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passionate-reply · 3 years

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In this installment of Great Albums, we’re back to talking about albums nobody’s ever heard of! You might not know who Zaine Griff is, but you’ve probably heard of a guy called Hans Zimmer, and Zimmer is the real mastermind of this record: a masterpiece of New Romantic synth-pop made long before he made his name composing for the big screen! Not to mention contributions from Ultravox’s Warren Cann, YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, and even Kate Bush. Find out all about it by watching this video, or reading the full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today’s installment is going to feature an album that is most definitely towards the obscure side--but, like most of the more obscure artists and albums I’ve talked about, I think this one is every bit as good as the classics. Zaine Griff’s Figures is not only a forgotten album that I think deserves more acclaim, but also an album that, in many ways, feels like it could have been a huge success in its own time.

Zaine Griff grew up in New Zealand, and moved to Great Britain in the 1970s in the hopes of pursuing a career in music. His debut LP, 1980’s Ashes & Diamonds, would mark him as one of the many artists straddling the musical landscape in the aftermath of glam, in the long shadow of David Bowie. With keen visual panache, a suave way of slurring when he sang, and the requisite killer cheekbones, Griff fit in perfectly with the so-called “New Romantics,” as stylish and sophisticated as Visage, Ultravox, or Japan.

Music: “Ashes & Diamonds”

The real turning point in Griff’s career was his being “discovered,” so to speak, by Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann. Cann had already become a figure of some renown, as the percussionist for the aforementioned Ultravox. Despite his tremendous fame today, Zimmer actually had much less to show for himself at this point, aside from a somewhat dodgy stint in the Buggles. While geniuses in their own ways, neither of them were necessarily natural frontmen, and Zaine Griff seemed like the perfect missing piece to fit into their pop ambitions.

Even setting aside Zimmer and Cann, Figures is actually full of recognizable talent, and I think it may have the single most stacked list of album credits I’ve ever seen in my life! You’ll also hear contributions from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi, backing vocals from Linda Jardim, who was also the soprano on the Buggles’ famous “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and a guest appearance by none other than Kate Bush. That’s really a lot of clout going around, which is one of the reasons I’m so surprised this album went nowhere. Anyway, that aside, the most dominant sonic footprint on display here is certainly that of Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is credited with producing the album, and his dynamic, expressive, perhaps “cinematic” work with digital synthesisers is surely the driving force behind Figures’s sound.

Music: “Fahrenheit 451”

It’s easy to imagine “Fahrenheit 451” is the thumping theme to some delightfully 80s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel. Its theme of lustful but dangerous romance is a constant throughout the album, most notably on tracks like “Hot” and the haunting closer, “The Beating of Wings.” The song’s tense and dramatic mood is well bolstered by those soaring synths, courtesy of the Fairlight CMI. One of the most distinctive sounds of mid-80s synth-pop, the soft, breathy tones of the Fairlight hadn’t yet reached full saturation when Figures was made--Zimmer was an early adopter of this particular musical revolution. You might be surprised to learn that “Fahrenheit 451” only saw minor distribution as a single, exclusively for the French and Belgian markets. I think that sort of mismanagement on behalf of Polydor really shafted this album. Its lead single was actually its title track.

Music: “Figures”

The title track of Figures isn’t the worst song I’ve ever heard, but I do think it just might be the worst song on this album. With a strident, stabbing synth riff and a somewhat sparse and anemic soundstage, the title track is not particularly exciting, and also not particularly representative of what the rest of the album sounds like, with no indication of the lush and vibrant textures that dominate tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” It also has less lyrics than the other tracks, and offers Griff little opportunity to demonstrate his pipes. Thematically, though, its imagery of wispy and mysterious personas, flitting in and out of substance in a world where appearance and identity are trifling and ephemeral, is something that resonates strongly with the album as a whole, as one might surmise from its title also being used for the album. “The Vanishing Men,” another song that easily feels like a better single than “Figures,” handles the same sort of subject in a more playful and upbeat manner.

Music: “The Vanishing Men”

The titular “vanishing men” are quite clearly the life of the party here, and in the world of this track, the insignificance of true identity is portrayed as an invitation to experiment and have fun with it--though not without a slight hint of danger as well. Perhaps it’s a good metaphor for the curated aestheticism of the New Romantic movement, decried by some as “style over substance.” New Romanticism really didn’t have much time left by the time *Figures* came out, being so strongly associated with trends in fashion that were on their way out by this point. Even Ultravox would find themselves pivoting towards more of a pop rock-oriented sound for their final classic lineup LP, 1984’s Lament. I can’t help but think that the changing landscape of musical trends is part of the poor reception of Figures, which is such a consummate New Romantic album, which basks in the full flush of the movement’s prior penetration into the mainstream. As stated above, “The Vanishing Men” is all about the glamour of mutable identity, but other tracks on the album seem to assign this theme a bit more weight, as in “The Stranger.”

Music: “The Stranger”

The titular character of “The Stranger” is described as “a stranger to himself,” but also “no stranger to anyone else.” This track seems to be more focused on the negative aspects of fashionable persona-play: losing the dignity and security of a true form, the people around you seeing through your charades, and becoming trapped in an existence defined by arbitrariness and artificiality. I’d also be remiss not to mention this track’s winsome pentatonic synth riff, which helps create a mercurial and ambiguous mood. It might be interpreted as a nod towards the rampant Orientalism of New Romantic music, which ran with the early 80s verve for all things Asian, and wasn’t shy about appropriating “Asiatic” musical motives like pentatonic scales to evoke mystery and wonder. Griff and friends’ use of such here is relatively subtle, though, and perhaps a bit more tactful than how many of their contemporaries approached other musical ideas associated with the East.

The unforgettable cover of Figures is as dramatic and infused with capital-R Romantic sentiment as the music contained within. Above the text relating the artist and title, which uses a V for a U for a touch of the classical, we see Griff splayed dramatically in a pond of lilies. With sharp makeup that emphasizes his lips, and a diaphanous, blousy top that turns translucent in the water, he seems to be the perfect tragic hero of some lost work of Shakespeare’s--complete with another flower stylishly pinned to his chest. As I mentioned before, Figures is an album that rides the wave of New Romanticism particularly hard, and I think its cover is yet another symptom of those sensibilities.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I can’t help but want to compare this image with a famous painting of one of Shakespeare’s best-known characters: Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais. Painted in the early 1850s, Millais’s Ophelia depicts the moment where Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet’s romantic rejection of her, drowns herself in a river. It’s exactly the kind of story of wild, passionate, and doomed love portrayed on tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” Ophelia is also associated strongly with flowers in the text, and features in a particularly memorable scene where she doles out various symbolic blossoms to members of the royal court. Besides the affinity of subject matter, even the composition of Millais’s work resembles the cover of Figures, contrasting its subject’s pale skin with the dark and murky natural surrounds, and emphasizing the drapery of their wettened attire. Ophelia is often considered the definitive masterpiece of the short-lived art movement, the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” who, as their name implies, sought to recapture the intuitive, colourful, and emotive power of art created prior to the High Renaissance. Not unlike New Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelite movement would crumble after only a few years, but not without leaving behind a trail of masterpieces that would continue to inspire future artists and admirers, far removed from their own time.

After the release of Figures, Zaine Griff remained involved with Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann, and, as the supergroup “Helden,” they embarked on an even more ambitious musical opus together: Spies, a sort of synth-pop oratorio about immortal Nazi super-spies falling in love in a futuristic dystopia. Spies is about as out-there as it sounds, and brings the flamboyant musical excess of Figures into a suitably theatrical setting. It’s also got nearly as star-studded of a cast as Figures, featuring not only Zimmer, Cann, and Jardim again, but also Eddie Maelov of Eddie & Sunshine as a mad scientist, and the enigmatic French electro-cabaret chanteuse Ronny, in the role of a super-computer with a sultry female voice. Griff portrays one of the titular immortal spies, known only as “The Stranger”--which, of course, begs comparison to the track of the same name on Figures, and prompts the question, to what extent was Spies already in the works when *Figures* was being written and recorded?

Music: “The Ball”

We all know the rest of the story for Hans Zimmer, who began working with music for film in the mid-1980s, such as the queer cult classic My Beautiful Laundrette. But Zaine Griff obviously never became a household name. Despite being finished in 1983, Spies never got to see an official release, as it was a bit too out there for a label to take a chance on at the time, and it would probably be lost media today if it weren’t for a vinyl bootleg that’s thankfully fairly easy to find online. Griff decided to retire from music shortly after this, and recounts a story of having walked past an extremely talented street musician, and having a sort of epiphany about just how hard it was to make it in music. After all, if a true virtuoso could end up busking on the street, how fair and rewarding could the industry possibly be? Disillusioned with the world of pop, Griff returned to his native New Zealand and got a day job as a golf instructor. More recently, though, he’s also released several new solo albums in the 2010s, surprisingly enough, and attempted to push forward into some very contemporary-sounding pop rock. The world is, of course, a very different place nowadays than it was in the 20th Century, and particularly in the world of music distribution, so perhaps it makes sense that our brave new world has room in it for someone like Zaine Griff to return.

My overall favourite track on Figures is probably “Time Stands Still,” which I think is perhaps the most accessible, pop-friendly track to be had on the album, and the one I would’ve released as the lead single had I worked for Polydor. With a big hook and simple, repetitive lyrics, it’s a true pop song through and through--though, if an artist releases a commercial-sounding album in the woods, and nobody is around to buy it, is it still really “pop?” Anyway, I also love this track’s delightful outro, imitating a skipping record to represent a freeze in the flow of time...though I admit it’s a lot less harrowing to hear when listening digitally! That’s all I have for today--thanks for listening.

Music: “Time Stands Still”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #zaine griff #new romantic #ultravox #warren cann #hans zimmer

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Trek Picard Season 2 Teaser Trailer: All the Easter Eggs & References

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Mild spoilers for Picard Season 1 ahead.

More than any of the new Star Trek series, Picard is the one that is the most stuffed with obvious Trekkie nostalgia. Yes, when Strange New Worlds starts showing some footage, we might feel differently, but because Picard is a sequel to the ‘90s-era of Trek, for this present moment, it connects with various generations of Trekkies at the same time.

On “First Contact Day,” Paramount+ dropped a minimalist, spare teaser-trailer, similar to the vineyard teaser for Picard Season 1. But this time, as we swept through Picard’s study in Château Picard, the trailer was basically nothing but Easter eggs. Here’s a full breakdown of what we caught and what it all might mean.

Château Picard is NOT a hologram

Notably, the first shot of the trailer is of the outside of Château Picard, which seems to imply what we’re looking at isn’t the holographic recreation of Picard’s study on the La Sirena, but instead, the “real” place. This could imply that Picard actually returns to Earth in Season 2. Unless this is some idealized version of his study we’ll never see.

Enterprise painting

This one is obvious. Prominently displayed in Picard’s study is that famous painting of the Enterprise which Picard had in his Ready Room for all seven seasons of The Next Generation, and the film, Generations. Like the Captain Picard Day banner in Season 1, you really have to wonder if this is the same painting. After all, when the Enterprise-D was crashed in Generations, we only saw Picard take his photo album with him, which seems to imply somebody else had to grab that painting for him later. That said, this painting looks a little different from the one made by Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach for The Next Generation.

Is any of this real?

Paradise Lost

One of the books visible in Picard’s study is Paradise Lost by John Milton. Mostly, this is a book of verses about Satan and other fallen angels. Paradise Lost is a revered work of literature insofar as many critics cite its metaphoric power over a variety of subjects. The most famous quote from Paradise Lost is easily, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Now that Picard is a Snyth/Golem (and no longer human) he might feel this way about himself. But, this thematic notion of Satan could also easily be applied to Q, a trickster god, often at odds with the other beings in the Q Continuum.

Star Trek also loves referencing this book. Khan alludes to this book in “Space Seed,” and Kirk explains to Scotty the significance at the end of the episode. When Chekov and Terrell find the Botany Bay’s cargo bays in The Wrath of Khan, a copy of Paradise Lost is clearly visible next to Moby Dick.

The Long Dark Tunnel

Sitting underneath the copy of Paradise Lost is a made-up book (meaning it doesn’t exist IRL!) of The Long Dark Tunnel. If you look close you can see the words “Dixon Hill.” Meta-fictionally, Dixon Hill a hardboiled detective who, in the Star Trek canon, was the main character of a series of crime noir novels published in the 1930s. The “author” of the Dixon Hill book was “Tracy Tormé” a writer on TNG’s early seasons. (The new Picard trailer honors that authorship too!) According to the Enterprise computer, “The Long Dark Tunnel” was the second appearance of Dixon in fiction. So, if you think of Dixon Hill like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, then The Long Dark Tunnel is like Farewell, My Lovely, or, perhaps, more appropriately, The Long Goodbye.

“Dixon Hill,” and the detail about The Long Dark Tunnel, was first mentioned in the TNG episode “The Big Goodbye.” The last time we heard mention of Dixon Hill was in Star Trek: First Contact when Picard played him on the holodeck and pumped some Borg full of lead.

The Promellian battlecruiser- in a bottle!

You can barely see this, but on Picard’s mantle, underneath the Enterprise painting, is a model ship in a bottle. Some fans, including Jörg Hillebrand on Twitter, have zoomed in very close and think this is a Promellian battlecruiser, in a bottle! Why would Picard have this? Well in the TNG episode, “Ship in a Bottle,” Picard mentioned having built model ships and putting them in bottles.

Picard’s Shakespeare books

We’ve seen these before, but the two big glass cases containing books appear to be Picard’s collected works of Shakespeare. Relevantly, Q threw huge volumes of Shakespeare at Picard (literally) in the TNG episode “Hide and Q.”

The Kurlan Naiskos

Given to Picard in “The Chase,” the Kurlan Naiskos is an ancient alien artifact. It represents “many voices” inside of “the one.”

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The USS Stargazer

Perhaps the most prominent Easter egg in the teaser is Picard’s model of the Stargazer. This Easter egg may not mean anything, but then again, this entire teaser is focused on Picard talking about regret and “second chances.” Picard was the Captain of the Stargazer before he was the Captain of the Enterprise. His best friend, Jack Crusher, died on the Stargazer based on orders given by Picard. Jack was Wesley’s dad and Beverly Crusher’s husband. We’ve only ever seen the Stargazer for real in the TNG episode “The Battle.” Interestingly, the Stargazer is also an Easter egg for Picard Season 1. In the Picard episode “Maps and Legends” Jean-Luc is visited by Dr. Benayoun, who we learn was a medical officer on the Stargazer. Other than Jack (and maybe Beverly) the canonical info about the Stargazer officers — and that Trek time period in general — is limited.

The Queen of Hearts

This Easter egg seems linked to a scene at the very start of Picard Season 1. While Data and Picard playing poker, Data suddenly has five queens. It’s at that point that Picard relives the attack on Mars, and wakes from his nightmare. Back in 2020 Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsman denied that this was an Easter egg for “Q,” but now, maybe, retroactively, it was?

Has Q just been hanging around, waiting to mess with Picard for a while?

While it’s probable that there wasn’t a plan to bring Q back in Picard Season 1, this Easter egg lets us believe that even if the writers’ didn’t intend for this reference at first, Q totally had other plans.

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Picard Season 2 is expected to hit Paramount+ sometime in 2022.

The post Star Trek Picard Season 2 Teaser Trailer: All the Easter Eggs & References appeared first on Den of Geek.

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whatiwillsay · 3 years

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DA2

DA2: love’s literature

hold my hand

driving ticket

indie record (the books beside our bed)

jail

kurt vonnegut

tattoos

lesbian chemicals (ft. Jack Antonoff)

unicorn

—

The title of this album is based off the fact Dianna is a snobby literature gay. It is a lyric of “kurt vonnegut,” and the motif of literature being an important element of love is repeated in “indie record (the books beside our bed)” and “tattoos.” The title is thematically appropriate as well, as its songs chronicle grand love stories fit for romantic literature.

“hold my hand” is an Achele song. The title is based on the fact that they always held hands suring “Someone to Love” during the Glee Tour. The song starts out with the dramatic ascending “Can” that is the opening note of “Someone to Love,” but the sound comes crashing down into a cacophony (think sort of like the beginning of “closure,” but with more chaos and more Freddie Mercury vibes). It turns into a Avril Lavigne-style petty break up song about Lea.

“driving ticket” is an Achele song. It uses driving tickets as an extended metaphor for relationship issues. One of the lryics is “And you always made fun of me because gays can’t drive / Guess I was too happy for you.” (After the release of the album, Dianna tweets that the “gays” in this lyric refers to happy people, not fruitcakes.) There’s also the lyric saying that in another life, Dianna would have crashed her car just to stop her pronoun-less love interest’s wedding; this is a reference to how Quinn got in a car crash and it stopped Rachel’s wedding in Glee. I chose the title for this song based on that Glee car crash and based on the fact that Dianna gets so many driver’s tickets in real life, haha.

“indie record (the books beside our bed)” is a Taylor song. It’s a bubblegum pop song with a somewhat ironic tone (think WANGBT meets “Stay Stay Stay”), but the bridge is intensely dramatic (sort of like the bridge of “Driver’s License” by Olivia Rodrigo). At one point in the bridge, she sings “You sung me a party / You wrote me a warm sweater.” This line confirms that 1989 (party) and “cardigan” (warm sweater) are about Dianna. The song is reminiscing on their relationship in a way that could be read as petty but is actually more so mournful (as Dianna believes that the greatness of that relationship was only possible because of their youthful infatuation, so is such a great relationship ever possible again? so like she’s sort of mourning the loss of her youth—to both time and closeting—as well). The title is a reference to WANGBT (even though I think it’s about Liz), and the part of the title that is in parenthesis is a reference to “Paper Rings” (even though I think it’s about Joe).

“jail” is an anti-Karlie song. I have this headcanon that Taylor wrote most of YAIL about Dianna but ended up gifting the song to Karlie with that Instagram post (like how she gifted “Dress”—a Karlie song—to Joe with that bridge). Because of this, we can think of YAIL as a song that Karlie stole. Dianna sings about Karlie with that Other Woman trope, except throughout the song, who the other woman is (whether she’s Karlie or Dianna herself) becomes less and less clear. In the chorus, Dianna refers to the other woman as “the crook,” which calls back to “it’s time to go.” She follows up that moniker with the statement that the crook must go to jail—but Dianna pronounces the J in “jail” very weirdly, so it almost sounds like she’s singing the word “YAIL.” In the bridge of the song, Dianna belts “143 / Remember those days,” which is what she tweeted after the Kaylor road trip Vogue cover. The bridge feels a bit like “Getaway Car” in that it has a lot of driving references, like Karlie is stealing Taylor by whisking her away in a car.

“kurt vonnegut” is a jazzy/indie song, in the style of “Do You Want a Man” by The Vaccines. In the song, Dianna quotes a lot of classic literature in order to paint a picture of a grand, dramatic, failed love (Swiftgron). The chorus includes the phrase “love’s literature” in an almost “New Year’s Day”-like reference to how their love is as grand as literature’s great love stories, but also somehow better, so don’t read the last page (aka, don’t let the story come to an end). That one line cautioning about the story coming to an end gives the song a little bit of a foreboding mood if you listen carefully, and that’s how we know that it’s a break up song and not a love song for Filippo. Notably, Dianna sings the lyric “so it goes,” which is based on a Kurt Vonnegut novel. What’s interesting about this is that out of all the authors whose work Dianna referenced in the song, she chose Kurt Vonnegut’s name as the title for this song. Tumblr sapphics take this to mean that “so it goes” has a special significance—specifically, that Taylor’s song “So It Goes…” is about Dianna.

“tattoos” is a Taylor song. It wants to be a petty break up song, but there’s too much emotion behind it to stay petty; as a result, it’s raw and full of hurt. Dianna wants this to just be about the tattoos, wants to just cuss Taylor out for putting her tattoo as a lyric in “Wonderland,” but she can’t help but pour so much more into this song—because her resentment for what happened to Swiftgron is so much stronger than just resenting that she had to contact a tattoo removal service. This fact becomes clear in a lyric in which Dianna refers to Taylor’s love as a tattoo, permanently seared onto her skin like a scar or a scarlet letter. (This The Scarlet Letter reference is another reason why I chose love’s literature as the title of this album.)

“lesbian chemicals (ft. Jack Antonoff)” is the most unhinged song on the album. The story behind this title is that Jack is a bit weird and has this almost obsession with lesbians. In one interview, he referred to himself as a straight man with lesbian chemicals because he loves like a lesbian loves. Anyways, the song starts off with the sounds of a piano being runed (because of that one time when we thought Dianna posted an Instagram story of Jack tuning her piano, lol). The song is a bit slower but still has that definite Jack Antonoff feel to it. Dianna sings about how she loves the pronoun-less subject like a lesbian would: she treasures them, admires how soft and perfect and lovable they are, etc. It’s almost like “Dress” in that it’s so undeniably gay in its lyrical content. Jack has backup vocals. After the album’s release, Dianna tweets that this song was Jack’s idea. It’s a clear no-homo-ing. She states that she feels similarly to how Jack felt when he gave that quote—that she’s a straight woman who just so happens to have lesbian chemicals and love like a lesbian would.

“unicorn” is an ode to the Blondterage. The title is a reference to Molly’s birthday post for Dianna (which is actually the cover of the album) in which she references riding Dianna, calls Dianna a unicorn (which has obvious sexual implications), etc. The song is a targeted attack on all Dolly shippers because it’s like “22” in that Dianna tries to pass it off as a I Love My Gal Pals song, but in reality, it’s secretly a song about longing. Sonically, “unicorn” is reminiscent of “Make Me Feel” by Janelle Monáe.

submission⬆️⬆️⬆️

truly incredible!!!

#DA1 #submission

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trinuviel · 5 years

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The Spiral, the Storm and the Wheel

THE SPIRAL

The White Walkers are in many respects a mysterious and somewhat frustrating enemy in Game of Thrones. They never speak but they do have some form of intellect since they create grisly patterns out of severed body parts: 1) a bisected circle and 2) a spiral. Both symbols originated with the creators of the WW, the Children of the Forest - and the spiral in particular is associated with the creation of the Night King since the tree where he was created was surrounded by a spiral created out of standing stones.

It is still unclear what the spiral signified for the Children of the Forest - but in an interview in The New York Post, Dave Hill, one of the writers on the show, explains that the Night King has adopted the symbol as a way to mock his creators:

The question is: has the meaning changed through this appropriation? That is at present not possible to answer since we have no idea what the symbol originally meant to the Children of the Forest. However, I do think that we can attempt to figure out what the Night King means when his people re-create the spiral through dismembered human and animal bodies. Because these spirals are a message, in a sense, and he’s saying “I am coming for you” while at the same time making a mockery of something that was sacred to his creators.

This spiral looks a lot like a wheel without a rim, endlessly spinning around and around. This is rather interesting since Daenerys Targaryen repeatedly talks about “breaking the wheel” in relation to her political ambition of conquering Westeros (I’ll return to this subject later). If the spiral is a spinning wheel, then what does it mean? The image of poor little Ned Umber at the center of a spiral made of severed human limbs in the first episode of season 8 inspired Professor Tyler Dean to write a very interesting opinion piece on the website of the publishing house Tor, which specializes in science fiction and fantasy:

The Mexica believed that time was a spiral. Not a circle, where everything that happened previously was destined to happen again, identical, ad inifinitum. Not linear, where the way forward was uncharted and momentum, progress, and change ruled the day. But, as author/illustrator James Gurney once pointed out to my eight-year-old brain, a combination of the two: a spiral. The forces of history push us ever forwards, but events rhyme with one another—parallel but not identical. That was what I couldn’t get out of my head after watching “Winterfell,” the final season premiere of Game of Thrones.

...

Spiral time is uncanny. We are reminded of familiar events and sequences but they are spiked with the creeping dread that they are not quite what we think or expect them to be.

...

We might be tempted to think of spirals as orderly and predictable, but “Winterfell” reinforces the idea that time in Westeros is not organized in a tightly-bound pattern but a widening gyre: each revolution around the center may echo previous events, but it brings its own entropy and decay. (Tor.com)

This idea of time as a spiral is a very interesting one but what I find especially compelling is this notion of the spiral being connected to an idea of entropy and decay. Tyler goes on to quote The Second Coming, a famous poem by W.B. Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned

THE STORM

The notion of decay in relation to the spiral set off various chains of association for me - about how the Night King and the White Walkers are an inhuman and unrelenting force of destruction, in that sense that they come close to be the magical equivalent to a destructive force of nature. The NK is even described as such by Jon Snow who says that he is the Storm. That made me connect the spiral with images of storm systems as they look from space.

On the right we have a picture of a spiral that the WW made from dismembered horses after they defeated the Night’s Watch at The Fist of the First Men in season 2. The picture to the left is a satellite image of a hurricane. The visual resemblance is very close indeed.

In the first episode of season 8, the spiral was reintroduced when Tormund, Beric and the remainder of the Night’s Watch come upon what remains of the Umber seat, The Last Hearth, after it has been run over by the WW.

When it turns out that poor little Ned Umber has become a zombie, Tormund and friends set fire to him and the body parts that make up the spiral. This is the first time that we’ve seen the spiral associated with the element of fire. This has led people to note a certain resemblance between the spiral and the style in which the Targaryen sigil is rendered.

There is indeed a bit of a likeness - and it is worth noting that the Targaryen sigil and the spirals that the WW each have seven arms.

(source)

Is this resemblance merely a coincidence or is there a deeper meaning at work? It is hard to tell but I want to explore this connection a bit further because the sole known Targaryen of this story is, in fact, also visually connected to the spiral symbol. In season 4, Daenerys Targaryen wears a dress made from laser-cut fabric that sports a repeated spiral pattern.

She is also known as the Stormborn because she came into the world during the worst storm that Westeros had seen in living memory. She is also a very war-like character and it is worth remembering that in the books “storm” is often used as a synonym for for “war”. With a bit of squinting one can even perceive s spiral shape hidden in one of the final images of the season 3 finale where Daenerys is lifted up by the freed slaves of Meereen.

It is faint but you could make an argument that it is there. This connection between Daenerys and the Night King is enhanced by the larger thematic framework of GRRM’s story. They are both associated with the extremes of Ice and Fire - indeed, just like the dragons are Fire Made Flesh, so are the White Walkers Ice made Flesh, which I have examined elsewhere.

THE WHEEL

The spiral also somewhat resembles a wheel, as I’ve previously mentioned. I’m not the only person who has noted this resemblance, @lady-griffin mentions this resemblance in this post. In the later seasons, Daenerys Targaryen has become known for wanting to “break the wheel” - but what does that mean?

In season 5 she tells Tyrion Lannister that she’ll have the support of the common people in Westeros and she describes the feudal system as a wheel with spokes made up of the noble Houses. In this context, it seems as though she wants to destroy the feudal system of the country she wants to conquer. However, as she herself mentions, her own House is part of this system and she’s not intending to create a radically new system since she still wants to be Queen. She still wants to occupy the hub of the wheel, i.e. the Iron Throne. She simply wants to remove anyone who can be a threat to her power. What she wants is not a more democratic system but an absolute monarchy with her at the top.

Nebulous and contradictory plans is very typical of Dany’s political rhetoric but I’m rather interested in how she describes this system:

“Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell. They’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, then that one’s on top. And on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.”

This conjures a specific concept of Classical (and later Medieval) thought: the Rota Fortuna, or Fortune’s Wheel:

In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Fortune appears on all paintings as a woman, sometimes blindfolded, "puppeteering" a wheel. (Wikipedia)

Interestingly, the show invokes Fortune’s Wheel visually in the opening credits. Thus, the Rota Fortuna embodies the political game that dominates the show. Fortune’s Wheel is the very embodiment of the Game of Thrones!

The thing about Fortune’s Wheel is that it never stops spinning. The same goes for the political game - there will always be someone who seeks power, regardless of whether there is a throne or not. The games of power and influence exist wherever human society exist regardless of what kind of government they have - there will always be politics and power plays. The only way to truly stop the spinning of the wheel is to eradicate humankind. There can be no game if there are no players.

This leads me back to the what the spiral may have meant for the Children of the Forest. The NK has adopted this symbol as an act of mockery - it signifies blasphemy on his part according to show writer Dave Hill. In this context, it is important to note that the WW always create this spiral symbol out of dismembered bodies - it is made of dead things and, in a way, the spiral as it is made by the WW symbolizes Death. If the WW’s spiral is an image of Death and it represents an act of blasphemy on the part of the NK, then it is very possible that the spiral signified Life for the CotF - symbolizing that Life spins ever onward through nature.

They created the NK by killing and magically re-animating a human man. The original blasphemy was theirs - and there’s a certain symmetry to the fact that the weapon they created by polluting their own magic turned against them. On a final note I also wish to point out that the Weirwood tree where the CotF created the NK is now dead!

This is actually a very important detail because in ASoIaF lore, weirwood trees are practically immortal. They don’t wither and die - unless they are interfered with.

#game of thrones #spiral #symbols #the night king #the children of the forest #the white walkers #daenerys targaryen

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shefightslikeagirl · 5 years

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CORSETS AND STRIPED STOCKINGS: OUTFITTING THE ASYLUM FOR WAYWARD VICTORIAN GIRLS by She Fights Like A Girl

These articles are best viewed on desktop, but are mobile friendly. Please excuse any strange formatting on your phone browser or the Tumblr app.

This article was longer than intended and image-heavy, so it’s been split into two parts.

PART V: AN ASYLUM MUSICAL

“And if I end up with blood on my hands, Well, I know that you’ll understand ‘Cause I fight like a girl.” - Fight Like A Girl (2014)

And now we're back to the relatively recent past, when this blog was in its infancy and the fandom couldn't decide whether to stick with the forum or run rampant on Tumblr. Fight Like A Girl (the album) was still being recorded, but Emilie did a few live dates Down Under and decided to feature the title song from the unfinished album.

To my understanding, the Harvest Festival was another one of those concerts where the show was considerably downsized because of the cost of shipping props and set pieces. But where the South American tours hadn’t pulled back in the wardrobe department, the Harvest festival did. Emilie and the Crumpets performed in one costume for the entire set. But to make up for the lack of glam, EA debuted the first costume of the FLAG era.

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This costume was worn for the cover art of Fight Like A Girl, and acted as the signature corset for the very first Fight Like A Girl World Tour (2012).

“Asylum Secrets: All of my costumes over the years have been made to look as though someone had been murdered in them and come back from the dead to enact a fabulous revenge. To achieve this, I have employed techniques from melting fabrics with an industrial strength heat gun to spraying them with solutions that no human should ever breathe. In the case of the corset pictured, I burned it mercilessly with sticks of incense before painting the fabric to make it look moth-eaten.” - EA on the creation of the FLAG corset (June 25, 2018)

Speaking of the 2012 FLAG World Tour! While there were a lot of changes from The Door Tour and Harvest Festival, this tour is probably best remembered as a transition phase between eras. There were new costumes, but… the Rat Queen still introduced the show with 4 o’Clock. There were new set dressings, but… the shadow scrim was still main stage center. The new corset was mixed in with the Rat Queen ensemble and the structure of the show hadn’t changed terribly. New, but… kinda not?

Except for that Warrior Mohawk, of course.

Upper: WVC content / eBay listing photo. Lower: Making of the Warrior Mohawk from Emilie’s Flickr account.

This is the only tour where Emile wore a mohawk for the entirety(-slash-majority) of the show. Later concerts would see her removing it after the third song. There was some slight skepticism in the fandom with its debut, sparking discourse about everything from cultural appropriation to thematic relevance, but EA didn’t make much comment on the criticism.

“[The Warrior Mohawk] signified the transformation from victim to warrior. I feel that it is important for me to let go in order that I may go on to transform yet again and create new bits of wearable magic to surprise you with... This headpiece symbolized the birth of a new era in the Asylum…. This is the headdress of a tribal Queen…” - EA, 2012 eBay auction description.

“The Mohawk headdress represents the tribal, wild element of the sisterhood that formed during the imprisonment of the inmates, and shows that, once we escape and are on the rampage to take down our oppressors, we have indeed transformed from individual, helpless victims into a strong and beautifully terrifying tribal warriors.” - EA for Natalie’s World, 2013 (x) (x)

Another costume that debuted on this tour was the MC of the Ophelia Gallery, who had his own brand-new number: Girls! Girls! Girls!

And as for its history...

(My best guess is that this photo originated in 2009, based on her hair.)

This character is a hint at the structure of the tour (and album) to come, where it would be less about the mad girls existing inside the Asylum and more about the story of how they got there, and what happened once they were interned. Allow me to stray from the costuming topic for just a moment…

A TANGENT: OF STAGE SHOWS AND ASYLUM CONTINUITY Spoiler filled ramblings of a long-time fan.

I’ve got a running theory that The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, in all its forms, runs in parallel to the concerts. But they match each other in reverse. [Spoilers for the book to follow.]

Emilie’s first concert of the Opheliac brand was in a small venue in Chicago, alongside Lady Joo Hee. In The Asylum… book, Emily-with-a-y’s final days in the Asylum were spent with Sachiko (a character based on and formerly named Joo Hee).

The Opheliac shows of 2007-2011 were all about the women in an Asylum singing songs and welcoming others home. Cannibals, ballerinas, pyrate captains, nymphomanics -- they all ran rampant with no apparent oversight except from Emilie herself. Rats crept and crawled onstage unbothered; toys, crumpets, and cupcakes were in abundance, often served alongside “tea,” and there isn’t a single cell door in sight.

Especially in the earliest days of the concerts, the set design had an emphasis on appearing hand-made -- not only because it was, but because it should be for these girls. This was the world EA branded for herself: a world of freedom, without judgement, earned by their own hands.

In The Asylum… book, after the Inmates take over and kill the doctors, this is very much what they do: impersonate medical professionals and welcome sick and not-so-sick girls home to protect them, nurture them, and give them the best life that the Victorian Age fails to do. They take over the Asylum and make it their own.

Then in the FLAG performances (2012-2014), the storytelling shifts. EA’s Asylum world is no longer loosely themed with inmates running amok, but adheres to a more rigid storytelling structure, detailing the struggles and despair of the girls locked up in The Asylum(-with-a-capital-T). It mirrors the bulk of the content in The Asylum… book. The carefree, whimsical stage dressings shift to bars -- a representation of the cells and gates in The Asylum. There might be a bear tied to a dreary grey harpsichord; you might even see a single rat scratching about. But they don’t have dominion here. There’s no freedom. Just the story of the girls trapped behind the bars.

And now we’re stalled on both sides of the street. We’ve met in the middle. The concerts started at the end of the book, and ended at the beginning.

Ok, I’ll put my soapbox away. Let’s get back on track.

BACK TO BUSINESS

Where were we?

Oh, yes: Girls! Girls! Girls! and new costumes.

So let’s jump forward a little more, because there isn’t much else to say about Emilie’s costume style in the 2012 FLAG World Tour. Moving on to the 2013 Fight Like A Girl: North American Tour (and following European and Australian tours), a brand new show was brought to the stage. Full new stage set-up, new costumes, and a full new setlist.

A costume I’ll be referring to as the “armored corset” replaced the moth-eaten FLAG ensemble in the opening number. Both Maggots and Veronica were given new costumes as well, replacing the costumes they had worn for years.

Armored Corset, with varying amounts of sparkled (2013)

Maggie Lally; Captain Maggot / Captain Maggots

Veronica Varlow; The Naughty Veronica

The show design of this tour had Emilie in the armored corset with the mohawk for the two opening numbers, Fight Like A Girl and Time for Tea. The mohawk and the armored plates on her chest and hip were removed during the 4 o’Clock Reprise, leaving her without her armor for What Will I Remember? as the narrative moves back to the beginning of the story, before the “Uprising.”

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On the subject of the corset: structurally, it was outfitted with snaps to attach the armor and allow for easy removal (see corset detail above, bottom right). The mohawk proved a more difficult challenge to remove, as it was securely clipped, pinned, and secured into EA’s hair. This ended up being corrected in the redesign that produced Mohawk 2.0.

Back to the show! By the time we get to Veronica’s Dominant fan dance, EA has removed the armor corset completely in the interim to prepare for the Girls! Girls! Girls! costume change. After Scavenger, the entire cast changes into Asylum Inmate Rags to perform Gaslight and The Key, and then changes back into full costume for the finale. Emilie wears the full FLAG ensemble from previous tours to close out the show, with varying headdresses.

But I’m skipping over something important.

The Scavenger.

Inspired by Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, The Scavenger, a vulture-esque representation of Dr. Greavsely, appeared onstage for Scavenger.

“This is the start of the original costume @maggotmagpie wears in our show, the one Greavesly wears in #AsylumMusical will be bonkers…” - EA on the Scavenger (February 7, 2016)

EA on Twitter/Twitpic 2012 (x)

The Scavenger was usually worn by Maggots as part of a stilt-walking performance, but if the venue couldn’t or wouldn’t allow for stunts onstage, Emilie would appear alone in the costume for the number.

Scavenger has plenty of different “shows” (A show, B show, and C show for my theme park friends), with “A Show” being Captain Maggot on stilts.

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Note: The Atlanta show featured here is a bit strange, as it uses the Stage Screen and the Asylum Bars during a tour that doesn’t feature the former. Emilie also isn’t in the normal costume for this number, using a personal scarf to cover her bloomers and bra.

“B Show” would be Emilie performing as the Scavenger, due to venue restrictions. This was actually the way Scavenger debuted, until Maggot’s first performance later in the tour. (See pictures and even more info here.)

“C Show” would be Moth’s performance in the final set of Fight Like A Girl tours, as seen below:

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(There’s also “D Show,” (ha) which is this random dude performing as The Scavenger. I’ve yet to figure this out, but my guess is it was a technician stepping in at the last moment or a friend of EA from Oakland.)

Last, but not least, are the Asylum Rags. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to say here, but there is. Click on the continue link below to learn more about tattered costumes and the rest of the FLAG era, because Tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE.

Fly back… PART I: Enchant and the Faerie Queene PART II: Drowning Ophelia PART III: Vecona, Seamstress of the Asylum PART IV: Wayward Victorian Girls

Remember to visit Part III and enter our giveaway! Ends 12/1/19.

[SEE ALL CREDITS AND SOURCES HERE.]

#this ones a long one folks #happy thanksgiving #emilie autumn #corsets and striped stockings #EA wardrobe #flag #sflag #link out to btp

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mst3kproject · 5 years

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1107: The Land that Time Forgot

Watching the opening credits of this actually made me do a double-take – the name Colin Farrell appeared on the screen and I was like, wait, what the fuck? Wouldn’t he have been like two years old? Well, I looked it up and learned that I was wrong: The Land that Time Forgot was made in 1975, and the Colin Farrell I was thinking of wasn’t even born until a year later. At least that woke me up.

It’s World War I, and a passenger ship is torpedoed by a German submarine. The only survivors are a few sailors, Doug McClure, and a Dr. Lisa Clayton who serves as the movie’s designated pretty girl. The nearest thing to rescue in sight is the submarine itself when it surfaces a few hours later – so they climb aboard, storm the hatch, and take over the ship. At first it seems that all they have to do now is head for home, but they soon learn that the Germans have sabotaged the compass. They’ve come ashore instead at the mysterious lost continent of Caprona. Naturally this is a land of cavemen and dinosaurs, and in order to escape the British and the Germans must put aside their differences and work together. Only then will they be able to get back to the real world and resume shooting at each other.

While At the Earth’s Core comes across as a movie nobody gave a much of a shit about, there are places where The Land that Time Forgot is surprisingly artful and well-made. In particular the first half-hour has several very nice moments in it, especially in the way it uses sound. After the opening credits, the music totally vanishes for a third of the film. The only background sounds are the lapping of waves and the creaking of the submarine, which makes gunshots and explosions all the more jarring when they happen. It also makes this part of the movie seem very grounded and real, which contrasts with the more fantastical stuff that happens in Caprona. The first sight of the Capronan cliffs is accompanied by the return of the soundtrack, which ushers us out of this more real world and into the fantasy beyond.

I feel like if Amicus had just set out to make a suspense movie about WWI submarines, a sort of early-20th-century Balance of Terror, they could have done a pretty fair job. Several scenes, such as when the characters are all sitting in the dinghy waiting for the sub to surface, or when they’re diving to escape the British ship firing on them and aren’t sure if the hull will hold, are very effective indeed. The interior of the sub is an appropriately creepy and claustrophobic place, and details like the slight swinging of the lamp in the captain’s office remind us that we’re at sea. The miniature sub surfacing, with water pouring off it, looks lovely. The giant squid that passes by them un-noticed in the dark is my favourite ‘creature’ moment.

Unfortunately, there’s also stuff that sucks. What ought to be the ‘action’ sequences are just a bunch of guys in very similar jackets and sweaters punching each other in the fog, and you can’t tell who’s who or which side is winning. The conversation between the captain and Dr. Clayton attempts to make the point that when your country’s at war it’s impossible to ‘stay out of it’ no matter how much of a pacifist you, personally, may be, but it’s too heavy-handed to work properly… though I do like how the two of them are able to bond over a shared interest in biology. I have no idea what happened in the tunnel that damaged the submarine, because the exterior shots are just blackness with a few rocks.

Then we hit the dinosaurs. These are honestly fairly impressive for the time the film was made. We don’t get a good first impression, as the first ones we get a good look at are three completely stiff pterodactyls circling like they’re hanging from a baby’s mobile. The rest are puppets, stop motion, and animatronics, and the people who decided which technique to use for which shot had a good grasp of what each is best at. The greenscreen work is sometimes crummy but there are some lovely matte paintings, and for the most part the effects here are good enough to tell the story without being distracting. There’s even some attempt to portray the dinosaurs as animals with behaviours, rather than monsters that exist only to menace the humans.

So I actually have quite a bit of praise for this movie. That’s not what my blog is about, though. This blog is about movies that suck, so let’s look at the bad parts of The Land that Time Forgot.

Well, there’s the standard stuff. The day-for-night is bright enough that it was obviously shot in the daytime while still being dark enough that you can’t tell what’s going on. The human inhabitants of Caprona are stupid cartoon Neanderthals with dark makeup on their faces but not their arms and legs, who become whiter and whiter as they move up the evolutionary scale. The motion of the dinosaurs may be pretty good but the design of them is ugly and lumpy, with far too many teeth even on the herbivores. This is partly because we didn’t know nearly as much about dinosaurs in the seventies, but the movie’s fat carnosaurs with their lizard-like heads would have been ugly and inaccurate in the thirties. Compare them, for example, to Charles R. Knight’s Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops from freaking 1927.

Many ‘lost world’ scenarios will simply present us with t-rex fighting a saber-toothed tiger and expect us not to question it. The Land that Time Forgot gives us an reason of sorts for its mixing of geological eras, but not one that makes any sense. From Om’s conviction that he will become a ‘Stolu’ and Dr. Clayton’s explanation of what’s going on in the giant coconut hot tub, we gather that each individual organism on Caprona evolves from a single cell to a complex being, following the entire history of its species’ evolution. This appears to have been inspired by the fact that embryos ‘evolve’ as they develop, going through phases in which they have things like gills before losing them. The phenomenon, called 'recapitulation', was considered one of the original pieces of evidence for evolution and I guess I can accept how they use it here. The problem is that the movie refuses to state it clearly, which gives the impression that the writers were kind of embarrassed by the idea.

The biggest problem with two-thirds of The Land that Time Forgot is that once the characters reach Caprona, the story more or less comes to a screeching halt. The parts set on the submarine were quite tightly-focused. Now we are technically still seeing the same story, as they try to find fuel in order to get them back to civilization, but we also stop for long sequences of people climbing hills and dinosaurs wandering around in the dark, or pointless arguments between the British and German sailors. In a dinosaur movie we obviously need a little bit of people standing around going oooooh and aaaaah, but they go about it all wrong here.

Then there’s the ending, which quite literally destroys everything we’ve seen so far. The characters are on the verge of saving the damsel in distress, escaping the island, and celebrating the power of international cooperation, and then at the last minute the volcano erupts and it all goes to hell. A volcano erupting at the end of a movie that is not about a volcano erupting will always be a deus ex machina, because there’s nothing characters can do to cause or prevent it – it’s never anything but a coincidence. The need to escape prompts the Germans to turn on the British and try to leave without Dr. Clayton and Doug McClure, and their karmic punishment is to be cooked to death by volcanic gases in their own submarine. Clayton and McClure are left behind on the shore while everything around them catches fire. This doesn’t feel like a conclusion to the story we’ve just seen. It feels more like somebody just really hates happy endings, and ripped one out from under us at the last moment.

There are a few things in this movie that could have counted as thematic material if anyone had cared, but nothing is ever done with any of them. Om is a ‘bolu’, a lower order of cavemen, and he never seems to notice Dr. Clayton, nor do the slightly higher ‘stolu’. It is the ‘golu’, the most human-like of them all, who attempt to kidnap and rape her. I doubt this was an attempt to say anything about human nature. It seems to have been done that way just because it wasn’t yet time for Dr. Clayton to be in peril until the climax of the film.

Likewise, Jonah and the bots comment on the fact that this is a movie about Europeans coming to a new country, shooting the inhabitants, and generally making a mess as they search for petroleum. Within the story this is not a colonial urge, as the characters have no plans to settle, but a matter of life and death, and again it seems like nobody thought very deeply about it. It was just a thing that needed to happen to make the plot work.

Enough went right in this movie that the things which went wrong really do become a terrible shame. A great deal of effort seems to have gone into just about everything, but a few poor writing choices mean that the result is not very good, yet not bad enough to be enjoyed on that level either. If I were contemplating this as a potential Episode that Never Was, I honestly think I would have decided against it. It just doesn’t have the kind of personality I associate with a good MST3K movie.

#mst3k #reviews #the land that time forgot #tw: rape #70s #curiously caucasian cavepeople

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nellie-elizabeth · 5 years

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Supernatural: Atomic Monsters (15x04)

I love it when Supernatural goes meta. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a show do it better. It's goofy and yet still thematically appropriate. And it's respectful of the once-in-a-lifetime fandom experience of being a person who watches Supernatural. Who grows up watching it. Let's talk about it.

Cons:

There is one thing that this show can't make its mind up about, and it's when it's cool to murder people. Like, yeah, the kid in this story was a vampire who had killed a young woman and was worried about losing control and killing again. But this episode also featured a (kind of) return of Benny, reminding us that vampires can be allies and friends, too. We've done this so many times over the years - Sam and Dean have had many debates about whether well-meaning monsters can control themselves enough to be left alive. And they've allied with people who under normal circumstances they might have just killed. Rowena. Crowley. Benny. Even Cas, if you want to get technical about it. It was painted as extremely tragic that the young man in this episode had to die. But I wanted there to be at least a conversation about it beforehand, where Sam and Dean said that yes, a normal life probably wasn't possible... but death wasn't the only option. If we can't live in the middle-ground, where exactly are we going with all of this?

I'm not surprised that Dean and Sam didn't talk about Cas in this episode. It makes sense because Misha can't be in the whole season, and Destiel just broke up in episode three. They're going to draw this sucker out just a little bit. But yeah, on a selfish note, I admit I was hoping for at least a mention. Maybe Sam could remark that Dean's good mood seems like a front, given how upset he's been about Cas. Oh well. I'm choosing to remain optimistic.

Pros:

The monster-of-the-week story was not one I'll be remembering as a favorite or anything, but it worked as a nice mirror to poor Sam's state of mind. Obviously he's sad about Jack, sad about Rowena, feeling really low about things in general... but he's also having terrible nightmares about turning evil and killing his brother. And now here we have a story about a monster who is afraid of hurting his loved ones, and who chooses to die to protect others. That's a very Sam-Winchester-y choice to make, and I know for a fact that Sam would rather die than hurt anyone, especially Dean. So the foreshadowing here was clear, even if the details of the case this week weren't especially memorable on their own merits.

And that dream at the beginning... I loved the cool lighting, the fight choreography, Dean's signature "cupping the face of my dying boyfriend loved one" move... all of it was wonderful. Jensen's directing really shone in that opening scene. And Jared played Evil!Sam so well. The fact that they brought back his psychic powers, the demon blood, and used it to frighten Sam about what he might become... all of that stuff was golden. Poor Sammy. There's a great moment before they leave for the case when Sam suggests that Dean call on another hunter, and Dean insists that Sam needs to come along. You just know that Sam is scared of hurting Dean, or of being off his A-game and causing problems. The poor darling!

The impala brotherly moment at the end was really powerful, and showcased to me how far these boys have actually come. Dean is open and honest, saying that he wants to help Sam out of his funk, that Sam helped him to believe that what they do still has a purpose, and still does some good. Sam is then honest about his own feelings right back, saying that he can't let the past go, that he still thinks about Jessica, that sometimes it all catches up to him and he feels like he can't breathe. And then, as if wanting to appease Dean and brush past the conversation, he says "maybe I'll feel better in the morning."

The Dean Winchester of earlier seasons would have let it go, stayed in a place of denial, and moved right on. But this Dean Winchester says to his little brother: "And what if you don't?"

Sam doesn't have a good answer for him, but just the fact that Dean asked shows huge character development. As far as the boys are concerned, Chuck is gone. They are free. Now they can work on their emotional well-being. They can decide what the rest of their lives look like. And as a start, Dean wants to help his little brother, and he doesn't want to shy away from the rough parts of that. I am enamored with the character development here.

But let's pivot and talk about that meta goodness. We see that in the years since we last checked in with her, Becky has gone through extensive counseling, and has gotten married and has kids. She is also still an active member of the Supernatural fandom, selling art on Etsy and writing fic. Let us just track the way that this show has talked about its fans over the seasons. In the beginning, Becky was a manic, obsessed, crazy fangirl who literally drugged Sam and forced him to marry her. Over the years, however, they have taken a different tack, treating the fandom with respect, especially in episodes like the 200th. And here, we circle back around. We have an acknowledgment that this show has been on for fifteen years, that some of the teenage girls who fell in love with it when it first started, are now grown adults with careers and families. And that these grown adults might still love the show as much as ever, might spend their time online chatting with other fans, working hard on fanfic, turning their passions into lucrative careers. And this is not mocked or derided in any way. I was gobsmacked by how respectful this interpretation of fandom was, and was so, so pleased to take a look at an old character and show real change and development.

This episode also firmly telegraphs something about the theme of this final season of Supernatural. The year 2019 has been rough for me, in terms of beloved franchises choosing to go the "dark" and "grim" and "realistic" route, what with your Game of Thrones and your Endgame and your killing off of beloved depressed bisexual characters (ahem Magicians ahem). There was a not-so-small part of me that feared that Supernatural was going to go the same direction, ending the story with some dark tragic ending, because it's the cool thing to do or whatever. But after this episode, I'm fairly confident that's not where we're headed. Chuck, our villain, wants to end the story as a tragedy. But Becky, the audience avatar, tells him exactly how much the fans will hate that. And Sam and Dean have always been about free will, in the face of insurmountable odds. So it's looking like the boys are going to earn their happiness this season. And I'm very much all about it.

I feel like there's a lot more I could say about Becky and Chuck, but I'll leave it at that. This episode had a lot of really great stuff going on in it. For once, the C-plot episodes make sense for Sam and Dean, because they truly don't know that the bigger threat is out there. We get the nostalgia factor with returning faces like Becky and Benny. We get meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling and endings. We get Sam having sinister dreams and actually confronting his own depression and trauma. I'm a pretty happy camper!

8.5/10

#review #supernatural #supernatural review #spn #spn 15x04

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opalsiren · 5 years

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W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot!

hi love! so, with the plethora of reboots kicking around mainstream media these days, its no surprise that the question of a w.i.t.c.h reboot has been broached by its fans. i have so, so, so many thoughts and this, but ill divide them into three categories for the purpose of brevity: firstly, general thoughts on what i would like to see if a w.i.t.c.h reboot is on the cards; secondly, what i would like to see in a live-action w.i.t.c.h reboot; and finally, what a decent animated reboot of w.i.t.c.h might entail. this is not an exhaustive list so please feel free to add onto this if youve any more thoughts! without further ado because jesus, we might be here a while….

general thoughts:

a w.i.t.c.h live action reboot should largely use the comics are source material. while the cartoons are beloved by many including myself, i reckon the good parts of each should be combined to be thematically consistent, fix plot holes etc. but the comics should be the bible here

the target demographic of younger women and girls would need to be established early on by the producers (personally i would love to see a slightly more mature, w.i.t.c.h college AU where the target demographic could be teens/young adult women and girls, but more on that later). this isnt to say that young men and boys would be absolutely excluded as an audience, but misogyny is alive and well in 2019, and our voices as women need to be uplifted. this is exemplified by the fact that caleb was given far, far, far too much screentime in the cartoon so that the show could reach a young, male audience, and his characters was mangled by chauvinistic tendencies. thank u, next.

i have my own preferences wrt to ships, but i think we can all agree that introducing male characters as mere plot devices for drama/conflict only to put them ‘on a bus’ when theyre no longer useful is just plain bad writing. this is a critique levelled both at the cartoon and comics, but largely the comics (see: Eric)(rip in peace).

i also believe that sticking to the conventions of a particular genre, or hybrid genre, would be preferable if a w.i.t.c.h reboot were to take place. some shows get it right, but I’ve seen a ton of shows go off the rails when they try to be a fantasy/comedy/crime/drama/horror/sci-fi/occult/soap-opera extravaganza all in one. i reckon a YA fantasy drama with comedic moments, something with a similar vibe to Shadowhunters or The Shannara Chronicles, could work really well. if we’re talking animated reboot, something with a similar tonal atmosphere to The Dragon Prince or Into the Spiderverse, would also be great

this shouldnt even need to be said but please, for the love of god, no musical episodes (heres looking at you, Riverdale).

i think i speak on everyones behalf when i say that, irrespective of the age demographic of the show, LGBT rep in w.i.t.c.h would be amazing. irma/cornelia have always been a practically canon fan favourite, but cassidy and nerissa’s relationship is definitely more than strictly platonic, so that could be developed upon too. trans/nonbinary!will is also a popular headcanon that could work. once there are lgbt heroes, and not just lgbt villains, i think we’ll all be happy.

similarly, seeing some neurodivergency in the characters could also be great: elyon dealing with pts after the fallout with phobos; irma struggling with adhd in school or college; hay lin and taranee also exhibit some traits of anxiety in canon. autistic!will would also work, and someone else in the squad is bound to be affected by depression given its pervasive nature these days.

much and all as i adore the guardian outfits, i think there would need to be a few changes made. the midriff-and-leg-baring get-ups, though very cute, become very jarring when you realise the characters are meant to range in age from 12 to 14. i dont have any specific thoughts on how improvements could be made, but lengthening hemlines could be a start. if anyone has any more thoughts, i’d love to hear them!

of course, there needs to be women in the writers room, lgbt people in the writers room, poc in the writers room, people with neurodivergencies in the writers room, etc. we all know what happens when writers rooms lack diversity, and it sure as hell aint pretty.

body diversity was something that was tentatively approached in the comics (irma is curvier than the others, at least in her mundane form), but eschewed almost entirely in the cartoon, with all the girls maintaining similar heights and waifish proportions. it would be worthwhile, not to mention realistic, for the girls to go through some body-image hang ups. maybe will is insecure about her ‘underdeveloped’ body, or maybe taranee longs to have the same curvaceous figures as other dancers her age. i think if they were to go for a message of body positivity, irma, loud and brash with no fucks to give, should love every inch of her fat body and encourage the girls to adopt her 'devil-may-care’ attitude. the patriarchy be damned.

one flaw with the comics AND the cartoons are that they dont really explore the worldbuilding a lot. we do spend some time on meridian in the comics and the cartoon, but largely from the perspective of either elyon, or caleb and the rebels. i wonder what a day on meridian would look like for the average meridianite peasant? what do meridianites do for fun? what language(s) do they speak? what are their religious/spiritual belief(s)? what are the styles of dress dictated by? meridian is based on medieval societies, and a caste system is suggested, but i would have loved to see the social hierarchies expanded on a little more. does the matriarchal nature of meridian rule value women and their labour? what about LGBT people on meridian? people with disabilities and neurodivergencies? is there any discrimination against the different species on meridian? in fact, i dont know if it was ever explicitly outlined to us the different species of peoples on meridian, in the cartoon or the comics. honestly id be happy to see a filler, AtLA Tales of Ba Sing Se-esque episode on meridian to cover all of these bases

one thing i loved from the comics that didnt translate as well in the cartoon were the girls’ passions and interests. will is obsessed with frogs, she rides her bike to her job at pet store, she swims, stresses over math homework. irma loves music and talking to her pet turtle, leafy; i could totally see her doing a stint at the college radio station or working part time at a record store. cornelia loves ice skating and has received tons of awards and accolades for her achievements on the ice. taranee is an avid photographer and dancer, but i could totally see her spending her spare time at rallies and protests too. hay lin is a proficient artist, making her own clothes and poring over paintings between shifts at the silver dragon. all of these things and more are what make these characters so well-rounded, relatable, likeable. their hobbies need to be weaved into the fabric of the show (not just brought up once for a silly plot device in cornelia’s case, or never brought up at all in taranee’s, as seen in the cartoon) in order for it to work

live action reboot thoughts:

this should go out without saying, but a live action w.i.t.c.h reboot should cast actors of colour to play characters of colour. hay lin, and by extension her family, need to be played by Chinese actors, while taranee needs to be played by a black actor, preferably one of east asian descent, etc. if they add a little more diversity to the cast i would be totally pleased. latina!irma is a popular headcanon that i ascribe to, and will has always been kinda ambiguously brown, so adding less ambiguous representation for poc to the cast would really be excellent

of course, age-appropriate casting is a must. more specifically, there should not be any 25-30 year olds playing characters in their mid-late teens, unless ofc they could actually pass for the age they are trying to play. shows like The OA and The End of the Fucking World really get this right (most other teen/YA dramas, not so much. less of the chiseled abs and rock hard pecs on teens, please)

this one might be tricky to get right, particularly with budget constraints, but i think a really good CGI/visual effects team is necessary for a w.i.t.c.h reboot to work. unless an adequate amount of the budget is spent on making sure the magic looks realistic, almost plausible, it will make everything else look cheap by comparison

also, this is more of a personal preference, but i’d love to see someone with a really beautiful visual aesthetic and scope of cinematography. i’m talking Sense8-esque levels of cinematographic beauty

i’m really rambling now but, similarly, it’d be so cool to see someone who could use lighting/colour theory in very particular ways. in Marvel’s Netflix Originals, each character has their own theme colour; in Jessica Jones, for example, all of the scenes are very blue and almost leeched of warmth, while in Luke Cage there seems to be a warm yellow filter over everything. how cool would it be if all Taranee-centric scenes had a slight gold hue? or if all of cornelia’s scenes were lit with green? maybe all of the colours could combine in the a subtle yet effective way when all of the guardians are together to show their unity and combined strength.

thoughts on an animated reboot:

i know very little about animation so these thoughts will be brief, but an art and animation style something like that of Into the Spiderverse would be really gorgeous. it is fluid, dynamic, beautiful to look at and, most importantly, reflects the comic format in a moving image perfectly. alternatively, the animation studio behind The Legend of Korra could also be wonderful. the visual effects used for magic would look absolutely incredible

one thing i have to praise the Jetix cartoon for is their choice of voice actors, which were, in many cases, spot on. while cornelia’s VA was annoying and shrill, the actors playing characters of colour were themselves people of colour. if an animated reboot was on the cards, i think it could be a great opportunity to once again include some diversity to the cast, namely hiring actors of colour to play characters of colour

please let no one who worked on voltron near a w.i.t.c.h animated reboot with a ten foot pole. no i will not elaborate

tl;dr at the risk of sounding like an entitled millennial, a w.i.t.c.h reboot should be less about creating something entirely new for a brand new audience, and more about building on what the longtime fans of w.i.t.c.h already love and bringing it forward for the older generation. all on all, we grew up with w.i.t.c.h, so it’s time for us to have our reboot. thanks for coming to my TED talk!

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rongzy · 5 years

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Kpop Production Notes: IZ*ONE — La Vie En Rose

This production note series is a means of recording things I thought worked or didn’t work in Kpop MVs from a production or artistic point of view. It is not meant to be a review or a critique — just thoughts.

Before we begin, please keep in mind: budget does not equal a good MV. Budget can help make a good MV, but you can have an expensive & bad MV just as easily as a low-budget & engaging MV.

Anyway, first in the series: IZ*ONE’s La Vie En Rose.

Highs:

- Dynamic opening with the first notes as IZ*ONE blooms open like a flower (or more appropriately, a rose.) Filling the frame with their hand movements and red-and-black outfits emphasized the point

- Tastiest shot is during Nako’s part. Using the other members to play with lighting and depth of field made the set feel 3D for once and was probably the most interesting this MV got

- There’s something to be said about the visual representation of the song’s (honestly, the album’s) central theme — the group’s colors, individually and as a whole, and, from there, spreading that color. We see this in how the MV starts with bland backgrounds and IZ*ONE wearing red/black clothing, and then as the video goes on it reveals a red background and IZ*ONE wearing white, as though they literally took their color and painted the world with it. I appreciate the effort in that but (as we’ll see when we get to the lows) I just wish it looked a little better

Lows:

- I understand that the bland backgrounds are supposed to be the point — so we can eventually give this boring world some color — but it’d work better if the video actually evolved with that concept. Instead we stay with the same flat colors and almost 2D-looking sets the entire time

- Even the red curtain and sofa that come in during the later scenes are unimpressive. There’s just no depth to any of the shots that utilize them. Look at that generic lighting. How flat these shots look. A bright red curtain isn’t enough to make something all of a sudden visually engaging. We barely even get any texture on that thing half the time

- I’m actually kind of impressed with how they managed to totally avoid any kind of tension buildup during Eunbi’s bridge part. It’s easily one of the most exciting parts of the song and choreo but the MV completely kills the hype. Sloppy editing, poorly-timed cuts, uninspired framing, and no change in the soulless coloring or lighting at all mean that the intended dynamism of this part goes entirely unnoticed by the casual viewer

- The pace of the MV is just really slow and clunky for this kind of song. The editing is just... standard, if not outright awkward with a lot of its cuts. Never tries very hard to shake up the rhythm (in terms of cutting) or make things exciting — it relies too much on the song itself to do that

- It’s strange how a lot of the shots feel awkward and boxed in when the members are supposed to be singing about confidence, elegance, and passion. Come to think of it, is there a single shot in this MV that actually conveys passion in any way?

- Also this moment of Chaewon strolling into Chaeyeon’s shot... like I know it’s because her line is right after but it literally didn’t have to be shown or edited like this... it just looks so awkward. Even putting the utter flatness aside (take a shot every time I say the word ‘flat’), what makes it worse is how she’s out of focus to begin with and then it cuts to two different shots of unrelated activity before she does anything and then back to this setup just so that she can get her line in. It keeps the viewers in a very strange moment of distracted limbo that really feels out of place and actually ruins the building excitement and power of Chaeyeon and Chaewon’s prechorus progression

- I don’t even think you can consider the MV that thematically consistent either. Some of the costumes confuse me very much (Yena getting ready to travel; Nako looking kind of like a maid? for some reason?) and also Yuri’s isolated shots that are suddenly soaked in actual color (but she’s the only one who gets these?). Also the way they switch between the “colorless” and “colored” sets towards the end takes away from the supposed theme of “painting” something to make a lasting effect. They were trying to make it more visually interesting with these switches but it was a lazy effort that didn’t fit with the message in the long run

- Average camerawork. Nothing particularly standout whether they’re filming choreo or individual scenes

Overall:

- Had a few interesting ideas with unfortunately half-hearted execution

- Awkward editing, bland coloring, uninspired sets, confused aesthetic

- Would have loved something more dynamic that actually suits the progression of the song

It’s a wonderful debut if you just look at the music and choreo, but the quality of the MV is disappointing.

#izone #la vie en rose #kpop mvs #rongzy notes

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raisingsupergirl · 5 years

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Comic-Con-fusion

So, I drove up to Iowa this past weekend and stayed with some good friends in order to experience my first comic-con. Some of you are giddy with excitement to hear how it went (you’re the ones who probably recognized the above picture of Carey Means, Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Frylock). Others of you are wondering why this is a big deal because comic-cons are stupid and colossal wastes of time and money (though I DID go to represent Havok--my publishing company--and to support the book releases of my aforementioned friends). And still others of you are completely lost because you’ve never heard the term “comic-con” (or you have a vague idea that they're a place where comedians gather). For you skeptics, I concede. Like most recreational things in this world (baseball, fishing, quilting, video games, etc.), it is a waste of time and resources. But only in the shallowest sense, and only to those who don't understand it. For a large percentage of humanity, these conventions represent a collection of the things that bring them joy. And more importantly, they're collected in a safe place filled with other like-minded fan boys and girls, free from ignorance or judgment. And for those of you who are oblivious, let me just say this: stick with me. By the end of this post, you'll have some understanding of what a comic-con is and why people attend them. At least… you'll have some understanding of what I experienced while at my first con, which was not what I expected…

First, I'll admit that a part of me still doesn't get it, and maybe it never will. But the rest of me is totally embarrassed by that practical, "normal" part. "Ooooh, I'm Andrew. I do my own taxes and wake up at a sensible time so I can exercise before work. Then maybe I'll mow the grass and watch a documentary before I fall asleep and do it all again." Gag me. Life is about balance. There are countless ways to break the monotony and make life memorable, so don't imagine that I believe that things as… unique as comic-cons are appropriate for everyone. I get it. They're pretty out there. Like, "a-body-painted-woman-casually-strolling-through-hundreds-of-sexually-frustrated-boys" out there. But we're all just little specks that make up a huge world, and just because something's foreign to me doesn't mean it's not healthy and enjoyable for others, right?

I know, I know. I'm opening a huge can of worms here. And I'm doing so on purpose. As I said, this was my first con, and I was struck with a lot of surprising aspects, the biggest one being the sexual dichotomy that pervaded everything. Like I said, right next to my booth was a body painter, and each day she covered a new "canvas" with a work of art. The canvas was always female, and she always had bikini bottoms on and pasties covering her breasts. Well, covering as much as pasties are designed to cover. The first day this took place, I couldn't believe it. Here we were, sitting quietly behind our vendor tables, giving away stickers and selling books to kids and fairly conservative-looking adults (not counting the occasional light saber or pair of fairy wings), and this woman was sitting twenty feet away wearing nothing but pasties to keep her warm.

But slowly, this artist covered her "canvas" with what I would truly describe as art. And it was incredibly frustrating because I couldn't bring myself to give more than a cursory glance without feeling like a pervert. Many of the passing convention-goers seemed to be in a similar boat, but curiously, they seemed to feel better about staring when they actively discussed and critiqued the artwork. It was as if continuously reminding those around them that they were looking at everything except this woman's ta-tas made them seem less like voyeurs. And you know what? I did the same thing. And it wasn't just with the body painting. A lot of the cosplay costumes (people dressed up in various costumes based on characters from video games, movies, cartoons, etc) were also sexually provocative. Most of them came by it honestly since the source material is often hyper sexualized, but seeing an animated blonde bombshell poured into a latex outfit is a little different than seeing someone try to replicate it IRL (in real life for all you noobs out there. And a "noob" is a newbie… a newcomer. Gosh, I should do a blog post just on gamer—video gamer—lingo.). And while I had no problem sizing up the more modest costumes (you know, the bloody zombies and ten-foot demons), when a woman would walk by in a Jessica Rabbit costume, I couldn't look at it without assuring the guy next to me that I appreciated its attention to thematic detail. All in all, the situation just made me want to crawl away and hide somewhere no one would find me.

But here's the thing: the fact that I didn't understand how to act in this environment didn't cheapen the experience. The work that these people put into their creations was seriously impressive. The merchandise for sale (costume jewelry, original paintings, metalwork, hand-made toys) was truly awe-inspiring, and the costumes were no less so. These people were dedicated. They were expressing themselves in unique and extremely talented ways. Yes, some of the art played on sexual attraction, but what era of human history hasn't (our current society's inability to process that appreciation in a healthy way is a MUCH larger and different topic)? And there was so much more to it than that, as well. Decades worth of stories, characters, and story worlds—which have all been heavily inspired by centuries-old, real-world cultures—were represented beautifully, and their creators all poured their own style and flavor into their work.

The longer I was there, the more I was able to appreciate this culture. Yes, some of the costumes and creations were beyond what I could understand, and yes, some of the attendees undoubtedly had unhealthy relationships with these fantasies, but no more so than the obsessions of baseball fanatics or diehard fishermen. That's the nature of passion. Kept in balance, it brings us joy and motivation to do great things. Left unchecked, it will destroy us. And in the end, I finished my weekend with a deep appreciation for this passion that the con-goers shared, both the vendors and the guests. And this fact alone would have made the five-hour trip worth it, even if I hadn't shared delectable drinks, decadent food, and more laughs than I've had in a long time with some amazing friends (though the drinks, food, and laughs certainly helped).

Okay, so if you had no idea what a comic-con was when you started this article, you're probably more confused now. Sorry about that. But for those of you who knew just enough to be judgmental, hopefully I helped shed a little light on the inspiring culture behind all the "weird stuff." And maybe next time I go, I'll learn to not be so cheap so I can actually buy my daughter that $5 pair of unicorn earrings I saw. Or maybe I'll just make her some myself. I've been known to be pretty creative, myself.

#comiccon #comic-con #comic con #planet funk comic con #planet funk #cosplay #art #creativity #recreation #frylock #aquateenhungerforce #flash fiction #havok publishing #body paint #amwriting #comic books

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years

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OUAT 2X22 - And Straight On ‘Til Morning

Despite all the mourning from the last episode, we’re gonna go straight on ‘til we finish off this season.

...Wanted to make my last pun of the season classy. Now you know what to do.

Press Release The inhabitants of Storybrooke brace themselves for the end when Greg and Tamara detonate the trigger Regina had placed within the curse, with the annihilation of the town and its residents imminent; and Mr. Gold mourns the loss of his son, Bae/Neal. Meanwhile, back in Neverland of the past, Hook discovers his connection to a young Bae after he rescues him from the sea and soon realizes that the Lost Boys are in hot pursuit of the boy. General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Past I really struggled with how I felt about the past segment. Something about this flashback has always rubbed me the wrong way (Or at least, as much as the two times I’ve watched it can do) and I spent the lesser part of two days wondering why. And I think I finally figured it out.

The actions and broad strokes of this storyline are great, as is admittedly much of the dialogue. I like the bond that forms between Killian and Bae and I like how Killian’s framed. The dialogue is for the most part pretty good and I love all the time we get to spend on the Jolly Roger. However, the thematically heavy lines like “being alone” and “caring only about yourself” are honestly so distracting because Killian’s is blatantly committing revenge on Milah’s behalf and he has a whole crew with him.

Now on one hand, I get it. Especially given Killian’s decision at the end of the flashback, one can argue that Killian’s revenge and the decisions stemming from it are more for his sake than Milah’s. It’s similar to what Regina was doing with Snow and her subjects, where she claimed that after she killed Snow, she’d show them love. On the other hand, as I said before, it’s honestly so distracting and I feel like if the above were the case, there would’ve been more to paint it that way.

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, just remember: The segment is good, but dialogue choices like that separate good from great. The drama between Killian and Bae is one of the most important parts of Killian’s redemption and their bonding provides serious insight into who Killian is as a character. Present First off, I love the way Neal’s “death” was handled. First, let’s talk about the acting. Robert Carlyle continues to be flawless. He shows how Rumple’s overcome with sadness and regret immediately upon hearing the news. Second, I love how he’s paralleled against Henry. While Henry has his mother to lean on and hold (A great if not tragic Swan Believer moment in and of itself), despite being told the news by two people, Rumple’s in the shot where he first takes it in alone and only comforted from a distance. Third, it gets Rumple questioning his own philosophy and is one of the biggest cases of “all magic has a price” being turned on him. It’s nothing short of a spiral and the way he pulls everyone down with him fits the character so well.

I got so many Spongebob Musical feels as I was thinking about the main story here. XD I’m going to explain it when I get to arcs, but I think that the main story does a good job bringing together Emma, Regina, Henry, Snow, and David’s stories. Every emotion here hits and the main story, which seemed to rightly get the most focus, was handled well.

Keep that in mind when I go off here.

”I did it [Kill Cora] because it was easy. It was a mistake.” FUCK THAT NOISE! NO! IT WASN’T EASY! IT WAS ACTUALLY BOTH DIFFICULT IN EXECUTION AND IN ITS AFTER EFFECTS! It was cruel, sure. And I get the guilt, but honestly, it was Cora (An uncontrollable monster) or Rumple (Someone who had been persuaded to do good in the past and could in the future AND had two morality pets to keep him on the straight and narrow). Fuck the noise where this was a wrong decision and that GOD this is the last instance where Snow says something like that! “There were other paths -- harder paths.” AND THEY WOULD’VE RESULTED IN MASS MURDERS ALL AROUND. FUCK! The ONLY good thing about that shitty flashback in “The Cricket Game” was that you supposedly learned that this idea was bullshit and you just threw that idea out like a dirty diaper! FUCK THIS SET OF LINES! It’s especially infuriating because it comes in the middle of a GREAT Snow scene where her optimism and leadership are so well shown!

Finally, What’s interesting to me is how Killian immediately dismisses Emma’s speech about being alone and being part of something by asking “Why are you really doing this?” Bae, being dead and Henry no longer having a father, is the spark that becomes the flame of his redemption. I’m with @sab031794 with the idea that Bae is definitely his turning point, while Emma’s words further the point, something he appreciates. Insights - Stream of Consciousness -Was there ever a concrete answer as to who drew the Milah drawing? Was it Killian? Milah herself? Like one of the people at theme park who paints people? -SMEE!! So by this point, is Smee Killian’s first mate or is he still just a regular crew member? Also, got to hand it to Smee for his faith in Killian. Smee’s a scared dude, so to see him with so much resolve in his voice as he tells Killian that they’ll avenge Milah, it’s so much bigger of a moment! -I didn’t realize how closely this episode borders on child trafficking until now! Dark. -I’ll never quite be over the way Bae’s eyes pop when he tells someone what happened to his father. Powerful! -It’s great seeing Killian piece together the puzzle that’s this new boy and immediately making a plan upon realizing just who he is. -It’s so creepy seeing how having only Lacey to depend on as a morality chain can corrupt Rumple so much. Hurting Henry to save himself at the very least was a point he was torn on when he first found Neal and learned the truth about his and Henry’s relation. But as he sees Henry on the swing, he’s so close to giving in and killing Henry. (Okay, someone write a dark ass fic where this happens. Henry dies and Emma goes crazy trying to figure out if his death was an accident or not. Can you IMAGINE the final confrontation there?!) Also, I refuse to believe it’s a coincidence that it’s David that snaps him out of it. Sheep Bros to the rescue! -Colin acts that last scene in the mine so freakin’ well! Like, less than three minutes later, that’s gonna turn out to be horseshit, but he sells that so believably! -I will say, while I don’t like a lot of platitudes this season, I’m cool with Henry’s “work together” schtick. -David, that was an amazing punch! XD -WHAT AN EXCELLENT REGAL BELIEVER SCENE! Once again, Regina apologizes to Henry and it’s very sincere. She’s not blaming anyone and is saying that it’s she who failed to live up to his standards. And Henry’s reaction does not absolve her, but lets her know that he loves her. THAT is GOOD! -”The things we do for our children.” This is kind of a weird line. -I love how it’s so obvious that this Pan is “him” and they are doing every backflip to make this a killer twist. -Oh My God! Felix is trying to be so menacing and it is just the HAMMIEST thing ever! XD I love it! It’s not appropriate at all to the mood they’re setting, but fuck it! I love it! -Grumpy, that is the best cup I have ever seen! I can’t even blame you for taking it back for Sneezy (And then maybe channel your inner-Stealthy and take it for yourself)! -I’ve been trying to do a count of the number of men in KIllian’s crew. So far, I’ve seen at most six pirates (Killian and Smee included). Does anyone have a better count? -Left is port, right is starboard. I don’t know why, but I always forget it. Hopefully, Captain Hook will be able to help me remember! -It’s interesting to me how Killian, even when he was just using Bae, used a real and vulnerable part of his life to relate to him. It’s great insight into Killian’s life and a subtle nudge in the direction of Killian coming to care for Bae even before the truly touching moment on the scene hits. -I do have to wonder, why does Killian want to live so badly? During “The Outsider,” Killian was more than willing to die so that he could return to Milah, but he wouldn’t have even killed Rumple then (though one could argue that he’d at least leave a black mark on Rumple and Belle’s relationship). Here, he’d be killing Rumple and there’s no sign he care about saving anyone else. -”I’m not your mate.” Give it a season, Davey! -Emma and Regina work brilliantly together here. There’s such a softness to Regina sacrifice and the way Emma tries to fight against what looks to be the inevitable. It’s a great testament to their dynamic. -Wow! The CG for the destruction of Storybrooke is awful! XD -Farewell, Lacey. I hardly knew ye. -Snow, that is not all of Storybrooke. That’s not even a quarter of Storybrooke. There should be a giant ass crowd of people, not just your besties! -The moment when Bae is told the truth of his mother by Killian is so powerful! There’s so much rage, passion, and love, all of it left on on the floor in the scene. -”I’ll track them down in Hell if I have to.” Granted it’s not regarding the same character, but give it a few seasons, Emma! -”There’s no way. I spent a lifetime trying to cross worlds to find my son.” Hindsight makes that line utterly hysterical! -Rumple! Let Belle help! Get some other stooge to cast the protection spell! Belle’s such a good tracker! -Why is this goodbye making me flashforward to Belle’s death?! *bawls* -GOLDEN HOOK WORKING TOGETHER!!! That look they exchange as they understand the map’s destination! YES! I’M FILLED WITH THE POWER OF YESSSSSS! Arcs - How are These Storylines Progressing? Regina’s Redemption - Regina’s redemption was handled masterfully in this episode. The focus of it was put on Henry. As the inevitability of the end hits her, all she can and does focus on is keeping Henry alive. But that’s not all. Her acceptance of ehr bad reputation being her own fault goes a long way towards washing away the exasperation from the last few episodes away. Her sacrifice works on every level, reinfusing sympathy into Regina without it feeling out of character because of the sharp focus on Henry. Rumple’s Redemption - So like usual, Rumple takes one step back and one step forward, and I felt that it mostly worked. I say mostly because I don’t really get how Lacey attempting to use Bae’s shawl is the turning point for Rumple using the memory potion on Lacey. It’s not like Lacey used the shawl maliciously and she even apologized for it. Was it so she could help him grieve? If so, I wish it came across better. That said, I like the effect that Lacey has been corrupting Rumple, but he realizes that he both needs Belle in her real state and that his thoughts of murdering Henry are awful and need to be shunted. At the same time, he’s not willing to lend a finger to help with the end of the world. Killian’s Redemption - What’s interesting to me is how early on in this episode, Killian is pointed at for not believing in something by Tamara, and when he does turn, Killian himself is one of the most belief-heavy people on the show! Additionally, in the flashback, Killian is so belief-heavy, believing that he can get his revenge on the Dark One and later that he and Bae can fill the empty holes in their hearts. But aside from that, Killian’s turn around is actually pretty simply set up for a sympathetic character. First, it comes through in the decision to go to the heroes to help stop the diamond, knowing they’re more effective. Second, it’s of course the decision to turn his ship around. It represents Killian’s decision to start caring again, allowing himself in a way to be reborn. Emma Accepting Her Parents - “Mom...Dad…” ...Do I even need to say any more? ...Well, apart from the fact that it’s a great closing out of the arc in the beginning of the season, it’s also a PHENOMENAL setup for the events of Season 3. Greg and Tamara - Greg and Tamara kind of get stupid in this finale upon revealing that they don’t know who runs the home office and all the deflectation that takes place when Killian questions them. Really? A group of people who supposedly value science over magic wouldn’t ask who their boss is? Favorite Dynamic Emma and Regina - Emma and Regina are amazing to watch. The episode doesn’t pretend that they’re friends or even that they like each other all that much, but that their bond over Henry is powerful enough that they can overcome those facts and at least start in that direction. For the first time, I feel these two come together as real mothers. They act in Henry’s best interests and that includes saving the other, being honest to Henry, and portraying the other in a good light. Darker Elements (TW: Mention of Child Trafficking) I’ve seen it be said that Killian’s decision to abandon Baelfire was the most evil moment of his life. While I’m not sure how much I believe that, I must point out how this is as close to child trafficking as OUAT can ever get without outright saying it, and that is fucking dark. While trying to examine my own feelings on the issue, I think in terms of the show, because of the fantastical distance of the child trafficking being conducted in an equally fantastical way by a pirate with a hook for a hand and a set of children in cloaks putting a boy in a dinghy to take him to Peter Pan, it’s different than other instances of Darker Elements that I’ve already touched on. If a woman is assaulted or someone is raped by deception, the resonance with the treatment of women and the realities of sexual assault, especially in our modern political climate, makes it difficult to cloud with fantastical elements. And I’m not saying trafficking isn’t, but it’s not something a large portion of OUAT’s audience sees on a constant basis.

Writer A&E are as usual in charge of the finale, and honestly, while well delivered, I expected better. So much of the dialogue works, and that makes the fact that some of the crucial dialogue doesn’t hurt so badly. I feel like they were trying to make square pegs fit in round holes when they talk about things like Killian choosing to be alone and how kiling Cora was easy and and how Rumple decides to turn back Belle because Lacey accidentally used Bae’s shawl as a napkin. it almost overshadows the genuinely good dialogue in other places and I feel like with another draft, those problems would either be minimized or non existent. It pains me how this episode reminds me in a lot of respects more of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (My current least favorite episode of the series) than some of their better episodes like “Broken.” Rating 8/10. I’ve been torn on ratings before, but never quite like this. So much of the Season 2 finale does work, but it does have failings and they chip away. However, I’ve gone on about some of the dialogue choices enough. Let’s talk about the good stuff. This episode is a good culmination point for so many of the arcs started and presents a good jumping off point for them to be furthered in the next season. It’s entertaining to watch emotionally resonates where it counts. It’s dark, but optimistic and has that Once-y feel! Flip My Ship - Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Swan Fire - We get to see some pretty sad and yet hopeful Swan Fire stuff. Emma is barely able to mourn Neal’s loss, but when she tells Henry and Killian the truth, you really feel the grief she’s going through. And then Neal’s alive! Swan Queen - It was so great seeing Emma and Regina working together! You really feel for the emotional bond they’ve formed as they fight off the diamond and it’s gotta be said that there’s a serious weight to the fact that the two of them together managed to fight off something that neither thought possible. Captain Swan - I feel like Emma and Killian really get their deserved start here. Emma not only tries to get her bean back, but tries to invite him to the hero squad with as much effort as she can given all else on her plate. And while it initially doesn’t work, Emma’s speech does find its resonance with Killian through remembering of his love for Bae. Rumbelle - My thoughts on how Rumple decided to use the potion aside, the moment where Belle comes back and they kiss is beautiful and heartwarming, as is their goodbye at the docks. Grumpy Beauty - Grumpy went out of his way as they were all gonna die to get another memory potion to restore Belle! That is so cute!!! I love this ship!!! There’s also such a real feeling of sacrifice as Rumple sees Belle off before his trip to Neverland. ()()()()()()()()() Oh My God! Season 2 is completed!!! Well, sort of! Like last season, I’m going to do my overview where I talk about everything from the quality of the season itself to the best dynamics to who was the best writer! I hope you’ll join me for it because it’s gonna be a lot of fun!

Thank you all for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales! Couldn’t have done it without you!

See you next time!

Season 2 Tally (194/220) Writer Tally for Season 2: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis: (58/60)* Jane Espenson (44/50)* Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (40/50)* David Goodman (24/30)* Robert Hull (24/30)* Christine Boylan (26/30)* Kalinda Vazquez (28/30)* Daniel Thomsen (18/20)* * Indicates that their work for the season is complete Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairytales #ouat 2x22 #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat #tw: mentions of child trafficking

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crusherthedoctor · 6 years

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Sonic & Tails: Beyond the Stars - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Mark of the Wilderness

“Those robot parts were everywhere,” Tails thought out loud in reference to the mess they cleaned up in the town by the meadows. “I think that was more time consuming than SAVING the place.”

“No kidding,” Sonic agreed. “Couldn’t you have told us that we’d have to clean them up on the way back?” He lightly nudged Lutrudis jokingly.

“Heh heh, sorry,” the horse replied with a guilty shrug. “But I did promise them... Wouldn’t have been fair for those poor townsfolk to tidy up their area all by themselves.”

“True. Now then... where to next?”

They were now back in Lime Shores, the town that the hedgehog and fox duo arrived in when they introduced themselves to Viridonia. The waves and the buildings shined just as bright as when they saw them the first time around, but gorgeous as they were, the sights were not on the heroes’ minds. The ominous creature that attacked them here had yet to be found, and at the moment, they had no clues as to where else it could possibly be hiding.

“So, uh, Trudy,” Sonic began to ask as he looked around aimlessly, having made sure to stick with his nickname for her rather than make another failed attempt to pronounce her real name. “What’s the nearest region from this point that we haven’t visited yet?”

“Oh, well...” Lutrudis had to pause for a moment as she was put on the spot, but it didn’t last for long. “There’s a jungle near the east side of the town, if that means anything to you. You don’t suppose it could be there, do you...? We don’t have any evidence for that...”

“No, but if Ol’ Egghead’s around here, he’s probably making a mess there too. He NEVER leaves a spot undisturbed.”

“It’s also a safe bet that there’s a link between him and the monster,” Tails added. “He’s commanded OTHER monsters, after all, and his presence in Viridonia sure is conveniently timed with its appearance. So even if we don’t find it in person, we could find out more about what’s going on at least.”

“Well, it’s not like we have other leads for the time being...” Lutrudis scratched the side of her face as she exchanged an unsure glance with Sonic to her left, and Tails to her right. “To the jungle it is, then?”

“Right away!” As expected of him, Sonic wasted no time in curling into a ball and rolling out of view in seconds. The seasoned and trained Tails was able to keep up with him easily, but Lutrudis...

“Oh dear, please wait up...!” She asked desperately as she tried in vain to keep up, being extremely careful not to overexert herself. “Not everyone is as fast as you, you know!”

“Actually,” Sonic began, having slowed down his speed a little so that Lutrudis could hear him. “Tails can catch up with me, he’s doing it right now!.So can Amy! Then there’s Shadow... and there’s Blaze... even KNUCKLES can be pretty fast when he puts his mind into it!”

“.........Not everyone is as fast as you, you know!” Lutrudis repeated with extra emphasis, while sounding even more desperate than the previous instance.

——

Tricky Tropics Zone

TT Act 1: Luscious Jungle

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Buzz Bomber - “Everyone knows these buzzing pests. They fly around minding their own business, but if you’re nearby, they’ll shoot pellets at you. Curiously, they have the same face as Motobug... Perhaps they’re made on the cheap?”

Coconuts - “These cheeky monkeys will throw bombs at you from the safety of their trees, but some of them are bold enough to toss them them at you from the ground. Their bombs are even designed like coconuts! Gotta give points to them for keeping it thematically appropriate, I guess.”

Bloominator - “Don’t go admiring this flower! Behind those petals lies a seemingly endless supply of spiked projectiles, which it’ll be all too happy to launch at you should you go near it.”

Mushmeanie - “They pose as mushrooms... and then they don’t once their casings are whacked off. They bounce along the ground aside from that, though I must say, they’re rather cute for killer robots...”

Rhinotank - “It would seem that this design incorporates visual elements from both the Rhinotank and its older model, the Rhinobot, making for a very sleek yet dangerous result... Either way though, it still charges at you should you pop up in its sight.”

Teething Tiki - “Have the idols of the jungle come to life!? ...No, they’re just knockoffs made by the doctor. They’re quick to grab you in the hopes of taking a chomp out of you, which isn’t very idol-like if you ask me.”

You're getting into the adventuring spirit now, but things will be a little trickier around here compared to your time in the meadows. (Even the name gives that away.) The jungles are teeming with all sorts of natural traps, and that's without throwing in Eggman's environmentally unfriendly band of mooks. But you heroes have been through plenty of jungles before, so this will be a breeze... right?

The greenery surrounding the environment is very rich in tone, as are the vivid colours of the flowers, but those are not the only things you’ll be seeing here. Like Frog Forest before it, Luscious Jungle is named after its vast array of succulent, yet unnaturally-sized fruit, many of which can be used to assist you in your journey. You can use apples as stepping stones on the water, bananas can be used in place of ramps, grapes can be bounced upon to reach extra heights... And if you’re feeling really daring, you can even roll the giant oranges and lemons into unsuspecting Badniks. There’s plenty of fruit to experiment with, so don’t be afraid to do just that, even if it’s purely for the sake of your own amusement.

Sonic: Sorry Tails, I have to say it... orange you glad there’s so many of them?

Tails: ...Couldn’t resist, could you?

Sonic: Nope!

Lutrudis: Sounds like someone’s being a bit of a sour grape.

Tails: Aw, not you too!

Lutrudis: *giggle*

But what’s a jungle without its animal inhabitants? That’s right, you’ll get to encounter the exotic wildlife around here too. Some of them, like oncoming zebra herds and aggressive tigers, only serve to hinder you. Others can benefit you instead, like the elephants who are all too happy to launch you out of their trunks (hedgehog quills cause no pain for them, apparently), and the birds who occasionally drop handy item boxes... Just don’t get mixed up with the actual wildlife and Eggman’s wildlife. Regular monkeys aren’t known for having bombs on their person.

Though the area is largely dense, there are occasional segments from outside the immediate jungle area that lead into sprawling savannah landscapes. The glow of the mighty sunlight makes them an impressive sight to see, but be warned, for the Teething Tiki robots can often be found lurking in these exact areas. Luckily though, if you can’t be bothered confronting them, you can climb up the necks of the giraffes to lose track of them, as well as treat yourself to an awesome view.

Once you find the end capsule, you may notice there’s a blocky pyramid structure towering over the trees. You can’t see all of it, but it would be remiss of you to not investigate it...

——

“And just through here, you’ll find... this!” Lutrudis moved a large bush out of the way so that Sonic and Tails could see what she was referring to. As it turns out, she was referring to a village with a distinctly primitive quality. Wooden huts and stone pyramids were dotted across the land, in league with imposing idol monuments, and passageways made of temple structures. The sunlight had simmered down ever so slightly, but its shine was still palpable, and the wooded barriers surrounding the village had various colours of the rainbow painted on them. The colours still popped even after the years of decay and rust.

“Quite a sight, huh?” The horse turned to the two guys, but she noticed they had a peculiar look of thought on their faces, as if they were looking at something else entirely.

“It’s kind of like... like that city I was sent to during Chaos’ rampage, in the past... Wow...” Needless to say, Tails was very amazed by what he saw. “I know it’s different, but it looks so much like that city...”

“Wait, that happened to you too!?” Sonic asked his buddy out of equal amazement. “I was sent to the past during that time too! Yeah, I totally get you, Tails. This looks a LOT like that place...”

Lutrudis took a moment to analyse their mutual sense of wonder with crossed arms, before glancing back at the village herself with a neutral emotion.

“I’ve never time travelled, so I can’t comment.”

Tails examined the village further, in an effort to spot for citizens. “So would we be unwelcomed here, or...?”

“Well, no one’s actually lived here for a long time,” Lutrudis casually explained, all the while fiddling a little with the tip of her ponytail. “Certainly never seen a thriving community in this part since I was a kid.”

“So we SHOULD be fine if we run around in it?”

“As long as you don’t break any priceless artifacts and disgrace the work of whosoever lived here in ye olden days, then yes, I would say so.”

“Pfft, please. You think I can’t control my speed?” Sonic chuckled as he started running ahead to the village.

“I would say your turning is a bigger point of concern,” Lutrudis lightly snarked back as she followed him. Tails followed suit, and as he did so, he smiled to himself, as he continued to witness how quickly his new friend was getting used to the company of his oldest.

Little did any of them know however, that a camera was spying on them from the skies, held by the hands of a familiar blue droid with shifty eyes. Though it made no sound, the siren on his head glowed bright red in accordance with his sinister intentions. Using his jetpack, the round robot flew away from the scene in a hurry, satisfied with his footage.

——

TT Act 2: Temple Village

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Jag-Off - “Such a ferocious beast! These jaguar bots are quick to pounce on you at a moment’s notice. They can be pretty fast... but not as fast as a blue hedgehog, right?”

Mayan Pawn - “Dressed in the style of ancient warriors, these dark blue Pawns will attempt to shiv you with their spears if you’re close, or they’ll resort to their blowguns if you’re at a distance. The doctor sure likes his stereotypes, huh...”

Returning Enemies: Buzz Bomber Coconuts Rhinotank Teething Tiki

Far from the first time you’ve been in an environment like this, but at least you weren’t warped to the past this time around. In this stage, you’ll get to explore all the ins, the outs, and the arounds of this ancient village, and suffice to say, it’s a pretty big village at that. And don’t worry, despite their intimidating stature, the idols won’t come to life, although the Teething Tikis are still around, so be vigilant.

There are no natives living among here anymore, but there are a few explorers for you to talk to if you want to, as evidenced by the little camp site they’ve set up in the area. Some of the explorers have a few interesting things to say...

“It’s said that this was once a populated city, but one day, everyone just vanished off the map! What do you think could have caused that? Did they bring a cruel fate upon themselves, like the ancient echidnas? Or was it something else... something more...?”

“It’s funny... This place looks ancient and all, but something about it feels very... NOT that ancient, if you know what I mean? ...Not even I’m completely sure on what I mean, though...”

Others have less than insightful things to say...

“Wow, are you really Sonic the Hedgehog!? I’m honored to meet you!... Now get out of the way. I can’t take the perfect shot of these pyramids while you’re mugging the camera.”

The majority of the village is on the outside, so the instances where you go inside the temples don’t last for long. That doesn’t mean they’re uneventful though: You can expect to find a healthy number of traps waiting for anyone foolish enough to enter, such as the spears that shoot from the walls, and the weak segments of ground that give way to a ghastly bed of spikes. It’s not all that pleasant, but you’ll live. (Unless you die, of course.)

The newcomer enemies are at their most prominent in the interior sections of the temples. Jag-Offs can almost jump scare you with how quick they can pounce, but they’re nothing too unbearable aside from that. The Mayan Pawns aren’t as fast, but they are more annoying, particularly when they use their blowguns.

It’s not just the temples you can explore, however. Some of the biggest and reddest trees have walkways built around them, and several tunnels have been made from within them. Have fun with scaling and shooting through the pine, but don’t get too careless, for Buzz Bombers love to hang around these sections.

When you finally reach the last bunch of temples in the area, it will turn out that I wasn’t being fully honest with you, for a particularly demonic-looking idol DOES come to life, which takes your character by surprise. Tails’ shocked reaction in particular is priceless.

Tails: AIEEEEEE!

After it takes a moment to growl menacingly at you, it then ascends higher in the air... revealing a serpent-esque body made of black stone, with red and orange markings for good measure. It also reveals two arms, each with the same colour scheme. While the explorers understandably run for dear life, you are made from a braver substance, meaning you’ll have to be the one who actually fights this thing. Unlucky!

BOSS: Idolossus

Right off the bat, it’ll summon four Teething Tikis. You don’t need to destroy them, but you might as well before they get in your way. The Idolossus itself is fond of using its strong arms to pummel you in all kinds of ways, most notably by slamming its hand at where you’re positioned, and sweeping an arm either clockwise or counter-clockwise along the ground.

What do you do? Well, the battlefield here consists of all the area that you’re currently in, so make use of that to get a fair distance away from it. It can still make a grab for you though, for its arms can extend their length to a certain point. Notice how some of the walls have large holes in them? What you want to do is position yourself in front of one of those holes, so that when it launches its arm and hopefully misses you, it’ll get stuck. It’s a rather tragic yet comedic sight, but you can’t think about that for too long, as it’ll eventually get its arm free if you don’t react fast enough. Quickly jump on the arm, spin dash all the way to the body, and land a hit on its eye. It’ll howl in pain while you fall back down to the ground,

It only takes three hits in total, but don’t assume that’ll make things easy. With each hit, it summons a greater amount of Teething Tikis, and more worryingly, it grows two more arms with each hit, culminating in a total of six arms. It also starts throwing in a few fire-based attacks for good measure, such as spitting out fireballs and leaving a temporary trail of flame wherever it sweeps the ground. You’ll also need to use a different wall with a hole in it for each hit, since the ones you already made use of get completely destroyed afterwards.

Spin dashing along the arm will be made tougher each time, since its extra arms will attempt to hinder you even while you’re trying to reach the body. But you can manage. Three hits in, and the Idolossus will let out one last howl before crumbling to the ground in pieces, revealing circuitry within its stone exterior. Not that there was any doubt beforehand that Eggman made this idol, but it’s nice to know for sure nonetheless.

——

“Personally, I thought this one looked ugly anyway,” Sonic commented upon looking around at the debris of the idol they had faced with his hands on his hips. He shook his head disapprovingly. “Seriously, black and red? Sticks out like a sore thumb. Not that that’s unusual for Eggman’s junk...”

“What was it doing here, though?” Tails asked as he scratched his head. “It’s a little weird for an Eggman robot to just hang around here and do nothing until we showed up... Maybe it was guarding something?”

“You might be onto something there, Tails,” Lutrudis grimly noted as she pointed in the direction of a few bushes and trees, which appeared to be emitting a strange purple mist. The three of them exchanged looks with each other, and with varying levels of dread, they slowly walked towards where the mist was radiating from. Sonic, the one in front, quickly brushed many bushes aside, his two associates close behind. The thick vegetation proved troublesome to traverse, but they marched on regardless, until at last, Sonic found the very definite source for the mist. Namely, a river filled with a substance that he had seen before...

“Mega Mack!” Sonic exclaimed.

“Mega Mack?” Tails asked with shock as he got to see it for himself.

“Mega Mack!”

“Mega Mack?” Lutrudis questioned in turn as she saw it too. She only had to glance at the area a grand total of once before she immediately covered up her face with her bandana. “Goodness gracious, that stuff stinks.”

“Yeah. Mega Mack. That freaky gunk that Eggman loves so much.”

Sonic frowned as he looked at the rest of the scene. In spite of the chemical’s effects, the rest of the environment remained fairly pleasant. The plant life and moss took on a much darker green than it did in the immediate jungle region, and the flowers came in stunning shades of white and light blue. A pale white shine engulfed the area, creating a sight that stood in stark contrast with the purple pollutant.

The hero’s firm expression grew tighter, as it only reminded him of what Eggman was doing to the place. He never understood the scientist’s habit of turning everything he could find into glamorized environmental hazards... nor did he care to know, as Eggman was infamous for his general callousness anyway. All he knew was that the river would only get worse if he didn’t put a stop to it.

“It won’t be pleasant,” he turned to Tails. “But we’ll have to follow the river if we want to find the source of this gunk.”

“There are worse experiences,” Tails shrugged, in a tone that implied he was thinking of something in particular when he spoke.

“If that’s what it takes...” Lutrudis added, her bandana still covering her face tightly. “This is still part of my home. I can’t just stand here and let the doctor get away with this disgrace, can I? The sooner we find the source, the sooner we can make this place less inhospitable... and less stinky.”

——

TT Act 3: Gloomy Bog

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Venus Dire Trap - “Self-explanatory, really. When they spot it, they’ll make a swift lunge for their prey... which, according to their programming, is you. Pretty grim...”

Returning Enemies: Buzz Bomber Bloominator

Don’t let the unflattering name fool you, this swamp actually looks pretty nice in spite of its current situation (and, you know, being a swamp). It’s only really gloomy because it’s in the process of being corrupted by Eggman’s influence. The Mega Mack is not fatal - you can take a dip in it with no trouble (although why you would want to do that is anyone’s guess) - but like with regular water, you can drown in it if you’re under there for too long. If you’d rather not dive in the Mega Mack and risk getting a disease, there are wooden walkways and loops that you can run across.

You can also use the vines to catapult yourself across different angles, which can be exploited if you’re a cunning sort of player. On the other hand, the biggest obstacle around here are the mud pits. They’re not fatal either, but the longer you’re stuck in them, the slower you can move... which can prove to be a disastrous consequence if there’s a Badnik nearby.

Speaking of Badniks, the Venus Dire Traps are very fast for a second zone enemy. They’re not impossible to counter, but you really have to stay on guard with them, or else you’ll be turned into prey in seconds. The Buzz Bombers also like to fly above areas with mud pits, and the Bloominators are rather annoyingly placed in the middle of the walkways a lot of the time.

And by the way? Don’t think going through the whole stage under the Mega Mack will grant you an easy victory. Aside from the usual worry of drowning, Eggman was crafty enough to leave a few Venus Dire Traps under the Mega Mack as well... and since your reaction time is ever so slightly slower when underwater, dealing with THEM while underwater is a lot harder. Although you will be rewarded with handy items if you get past all the danger, so it’s your choice...

When you reach the capsule, you’ll spot what appears to be the source of the Mega Mack: a giant, mechanical bee hive compound. Buzz Bombers are rapidly flying out of it, and Mega Mack is callously spewing from different angles within the holes located on the structure. You better shut this thing down, eh?

——

TT Act 4: Hornet’s Nest

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Hive Bomber - “Inside the big hive lies... miniature hives! Should you be careless enough to touch it, it’ll release a group of bite-sized Buzz Bombers for you to deal with. As if there weren’t enough of these fiends around here already, sheesh...”

Returning Enemies: Buzz Bomber Bloominator Venus Dire Trap

Another immediate jump to the next act. This stage takes place both outside and inside the robotic hive, as it’s been fortified in the event that you turned up to try and wreck the place. On the outside, you’ll have to deal with more Venus Dire Traps and Bloominators, as well as the natural hazards of the marshy environment. You may be reminded of the Great Megalith in fact, as the fortifications around the exterior are quite fancy, complete with lamps hanging on the ceilings, and on the walls.

The interior of the hive, however, is a different story. Fittingly enough, you’re gonna have to deal with a lot of Buzz Bombers in here, as well as their junior counterparts hiding away in their own little hives. Being the progenitor of the Mega Mack, there’ll be rivers of that here and there too, but since they’re rushing very rapidly here, you’ll get sent along its course if you accidentally go for a swim in it, Don’t worry though, this won’t count as a death. Usually it’ll just take you to an earlier point in the level, so it’s still annoying, but not an instant kill.

Naturally, there’s a bunch of honey-related gimmicks and obstacles in the hive as well. Honey on the walls can be used for wall jumping purposes, and honey slides can be used to gain a ton of momentum for the giddy players who like to just go fast. If you’re going up a slide, you can jump along the platforms that are conveniently provided for you.

The stage is honestly pretty straightforward for the most part, with no big surprises... until the end. You will eventually reach a tunnel, and it seems you’re in the clear, since there are no enemies or obstacles to be found. But your character is running towards the camera... You know what that means...

Right on cue, a truly massive Buzz Bomber emerges from the ground, and it wastes no time in chasing you down, presumably for all those years of destroying its smaller offspring. It won’t do anything other than chase you, but it’s pretty speedy, so don’t get cocky. Remember, there is honey everywhere in this tunnel, so on the occasion that it makes a faster charge towards where you’re running, you can avoid it by simply running along the other edges of the tunnel.

After a while, the tunnel will cease, and you and your chaser will reach an interesting room with a flower-shaped device in the center of it... which also happens to have five rivers of Mega Mack emerging from it. Now that you’re not being chased, you can have a better look at this Buzz Bomber. Longer wings, brighter stripes, notable spikes on its tail, a tiara-esque shape on its head... yes, this must be the queen. Time for some regicide.

BOSS: Queen Bomber

The Queen will start off by doing what every Buzz Bomber does: fly around and shoot pellets. Although for obvious reasons, its pellets are fairly larger than that of the average Bomber’s, and are thus harder to avoid. It will do this three times, although if you fly up as Tails, or make use of your parkour as Sonic, you can whack the Queen early to get it to move on. This won’t count as a hit, but it helps speed up the process if you’re impatient.

Either way, the Queen will eventually place itself in the middle of the flower, and the flower will close itself up to reveal laser cannons underneath, which will then process to sweep the ground. This can be tricky to dodge when you’re also trying to avoid the Mega Mack, but it’s also your moment to strike. Once the lasers have stopped, there’s a brief moment before the flower petals lower to reveal the Queen. Before that happens, spin dash one of the petals three times as quickly as you can, and this will destroy said petal.

The Queen will grow furious that you harmed its lovely flower, and in response, it’ll fly out of the camera’s view and fire a rapid onslaught of pellets straight to the ground. Fortunately, they have shadows, so you have an early warning as to where they’ll land. After which, the normal process will continue. Avoid the pellets, dodge the flower’s lasers, whack another petal three times. Smooth sailing from here, right?

Well, not quite. The process itself largely remains the same, but you’ll have more to dodge the longer the fight goes on. After two petals are destroyed, the Queen will make use of those spikes on its tail by firing them at you. Unlike the pellets, the spikes will temporarily bounce along the walls from different angles, and they’re faster as well. The Queen itself will also be slightly quicker in firing its usual pellets.

After four petals are shredded, the Queen will summon regular Buzz Bombers for assistance, so you’ll have to deal with them too. However, some of them will be colored red instead of blue. Aside from being a visual nod to the similar Buzzer model, it’s also an indication that they work a little differently, as the red Bombers will forgo shooting pellets in favor of getting in your personal space, hurting you via physical contact. This can be irritating, but you can use it to your advantage by attacking them from a certain angle so that they’ll crash straight into one of the remaining flower petals, destroying said petal in one hit.

When all six petals are down, the Queen will get REALLY mad, and it’ll throw all its previous patterns out of the way in favor of charging straight towards you! Simply bop it on the head a single time... and it’ll blow up. How anticlimactic.

Well, it’s still a Buzz Bomber at the end of the day. They’ve always went down in one hit. I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

——

With the Queen’s defeat, and the destruction of its flower, the rivers of purple liquid in the hive slowly began to die down. Their course grew slower, their gushing grew quieter, until eventually, the tunnels and holes that were once full of the chemical were drained completely.

“Yeah!” Sonic cheered as he pumped a fist in the air. “No more lousy Mega Mack!” He followed it up by exchanging a bouncy high five with Tails.

“i just hope the river will recover from this,” Lutrudis muttered with concern as she fidgeted with her hands. Her bandana was down again, now that her sensitive nose was no longer affected by the surroundings. “A lot of the goop made its way there... I hope it’s not permanently tarnished...”

Sonic gradually stopped cheering as he found himself unsure on what to say in response, as he too wasn’t sure about whether it would fully recover or not. Having noticed his friend’s worrying, he could only throw a look of sympathy her way. Tails simply looked down at his feet, similarly uncertain on how to address the horse’s thoughts.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Sonic gently reassured her with a small smile, patting her on the back. “Maybe not immediately, but... things have a way of working out. Trust me.”

"Heh...”

“As for that beast, we’ve STILL not found it,” Sonic pondered out loud. “We haven’t found Eggman either, come to think of it...”

“Why do you think Eggman’s hiding?” Tails questioned.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Tails,” the hedgehog shrugged as his quills drooped. “I mean, it’s not like he’s being secretive about his involvement. We KNOW it’s him. We KNOW he’s here. Being coy isn’t like him at all...”

“Hey, guys?” Lutrudis seemed hesitant to mention what was on her mind, but she went through with voicing her thought. “I don’t know this for sure, but... I think I might have an idea on what the doctor is searching for.”

“You do???” Sonic and Tails cried out in unison.

“Please tell us, Trudy,” Sonic added urgently, yet not without tenderness. “This could really help us. Even if you’re not sure about it, tell us anyway. If we can have even a vague idea on what he could be up to, we can stop him a lot quicker.”

The young lady was conflicted. Doubt plagued her mind. What if this wasn’t it? What if she leads them to something that amounts to nothing? What if she completely wastes their time and creates more problems instead of solving them? She looked at Tails, who nodded reassuringly, then she turned back to Sonic, and she looked deep into his eyes in particular. She felt her anxiety simmering down as she focused on the hedgehog’s bright, green, friendly eyes. She took a moment to nod to herself as she finally began to spill the beans.

“I’ll take you to it myself. It’s not far from my residence.”

——

“So they were at my Mega Mack compound, I see...” mused an all too familiar voice hidden away in the shadows, as he watched the footage that was provided to him by the blue robot, who twitched nervously at his master’s brief period of silence.

“Is the hedgehog foiling your plans again, doctor?” asked another voice in the shadows.

“...Nah,” the voice replied in an uncharacteristically relaxed tone. “He’s not doing that at all, not this time. You see, he can actually destroy as much of my stuff as he wants... and it won’t mean a thing. I’ll still win.”

“And what makes you so certain of that? What exactly are you planning?”

“Ho ho ho... You’ll find out in time. That said however...” He examined the footage once more, stroking his trademark facial hair all the while. “I think I’m going to keep an eye on the new girl.”

“She doesn’t seem like anything worth concerning yourself over, doctor. She has no fancy abilities from what we’ve seen, no experience with the Chaos Emeralds...”

“I have learned a valuable lesson over the years, Orbot. When Sonic makes a new friend, they always cause trouble for me. I’m NOT taking any chances.”

“Understood, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Now then... Are YOU ready for your next job?”

A hand emerged from the darkness to point down at the blue droid. He looked to his left and to his right, as if he were wrongly accused of a crime. He finally nodded slowly, almost anxiously, his siren still shining brightly.

“Good stuff! Then in that case...”

Out of the shadows stepped a robot who looked very similar, but not completely identical, to the blue one. He was triple the height, with a proud spot of red. As three similar pairs of red eyes glowed behind the two machines, the red one silently raised his scepter in the air, as if to celebrate a glorious occasion.

A grin slowly formed on their master’s face. A grin that Sonic had seen many, many times throughout his adventures.

“Let’s go crash the party, my loyal Heavies...”

------

Back to Chapter 1...

To Chapter 2-3 Interlude...

#Sonic & Tails: Beyond the Stars #Crusher's Fanfiction #Sonic the Hedgehog #Fanfiction

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