivalry and about Lewis, and Lewis can’t.
And – sorry for this personal vendetta but yes, I’m gonna mention it – the funny thing about this is, Lewis early on in the season (Bahrain GP) said in an interview that the issue with racing now is that drivers get coaches when psychologists just mess with your mind and they don’t need all that. Meanwhile Nico credited part of what allowed him to win that year to working “extremely intensely” with a sport psychologist. So. Yeah. Just saying. Maybe if he worked with a psychologist he wouldn’t have gotten that paranoid but who knows. Anyway, moving on. This really isn’t Lewis’ best year. That’s probably the least likeable I’ve seen him. And I understand why some people saw him as arrogant. Because he fucking is. (Doesn’t matter btw, I love a cocky asshole, but it’s honest to mention it I think.)
I’m absolutely fascinated with Nico’s departure as well. We’ve talked about it a bit in the last review but of course I’m gonna talk about it again. Right when I started watching the brocedes era for this rewatch (which, again, up to this point isn’t really a rewatch but a watch), I mentioned that being in this fandom without actually having seen it with my own two eyes gave me the very wrong picture of what it was like. Nico has been demonised a lot by Lewis’ fans, and I don’t think most of it was justified. I also think a lot of newer fans interpret the story with the current Lewis in mind (i.e. generally extremely clean racer, very good at media com, very good at portraying himself as good and above petty disputes – whether he truly is above them remains to be proven) but Lewis was an asshole much more outwardly at the time it happened, and he still had a lot of maturing to do, and his com was pretty bad (think of the Japanese GP snapchat scandal stupidity, I mean… the whole thing was ridiculous to being with, but he unfortunately handled it very poorly as well – if such a thing happened today he would react very differently). Anyway, I will forever wonder whether it could have been possible for them to have such a rivalry in a mature way later on, or if the fact that it’s THEM makes it impossible for them to be mature about it, in the way siblings can never fight without all the weight of their childhood on their backs.
Similarly, I feel like when you don’t know the actual story, like I mentioned in the Abu Dhabi review, it seems like Lewis won the war as Nico gave up on F1. But that’s not true. And look. You know I don’t really do fanfiction but I want to say that the first person who opened my eyes to it even before I got to the end of the season and saw it for myself was Akira (@effervescentdragon) in this ficlet. Credit where it’s due, what she wrote really stayed with me while watching the end of this season. Anyway, forgive me for quoting myself from the last race review, but there’s no use paraphrasing something I already wrote :
And I think it’s an important thing to finish on. Because a lot of people have said (I mean I’ve just read it in one of the articles I’ve read for this conclusion) that Nico won the battle but Lewis won the war because Nico basically gave up. I myself have alluded to this in the “Lewis breaks his teammates essay”. Lewis did break Nico. I mean Nico said pretty plainly that he was unable (but maybe more importantly unwilling) to keep putting so much effort into beating Lewis. But Lewis didn’t win the war, Nico did. Because Lewis never got to beat him again. [...] And Nico robbed him of a chance to set things right in his mind. In the story of their rivalry, the last thing that happened is, and will forever be : Nico won. And that’s Nico’s everlasting victory.
Let’s talk numbers : so far, I’ve completed 56.6% of my rewatch. In total, I’ve made 1,862 GIFs to illustrate it.
Here’s a list of the 2016 GPs with a quick summary and the link to the actual recap if you wanna read it or take a look at the GIFs I made :
Australian GP : season context, quali fiasco, Lewis pole, interviews, bad start, horrible crash with a redflag, slight Toro Rosso drama, Lewis P2
Bahrain GP : quali fiasco still being revised, Lewis pole, Alonso is NOT back, another interview, Angela, got overtaken by nico then contact with val, pretty good racing but not at the front, Lewis P3
Chinese GP : absolute disaster of a weekend, first PU failure, chaotic start, three pit stops in the first ten laps???, lots of overtakes, Lewis p7
Russian GP : abysmally stupid halo conversation, second PU failure + issues during the race, messy messy start, mechanics swap, lewis P2, bonus
Spanish GP : lewis pole, Max promoted to RedBull, obviously well. Double DNF.
Monaco GP : not on pole, mixed conditions, but still 44th win!
Canadian GP : controversial start incident, battle with Seb, nice podium, the seagull incident, Ted being very partial, Lewis wins!
European GP : bad quali and another engine problem, stupid radio ban, Lewis P5
Austrian GP : pole!, complicated race, shocking plot twist, lots of post race debrief, Lewis wins
British GP : Lewis pole, karting interview, wet start, loads of cars losing it, radio ban issue for Nico, Lewis wins
Hungarian GP : huge quali controversy, the radio ban gets even stupider, possibly some shady backing up and brake issues?, Lewis wins, championship lead! Raikkonen doesn’t like Max’s driving
German GP : Nico interview, strategy group meeting, pretty boring race, Lewis wins
Belgian GP : engine penalty, terrible Brundle opinions on the halo, incredibly chaotic race, Lewis P3 after an extreme recovery
Italian GP : extremely boring race, nothing to say, Lewis P2
Singapore GP : chaotic start, very very weird strategy calls, Lewis P3
Malaysian GP : fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck (but more seriously : turning point moment?, tragic ending, hurt no comfort, conspiracy theories, etc.)
Japanese GP : Snapchat controversy, another bad start, many overtakes early on, suspenseful ending, WCC decider
US GP : Lewis interview, Lewis pole, but more reliability problems, Lewis’ 50th win! Adorable podium.
Mexican GP : Lewis pole Lewis win, but nobody cares because there’s incredible drama between Max and Seb, none of your business
Brazilian GP : very very chaotic wet race, Massa’s last home race, lovely radio, baby Charles is in love, Lewis win
Abu Dhabi GP : obvious title decider, some stuff about Nico’s decision to leave F1
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vv brainrot continuation:
dad, I missed you (mom, I missed you)
that cute "feels so good" sound (pink drink, I really want to try it)
hugs in bed are the same as after joob’s funeral
part 3/4 damn music from vice versa! aof, fuck, just admit everything already!
we got lost (and found our local glasshouse)
bonfires and songs with guitar
return of shirts (and they smell like each other. what could be more erotic)
interrupted kiss (okay, not because of bad breath)
the description of the sky is worthy of rawi’s palette
the guys were right, this damn miss universe appeared before our eyes. lord, I'm not completely alive, monica. what about you? you know, maybe sea didn’t lie, and the remaining episodes won’t be sad even despite the breakup, bc the worst and most expected has already happened, and then everything will go easier. william's song brought me to tears, it's beautiful! and I liked day's version. its so romantic. but, forgive me, the bed scene could have been much better, the angles and amount of blur didn’t turn out very well, and, tbh, I expected more tactility from day, so that he could study mork’s body with his hands. it was so important to him, but they showed it to us very quickly and didn’t spend enough time on it. but I really liked that they were presented as switch, moving away from the nightmare clichés, it's great. the scene on the mountain is the pinnacle of it all, and lord knows the boys pulled it off superbly. it was so emotional. I crumbled like sand and don’t know how I’ll recover by next week. monica, share your brainrot, I’m sure I missed everything possible bc I was so busy in the bed scene.
SORRY PINKYBRAIN IM AFRAID IM GONNA BE COMPLETELY USELESS THIS TIME AROUND I SWEAR I EVEN TRIED TO REWATCH THE EPISODE TO PICK UP MORE PARALLELS BUT I ONLY ENDED UP SOBBING ON THE FLOOR WHILE CLUTCHING A BUNCH OF SCREENSHOTS TO MY CHEST
and you've already pointed out all of these moments but allow me to put them side by side anyway because!!!!!!!
[CHANTS] COMFORT SHIPS COMFORT SHIPS COMFORT SHIPS PORTRAYED BY THE MOST COMFORT BOYS JUST SO COMFORT SHAPED COMFORT SHIPS!!!!!!!!!
and even if these two moments can’t really be compared THEY INVENTED EMOTIONAL FOREHEAD TOUCHES TOO!!!!!!!!
my personal emotional devastation aside, tho, i do think there are some parallels to be drawn between episode 9 of vice versa and episode 9 of last twilight, between puen on an island finally accepting his life in the original universe and by the end "gaining sight" on who talay really is, and day on a mountain finally accepting going blind and having his last sight being mork. i also think it's interesting that in last twilight (the ost) at one point there's the line "my heart cherishes the memory of us" while in vice versa the very last line of friend credits' second movie is "though we aren't together tomorrow, you're always here in my memories". like idk if it's a reach but both shows are about seeing when you can't really see (not just in the literal physical sense) and acceptance and carrying this love that helped you through it all with you and i just think someone with a brain activity currently higher than my own could make some connections!!!!!!!!
i personally did like the sex scene (i've talked about it here a little if you're interested), but i think i also get what you mean. if it were for me we would definitely have gotten a 17 minutes long one take focused on day's hands as he traced every part of mork's body starting from his face and slowly making his way down to his feet. but at the same time i wonder if it would have made sense for their first time. i feel like day was already so preoccupied with his sight being almost gone that what he needed in that moment was to get lost in the feelings rather than commit mork's body to memory. and who knows, last twilight has already broken p’aof’s habit of having only a couple of kisses in his shows, maybe it will make him give us another intimate scene too!!!
#once again i apologize for being useless but this episode really destroyed any trace of sanity i had left ;;;;;;#if i ever catch some other parallels in the future i will definitely let you know!!!!#last twilight the series#vice versa#morkday#puentalay#m: ask
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Am heavily considering writing @destinysbounty’s “if Pythor didn’t suck” au and realizing that literally only season 7 remains relatively intact
Season one’s climax is largely avoided considering Pythor’s massive involvement in the resurrection of the Great Devourer
No Great Devourer = Garmadon isn’t given the golden weapons = no megaweapon plot = no traumatic loss of childhood for lil Lloyd (at least not in the literal sense), final battle may or may not still happen but if it does Garm is throwing hands with a whole ass eight year old
Assuming the final battle still takes place, we still get the first half of season three relatively unchanged until the blackout successfully wiped out the Overlord without Pythor’s intervention, no space arc and Zane doesn’t die
Chen is most likely still doing stuff but since Zane’s still alive season 4 would look a lot different, especially considering Pythor’s role in Chen’s success
If Chen doesn’t get to pythor to complete the spell the season 4 finale would probably look very different, potentially not including Garmadon’s self sacrifice that resulted in Morro’s release. If that’s the case season 5 just straight up does not happen, possibly leading to Nya not discovering her powers until even later
If season 5’s final fight didn’t happen and Stiix isn’t destroyed then most of the setup for season 6 goes out the window, depending on how this alternate version of season 4 went it’s possible Clouse isn’t even still around at this point. This one’s more up in the air but I think there’s a considerable chance Nadakhan is never released
Pythor had absolutely nothing to do with the time twins’ return!! The ninja get to fight bad guys again lmao
No evil Pythor = no Great Devourer = no evil Harumi = no Sons of Garmadon = no resurrected Garmadon, seasons 8 and 9 are out of here lmao
Season 10 is a direct consequence of Harumi’s actions and all that followed, it too is canceled
The ninja accidentally release Aspheera as a result of not knowing what to do with themselves, in this timeline they’ve seen far less action and are used to having long stretches of time between villains, possibly even have side hussles, season 11 is gone.
Okay, season 12 might stay relatively unchanged but that’s a big maybe considering the Mechanic is responsible for the inciting incident and his origin story was a result of season 4. Things probably played out similarly for him but if they didn’t then there’s a good chance Prime Empire never got going. But even if it did, if Skybound didn’t happen then Jay didn’t find out he was adopted and may not have been able to talk down Unagami as well as he did
On the surface, season 13 is vibing BUT as of Crystallized, we know Vangelis’s actions are being funded by Harumi and the Overlord, neither of whom would be active at this time in this au. There’s a good chance he’s still a slaveowner because people like that don’t really need a reason to be fucking horrid but it’s not a given
(The Island is season 14 in my books, it’s the same length as season 10) the conflict is kicked off by Wu’s mid-life(???) crisis in season 13 which may or may not occur similarly in this universe. It’s also more than likely that the ninja never met Clutch in this au since season 11 didn’t happen. It would probably still happen but it would look very different, I’m not sure and I’ll need to rewatch to make up my mind
Assuming Nya does in fact unlock her true potential at some point and some semblance of season 14 happens, I believe Seabound is relatively unchanged. Pogchamp for season 15 being the only other survivor of this au lol
Circling back to season 8, Crystallized just straight up does not happen. Nya would presumably have still died the season prior though so in this universe season 16 can be more about that. Though, since season 11 didn’t happen meaning Aspheera isn’t around, they’d have to find another way to bring Nya back. All in all would be a very different story but one I’m very interested in seeing
When it is inevitably revealed that the Merge was caused by something the ninja did, there’s a good chance DR doesn’t happen. Until then, season 17 theoretically remains relatively unchanged (with the exception of tomorrow’s tea having never happened and Lloyd being younger than he is in canon and this closer to Arin and Sora’s age)
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Honestly, Legend of Korra Book 1 is a solid 9/10. I've always thought so, from the moment I first watched it, but after my latest rewatch that belief has been reinvigorated.
Yeah, it would have been an easy 10/10 if the ending felt less rushed, if Korra's sudden airbending had been given more depth. But considering they initially only had this one season, it makes sense for them to wrap it up on a good note (and have an Aang Easter egg).
And yes, there's also Makorra as the smelly elephant in the room, but you know what? I'm not even that bothered by it. It doesn't overshadow the good things Legend of Korra does, and it does a lot of good.
Fandom brain really exists, and I think many of us watching at that moment were influenced moreso by what LOK could have been rather than what it was. I was one of those people for sure, but that not exactly a fair way to engage with a piece of fiction. When you look at Book 1 just as it is, and let the story - not your expectations - lead you, you see that it is full of well-paced action, good suspense, rounded characters, and enough humour to keep it all light. With the limited time they have, the worldbuilding is enough to make you interested in the world without creating many more questions. Simply put, it is hype as fuck.
And Korra herself, the fandom really mistreated. Many people disliked her abrasiveness and arrogance, but the whole point is that her naivety to the world feeds her behaviour in both good and bad ways. This is literally baby's first outing, baby's first political intrugue, and baby's first romance. She is a character that clearly has to learn a lot about herself and the world, but instead of appreciating that character arc many instead gave her shit.
I felt the need to make this post because I think we all gave the show a little too much shit during its runtime. With the abysmal Book 2 following after this is not surprising, as it unintentionally retcons a lot of the good things from Book 1. My last rewatch of LOK actually died at Book 2 because it was that unbearable. This time I will jump straight to 3 and 4 (which I haven't watched since its original airing), and will report back to you later with my thoughts.
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watched hairspray live [ 2016 ] last night and im so crazy ... id never heard some of these songs before since my only experience w it previously was watching the 2007 movie but im so confused why they cut some of these bangers from being in the film ??? lmao
i will always think that cutting ‘mama im a big girl now’ is a crime against humanity, literally one of my favorite numbers, its so fucking catchy?? im glad someone agrees i feel like with musical -> movie translations they always cut like. all the songs that they really shouldn’t. (both good movies like hedwig and the angry inch and bad, bad movies like in the heights are guilty of cutting my all time favorite songs.) I like the 2007 hairspray movie fine, i just think its a little like.. tame for what the original movie and musical are? Like when i saw a production of hairspray a few months ago the highlight was that it looked kinda.. cheap? yknow how john waters films do? like it was made on a small budget? and obviously it wasn’t but it captured a lot of the charm of the original film through that. Hairspray is a weird, crude story that is painfully aware of it’s flaws, it’s literally a ‘everyone gets everything they want and racism is solved!!’ ending, it’s not meant to be taken seriously, and i always felt like the 2007 movie lost some of that if that makes sense. That being said, it’s been a while since I saw it. I need to do a rewatch of a bunch of movie musicals i’ve seen live productions of and see how they hold up lol.
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here we gooooo
shadow and bone s2e2 reaction
ok I know some people didn't like that they changed sturmhond's character but I kinda like it...it makes him more of a "privateer" *cough pirate cough*
also it makes sense that he didn't know the darkling and alina were working together since literally everybody else does...especially since they changed it to have the darkling not be on the ship
darklina scenes are very well done...the desire and the way the darkling is describing his past and his way of thinking
I love the genya darkling sceneeee...it shows that what the darkling is doing is affecting him physically
it almost seems like the darkling doesn't like his nichevo'ya which is a whole different side of the darkling we haven't seen
not the darkling saying thank you and then being creepy as hell
OMG PER HASKELL it's all coming together now...kind of
WYLAN TRYING TO LOOK TOUGH I LOVE HIM
omg not nina knowing everything
Matthias it'll be ok babe 🥺
I love sturmhond only learning mals name after he became valuable 🤭
Tolya and Tamar understanding how Alina felt on the outside of both Shu and Ravkan 🥺🥺
they definitely make Alina more of the "hero" type as well with her originally being the one to want to find the amplifier to tear down the fold
"there is a cost, always, to making difficult choices. The key is making sure that cost is not regret."
"trust is the other side of secrecy kaz, remember that" love them...and their secrets
Pekka never took kaz seriously until crooked kingdom so having him take him serious now is gonna change some things...I just wonder how
aww now we get sentimental sturmhond
Paddy is such a good sturmhond honestly they just casted extremely well because tolya, Tamar and wylan are all extraordinary 😭
ope...he still doesn't know mals name 🤭
"when people say impossible they mean improbable" love
morozovas journal?
confirmed
BAGHRA...well she's not blind...YET...but we'll see
I love this sea whip hunt...the music is so good
I think it's cool that they made it on an island and they were on their feet not on a boat
ahh the helnik flashbacks are so well placed
WYLANNN
his facial expressions 😭🥰
"have we met before?" this man 🙄
wylan looked SO DONE when jesper called him a total stranger 🤭🤭
jack understands wylan SO WELL like he's PERFECT
also wylan and jesper have such good chemistry even though it's still the stage where jesper "doesn't like" wylan...it's great!
no FUCK THAT if that creep ass bitch thinks he can't put inej back in the menagerie
how tf is he getting stabbed and fine with it???
there's that upped rating again (aka watching the madman pull the knives out of inej)
NOT JESPER REMEMBERING WYLAN ONCE HE'S LITERALLY ON TOP OF HIM STFU I LOVE HIM HE'S SUCH AN IDIOT
THE CHEMISTRY
God I love jesper he's so cool
(also don't mind me rewatching all the wylan scenes like 3 times)
I need scenes where kaz had all the shit planned the while time...cuz that was always the best parts in the book
(because when Nina showed up I thought that was gonna be Kaz's whole thing like "everything went to plan")
not jespers thumbs up while wylan was getting choked 🙄🤭
YES WYLAN
omgggg durast jesper GET IT
don't mess with nina she's a bad bitch
ope! here comes the black veil!
did jesper just slap wylans ass? 🧐
OPE THE MAL AMPLIFIER HINT
also him helping her stop summoning 🥺
"my alina" that's some bad bitch energy
#this is way longer than i intended it to be#its so good though#rusalye#shadow and bone s2e2#s&b s2e2#shadow and bone reaction#shadow and bone spoilers#shadow and bone#s&b reaction#siz of crows#soc#wylan#wylan van eck#wesper#young kaz#mal oretsev#alina starkov#justanothersbreaction
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I was rewatching season 5 and I'm sorry but I find the episode immediately after hotch gets his shit wrecked by foyet so funny bc they're all treating him like he's this unhinged psycho like abdjfjds yeah I GET that that's what he was supposed to be like but the way they executed it, he really wasn't that out of order. It's just funny to me when he did like literally anything the other character on screen would look at him like 😧😦🫢
i actually find this soooo interesting for so many reasons.
foyet is the first "big bad" we really get for criminal minds. i've said a lot about whether this was a good directional shift for the show, but it was an interesting move to target the team leader first. hotch has, for the most part, gone largely unrecognized by the drama of the show so far. sure he's had his divorce blah blah, but he doesn't talk about it much. if he doesn't talk about it, the team's curiosity will fade sooner rather than later. that seems to be his strategy whenever something is going on with him. and it tends to work.
but now it's different. this was a serious event that happened. they can't help but recognize the severity of what just happened, and there's a palpable difference in the team dynamic because of it. so when everyone has their eyes on hotch, scrutinizing his every move, i don't think it's necessarily because he's acting different (even tho he is--even if his general risk assessment is the same, he's still initially snappier towards friends and strangers than they're used to seeing from him), but because they're aware of his presence in a way that they're not accustomed: he's vulnerable. he's not the unbreakable monolith of stability the team has believed him to be this whole time. i think a big reason why it hit the team so hard isn't just because of what happened, but the way their relationships have all developed up until now.
morgan and garcia are very clearly the most concerned out of everyone. beyond their closeness, i think that has a lot to do with both of them losing a parent/parents at a young age. seeing their leader--who they have so much respect and love for--severely wounded fucks them up!! hotch more or less holds a father figure role in both of their lives, and it's not something that appeared out of nowhere (and here i'll add reid since he doesn't have the trauma of a parent's death, but he does see hotch as a parental figure). it's the result of years and years of building trust, both in character and as a symbol of strength and security (which is now relevant to jj, whose whole character development is about trying to emulate that mythical strength). their faith is shaken in him--not because of his own actions, but because of their own idealized concept of him that was challenged by hotch's very very human fallibility. even emily, who doesn't rely on him emotionally the way the rest of the team does, is disturbed, but only because she sees him as a protector of the team--as a protector of the new chance of life she has with them. now that that's threatened, she needs to see his safety through with her own eyes (which is why she's the first to notice him missing, and the one who needs to drive him to and from work after this). he's the rock of the team, and no one expects the rock to crack.
i hate when rossi ends up the voice of reason, but in this case it really makes sense. he doesn't have any aggrandized notions of who hotch is: he watched hotch grow within the bau. rossi knows how to push hotch, when to push hotch, because he knows hotch won't break easy. even when hotch hates himself, like the original omnivore episode, rossi doesn't hesitate to shove a gun in hotch's hand and tell him to kill himself because he knows hotch would never. rossi's perfectly aware of the weaknesses hotch refuses to let the rest of the team see. when rossi tries to assuage derek's worries, it's not because he doesn't care, but because he knows not to stifle him. he knows hotch will get through this, he just needs time. i think everyone's reaction to hotch's return is perfectly emblematic of their relationship to him: morgan questions his authority suddenly because the inherent trust is lost. emily is above all worried about his safety because she knows that jeopardizes the team. reid is worried but he doesn't interfere because, as far as he's concerned, hotch can handle it. garcia is worried but doesn't interfere because she doesn't know how to help. jj's concern is more akin to pity because the bastion of strength she's respected for so long ended up being just as human as the rest of them. rossi's concern for hotch is on the back burner because he sees that the team is fracturing around the edges
i love 5x02 because we spend surprisingly little time on hotch dealing with his emotions; instead, we focus on the team dealing with hotch's vulnerability. they're fully aware of him for the first time, and they overreact to everything they would normally accept at face value. they rarely question his judgment before this because they trust him implicitly. he's proven himself, and it's heartbreaking that--through no fault of his own--he has to build that trust back. rossi says to derek "we have to show we have his back." derek interprets that as watching his back, to double check every decision and making sure he's alright based on those decisions. even jj knows that, given the heat he's getting from his superiors, that's the last thing hotch needs.
#i had to open tumblr on my laptop for the first time in years to answer this bc i needed a proper keyboard to express my thoughts#so if anything looks super fucked up thats why#asks
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anyway, as someone coming at this movie from not having read the book but being an avid rom com fan, i kind of don't like how rwrb is being called not original or not creative or not inventive or silly or basically not good
i mean. i get if you don't like rom coms. i do, they're truly not for everyone. but like. this movie was really fucking good. maybe rom coms just don't get credit for how hard they are to do well?
like idk actors repeatedly say how comedy is harder to do than dramatic, serious scenes, which is probably why there's a whole group of actors who are known for doing comedy, because it's really hard and a specialized skill set. getting those comedic beats right, the expressions that have just the right amount of irony and im in on it is hard!
and with romance, you need to have that chemistry, that rhythm it's really hard to do well because there's nothing external to the characters to distract from their performances there's no cool effects or world at stake plot or menacing villian
and rom coms?? really hard to get right. the whole genre has been in a decline for like the past ten years if I've been honest. so many recent rom coms have not been good at all! horribly written, terribly edited with really bad pacing, the flattest acting with no chemistry and not to mention uninteresting sets and costumes and stagnant camera work
meanwhile. rwrb is brilliant. it's written so well, with hilarious one liners (thank you zahra) and so much humour and comedy from the couple, the actors went all out with phenomenal performances, the shots showed so much care and attention to each scene, and the pacing was perfect for what it is - a rom com.
like so many recent rom coms take 4k way too far and it looks so bad, but rwrb looks so beautiful in every still. every single background was gorgeous every set, every detail with costuming. and this is important in rom coms! the two leads look so incredible!! taylor looks like a greek god with his long legs and his abs and his eyelashes to his nose while nick looks like a beautiful angel. (sorry it had to be said)
and the thing is, this is really hard to do. I believe rom coms have been in decline as the industry grapples with how much technology has pervaded dating recently, from dating apps to communicating constantly through things like texting and facetime, which it's really struggled to show convincingly on screen. the last good rom coms were before things like smartphones really took off
and rwrb did that so well!! romance as a genre in books recently has kind of been leaning into the tropes we're nostalgic about while incorporating those more recent aspects of relationships, and rwrb translates that so well on screen. the way they did the text messages was honestly innovative!!
the way it kind of led up to having henry physically in the room was an amazing way to capture growing closeness and how we now perceive text conversations to be just like real conversations, while still highlighting the kind of difference of actually being there which is actually really hard to portray and not really something the industry has figured out how to show well imo.
i loved the chemistry in that scene, and i loved how they did the emails as well because those are two different things!! and how it was able to show their togetherness while they were apart. even the way that ghosting works and alex literally storming a castle was shown so well!! that's not easy or done before!!
all this to say, i for one really appreciate matthew lopez's vision and will be rewatching this movie just as much as movies like 27 dresses, bridget jones' diary, and the proposal and i can't wait for a new wave of (queer!) rom coms
#rwrb#Im js#really loved this move#haven't read the book yet!!#i also really loved how many different sets there were like that makes it feel so lived in#like it may not be something you notice right away but it adds so much to the production value and the overall feel of the movie#it feels so real and expansive and it does such a good job of capturing the amount of time that it covered#and the lives of the characters!!#again different from recent rom coms which can again be really flat and have like two sets
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I do not dislike Michelle Keller, formerly Michelle Lasso, but I do dislike how the series and most fans either refuse to criticize her or defend her.
I understand that fans, esp women, are compelled to defend Michelle because she’s a woman and women are overly criticized and dragged unnecessarily at times. I get that. However, there would be think pieces about Michelle is she were Michael. And I truly hate this current trend of pretending everything is different when it’s a woman involved.
It’s quite strange how people are so sad for Ted being made to feel like he’s too much—hmm, I wonder who made him feel that way—and are rooting for him to have a happy ending with someone who accepts him as he is. Then when you directly criticize Michelle, it’s a ton of excuses about how separation/divorce is hard, Ted wouldn’t be transparent with her, and so forth.
While this is true, intentionally or not, Michelle still hurt Ted in a major way. And, I don’t know about you all, but I believe you should still apologize for hurting someone even if it wasn’t intentional.
Michelle became short tempered with him and had an issue whenever he tried to do things for her. While her reaction wasn’t malicious, there’s nothing wrong with, ��hey, I know you meant well. I just—it’s hard being around you and having this life with you when I don’t even feel like I know you. I shouldn’t have lashed out. You didn’t deserve that.”
Boom!
This NEVER happens.
Michelle never has to take any accountability for the things she’s down, which we know has a major effect on Ted. Essentially, people are arguing he deserved that treatment all while saying, “poor Ted.”
Michelle making Ted feel bad for saying “I love you.” I understand Michelle was going through her own shit, but Christ! Would we defending her if the genders were switched? I’ll need to rewatch the episode to really dig into that, but it felt unnecessarily cruel even if she didn’t intend for it to be so.
Someone will correct me on this, but Michelle and ted separate in February and by March of that same year she’s pushing for ted to sign divorce papers. It’s not like he’s a busy man or anything??? Literally most divorces, esp considering how long they’d been married, take a while to happen. Ted fucking granted her the divorce without her even asking and was kind about the entire thing and Michelle is pushing for a divorce within the month.
Is that not strange?
I honestly think this was just a bad writing choice, but my God, I can’t imagine the discourse if Ted was a woman—Thea. And how “Michael” would be dragged for that and people speculating that either they were cheating or wanted to be with new and different women. Not even accounting for how some would relate to “Thea” and how their ex did them dirty.
But again, we can’t talk about that. No matter how fucked up that was, NOPE!
And this recent shit. I don’t even know.
I don’t know if it’s a case of poor writing or not because I don’t think the series is going to go there. Meaning I don’t think the series is going to say Dr. Jacobs groomed Michelle. But let’s keep in mind that he was her therapist originally, and then their marriage counselor. He was the one who fueled Ted’s dislike of therapists and always sided with Michelle. I don’t think Ted even felt like he could be heard.
When Dr. Jacobs realizes it’s Ted, he freezes as if being caught. As if he was cheating with Michelle. Even Michelle is acting suspicious as fuck. There’s no, “I didn’t want him to find out about this, he may take it hard.” It felt like they’d both done something they were supposed to be doing. Both come off as guilty as hell.
Do I think the actually had an affair?
No.
Or maybe it was an emotional affair.
But people love to skip over the shit Michelle does (or inadvertently blame Ted) and it’s fucking annoying. Not necessarily because they don’t pay attention to her, but because the discussion around her behavior when they actually engage with it is either brushing off what she does or defending it.
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