Can I say something about Dune 2….

1, 2 and 15?💕💕

Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Angst. It's the angst. 🤌 One of them has to be in distress so the other can provide comfort at some point. Bonus for some action and snarky dialogs but it doesn't need to. The important part is the act of service as love language. I demonstrate my affection to you by taking care of you, no matter the issue, especially if you're not used to being cared for. (I also just love smut.)

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Hmmm. Lemme think. I will go for "fake marriage" because that's actually on my to-do list!!! (Long story short, I made a devil pact with @andorerso to rewrite a bad movie. more on that later.)

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Oh boi. That's so hard. 😭 I will go with either seelonce mayday or the girl with the stardust eyes (because they're my most recents so I feel really connected) but probably the first because I imagined Surren Pai so vividly I would LOVE to see it on screen! Especially the Albatross ♡ Also ngl, Jyn's escape from Vardos at the beginning would make for sick action shots!

Thank you for enriching my enclosure with your attention ❤️❤️❤️ Happy raccoon!! you can ask me questions (づ˶•༝•˶)づ♡

“Onision Interview With Attorney” April 27, 2020 Speaks

Apparently the attorney is Vincent’s sister. If that’s true, I’m guessing he didn’t have to pay for this interview because she already has a bias against Chris Hansen. (Vincent hijack Hansen’s website and publicly announced he sold it to her. They turned it into a website advertising her attorney services. She also helped Vincent filed a lawsuit against Chris Hansen, but Idk if it went anywhere. It looks like the site has since been reverted back to Hansen’s.)

Notes:

Greg / James announces they are going to talk about online culture and how people are impacted by social media.

He asks a really wordy, broad question. I’m not exactly sure what he’s asking, but I think he’s trying to ask how private people can stay safe on the internet? She says with the pandemic attorneys are using the internet more. She says cancel culture is very dangerous.

(Wait- why is there a picture of James as a teenager on screen? I just noticed this. I��ll add it to the top of the post. Sorry, that distracted me.)

She gives an example of a couple going through a divorce and one of them uses their big social media presence to damage the other. She said that makes the attorneys think if they should keep representing someone when their ex could inflict damage to them (the attorney) with things like negative reviews. (People left negative google reviews for her law firm after she got involved in Vincent’s online feud with Hansen. It looks like they are all gone now. From what I saw, it was complains of unprofessionalism with the website situation. People may have left false reviews as well, but I did not see them. I only looked very early on.) 

James says this is the opposite of the justice system where everyone has a fair chance. Public opinion controls right and wrong.

Attorney says public opinion is a myth because most people don’t know the laws or have been to law school. That’s why they have lawyers.

She talks more about how scary it is for lawyers, to risk their livelihood. People can put them out of business with negative reviews who don’t even live in the same country.

James asks what she thinks the general legal repercussions could be for trying to destroy someone’s private life on social media. She says there’s options, but they’re difficult. You could sue for defamation, but you’d have to prove the statement is false and defamatory, you’d have to locate them, you’d have to prove loss of money, and the defendant would need the ability to pay.

James asks if he’s been right when he said it’s not worth going after someone with no money or if you could claim their future assets. She says it could be a thing, like in the state she practices a judgement is good for 20 years and in some states it can be renewed for longer. You’d have to check the state. She says if they’re a minor, the parents could be held responsible.

James asks if there will be a legal shift to protect people from baseless cancel culture. He uses Taylor Swift and Johnny Depp as examples. She believes there will be a shift. She says there should be responsibility on providers that allow negative comments that enable cancel culture.

James asks if someone could be punished for unknowingly telling a lie about someone. He uses the example that he said someone was a murderer, then later finds out someone else was found guilty. Yet he doesn’t remove his initial statement and doesn’t make a public correction. She asks isn’t that why the news publishes retractions? James says people act like the news, but don’t do that. He says everyone wanted to interview him, but when they realized everything they wanted to interview him about was false, they suddenly didn’t want to interview him anymore. They publicly ignored the issue instead of publishing a retraction. He says if you pretend to be a newspaper or journalist, you have to hold yourself to the same standard. Attorney agrees and says everyone needs to be careful with what they say as facts.

She says people shouldn’t be afraid to interview someone in fear of the online effect it might have. She asks where the great interviewers like Oprah, Lisa Ling, and Barbra Walters would be. James says this is black and white mentality, if you’re not with us you’re against us. You can’t have an impartial opinion. He gives an example, if weren’t against Johnny Depp when everyone was angry with him, then you’re an abuser. He says you can’t even have a dialog or find out the full story without people trying to cancel you. He says it converted the media into pandering to their audience.

Attorney asks if now we have to not watch Woody Allen movies because of what he was accused of? James says he stopped watching Johnny Depp movies for a while and that was wrong because he let society and popular opinion control him. He says we want to be with the in-crowd, so when someone is cancelled, we want to go along with it to go with the flow. We’re afraid to admit when we’re wrong or that will be one more reason to be cancelled. He says it’s a complex social structure.

He asks for advise for public figures and private people trying to recover from being canceled or if their ex ran a humiliation campaign online. Attorney says she has a website because all attorneys need websites now. She was dragged into it and everybody started posting really negative reviews because the person that started this cancel culture stated what her familial relationship was. No one has any knowledge of that before they said it. (Dude... when I went to “HansenVSPredator dot com”, your face and name showed up. You have the same last name as Vincent. His last name was on every Hansen stream. Your law firm is across the river from where Vincent said he lived. Vincent tweeted your full name when he announced he sold the site. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. At the time I assumed she was either Vincent’s cousin or sister. I’m not a Hansen stan, but Jesus. Blaming him for all of the negative attention she received is a stretch. If anything I blame Vincent for even suggesting selling her a hijacked website from a high profile person to use for her business. Especially after Vincent got twitter totally pissed off at him. Terrible idea. I remember at the time thinking this poor woman doesn’t know the shit show she just walked into.)

Then her rating, which was really good, went down. She says profanities started being used and it was disturbing. She says she has her own harassment suit. (oh so it wasn’t Vincent’s) The platform got rid of the reviews and she was able to find out the identity of some of the individuals. This all caused loss of sleep, not being able to work, headaches, being afraid and worried for the people she’s working for. She wanted to protect them and was able to file a harassment charge and those are hard to get filed.

He says she’s a private citizen and when someone with a social media presence goes after you makes it difficult to work at your job and function as a human being. Online community doesn’t understand there’s the real world, then there’s the online community. The real work is mostly rational people working jobs with other people. There are consequences for their actions. Online you can be extreme you can act like there’s no law, until reality hits and they’re sitting in court. When people irl agree with you, when police agree with you, when people in court agree with you, it’s important to bring people to the real world so they can’t destroy your life more.

Attorney says people contacted the Bar Association on behalf of the person they’re following. She said it brought harm to the person who started the cancel culture. He made false statements about her. Because of her familial association, she should be banned. People going to the Bar Association inspired her charges against him.

James says we need to be held accountable when we drag people who are entirely private, people who never had a Youtube channel, for bringing negative attention to them. (Like the underage fans you insulted in your body ratings videos?) There’s no reason for us to inspire people to go after private people. His own family members were targeted. They have no association with his channels. (They were on his channels though. Not saying they deserve negative attention, just pointing it out. His mother acted in a number of his skit videos and she has her own channel. He also did a collab with one of his sisters to promote her channel.) He says they were entirely innocent.

He says he hopes the world we’re approaching is one where there is an anti virus for the virus, which is cancel culture. He says we keep acting like heroes by hurting people who are not involved.

He says, like in the attorney’s case, you can’t involve people who are not involved. Says you can’t take someone from a platform they are on and attack them on a platform that they are not on. He gives the example of someone cutting him off the highway, he can’t take out a camera and stalk them to humiliate them online. He should handle it with the police. She agrees and says the authorities are the ones that can do investigations.

James asks for a closing statement from the attorney. They promote her new channel and she says she would like to talk to Cher one day.

She says if something isn’t fair to share, don’t share it. James says you should think about if what you’re going to share will hurt a private citizen. He says he understands public figures, like himself, are different. When you involve family members and private citizens, you become legally accountable for what happens to them.

Character Interview II: Growing Up

UI: Alright, are you ready for the second part of the interview, Mr. Blackwood?

Leo: Yeah, let’s get started. And please just call me Leo.

UI: Okay, Leo, you mentioned that your parents, Ellis and Laura, their jobs and what they were like generally. How do you think they were as parents specifically?

Leo: They have been great parents, to be honest. I know being in the industry there’s always a lot of talk about how famous people might spoil kids too much or not be around a lot; I think there’s no way to fully know what you’re doing, it’s not like there’s a manual of how to raise your kids. But I have to say my parents did a great job balancing their work with having a family and a normal routine for us.

UI: Were your parents strict?

Leo: Not really. I mean they were strict enough with generally normal things; keeping up with school, having good grades, being a good kid. They definitely made a lot of emphasis on making both me and my brother that we are very lucky and privileged and know that all of this takes hard work; they didn’t want neither me or my brother grow up to be, you know, the typical rich spoiled rich kid.

UI: Which of your parents dealt with bad behavior most often? What did they prefer when it came to parenting?

Leo: Probably mom, I mean they both did in different ways but mom was… I guess you can say the first one who would take action if we ever got in trouble; she would be the first one to give me a lecture and ground me. While my father is generally the quiet, calm one; he would wait a little bit before he talked to me alone to make me understand whatever I did wrong.

UI: Did they ever get psychical with you or your brother?

Leo: No, never.

UI: Did you get in trouble a lot?

Leo: Not really, I mean I’m not perfect; I was a teen, I’m sure I was stupid at some point but it was never something huge.

UI: Okay, we’re doing the same dynamic we did before; can you close your eyes and tell me what the earliest memory that you can remember is?

Leo: Oh I don’t even need to close my eyes, (smiles); it’s the day I got to be in one of my mother’s films, I was about six years old I think and my mom was in this film and they needed a kid to play her kid and immediately she thought who else would be more perfect than her own kid. I remember reading lines with her, I didn’t have many dialogs; I didn’t even think it was a real job, I just though “Oh cool, I’m playing with my mom.”

I remember watching her perform as the camera started rolling, I had a seat next to the director and I just remember seeing her… and thinking how amazing she was, how graceful. The director glanced at me and let me see the screen he was looking at; you know to see his perspective and I remember feeling important; in my head I thought I was directing for a minute. And when her scene ended she looked at me and gave me a big smile as she walked towards me and called me her little director. I didn’t know then I would end up exactly that… she still calls me that some times.

UI: Can you list all of the schools that you went to? What was each like?

Leo: Sure. I went to Brentwood School for all my basic education from Elementary to High School; it was a normal school really. It’s one of the best private schools in Los Angeles area, my parents thought it was the best choice for my safety and everyone else. Being the child of famous actors can be difficult, so my parents thought it was just the best to be in a school that were more used to these things. It was a nice school, I can’t say much really; school is school, kids hate being stuck in a classroom for the most part. But I made good friends and had all the normal experiences a kid can have at school. It was good. (Laughs).

UI: What was your favorite subject in school? Why?

Leo: Other than the arts workshop, I took a course we had in school for photography and obviously that was my favorite thing in the world but I feel like that’s an obvious answer. Other than that I would have to say English and literature, I love reading; I tended to create a movie in my head for every book we had to read or every essay we had to write.

UI: What was your least favorite subject in school? Why?

Leo: Biology; it’s not that I hated all of it but I dreaded the times we had to dissect frogs and stuff like that. First of all, that’s animal cruelty and second of all I’m kind of squeamish with animal’s insides. (Chuckles)

UI: As a kid, how do you think people would describe your personality?

Leo: Generally nice? (Laughs) I don’t know, I mean I had friends, I loved to run around all the time and joke but I wasn’t like a class clown; I suppose people liked me for the most part, I never had issues with anyone that I can remember at least.

UI: As a teenager, how do you think people would describe your personality?

Leo: Well I won’t most likely to bright up your day in High School, does that help? (laughs) As narcissistic as it sounds, I swear I’m not trying to, (chuckles), I was a popular kid; I liked making friends and helping people when they had issues if I could.

UI: Would you say you were the most popular kid in school?

Leo: Uhm… I suppose I was somewhere in that area.

UI: Did your class voted for you on that? Were you prom king or anything like that?

Leo: Yeah… (laughs) This is weird. I don’t mean to sound like an asshole.

UI: You’re not (laughs)

Leo: Okay, great. (chuckles)

UI: How did you do socially in school? What ‘cliques’ did you socialize with?

Leo: I was never like a clique type of a guy or at least I didn’t care too much for it; I was in a sport’s team so I got to hang out with the jocks, I was also in arts so I was around artsy kids obviously. Generally, I just like to be friends with people I shared things in common and you know, I could get along with. I did hated people who thought were bullies or liked to make others less; I went to a good school though where people got along, there were one or two people who liked to create issues but it wasn’t as bad as other’s schools could be.

UI: Who were your friends as a kid?

Leo: Toby Jenkins was my best friend from like Elementary school up until now really; we’ve been great friends ever since we were kids, our parents are in the Industry and they are actually friends so we grew up to be like brothers. There was this other kid called Samuel Hill, we were really close up until we were like twelve years old because that’s when he moved to Japan because of his father’s job and we kind of lost touch. Emma Moore was also a good friend of mine, she moved to New York when we were around thirteen or fourteen; we still keep in touch, Toby used to have the biggest crush on her (laughs).

UI: Who were your friends as a teenager?

Leo: Toby, obviously. Aaron Wood, he moved from Canada when we were around sixteen, we got along pretty well; we’re still pretty close. I was also really close to Danielle Avery; she was a student at my school and also and actress, she was a friend and we dated in High School.

UI: Are you still close to Danielle?

Leo: Not really, sometimes we run into each other but we don’t have a really close relationship anymore; it just happens with relationships but it’s not something dramatic.

UI: What did you think of school generally speaking?

Leo: I don’t really have much thought about it. Of course, it’s important to get your basic education and that’s kind of a way you learn to socialize; it’s the place where you start trying to find out who you are, I suppose. I had a general good experience; I made great friends and gathered great memories. But I won’t lie and say that I loved sitting for ours during class every day. I was a normal kid. (Chuckles)

UI: What is your worst memory from school?

Leo: I don’t really have any sort of traumatic memory or experience from school, I think I was lucky enough to not get bullied and even if someone tried I was the type to not let people mess with me. So yeah… if anything a sad moment I believe would be my first heartbreak which was me breaking up with my first girlfriend, I was fifteen and she basically decided she liked basketball guys instead of football so she dumped me for another guy and that hurt. Teen years man (chuckles).

UI: What is your best memory from school?

Leo: Prom and Graduation for sure; that sounds so cliché I know but It was probably the best part of it; you know after studying hard so many years you finally are over with that part of your life, I was so eager to start with my life and going to college to prepare for something I knew I loved. Seeing my parents proud and obviously celebrating that with my friends, it’s just a wonderful experience.

UI: What did you think that you wanted to be while growing up?

Leo: Uhm… I know when I was really young like five or six I wanted to be Spiderman, you know he’s very strong and can climb buildings and he loved taking photographs so it kind of checked all the awesome boxes for me. (Laughs) As I got older I thought I wanted to act like my parents but soon I realized I didn’t have the heart for it and realized I was really interesting in photography and filming, It didn’t take me long before deciding I wanted to be a director.

UI: What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

Leo: I loved playing video games and running around outside, I started loving photography pretty early on, I think I was seven or eight when  I got my first camera and I carried that with me everywhere I went.

UI: What was your favorite thing to do as a teenager?

Leo: Hanging out with my friends and girlfriend, video games and photography. Nothing changed much (laughs)

UI: Do you think that school properly prepared you for your job? Why or why not?

Leo: I mean… I guess it might have given me some basic tools for it but it was really me learning on my own cuz I loved it and also when I went to college that was like the real in depth learning process for me.

UI: Do you think that you got most of your skills or abilities from school? How so, if so? If not, where did you get them?

Leo: College definitely thought me a lot but I’m also a very curious person so I taught myself a lot of things simply because I liked to do research on things I was curious about or saw other directors or photographers doing when I was around my parents’ jobs.

UI: Who did you look up to while you were growing up? Why?

Leo: My parents, they are very passionate about their work but acting is not the only thing they did; they knew how privilege they are and they always made sure to use the platform and the voice they had to create change and give to people who are less fortunate; I just think they are amazing human beings and that’s exactly the type of person I want to be.

UI: Who do you think from the past had the most influence on you as a person now?

Leo: Uhm… that’s a hard question to answer. I think every single person you came in contact with through your life leaves you a lesson; good or bad, it helps you shape into whoever you are today. If I had to pick anyone it would be my parents for the same reason I mentioned in the previous question.

UI: You’ve talked about your immediate family. Is there anyone in your extended family that you were in contact with or were close to? Why or why not?

Leo: I have an uncle, brother of my mother who’s a photographer; he’s won awards for it and he shared his passion with me when I was a kid. We got really close because our common interest. He’s always around all the time; he’s always been there for us.

UI: Is there anyone outside of your blood that you consider family?

Leo: Love Bryant. We’ve known each other for a long time now, we’ve seen each other and supported each other in the best and worst moments of our lives; she’s like a sister to me.

UI: Have you had your first kiss already? If so, when? Who did you have it with? How did it happen?

Leo: My first kiss was with a girl named Jenny, when I was around eleven; it was during a spin the bottle game. A little awkward you know, we were little kids and it happened in front of a lot of other kids who kept teasing us. Childhood. (laughs)

UI: Have you had intercourse? If so, when was the first time? Who did you have it with? How did it happen?

Leo: Like most American man my age, yes I’ve had sex before.(chuckles). My first time was with my high school girlfriend, Danielle, we were sixteen or seventeen years old and my parents had to go away for a weekend and trusted me enough to look after myself for two days… Danielle came over to hangout, one thing led to another and we ended up losing our virginity that night.

UI: To close out now that you’ve looked at your growing up, how would you describe your childhood in general?

Leo: Happy, I honestly don’t have anything to complain about; I was… I am a lucky guy. I never lacked anything, I didn’t have any really terrible experiences; except for the way my previous relationship ended but I see those things as normal things that might happen in life. So yeah, I’ve had a good life so far.

Help I’m being harassed by the #1 sexeist man! Review

Sorry I had this mostly finished on the backburner for awhile but Soulless grabbed my attention pretty hard.  BUT NOW THIS IS FINISHED! I hope you enjoy!

Summarize

So the story is as follows…Takato is an actor who was voted Japan’s sexiest man for a few years in a row. However his title is usurped by this dude named Junta that he’s working on a new movie with.  Takato is salty about this but is professional about it and just kinda harbors secret bitter feelings.  He is polite to and gives advice to Junta when asked.  Junta invites him out to drinks, Takato doesn’t want to but everyone within a 5 mile radius swoops in to pressure him into it so he caves.

GOD WHY IS THAT A THING? That for sure happened in Love Stage and I’m sure I’ve seen that trope elsewhere.  Where not just a 3rd party will pressure a reluctant uke but like a fucking horde of strangers with nothing to gain from it just crawl out from under the fucking floor boards like little hack-handy roaches to advance this shitty plot.

ANYWAY!

Junta gets Takato drunk, films embarrassing stuff that he threatens to blackmail him with, and a fucking horror scene of a rape ensues.  Like, not dissimilar from Junjou in the fact that the atmosphere is drawn as oppressive, the uke is riddled with very palatable fear, the seme wears crazed expressions, and behaves violently.  Hell, Takato manages to shove him off and tries to lock himself in the bathroom for his own safety but Junta rips the door off its fucking hinges. Takato PLEADS like BEGS for him not to but he is violently raped against the wall while Takato cries saying OUT LOUD that THIS IS RAPE!  Afterwards he’s crying and shaking, talking out loud about how he’s frightened if others find out and feeling humiliated.

Junta picks him up and is like, “Man I guess I got carried away, but like REAL TALK I have a crush on you. The rape was kinda bad I guess, but it’s not my fault cause I literally cannot control any of my actions. I can prove I like you by having gentle sex with you in the bed.”

Takato agrees to this.

I BEG YOUR FUCKING PARDON?!

The implication here is that Junta just looked SO SWEET! But like also it wasn’t gentle sex at all and Junta is going to continue to blackmail him. HAR HAR!

Like here is a hot fucking take authors and fans of this particular type of garbage… that kind of writing does not make this more consensual and okay.

Like if you threw a dude in a pit full of scorpions, and he is being stung by a thousand stingers and the poison is slowly and painfully shutting down all of his bodily functions and it’s all really gruesome…but then someone asks if he wants to be saved and the dude in the pit goes from screaming in agony to saying, “Actually I like it down here.”

Does that mean being pushed into that pit, and what he went through in that pit is okay? NO

What does him suddenly wanting to marry all of those 1000 scorpions mean?

IT MEANS YOU’RE A FUCKING HACK WRITER WILLFULLY CONTRIBUTING TO RAPE CULTURE FOR A QUICK BUCK YOU HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Like you can have your stories where a rapist is redeemed from his awful actions, but more often than not I see these fucking outrageous hairpin fucking turns in writing.  

I mean, Junta does apologize?  Which is better than some semes but honestly I’d rather him not even bother because he’s not sincere.  He apologizes all the time for the sex acts he puts Takato through but goes on to blackmail him, hurts him, abducts him, and threatens him to his face with more rape. LIKE NOT EXACTLY FEELING AS IF YOU TOTES CARE ABOUT HOW HE FEELS ABOUT ALL THIS, BOYO!

The next chapter while they’re being filmed for the show Takato throws him against the wall and hijacks the dialog to make it sound sexually threatening.  Takato IN HIS MIND ADMITS “DAMN HE’S ACTUALLY USING ENOUGH FORCE TO HURT ME!!!!”  So after this shot, Takato gives Junta some advice and makes no shit, this fucking face…                        

And that…face, (improperly attached to what I presume is a series of straws coated in plaster masquerading as a neck)  gives Junta that GOTTA RAPE NOW BONER!

So that’s what happens, he just violently drags off a kicking and screaming Takato in the middle of shooting and no one bats a fucking eye. SEEMS LEGIT!  What’s baffling to me is they don’t even draw a sex scene for this.

MY BRO, WHAT IS EVEN THE FUCKING POINT THAN OF ALL THESE RAPE SCENERIOS IF THERE AREN’T HIDEOUS MELTING FACES AND WACKY INFLATABLE TUBE MAN BODIES TO GO WITH IT!?

But afterwards Junta says the classic creepy shit, “Give up already and become mine. I have no intention of giving you to someone else.” WE KNOW THE DRILL!

Takato looks up at Junta and goes, “Yeah guess I love this dude.”

AND LIKE FOR WHAT? FOR HUH? WHAT’S GOING ON HERE!?!!??!?!?!?!?

But also, are you fucking joking here? Like I’m not into the 10 volumes of “Am I gay or not?” bullshit we get in yaoi. But, depending on the pace and characterization, there’s nothing wrong with dragging out the love being 100% mutual. Here’s it’s in chapter fucking 2.  Even Junjou went at a slower pace than that.  When I read that I couldn’t help feeling like, “WELL WHAT’S THE CONFLICT IN THE NEXT 3 AND A HALF VOLUMES GOING TO BE?”

Which, admittedly is unfair, there can be lots of relationship conflict outside of mutually expressed love…However for a rapist/tsundere dynamic? That’s usually at least 75% of the conflict.  But oh, maybe this means we’re going to get different kinds of drama!  So even while it’s not good, we’re going to get something different!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It’s utter NOT-CONFLICT is what we end up with.  3 different chapters are, “I haven’t seen much of him, that must mean he’s bored of me. Wah! Oh it turns out he was just busy. Oh that’s good.”  PAGING FUCKING JUNJOU WITH THAT SUPER FUN, ENGAGING, AND INTERESTING CONFLICT HARDY FUCKING HAR!

Then we take a hard right into sorta worst rapist territory.  What do you mean by SORTA worst rapist Faps?

Well……

There’s a new actor Takato is working with and this new actor, and the new actor’s coding as a bad guy is about as subtle as a punch to the mouth. So new actor gets Takato drunk enough for him to pass out, gives him a hickey and ????????????

2 things happen in these situations in yaoi typically

1.)    SOMEHOW the seme MAGICS his way there beats up the worst rapist

2.)    This happens after the uke and seme have a fight. So uke realizes how mean he was for not being 100% down with all the seme’s shitty behavior cause there is a worst rapist out there. He runs crying to the seme apologizing and conflict solved.

We sorta get the 2nd here…but not in a straight-forward way.  For one there is no fight beforehand to set up any kind of relationship development.  What happens is that Takato wakes up mortified at the possibility he was raped while he was asleep.  He staggers around both in denial and utter shame.  Seme shows up and like only adds to this panic by yanking him around, forcefully washing his body, and screaming that his SLUTTY, SLUTTY FACE MANIPULATES MEN into raping him.  The seme tells him that they don’t have to have sex.  Which good, but I mean the scene is not framed as if Takato is doing this out of kindness but almost as a dare. The implication being if Takato doesn’t consent that he is the OTHER MAN’S BOY NOW and they should just break up. So there is implicit pressure there, but he does seem to initial consent.  Yet during the sex Takato internally cries about how much he hates it because his boyfriend is hate fucking him but he can’t say NO because than his boyfriend will hate him more.

LIKE FUCKING BIG YIKES MY FRIEND! IT’S SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE!

Which like, I could see a post-assault sex scene full of the emotional intensity of the anger, guilt, shame, fear all intermingling within both of them working well. (Not that post assault consensual sex is much of a thing.)  That they’re trying not to think of what Takato went through but it’s eating at both of them.  THAT COULD BE A REALLY INTENSE, WELL DONE SCENE!  However this is framed like seme ~taking back what’s his~ in a really cold, pissed-off way that’s AT BEST really insensitive to what the uke just went through and his current emotional state.  While Takato ~letting him~ cause he’s afraid his bf hates him for getting raped by someone not him.  Junta also disappears without a word, making Takato fear that YEP HIS BF DON’T WANT HIM CAUSE HE’S DAMAGED GOODS NOW!

But who has to apologize? THE UKE!

Also it turns out Takato was not raped cause worst rapist couldn’t get it up after Takato said his bf’s name in his sleep.  This is framed as better not cause of what the uke went through, but he didn’t really CHEAT so Junta can forgive him.

LIKE REALLY MY DUDE? YOU STARTED THIS OFF WRITTEN TAKATO MORE REALISTICALLY DEALING WITH THE DENIAL, DISGUST, AND SHAME OF ASSUALT AND INSTEAD JUST DEGRADED INTO THE SAME VICTIM-BLAMING HORSESHIT! GET FUCKED!

So the resolution is that the relationship is fixed and Junta threatens and blackmails the rapist. Which, I’m glad he didn’t get off scot-free but those interactions felt less like protecting the safety of Takato and more like, HE’S MY PROPERTY NO TOUCHY!

So from here we take a big turn.

Most of the 3rd volume is a big back-track to the beginning of their relationship before it was romantic or sexual.  And boy howdy it feels like a retcon for the fuck awful pace of the 1st volume.

Basically it’s about how Junta became obsessed with Takato while working on a movie cause idk he’s pretty and he accidently heard Takato say something shitty about him once. While I wouldn’t call this good the fact that they actually let this blooming of affection take place makes it the best chapters so far.

Like at the end Junta resolves himself to let his feelings be known and to start a romantic relationship with Takato.  Without the context, that felt like almost sweet? That he’s accepted his gay feelings and wants to share his life with Takato.  However if you REMEMBER THE CONEXT it means that Junta planned to drug, blackmail, and rape Takato WHICH YANNO REALLY TAKES A SHIT ON YOUR CUTE LITTLE FEATHERS BLOWING IN A BREEZE TO GO WITH HIS CUTSY MONOLOG YOU SHIT-SUCKER!

But lordy the next chapter comes along which is a retelling of this prequel from Takato perspective. The only saving grace here is that it’s not nearly as long as Junta’s.  Basically Takato realizes that Junta is OUT for him, and has a fucking frightened panic attack in his car afterwards. He’s literally shaking and monologing about how scary the situation and Junta are.  And this isn’t me even inferring words in Takato’s head, he repeats scary over and over.  Takato even decides to over book himself so he’ll have fewer chances to interact with Junta. So he does the classic ~pass-out from overwork~ thing so Junta can save him and from here we immediately transition to,

Oh now it’s modern day and they’re banging…..okay????? VOLUME ENDS

The next plot point comes down to this:

Paparazzi are OUT TO GET THEM! There is a photo leaked that isn’t really suggestive at all and Takato pretty much loses his job for it. However Takato finds out there is a much more damning picture of him and Junta, so he decides to break up with Junta, and like…just literally do whatever the paparazzi wants in order to protect Junta. But like, what’s the point of hiding it from Junta? And if this dude is going to blackmail you, what are you going to do to make sure their demands end or don’t get to the point that they’re unfeasible to continue giving in to them?

HAHA OH WELL!

Takato doesn’t even get to see the paparazzi again, his producer finds out and sexually assaults him to PROVE A POINT!

AND BOY HOWDY I’M WAY INTO THAT TROPE! LOOKING AT YOU OURAN HOST CLUB!

Cause HAHA nobody could literally want anything out of a wealthy, well-connected actor other than gay rape amirite?

Meanwhile Junta is cultivating a rumor that he’s having an affair with an actress.  Cause of fucking course Junta figured that the only reason his boyfriend (whom is often upset at how shitty he gets treated by him) is an elaborate ploy to protect him from the paparazzi.  But you know OF COURSE we see the actress and Junta flirting a bunch to stir the pot in a private setting but like…they only need to be seen on an outside date once.  This means that he’s fucking lying if he says that he only did it to SAVE BOTH OF THEM FROM THE PAPARAZZI.  He was getting a kick out of it, which I think you could argue that he was being unfaithful or in the very least being a fucking dick about it.

But, Junta goes on TV and says that he’s not having an affair with the actress or with Takato but he is moving in with Takato.

Yeah nothing dispels rumors of an intimate relationship like the announcement that they’re MOVING IN TOGETHER!  Now, as I understand it, the housing market is very different in Japan from the west and therefore it’s less of a huge TELL of an intimate relationship if two people move in together.  But even if that’s the case, saying you’re moving in with someone you’re accused of having an affair with…is not helping my friend.

However it is phrased this way, and immediately the entirety of the media believes this whole-heartedly, and the paparazzi guy (despite having a much more damning picture he hasn’t released) is like, “Wowzers he’s so smart, he has BEAT ME! I’m giving up being paparazzi.  That man CHANGED MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER! HOW COULD I EVER THANK HIM!?”  Even the fucking company that hired this paparazzi guy is like, “WELL I’M TAKING MY BUSINESS IN A NEW BETTER DIRECTION! THAT JUNTA GUY SURE, SHOWED ME!!!!”

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING!? You might as well have every criminal in Japan throw their hands up going, “WELL GOLLY!  DID YOU SEE HOW GREAT THE ACTUAL RAPIST AND ABUSER JUNTA IS? BEST NEVER DO A BAD THING EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

GO EAT EVERY DICK!!!!

That’s pretty much the end up to this point.  I mean, there are some odds and ends chapters here and there but they’re pretty much excuses for sex chapters. And like, even though those are pretty rapey, I kinda respect them more than when you attempts to interject some semblance of relationship drama, cause holy hell that paparazzi shit ugh.

Though if you’ll allow a side rant from me about how the story treats sexual assault. According to the author it comes in a lot of flavors and most of them are awful.

For one: if it’s a hunky guy who loves you: Rape is great.

For two: if it’s a hunky guy but you already have a rapist errr boyfriend: You’re cheating.

For three: if you’re being obnoxiously sexually harassed by your superior….BUT YOUR PRODUCER IS AN OLDER EFFEMINATE GAY MAN: It’s hilarious and harmless and helps cement your Marty-stuness.

For four: if a woman is being groomed by a superior: It’s a bad thing that should be stopped.

3 and 4 happen within the same chapter but the author is so oblivious at the hypocrisy of the framing it’s absurd.

Story

Okay so the story is a mess. The relationship progression goes way too fast for it to make sense, and negates a lot of the drama you could have had.  It’s possible that the editors wanted sex ASAP for some kinda quota, and that’s not necessarily bad. But it really burns my biscuits when people think, “Oh that means lead with rape and that they’ll be in mutual love by chapter 2.”  

Sure most tsundere stories have a bit more lead up until the uke can confess he likes the seme back but this is not the right way to break that mold. The hairpin turn makes no sense and neuters a lot of potential conflict.

It puts the comic in a pacing hole to start and the rest of the story does little to mitigate this. I think there was an attempt to rectify this by going back to the story BEFORE they were a couple.  However that was horrible botched as well.  It brings the pacing to a screeching halt with a volume of Junta being like “OH NO HE’S HOTTTTTTTTTTT” despite the time devoted they do very little to give them an actual relationship or investment in his personality. It’s all a one-sided pining boner for hideous wiggle mouth.

The content of the writing is just embarrassing too.  I can be a more forgiving in the sex-excuse side chapters.  But like there’s a side chapter when Junta is magiked into a child and for like what? So we can coo, that the author drawing a small snowman with a poorly defined face and pretending it’s a child is super adorable?

So we can excuse the shitty way Junta behaves?  Is anybody weirded out that 3 year old Junta is more thoughtful and respectful than his adult-self?  YOU CAN’T EVEN WRITE HOW CHILDREN BEHAVE YOU STUPID SIMP! UGH!!!!

But also the arc on the paparazzi just ended in a total train-wreck of awful writing no question.

Sexual politics:

They’re fucking atrocious here.

1.)    The first scene is framed as a brutal rape but 30 seconds later its fine and they’re in love.

2.)    The handling of the ~worst rapist~ trope with big buckets of victim blaming and as if Takato was ~cheating~ is horrendous.

3.)    The worst rapist is also a sex worker.  So we’re framing sex workers as bad people and sex work as a bad thing. BUT GOLLY KEEP DRAWING GRAPHIC SEX SCENCES!

4.)    The sexually predator producer of Junta being framed as harmless cause he’s effeminate is god fucking awful.  It’s also this bizarre homophobic double standard that this man (and by extension his gay brother) are a joke because they behave stereotypically gay and aren’t ashamed of being effeminate.  MEN ARE ONLY HOT IF THEY ACT LIKE PREDATORS IN A MANLY WAY, OR ARE ASHAMED OF ANY SEXUAL SUBMISSIVE OR EFFEMINATE TRAITS THEY HAVE! I LOVE WATCHING MAN ON MAN SEX BUT SO HELP ME GOD IF THEY’RE ~GAY ABOUT IT!~

5.)    They ~sorta~ take sexual harassment seriously when a female actor is being groomed. Like they joke about it but also DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT really fucking muddles what we’re supposed to think about sexual abuse at all here.

6.)    Takato’s producer sexually assaults him to ~prove a point~ that Takato is putting himself in situations where rape COULD happen.  The fuck is this horseshit! “These men could do the very bad thing of raping you. Let me demonstrate what that bad thing looks like cause I’m sure you’re UNAWARE!” THE FUCK!?  Also this sexual assault is framed more seriously than Junta’s producer because this producer is coded as MORE ATTRACTIVE and less openly QUEER! ONCE AGAIN I EXCLAIM! THE FUCK!?

7.)    Takato OPENLY describes Junta as scary and calls his acts stalking, kidnapping, bullying, blackmail, threats, and rape.  He also tries to actively avoid his boyfriend at times, yet are we not to take ANY of this seriously?  Are we not to take this seriously cause this behavior is acceptable when the one dolling it out is attractive and charming?  Are we not to take it seriously because we can’t except Takato to be honest about how he feels about any of this?  I don’t believe in given a blanket free-pass when Takato doesn’t consistently express desire in Junta’s abusive tendencies.  Like maybe you can argue some of the sex is consensual but can you argue that Takato is into the blackmail, when he never mentions he likes it? Can you argue he’s into the non-stop attention when he SOMETIMES BEGRUDINGLY admits he enjoys it?  If so does just that get a blanket pass?

JUST UGH! YOU’VE GUYS HAVE PROBABLY HEARD THIS RANT FROM ME BEFORE I FUCKING HATE TSUNDERE SEXUAL POLITICS!

 Characters

Takato

Okay so Takato. What’s this dude’s deal?  

Okay let’s start with some boring basics:  He’s a hard-working actor who strives to be professional.  He’s a perfectionist, who seems to easily and joyfully take on the role of mentor/protector. He does seem to take himself too seriously at times. He appears to subtly prod at people who have wronged him or others rather than confront them directly. He’s also shown to be a tsundere with a submissive streak.

There’s nothing bad on its face about this characterization.  However Takato is described as an intelligent professional actor, with years of experience.  Yet his handling of the paparazzi thing is pretty much he goes to shit and opens him up to more rape cause lol hot.  I could maybe understand this characterization if the paparazzi thing really hit Takato on a personal level and he made some irrational choices due to feeling as if he was being attacked or that he was going to permanently lose his job.

However he is shown as calm, as he’s making these choices and openly states that he will gladly give up a career he worked so hard for if it would save Junta’s career. Did he not, even for a second consider he could save both of them?  This is not consistent with his characterization and it exists to put Junta on a pedestal he does not deserve.

SPEAKING OF…

Junta

So…this fucking guy. Junta is a young up and coming actor with early success.  He’s shown to be an impulsive, passionate person who relies heavily on an ~angelic charm.~  He has no shame in using calculated, underhanded methods in order to achieve his goals.  He is shown as impatient, has a temper, and is openly disrespectful to his partner.

Yet the world fawns over him with praise for how attractive, charming, and ~resourceful~ he is.  He is described as having a few low wage jobs out of high school and therefore he’s an expert in EVERYTHING FOREVER!

I believe they were trying to humorously contrast Junta having a sweet, innocent angelic charm, with the reality of him being an aggressive a-hole.  However they do not frame the aggressive a-hole side of him as bad but rather as HOT.  Like I GET THAT on some level but since he’s a manipulative, abusive, rapist, it just reminds me of all the REAL LIFE INDIVIDUALS who put on a good face for the public but to their partner they’re monsters.

Art

I legit hate this fucking art. Like straight up and down, I have a hard time even reading it on a visual level.  Like the anatomy is OKAY and the backgrounds are OKAY but a lot of it is less than okay. The worst culprits are the character designs, the necks, and the expressions.  

I am so done with mediocre artists churning out, not only same-faced characters compared to their own art, but characters that are basically same-faced compared to the main-stream.  The only thing unique here is that Junta has dark hair underneath his lighter brown hair. OH GOLLY!  It’s so fucking bland and Junta’s got best seme in the Chil Chil awards and I’m so salty about that I could give the dead sea a run for its money. UGH!

The necks are super long, thin, twisty, sharp angels, and with her sad attempts at tendons it looks as if they’re constantly tense.  And in worst case scenarios they don’t look as if they’re attached to even half of the chin. Yeesh!

The expressions…fucking lord.  In the best of times, the facial spacing is just bad, with eyes and mouths off center, and ears too low.  The author has no concept of how lips/faces work so all the kisses are REAL BAD. It’s either just like…triangles smashed at each other, no lips involved, or they’re like 1 foot apart layering their tongues on each other like they’re building a fucking sandwich.

The worst of times is Takato’s sex faces.  THEY MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT-SCREAM!

Basically he squints and his eyes get so watery it looks as if they replaced his eyeballs with just well…water.  You can’t make out pupils, irises, NOTHING!  But the mouths are the pinnacle of puke-inducing.  They’re these enormous squigglies with no rhyme or reason, just oozing saliva like a breach in a dam. At best they’re cartoonish in an unerotic way. THESE SQUIGGLES! I CAN’T STAND THEM!  YUCK!

TL;DR

Poorly drawn and written Rapist/Tsundere garbage.  While it doesn’t hit EVERY little overplayed trope, it’s still pretty cliché.  Just, it’s similar and up there with Junjou in the shitty department if you ask me.

CR Features Argues About Anime of the Year!

Anime Awards voting end on Friday! We've been super pumped because of the community's reactions to the nominees. However we have gotten so loud with our individual opinions on who we think should win that we’ve been told to duke it out via written words instead of continually disrupting our coworkers (sorry fam).

  We've hit every category in the Anime Awards and this is the last installment in our argumentative saga. So we're gonna  get down to the nitty gritty of Best Film, Best Director, and finally ANIME OF THE YEAR. Let’s down to business!

Best Film

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

This is admittedly the area where I feel least qualified to deliver a prediction, but I nonetheless feel very confident. Just based on box office it’s likely the one everyone has seen, so… Anyway, My Hero nailed its theatrical debut with an original story that felt plausible and made great use of the existing characters. All Might literally flexing on the villain is one of the greatest moments from the entire series only made possible by this film.

-Peter Fobian

The Night is Short, Walk On Girl

When I think of what constitutes an amazing film, I like to think of how the overall package leaves me feeling after I watch the whole thing. I usually want a film to leave me wanting more, but satisfied with the story I’ve been told, and for anime films, I want to see amazing, crisp visual storytelling tied to great voice acting and musical packages. For 2018, no film really left me feeling that way other than The Night is Short, Walk On Girl. The musical number alone was worth checking out the film for, and the movie also captured a lot of that joy of life style of film that usually gets talked about for college and early adulthood films.

-Nicole Mejias

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

Before My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, I’d never been in a theater for an anime film that had such an excited audience. Usually there’s this reserved feeling of “Okay, we got this far. We’re seeing anime at an actual theater and if we play it cool, maybe this will happen again.” But thanks to the popularity of My Hero Academia and the growing appreciation for anime in America and I was faced with an audience that treated My Hero Academia: Two Heroes like a WWE show. There was so much cheering and love and when I left, I was just so happy to be an anime fan.

-Daniel Dockery

Liz and the Blue Bird

There isn’t any dialog for about the first ten minutes of Liz and the Blue Bird. It opens with one of the main characters’ footsteps ringing out into the air, and then a piano melody begins playing to the beat tapped out by her shoes. The music and imagery play off of one another in a way I’ve literally never seen in a movie before. It was so beautiful that the majority of the audience I saw it with was in tears LITERALLY BEFORE ANY CHARACTER SAID ANYTHING. This is truly the best possible movie Sound! Euphonium could have received. It’s one of the best anime experiences I’ve ever had, and I love it a lot.

-Cayla Coats

Best Director

Tatsuya Yoshihara for Black Clover

If a director is the champion of a production, I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Tatsuya Yoshihara. He’s gone above and beyond to make Black Clover a success and it’s really shone. Just following him on Twitter, you can see he lives this series and his extracurricular efforts to elevate the production are well known. His bringing in animators of all types and levels of experience to deliver the surreal experience of episode 63 is something I hope to see more regularly from Black Clover in the future.

-Peter Fobian

  Masaaki Yuasa for Devilman Crybaby

  Devilman Crybaby left me a blubbering mess by the end of it, and I hated Masaaki Yuasa for it. My only real exposure to Devilman came when I was younger and watching old VHS tapes of anime, and back then I just saw Devilman as this dark and action filled story; in Devilman Crybaby, Yuasa certainly didn’t shy away from those aspects, but he found a way to make the story even more tragic as the ending drew near. The blending of Science Saru’s visual style with Go Nagai’s manga, topped with the amazing soundtrack, is a package that could only really be created by someone with a keen eye.

-Nicole Mejias

  Akira Amemiya for SSSS. Gridman

  I’ve spent a ton of time over the last few months spreading the good word about SSSS. Gridman, but as my turn in the awards season comes to a close, I feel like I should give it one more parting compliment: The director, Akira Amemiya is awesome. Coming off of Inferno Cop and Kill la Kill, I think SSSS. Gridman, due to its subject matter, might be his best work yet. Even relatively static scenes between characters crackle with energy, and the battles are usually spectacular.

-Daniel Dockery

Norihiro Naganuma for The Ancient Magus’ Bride

How do you heal from something that has broken you completely? The Ancient Magus’ Bride seeks to answer that question. Chise’s journey to learn magic and undo the traumas of her past could have come off as tone deaf or emotionally exploitative in the wrong hands, but Naganuma’s earnest depiction of her struggles elevated this show into one of the most emotionally engaging anime I’ve ever seen. How do you heal from something that has broken you completely? Use your pain to connect to others.

-Cayla Coats

Anime of the Year

A Place Further Than the Universe

  A Place Further is an amazing production delivering one of the greatest and most original stories I’ve seen in years. From having zero source material and playing with the idea of a story about girl psychics, the staff somehow pulled together an airtight and thoroughly researched story with fantastic moments and intriguing character subplots. It was excellently paced, affirming, and I honestly can’t think of a single thing they could have done to improve it.

-Peter Fobian

  Hinamatsuri

This category was pretty tough to choose from, and in the end, I chose the brilliant Hinamatsuri. I went into this series knowing absolutely nothing other than it was a comedy. But underneath the comedy, the real strength of Hinamatsuri emerged as a story about people with real problems looking for connections. Despite Hina being a selfish brat, she’s also relatable, Nitta is somehow one of the best anime dads in memory, and I really had a hard time not crying at Anzu’s story of finding a family, losing them, and finding a new one. I loved Hinamatsuri from beginning to end, and can only hope that we may get another season of it!

-Nicole Mejias

  Devilman Crybaby

I haven’t talked a lot about Devilman Crybaby because 1) Everyone has been talking about Devilman Crybaby, and 2) I didn’t watch it until late in the year, and I didn’t want to be the guy to burst, Kool Aid Man-style, into conversations about Fall Anime and say “BUT DID YOU GUYS SEE DEVILMAN CRYBABY? HEY. HOLD ON. WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” I didn’t really get into anime until college, which means I missed the age where I would watch a Dragon Ball Z or a Berserk or anything else and think that it’s insanely, unflappably, almost perfectly rad. But watching Devilman Crybaby, I think, gave me the closest thing to that. This sense of “Oh, man. Anime really is the coolest thing in the world. Also, I need a Mountain Dew.”

-Daniel Dockery

A Place Further Than the Universe

This wasn’t the most visually beautiful anime of the year. It didn’t have the best music, the best character designs, or the best dialog. But Shirase’s journey to find her mother in a far off land transformed these parts into a truly amazing whole. Shirase, Mari, Hinata, and Yuzuki all feel like completely realized people and their journey to Antarctica is one of the finest examples of how anime can tell stories like no other medium can.

-Cayla Coats

Woo! So we hit every category, had a lot of fun writing this up, and have exhausted our physical and written voices concerning who we think should win for now. We can't wait to see who wins! 

  If you haven't voted for Anime Awards, you still have time! Voting ends this Friday and the place to see all of the nominees for every category and vote for your favorites is right here! 

  Who do you think should win: Best Film, Best Director, and Anime of the Year? Tell us in the comments below!

Ricky Soberano is a Features Editor, Script Writer, and Editorial Programming Coordinator for Crunchyroll. She’s the former Managing Editor of Brooklyn Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @ramenslayricky.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

So I’m pretty late to the game on this, but I just saw Incredibles 2 and now you get to see my opinions not under a readmore.

Motorcycle chase was the dopest. The Underminer fight and the mansion fight were pretty cool too. I surprisingly really liked the Screenslaver fight as well. I was expecting something totally obnoxious and painful to watch, but it didn’t have any effect on me at all.

Movie needed more Voyd. I loves me some portals. But also, she got way more screen time and dialog than the other minor super characters and it seemed like she was going to be more significant that she turned out to be. Like, you’d think she’d have a subplot with a character arc or she’d turn out to be a villain. But no, she’s just featured a little more prominently than the other minor supporting super characters.

Which brings me to my next point;

Story wasn’t as good as the first one. It felt more like a TV pilot than a proper film. Voyd being introduced and made to seem significant but then not being anything more than a slightly more prominent side-character was just one of the reasons it felt that way. It doesn’t feel like a movie because it doesn’t feel like a complete story, it feels like it was just setting up characters and plot points and themes to be fleshed out across several episodes.

First movie was pretty clearly a complete self-contained story about a mid-life crisis and the narrative was focused squarely on Bob and his need to find the balance between pursuing his interests and doing what gives him purpose and looking out for his family with minor subplots about the kids coming into their own with their powers and Helen worrying that Bob is cheating on her. Incredibles 2 is just Bob playing Mr. Mom and Helen fighting crime. You expect that there’s going to be a point where Bob reaches the end of his rope with the kids or his jealousy of Helen and blows up at her or does something stupid like jacking the Incredicar and doing some unauthorized hero work that ends up undoing the good will Elastigirl has built-up. Or you think Elastigirl is going to have an arc about dealing with the pressures of being a representative of all supers and having their fate, and in particular, the fates of her children, decided by her actions. But instead Bob’s big 2nd act fuck-up is embarrassing his daughter and his character arc is just acknowledging that being a dad is hard. Helen doesn’t even really get a story arc. She wants to “respect the law” then decides to “fix the law by breaking it” in the beginning. Then she just does illegal crime fighting. No cops try to stop her, her family suffers no consequences, there aren’t any injuries or property damage. She literally records herself breaking the law and then just goes on TV to talk about her law-breaking and no one ever tries to arrest her or anything. The public adores her, we never hear of any kind of opposition or counter-arguments against what she’s doing. She never encounters anything that would make her think she’s going about trying to legalize supers again the wrong way or that maybe she shouldn’t be trying to legalize them again at all. There’s some other little things thrown in there like Helen worrying about leaving the kids in Bob’s care or discount Megamind girl stroking her ego about being in the spotlight, but that ends up not amounting to anything either. Helen never like, misses her kids, or gets the idea that Bob can’t handle things and decides to abandon her cause to take care of her family, nor does she develop an ego or a persecution complex and that causes her to fight with Bob or make a bad decision because she’s being stubborn and wants to prove a point or something.

Other little nitpicks I have are that even if I hadn’t been spoiled about who the villain was it was a dead giveaway that they had her explain her motivation immediately. There wasn’t even a good reason for it. She could’ve kept her mouth shut and just let Elastigirl think she held the same beliefs as her brother and then surprised us later by telling us something we didn’t already know about the circumstances of their parent’s deaths and how she interpreted things.

The Edna and Jack-Jack scenes felt repetitive and unnecessary. Edna already made Jack-Jack a suit in the first movie and the remote for the new one broke so he had to go back to using the old one anyway, so what was the point? Plus, the audience has already known since forever that Jack-Jack had powers. I didn’t even realize that the family still didn’t know. I thought they saw when he transformed into a monster in Syndrome’s arms or would’ve noticed between the end of that scene and whenever the track meet scene happens given how frequently Jack-Jack displayed his powers, or at least they would’ve heard all the messages the babysitter sent.

The scene where Jack-Jack fights a racoon makes me really uncomfortable for some reason. It’s like, no matter who wins, I lose. I’m looking at a baby thinking “Oh god! It’s a squishy little baby fighting a wild animal! I hope it doesn’t get scratched or bitten!” But I’m also looking at a fairly realistic-looking animal, not a Daffy Duck or Wile E. Coyote-looking creature completely divorced from reality thinking “This is just a regular animal getting the shit beat out of it by a much stronger being. I can see the fear in its eyes. Why doesn’t it just run away? Why does god want me to suffer?” IDK, I feel the same way about the first scene of Moana where there’s a baby unsupervised on the beach and you’re supposed to think it’s cute, but I’m just thinking “If the water weren’t magic, this would end badly.”

Which reminds me of the short that came before the movie. Also really uncomfortable. The beginning where the woman puts the dumpling in her mouth and was just a second away from biting down before the thing became sentient is seriously unnerving. And then it’s just so soft and gooey-looking for the rest of the short I can’t help but be on the mom’s side being terrified of it getting smushed by a soccer ball. Then she fucking eats the baby and lemme tell you I have never been so relieved to see an “all just a dream” ending. It kind of reminds me of that terrible movie Splice that you think is going to be a horror movie but then it turns out to be a movie about parenting. Then you think it’s going to have a tragic ending where the monster girl breaks free from her overprotective parents and then gets hit by a bus or shot by a farmer or something because they sheltered her instead of preparing her for the outside world. But then in the last ten minutes it decides it wants to be a horror movie after all and instead we get cat murder, maiming, incest, and rape.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Starring: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Meng'er Zhang, Fala Chen, Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung

Release Date: September 3, 2021

My Rating: 7/10 (solidly good movie)

My Review (WITHOUT spoilers):

Ever seen a movie that’s actually a YA novel? I’m not talking about a movie that was based off of a YA novel (like the Hunger Games or Divergent)...I’m talking about a standalone movie you watch and leave the theater going “dang, this would make an awesome YA novel”. That’s what Shang-Chi felt like to me. The plot was, simultaneously, very basic and very intriguing. Nothing shocked me but I felt engaged the entire time. It was an entertaining story set in a freaking awesome world.

This movie didn’t feel like a Marvel movie, but in a good way. It was fantastical and more steeped in fantasy than the majority of the MCU (Thor kind of gets an exception but not really. Too much raging testosterone and magical robots and aliens). Even the Ten Rings themselves are these mythical weapons that no one really knows the origin of. It just felt like an awesome modern-historical fusion fantasy novel. Think Black Panther but with less technology and more magic. I got Thor, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange vibes from this movie.

OVERALL TAKEAWAY:

Definitely a wonderfully fun time. It’s a solid Marvel movie. I don’t feel super strongly about it one way or the other but I had a great time watching it in the moment.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN IMPROVED:

The acting left a bit to be desired. Half the cast was great, the other half was “meh”. The pacing/structure of the movie really wasn’t my cup of tea. They kept jumping around in time. Looking back, after I’ve processed it a bit, I don’t know how else they could’ve told the story effectively without doing that. It was just a bit disorienting, got a bit old after a while, and just wasn’t something I’d seen in any Marvel movie before.

WHAT I LOVED:

The fight sequences are the best fight sequences I’ve ever seen in the MCU. Even just the visuals of the fights and the final battle were breathtaking. Absolutely beautiful and very exciting to watch. I said that half that cast delivered brilliant performances? Awkwafina and especially Shang-Chi’s Dad were absolutely amazing. His Dad is the reigning champion of the Marvel DILF competition...to be eligible for this competition, you cannot be the main character/hero of the story who is also a dad. You have to be a dad on the periphery (so Scott Lang, Tony Stark, they don’t count). I’m seriously in love with Tony Leung now holy cow, he was very handsome and his character was freaking awesome and his performance was outstanding.

SPECIAL FOCUS:

The family drama! This movie has the best family drama of any Marvel movie I’ve seen. It, alongside Thor and Black Panther, round out the “Family Drama Holy Trinity” of Marvel. Thor’s family drama is a little too heavy (dad is the king of the cosmos, one brother is adopted and was lied to his entire life and was actually the son of the ENEMY, they all live for 5000+ years, everyone keeps dying, Thor’s kind of a douche at the beginning...aka, daddy issues) and Black Panther is, while entertaining for sure, a little too reserved (his core family unit is actually incredibly healthy and it’s just the bombshell that “oh hey, my uncle kind of went a little to far, dialogically, and now he also has a son we didn’t know about? Interesting, let’s address that”...aka, cousin-issues). You’ll see it when you see the movie, but the family drama in Shang-Chi has so many layers!! Every single member of the family is caught up in the drama and it’s so complex that you can’t even find any member of the family completely at fault for the way they acted. It’s very much grey instead of black and white and it was just fascinating to watch and uncover. Very well rounded, as far as family issues go.

AS IT COMPARES TO THE OTHER MCU MOVIES:

I’ve been spoiled by all of the crossovers and team ups in Marvel over the past decade that whenever I go see an origin movie, I have to remind myself that it’s not going to live up to Infinity War or Thor Ragnarok or whatnot. It doesn’t have the built up story already in place - it’s starting from scratch. This movie is certainly strong enough to stand on its own. If they didn’t mention a couple of MCU events and such, and if I didn’t previously know that Shang-Chi was a Marvel character, I would've just assumed this was a cool new fantasy action movie. There’s easter eggs that enhance the fun for sure, but it’s pretty strong all on it’s own. It’s certainly more exciting than Captain America: The First Avenger or Thor. I’d say, as far as Marvel origin stories go, this movie is firmly in the middle of the ranks, if not more towards the top.

Hi! This is the first part of my very first Fanfiction :D I’m super excited and very nervous too. I want to thank Courtney @shesasurvivor for accepting me as her mentee, also to the lovely ladies of @loveinpanem for giving me the push I needed to start writing.

I hope you like it, I’m going to post it on AO3 soon.

This story is Everlark high school reunion, inspired by the movie “10 years”, you’re gonna find some similar dialogs and other things

All mistakes are mine, I hope is readable because english isn’t my first language, so here it goes!

Never Had

2007

Annie had begged her to come with her to the swimming competition between their team and another high school. She had a new boyfriend from the opposite school and she wanted to see him “Swimming in all his  swimmer-body glory” she said with a dreamy look on her face. Katniss rolled her eyes when she heard it, but even she had to admit that he was actually very good looking, even more so with water dripping all over his toned body. But as soon as the competition was over, she almost run out of the gym, shooting Annie an apologetic smile. It was Friday and she wanted to get home soon.

Katniss  walked to her car, enjoying the crisp autumn air, even if it made her shiver on her light coat and yellow flats. She cursed her obsession with the shoes, but she loved them too much and took every opportunity to wear them. It had been the last item that her dad bought her before dying and she loved having them as a daily reminder of him.

She rummaged through her purse, looking for her car keys, but finding her cigarettes box first. She took it out and grabbed one, lighting it and taking a long drag, enjoying the sensation. It was a filthy habit, but it was something she enjoyed too much to quit.

She had started after the dead of her father, almost a year ago, when she found her mother sitting on the porch in the middle of the night. Katniss had woken up thirsty, when she saw her mother’s silhouette outside. She walked out to ask her if she was ok when she saw the cylinder between her fingers. Her mother looked up and without any questions, she lifted the box and offered her one. Now they shared a smoke every now and then, enjoying a comfortable silence between them.

Katniss had moved to Twelve with her mother and little sister at the beginning of her junior year, almost a year ago, after her dad died of a heart attack. Her mother couldn’t stand being in their old town anymore, deciding it would be good for her and the girls to breathe another air, meet new people and start again, plus her older brother lived nearby. Katniss was against it at first, not being a big fan of change, but seeing the way her mother had started to look healthy again, and her little sister was happy to be near her cousins, it made the moving a little easier. Even when she left someone important behind.

She was reaching her car when she heard footsteps approaching “Katniss!” she heard a deep voice calling her. Her body shivered and her heart skipped  a beat when she turned around and saw him jogging to her. It was annoying, this reaction of hers to him, to this boy. Her stomach flipped and her heart clenched because she shouldn’t be feeling this way. Not with him.

Peeta Mellark had been her classmate on physics since junior year, sitting behind her on every class. He was impossibly bad at it and she made sure of telling him. But the guy had a way of turning all her snarky remarks on a joke that made her fail on her attempts of scowling at him. He was funny and well liked between their classmates. He had deep blue eyes and curly blonde hair that was under a dark blue beanie most of the time, and always with an easy going smile on his face.

Katniss had been a bit reluctant of becoming friends at first. She had left her boyfriend behind in her old town, but they still kept a long distance relationship. Which was a pain in the ass if she was honest, she missed him so much that sometimes when they talked on the phone they ended arguing because of it, because they hadn’t seen each other for so long that they couldn’t even talk about something that wasn’t their relationship and lamenting how far away they were. Katniss felt that she and Gale were slowly deteriorating, but they tried anyway, she loved him and he loved her too.

Which was why being friend with Peeta wasn't the best idea. They had a way of communicating that she had never had with Gale. Peeta was an attentive guy, he noticed when she was in a foul mood and tried to make her smile in class at least once. They also saw one another at the occasional party, joking about their inability of drinking keg beer and secretly sharing a bottle of some peach liquor that Peeta stole from his house. She wondered how he could bring a full bottle of something without going noticed, but once she asked, he just shrugged and served her another drink.

They had fun, they laughed and lately, they had developed the habit of greeting each other with a handshake that made her tingle from head to toe. It had begun innocently enough, she confessed him once that didn’t liked to hug people and preferred a handshake but people often assumed that it was ok to touch each other without permission, and that pissed her off. So Peeta had started to shake her hand instead, an odd gesture to most of their friends, but an endearing one to her.

Little by little, Katniss had started noticing things about him, like they way he got excited telling her a story from his brothers or a new song he had heard. He loved music and arts and was trying to educate her on classic rock bands. Katniss liked the way he made gestures with his hands when he talked and how his eyes shone form every emotion that he was trying to convey.

One afternoon, they met at the library to finish an assignment, she noticed that he had calloused fingers and even some small injuries, so she reached for his hands, without even thinking. He turned sharply to her, eyes wide. She realized her actions and tried to act nonchalantly, asking him what he did to get those.

“I’m learning to play guitar” he answered, she retrieved her hand from his and folded them on her lap. He cleared his throat “I’m not very good” he said in a self-deprecating way.

Katniss looked at him, lifting her eyebrows. “Don’t let that stop you, if you want to play, you shouldn’t quit because you’re not good at first” she said. Peeta gave her a shy smile and kept working. She caught him looking at her from time to time, but decided to ignore it.

Now, in the parking lot, she couldn’t stop all the emotions running through her, so she gave him her best smile. “Hey, Peeta” she greeted him, taking a smoke of her cigarette. Peeta trusted his hand and she shook it.

“Hey” he smiled at her “Are you going already? Some of us are going to Delly’s house, why don’t you come?” he said in a rush. Katniss crooked an eyebrow at him, amused. Peeta flushed deeply and shook his head, laughing a little, he took a deep breath and asked her again “Would you like to come?”

Katniss liked Delly, she was the first student to greet her, and showed her around school. She had gone to a few of her parties, but the fact that Peeta was asking her to go, made her stomach twist in guilt. She wanted to go, but she knew she shouldn’t

“I, ah…well I can’t” she said. Peeta visibly deflated, his shoulders sagging a little.

“Oh, yeah of course, you must have something to do, right? Like…talk with your boyfriend or something” he looked at the ground, stuffing his hand on the pocket of his hoodie. Katniss finished her cigarette and stomped her yellow flats against the stub. Peeta looked up again, seeing that Katniss hadn’t answered yet. “You guys are still a thing?” he asked her, his blue eyes looking right to her.

Katniss cleared her throat. This was uncomfortable, she had a boyfriend who loved her, back at her old town. But here, right in front of her, was the funniest guy she had ever met, he was sweet and smart and right now, she was melting at the sight of his curls peeking out from his beanie, the way his hoodie wrapped around his shoulder and the perfect fit of his jeans. His smile now was  more cautious. She hated that deep down, she knew how he felt, but she couldn’t do anything about it, she had a boyfriend. She had a boyfriend she repeated like a mantra.

“Yeah…he was going to call tonight” she answered. She felt restless, she needed to breathe or a cigarette to calm her down. She took another one from her purse, lightening it fast, taking a long smoke. Peeta kept looking at her, his eyes showing her a different emotion she couldn’t pick. He blinked a few times, smiling at her again

“Well, can I walk you to your car while you burn your lungs?” he teased. Katniss nodded her head, walking slowly next to him. “Have you seen him lately? Your boyfriend?”

“No, he’s working at his dad store, saving money for college” she said. It was the discussion they had every time they talked. He wanted them to go to the same school and live together, something Katniss wasn’t so sure anymore, if she had this feelings for the person walking next to her, she thought their relationship wasn’t very strong. Or she was a shitty girlfriend, that was the thing that made more sense now, but she couldn’t admit it yet.

“Where are you going to college?” he asked her.

“I haven’t decided yet…but not so far from here” she said “I have the feeling I’m one of those really nostalgic students who are going home every weekend” she smiled. He was silent, just walking and nodding his head. She couldn’t see his eyes or his face. “What about you?”

Peeta shrugged “I don’t know, maybe I’ll go to New York with my brother” he said. She knew his older brother lived there, working as a lawyer and making a lot of money. “I would like to explore my options before making a decision, you know?” he turned to look at her, his demeanor serious. Katniss stopped walking, they had reached her car.

“Yeah, that’s-that’s a good choice” she stammered. Why was she so nervous all of the sudden? “This is my car” she pointed lamely to her old green car. She threw away her cigarette and scratched her neck nervously.

They stood there, in front of her car looking at each other. She felt a rush of longing, but she quickly drowned it, she couldn’t feel this way, she was not going to break anyone’s heart with her stupid reactions. It must be just stress or hormones, she tried to convince herself. She shivered, feeling all her emotions running through her veins. Peeta took off his beanie suddenly, reaching her and putting it on her head. Katniss looked at him, startled by his proximity. He looked at her with a similar expression, like he couldn’t believe himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry” he whispered, his hands still on the beanie. He slowly let go of the garment, his hands going to her hair, caressing her tresses between his fingers. Katniss heartbeat was fast now, her eyes wide, looking at him. “You look cold, this should help” he said softly, his hands now resting on her shoulders, squeezing her lightly. She shivered again. He wasn’t that much taller than her,  so his mouth was in level with her forehead and she could feel his warm breath fanning on her face.

“Thank you” she whispered. They were so close, she could count the freckles on the bridge of his nose. She noticed that his eyelashes were long and lighter than his hair. She looked up to see that his curls were pointing everywhere, the static giving him a funny look. Unconsciously, her hands darted right to his hair, trying to smooth it down. She heard his sharp breathe intake. That took her out of her trance , her eyes widening at how close and intimate they were, leaning to each other, a magnetic pull between them.

She should stop, take her hands off his hair and get in her car. But she couldn’t move, she kept running her hands through his curls. Peeta took a deep breath, moving his hands from her shoulders to her waist, grasping her lightly.

“Katniss…” he whispered, his eyes now hooded. She closed her eyes and shook her head, her hands reaching the curls at the base of his head, her fingers caressing his neck. She felt him shudder. His body heat was making her dizzy, her mind focused on him, his smell, his skin, so soft under her fingertips. The way his mouth was only inches away from her was driving her crazy too. “Katniss” he tried again, squeezing her waist. She leaned on his chest, pressing her cheek against it, feeling his strong heartbeat beneath. She tried to calm herself, breathe in and out, willing her heart to slow down.

“I’m sorry, Peeta” she apologized, it seemed like the right thing to say. But sorry for what? For not going to the party or for having a boyfriend? She added “I’m sorry that I can’t go to Delly’s”. His hands slowly went to her back, pressing her against him, she lowered her hands from his neck and grasped his shoulders. This was all she could give him, a hug, nothing else. She had a commitment.

“It’s ok…don’t worry” he whispered, his hands caressed her back, entwining his fingers through her hair. They stood like that for a few seconds, feeling each other, their breathing and warm body heat. She felt his scent, like a soft cologne and clean laundry. There was something else too, a smell she couldn’t pinpoint. She supposed that was his natural smell, it made her bury herself closer to him. No, she couldn't do this, what was she doing? It wasn’t fair for anyone. She felt her throat tighten with guilt, her stomach giving her something close to nausea.

She took a shuddering breath and looked up, trying her best to smile at him and not break at the sight of his sad, deep blue eyes looking down at her. He gave her small, lopsided smile, shrugging his shoulders. They released each other, an understatement passing between them.

“I should go” she said. Peeta just nodded his head, looking down and stuffing his hands on his hoodie, a rush of wind messing with his curls again. Her hands reached her head to take off the beanie, when Peeta looked up and took a step back, putting his hands in front of him

“No, please, just…take it, it’s cold. Just bring it back on Monday, Everdeen” he said with a teasing  tone. She placed it down her head again and turned to open her car. She thought of getting in and take off speeding through the parking lot as fast as she could. But she turned and looked at him.

“Have fun at Delly’s” she said, trying to lighten up the mood.

Peeta shook his head, giving her a sad smile. “I hope he knows how lucky he is” he said, and turned around to leave. Katniss remained there, looking at him walking away from her. She swallowed a lump through her throat. She was stressed, that was it. And she needed to be alone for a while. That was it.

She got to her house after an hour and a half of wandering around the town, eating ice cream and chain smoking at a park. She had to do something, she couldn’t do this to Gale, her boyfriend who loved her so much that wanted to be with her in a few months, saving to get an apartment together. And she couldn’t even convince herself of calling him. What kind of girlfriend am I?

She parked her car and reached for her purse, taking out her silenced cellphone, she winced thinking of the amount of missing calls she was going to see, after ignoring it completely since leaving the swimming competition. To her surprise, there was nothing there. Weird, she thought. Fridays were the day when Gale got out of work early and called her for almost an hour each week.

She got out of her car and reached her door. As soon as she opened, she saw him, sitting on her couch with Prim. Gale.

He turned to look at her, his expression loving and bright, grinning from ear to ear at her. He stood up fast and walked to her, cradling her face between his warm hands and lowering his mouth to her, kissing her for the first time in months. Her arms reached to his shoulders and she felt her heartbeat pick. She distantly heard Prim sighing. She broke the kiss, looking at Gale for the first time. She smiled to him, looking at his handsome face. His eyes were soft and his smile big, she hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time. She started to laugh and reached to hug him, he pressed her against him, lifting her of the ground playfully.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. He let her go, rubbing his hands up and down her arms.

“I missed you, so I got here, we have dinner reservations by the way” he replied. He then looked up, to her head. Katniss felt her stomach drop. The beanie. He frowned a little, but his expression was amused “This is new, I didn’t know you liked this color” he said, reaching for it. Katniss ripped it from her head, throwing it to the couch quickly, before he could touch it or ask more questions about it.

“I missed you too” she said. And it was true, seeing him brought up all those repressed feelings she had. It was hard being long distance, she missed him so much that she tried to drown all her love for him. Gale caressed her hair and she closed her eyes, leaning into him, hugging him hard and pressing her cheek on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. This was what she needed, to see her boyfriend and to trust her love for him. After all, Peeta was just a classmate.

Right?

A Random Roundup of Surprisingly Positive Trans Portrayals

Over the last half a year or so, I’ve run across a number of bits of media I’ve come across which blindsided me with trans characters that rang pretty true. Every time, I was tempted to sit down and write a proper review, but other things were going on, so I’m just going to sit down and bite the bullet with a collection of relatively quick takes.

So let’s start off with Swiss Army Man. It’s an indie film, but it caught on a bit with wider audiences thanks to, well, the titular character being the magical farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. Odds are you’ve at least heard of it, but at least no one I’ve talked to about it had any idea there was anything trans-related in there, so you might be thinking I’m reading into it. Quite the opposite. The main character is, with absolutely no ambiguity about it, a closeted trans woman, and the entire plot of the movie is directly about her coming to terms with that, learning to accept herself, and stop worrying about everyone judging her so she can transition already (which she’s heavily implied to do just after the credits roll. A lot of this is subtext, but plenty of it is just plain text. I mean, halfway through the movie she starts dressing as a particular woman she sees as a rolemodel and getting lost in very girly fantasies, and these are specifically presented as her only really happy memories in a later life-flashing-before-her-eyes sort of scene. I’d really recommend watching the whole thing yourself, since hey, it’s a funny uplifting heartfelt movie (if requiring a trigger warning on suicidal imagery) but here’s someone else’s spoiler filled, inconsistently gendering explanation of a good chunk of the trans imagery.

Somehow though, all this gets lost on a huge chunk of the audience. Including most professional reviewers, even ones for LGBTQIA-focused media outlets. I read one shortly after watching it which stubbornly insisted it was trying to convey that the main character was a gay man through a bizarre metaphor that didn’t work. I’m tempted to call that one willful ignorance, but it IS to be fair one of those movies that plays around with an unreliable narrator and an odd mix of grounded reality, obvious fantasy, and supernatural elements that are hard to fit in either of those boxes. As someone who takes in a lot of that sort of thing, my personal takeaway is that while the main character is just imagining the corpse talking as an imaginary friend to cope with her suicidal loneliness, it does seem to be, within the observable reality of the movie, a legitimately magical corpse full of hyper-compressed Gyo gas. And a metaphor about shame. The main character being trans though is completely unambiguous and clear through every possible prism.

I do find it interesting though that on the commentary track, the pair of writer-directors responsible for it fail to directly refer to the main character’s womanhood, mostly just talking about her loneliness, and how relatable it is. So, blatant as the nature of the movie is, this may be a case of closeted trans women creating a story about a closeted trans woman without even realizing it.

Next we have a Korean film I stumbled across on Netflix with the unfortunate title of Man on High Heels, which I have to assume is trying to riff on Man on Fire or something similar. It’s about a tough martial arts action figure sort of cop who ignores procedure and beats confessions out of crime lords, who’s even more respected in the underworld for being such a stone cold badass than by the police force who has a pretty easy job accordingly. Who is, again, a closeted trans woman. This one I went into expecting to cringe a bit at a weird exploitation action comedy, but it plays the premise completely straight. When the movie starts, she’s been walking that knife edge for a while of starting HRT, buying a new wardrobe, and practicing with makeup, while still very much in the closet, and the main thrust of the drama is her trying to scrape up enough cash for The Surgery while trying to preserve her tough macho action legacy, and generally fumbling, with fellow cops thinking she has a drug problem and mobster fans thinking she’s gone crooked. Lot of emotional gut-punches too with flashbacks, falling out, and not exactly a happy ending. It doesn’t have the same inner monologue as Swiss Army Man, but it still feels fairly authentic in terms of the emotional turmoil she’s going through. And of course it gets some basic facts about medical transition wrong. Still, not what I expected.

Turning to TV, somehow I ended up marathoning through the entirety of Sons of Anarchy on a whim. Now, I cannot actually recommend that anyone ever watch Sons of Anarchy. Frankly it’s a poorly written show which spends more time than not completely rudderless, constantly forces people to act completely out of character to spur on new plot arcs, and stumbles hard every time it tries to say anything about women, race, politics, or morality.

Some time in the 5th season, a random filler episode has the core cast hiring a trans prostitute to stage explicit photos with someone they’ve knocked out in order to blackmail him, resulting in a very forced exploitative scene. It certainly doesn’t help that the trans woman in question is named Venus, and played by Walter Goggins (not that I approve of cis men playing any of the characters I’m listing here, but Goggins is the most overtly masculine actor in the mix, and playing the only character on this list who is out as trans and well past first transitioning). That episode left a particularly bad taste in my mouth, and I’m curious if there was some backlash to it at the time, because in the next season, Venus returns, as a minor recurring character who gets fleshed out and made significantly more sympathetic. She gets a tragic and cliched backstory full of sexual abuse of course, but she’s at least in the running for the single most morally centered character in the series, gets a lot of sympathetic dialog, and sticking up for her in various ways becomes a way to signify someone is, for the time being at least, on the path of righteousness.

What really amazes me though is the last season. The entire final season of Sons of Anarchy is frankly a train wreck. Season 6 ends with the incredibly pointless and poorly motivated murders of its most sympathetic major characters (including the main audience surrogate) to stir up conflict, and as a result season 7 is just a ridiculous exercise in body stacking. Almost every character ends up either dead or at a complete loss of what to do with themselves, and there are really only two characters who can be said to really get a happy ending. Tig, one of the more consistent characters, who can largely be described as the Designated Weirdo in the core cast, ends up spending the last season dating Venus, and their last scene implies that him falling in love with her breaks him of his weird self-destructive performative freakiness, and they get to live happily ever after. Everything else about the final season, and really the show at large, I rolled my eyes at, but hey, pleasant surprise there!

Meanwhile, turning to Japanese children’s television from a few years back, there’s Kamen Rider W. Like every Kamen Rider series, it’s a self-contained superhero show with lots of quirkiness and rubber-suit action sequences. The main gimmick the W alludes to is that the hero of this particular show is really two people. When it’s time to throw on the suit and jump into action, one of the two protagonists passes out, the other getting a split consciousness (and then of course late in the series when they get their ultimate powerup, they full on merge into a single body instead). One of these characters is Shotaro, a dorky wannabe hard boiled detective. The other is something of a mysterious MacGuffin character named Phillip, who has quite a lot going on, but most significantly for this article’s purposes, this is Phillip:

Broadcasting standards in Japan are a bit further behind the times than they are in America, so you can’t ever full on come out and state that a character is gay or trans. The best you can manage is to just barely provide plausible deniability while implying the ever loving hell out of it. And so we have Phillip, who is about as blatantly not-a-man as you can really get away with, visually. Whether the idea is to subtley portray a trans woman, or to portray the only non-binary human character I can recall ever seeing in anything is a tough call, but the hair clips and some variation on this non-quite-a-dress are present on Phillip in every single episode other than the one where a contrived sting has Phillip throwing on a dress and a wig to really pull of a Lovely Magician’s Assistant look... and trying to find a screenshot of that by searching for “Kamen Rider Phillip Dress” just gave me a variation on the standard Phillip Outfit on a female manikin at a cosplay shop.

Anyway, Phillip is great. Aside from being Very Clearly Trans, Phillip Very Clearly Has Autism (sensitively and realistically portrayed), but neither of these is ever commented on by anyone in the show. Instead, everyone is constantly talking about how Phillip is so unambiguously the more powerful, intelligent, and competent of the two, and constantly suggesting Shotaro is dead weight. It’s fantastic. Oh and the two are also as unambiguously in a romantic relationship with each other as broadcasting standards will allow. There is blatant queer-baiting between male leads in every Kamen Rider show, but I mean, they have a love theme, their ultimate weapon/armor is rainbow themed, and the lyrics to the show’s opening are all about the ultimate union of body and soul between two partners.

Incidentally, Kamen Rider Wizard from 2 years later does make a more overt effort of trans representation with a minor character, but fairs far worse with it, and the following year’s Kamen Rider Gaim has... this character, but I’m trying to focus on surprisingly good representation, and neither of them exactly qualify.

Finally, the tragically obscure 7th Dragon III Code VFD for the 3DS, along with making literally the entire cast of NPCs and PCs explicitly bisexual features as a prominent NPC a game designer/time machine designer who shortly before the game begins switched over to being called Julietta and dressing like this:

I haven’t found the time to finish it, but misgendering localization aside, yeah this is totally in keeping with my general composite image of my fellow trans game devs, and she’s great so far.

Retrospective Review: The Entire Mass Effect Franchise

Andromeda is coming out in a week (as of this writing) and I feel like I want to revisit the franchise. I’ve done a post like this a few years ago when my blog was new but didn’t really settle in on a style and it was kind of garbage with a lot of pointless paragraph breaks. First, some quick insight. I was born in ‘89. That means I was too late to life to be considered an “80’s” kid, and the 90’s were half over before I was able to form real likes, dislikes, or memories. It’s a strange bit of flux because most of my “Nostalgia” is usually in the form of Legos as opposed to comics, games, movies, etc.

It’s a flux that’s kind of leaked into my daily life. My family is not, and never has been particularly affluent. Every extra ten dollars we find, we think “YES. A few days of gas” or “YES. Lunch money.” We’re not poor, we’ve never had a lot of room for amenities. We update our computers basically once every 5-10 years based primarily around income tax returns. Whatever hand-me-down I get from person who was able to afford their new computer, it was always better than what I had. A problem that has recently been remedied when I was employed for two and a half years as a part-time cashier still gave me enough to buy my own completely up to date computer that will last me the next five years on its own. Stick with me, I’m getting to the point. As a result of all of that, I tend to not be able to get games as they come out. Especially not games that turn into these huge franchises. A few games hold special places in my heart BECAUSE of the very fact that I was able to start with them. Mass Effect is one of those series. I started with it on the Xbox, probably borrowing it from a friend initially and playing it in bite-sized chunks before getting it used (likely bought for me like everything else was). The story starts out well. Your character (do I even really need to name them at this point?) is on the track to becoming a Spectre, a sort of special service agent for the entire alien government. During the screening process, another Spectre goes rogue and the entire game is building up a sort of power base against him while discovering a secret of the universe that may lead to the death of everyone in it. Damn. Ramped way the hell up, didn’t it? I suppose that’s fine, as studios don’t exactly expect all their games to shoot off the way they do sometimes. Mass Effect was good for its time. A fairly basic shooter with some RPG elements, in the older days where putting a point in your skills increased damage by 4%, and other things like that. It was incremental, but it had a cool idea based around a boring mechanic. Every few levels in the huge variety of skills you had at your disposal, you’d get a new ability or some kind of boost. Put enough points in “Fitness” and you’d unlock an ability called Immunity, an active ability that reduced taken damage by a flat rate for a few seconds. It’s interesting how the following two games basically dropped that idea, gave you the same 4-5 abilities (that vary per class), called it a day, and just built everything around those. It made the second game a certain kind of boring because every playthrough was effectively the same. You hotkey your main one or two attacks and just shoot stuff when it’s on cooldown. The second game’s story went sideways rather than forward, a point against its favor when looking back at the series as a whole. It continues, presumably a few months after the events of the first game and your ship gets shot out of space and Shepard literally dies immediately. In the introductory sequence establishes that you were picked up by the Cerberus organization and basically rebuilt like goddamn Robocop. I was expecting a “We have the technology!” type dialog but alas, we were deprived. Cerberus was an organization briefly mentioned in some tiny fetch quest in ME1 when you discover a small outpost had been husk-ified. To their credit, this definitely tied into what they would end up doing en masse in ME3 but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. They come to ME2 full force as Shepard is more or less forced to work with them when the mere association makes the alien council backpedal their support for Shepard, whom they presumed dead. As a result, you don’t see a lot of them in ME2. The whole story culminates in fighting a sort of human-based reaper that the collectors (who you later discover were reaper-possessed Protheans. Christ this series is weird) have been building by harvesting human colonies just on the edge of the government’s jurisdiction. Because of this they refuse to respond to the abductions and Shepard joins Cerberus to figure out this mystery and solve it. With bullets. Or whatever the hell comes out of guns in this universe. Something something mass effect fields. The entire game is basically the Dragon Age 2 problem all over again. It feels like it takes place in a single setting even though it doesn’t. It’s mostly padding. Half the game is loyalty missions as you run around to make sure your minions are happy enough with their lot in life, so they’re suicidal enough to do the suicide mission at the end but not suicidal enough to shoot themselves on the Normandy because they’re just not quite sure their father is still alive or not. I never liked this aspect of the game. Every where I turned, someone on my team was whining about something that barely mattered in the grand scheme of things. You could argue that settling their business gives them enough drive and morality to survive the mission at the end. If they didn’t have the morale, maybe they would be too sad to move out of the way of certain bullets. I get that, morale is a huge thing and I suffer from the gain and drain of it on competitive multiplayer games. I feel it, but it’s exhausting to try and manage it across a 20 to 40 hour game. Especially since the mechanics were dumbed down as I alluded to earlier. In the end, ME2 barely matters on a story standpoint and mostly served to update the graphics, systems, and mechanics from the first. To that end, they did fine. ME2 looks fine, even by today’s standards. In a more combat-oriented game, ME2 functions as a successor.  This brings up to ME3. It opens up about a full year after the events of the second game, where Shepard is being punished for their actions in the Arrival DLC of ME2. Never got around to doing that DLC? Tough shit, as they reference it throughout the entire first act of the game and even later when you meet a Batarian on his deathbed. I played through it maybe once and I still don’t really understand what happened or why it was my fault, but there you go. Basically, in the second scene the reapers attack and fucking finally, the goverment lets Shephard get their best murder on and fly out to kick some actual ass. This is even lampshaded by Legion (a Geth teammate you acquire in late-game ME2) who told their own people that the reapers were coming and were believed immediately and began prepping. “Must be nice”, Shepard says. Indeed.  The entire game is spent gathering war assets for the finale of the series. The more you have, the better it goes on a story standpoint. If you scrape for every asset you are capable of, there will be less loss of life. More soldiers on the field, more field assistance, and generally a slightly less bleak atmosphere (which is still pretty goddamn bleak). The mechanics are a crisper version of ME2′s. You still only have 4-5 main abilities to use per class but the leveling system is a bit more nuanced and more in-depth than before, which edged towards ME1′s style without being too stupidly gratuitous like adding 4% to damage. They saved that for actual gun modifications. The cover system has remained through the entire franchise (As it will continue in Andromeda) and it mostly serves to give you shield recharge while reloading your gun and not much else. Mass Effect 3 is probably my favorite of the entire franchise. Some are beholden to the first game as classic nostalgia, and I don’t know many who talk about 2 very much. However mostly decry the third game for its flawed ending and I chalk that up to a PR misunderstanding, or just bad wording on Bioware’s part. See, the sting mostly comes from when they claimed that “Oh the ending won’t be a simple A, B, C matter...” That’s exactly what it became. In the end you had the choice between destroying ALL synthetic life, taking control of the reapers for yourself and effectively fusing your consciousness with them, or if you gathered enough assets, full on synthesis. This basically fuses organic life with synthetic code, making everyone a sort of hybrid and thus rendering the Reaper’s flawed logic completely moot, and they fuck off into the void of space all over again. However for those who actually watched the endings, with the help of the extended cut, there’s a lot of nuances that that simple choice does not immediately seem apparent. In the extended cut you can see the multitude of your choices play out. Did you cure the genophage? You witness the rebirth of Tuchanka and see it get rebuilt in grand buildings with Krogan mothers celebrating their children. What did you do about the Geth/Quarian conflict? You see the results of that as well. Yes, the ending decision did boil down to an ABC choice but the ramifications of a few choices that you made since the first game still absolutely had an effect. A mass effect, if you will (please kill me). Ultimately I feel like there’s a lot more to do in ME3. I’ve played it for a few hundred hours, changing something big every time I do it. I take on a different lover, I switch sides and sabotage the genophage (which I will never ever do again because holy shit). I hop between Paragon and Renegade because it’s fun to watch the world change before my eyes as I decide to murder people that I would not otherwise have done. I do run out of things to do however as the level cap is 60, and if you’ve imported a ME2 save you’re probably already level 25-30 so it takes a single playthrough to max out. After that point, doing NG+’s only change a bonus power and maybe you can fiddle around with different weapon types and adjust playstyles. Which I did often. While I wrap this up with a sort of game-by-game summary, I want to give an honorable mention to ME3′s DLC, The Citadel. It’s often considered the ‘true’ ending to the series and is my personal headcanon post-final battle regardless of lives lost. It takes place on the Citadel (obviously) while most of your crew is on shore leave while the Normany gets cleaned up as it presumably does every time you dock anywhere across the franchise. Shepard’s life is never simple as it turns out there’s a plot against their life and must scramble to figure out another mystery. It’s an incredibly funny DLC with a ton of humor and mostly acts as a tone-shifting breather for the general “We’re all fucked” aura the game mostly gives you. It even ends on a “We’re all in this together” high note with most of your crew (And some from ME2 come back!) overlook a beautiful view while in the titular Citadel. So. We’ve reached the conclusion with my overarching thoughts on the franchise as a whole. It’s good. It’s an experience, and I highly recommend playing through it because there’s a lot to talk about. I’ll give a basic rundown. Mass Effect 1: Fine game, but has not aged well on a visual standpoint. Story is perfectly solid and moderately self-contained without originally relying on a whole franchise to carry it. RPG elements are excessive and each individual upgrade doesn’t feel like it does much until the higher levels. Mass Effect 2: Basically sidesteps its predecessor. Weak story that takes the plot nowhere but with crisper, actionized mechanics and less inventory menus to worry about. Mass Effect 3: Is the culmination of everything they learned from the last two games. More nuanced RPG systems that seem like a middleground between 1 and 2. Story comes to a solid conclusion, and I don’t agree with all the constant whining about how the endings ruined the entire game for some people. Grow up. I’m sure the game has some kind of anthology pack you can buy on sale at this point and I’d recommend giving it a go. If you’re a newcomer to the franchise, be prepared to set aside anywhere from 50 to 200 hours between the three games. If not, Andromeda takes place between the events of 2 and 3 while taking place in a completely different galaxy and will very likely only slightly reference the previous games. There’s the occasional nod, like you meet a sibling of the Turian female in Omega. Other little nods like that but it won’t be necessary to go through all three to enjoy the full experience of Andromeda. Can’t wait!

Shahid Kapoor's depth is mined for a horrific, harrowing ode to misogyny- Leisure Information, Firstpost

http://tinyurl.com/y5bjlkev Language: Hindi and English with (unsubtitled) Punjabi Ranking: 1 (out of 5 stars) It takes nearly 50 minutes for the heroine of Kabir Singh to utter her first sentence. “Kabir, what do you want in me?” says this fragile-looking child-woman who was a mute puppet in his palms till then. “I like the way in which you breathe,” he replies. Ooh, keh diya na dil ko contact kar jaane waali baat! Shahid Kapoor in and as Kabir Singh Okay, my apologies for the flippant tone, however please excuse it as a defence mechanism in opposition to some of the horrific, harrowing, horrendous odes to misogyny and patriarchy ever created by Indian cinema in any language – humourised and romanticised for our viewing pleasure. Kabir Singh is the Bollywood remake of the 2017 Tollywood blockbuster Arjun Reddy starring Vijay Sai Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey within the roles performed on this Hindi model by Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani. To name each problematic is an understatement. As I watched Kabir Singh, I may already hear in my head the drained clichés which might be rolled out as rebuttals to criticism of such movies and are prone to be regurgitated for this one. “C’mon ya, males like that do exist.” “Are you saying movies shouldn’t depict actuality?” “If damaging characters may affect individuals to develop into dangerous then how come optimistic characters don’t instantly reform society?” Or, as Kapoor himself pre-emptively stated earlier this week in a newspaper interview: “If we begin judging characters, we will not make motion pictures which might be actual.” Oh brother, cease. Please cease. That is exhausting, however for the zillionth time: it’s not the depiction of actuality that’s objectionable right here, it’s exactly as a result of violent, damaging misogynists do exist and girls for hundreds of years have suffered at their palms that it’s deeply troubling when a movie portrays such an individual as cool, humorous, and, as Kapoor places it, a person with “a superb coronary heart” who “loves purely” and “wears his feelings on his sleeve”. Once more brother, cease. Cease with the euphemisms, please. Name the Kabir Singhs of the world what they’re and present them up for what they’re: obnoxious, ugly sociopaths. Kapoor performs Kabir Rajdhir Singh, an ill-tempered, aggressive albeit academically sensible medical faculty scholar who sooner or later sees a fairly lady on campus and decides she is his. Her title is Preeti Sikka (Kiara Advani) however he doesn’t know that then. They’ve but to also have a dialog, however like a canine urinating to mark his territory, Kabir goes to an all-men junior class, broadcasts to the scholars that they’ll have their decide of the opposite ladies within the faculty however this one is his lady, and calls for that they unfold the phrase on his behalf. Thoughts you, all this and every thing that comes thereafter (he’s a chain-smoking alcoholic and drug taker who loses himself additional in a spiral of substance abuse and intercourse habit when he’s forcefully separated from Preeti) is depicted in a comical tone and projected as depth, ardour and profound emotion. Each one of many despicable Kabir’s actions is portrayed because the handiwork of a loveable, mad genius. In addition to, the heroine who appears initially intimidated by him quickly falls in love with him, he treats one other lady like meat and he or she too promptly tells him she loves him, his mates – female and male – adore him, he’s well-liked with the nurses in his hospital on whom he threatens to vent his horniness… I imply, c’mon ya, if that’s the case many individuals are obsessed with him he should be having “a superb coronary heart”, no? Choose for your self the guts so good that Kabir kisses Preeti for the primary time whereas she stands statue-like, having not expressed any curiosity in him until then, he bodily imposes himself on her subsequently too, he orders her round like one may a pet animal that one is keen on, after they’ve intercourse for the primary time he instructs her in a proprietorial method to cowl up in public, after she falls for him he roughs her up, treats her like shit, repeatedly hits her and tells her she was a no person in faculty whose id rested totally on her being often known as his lady, and worse. As if none of this was sufficient, a music titled Tera Ban Jaunga has lyrics that go thus: Meri raahein tere tak hain  Tujhpe hello toh mera haq hai    (Translation: my path, each path I take, results in you / I’ve a proper over simply you.) The purpose about a “proper” over a lover is re-asserted within the music ‘Tujhe Kitna Chahne Lage‘, wherein the phrases go, “Tere ishq pe haan haq mera hello toh hai” (I alone have a proper over your love). Kiara Advani and Shahid Kapoor in Kabir Singh. Picture through Twitter From the 1990s, Hindi cinema steadily bade goodbye to the portrayal of violence, molestation and stalking as professional types of courtship. It by no means went away totally, however for essentially the most half, if a number one man was a stalker, he was categorically slotted because the villain of the piece as he was in Yash Chopra’s Darr. The romanticisation of stalking and the mistreatment of ladies whereas wooing them has made a giant comeback this decade, epitomised by Raanjhanaa (2013) and numerous Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar starrers. Kabir Singh is in the identical league: harmful to the core as a result of it’s such a slick manufacturing. For one, it’s well-acted, particularly by Kapoor, Advani (recognized to date for M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Lust Tales, Bharat Ane Nenu), Arjan Bajwa enjoying Kabir’s brother and Soham Majumdar within the position of the hero’s greatest buddy Shiva. Kapoor, in reality, is so good right here that it’s heart-breaking to see him use his reward thus, to see the spectacular star of Vishal Bhardwaj’s spectacular Haider (2014) descend to this cinematic abomination. The forged is one in all Kabir Singh‘s many pluses. The cinematography by Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran is plush, the modifying by Aarif Sheikh and Vanga himself is really slick, and the songs are engaging. That stated, these numbers are ruined by the way wherein they’re used within the narrative together with the overbearing, ear-splitting background rating. The songs are nice when heard individually, however they’re slammed into the movie’s soundscape like whiplashes akin to the screechy results utilized in dangerous Bollywood thrillers to startle the viewers. Most insidious is the writing of Kabir Singh, which makes use of humour to lull us into an acceptance of its horrible, terrifying hero’s obnoxiousness. As offensive as his patriarchal, misogynistic angle in direction of the heroine and different ladies is the truth that in direction of the top writer-director-editor Sandeep Vanga appears to be attempting to evoke sympathy for him by getting him to tearfully confess that he’s an alcoholic. Clearly with this objective in thoughts, just a few bars from the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are additionally woven into the background rating – in a foolish and cheesy vogue, it should be stated – when Kabir is coping with the dying of a beloved one. In direction of the top, Vanga even appears to be trying a press release concerning the limits that supposed democracy locations on us when a lawyer says of Kabir that such free-spiritedness in a democracy isn’t okay. Ah, so being a creep is “free-spiritedness”. Obtained it. That line is one in all many dialogues in Kabir Singh which might be written to sound deep and mental, however imply little to nothing particularly contemplating the context wherein they’re spoken. The naming of the hero in Vanga’s Hindi remake appears to be a bow to poet-saint Kabir, and to underline the purpose, in a voiceover within the opening scene the man’s grandmother (Kamini Kaushal) recites one in all Kabir’s dohas. I have no idea whether or not to chortle or cry at this desecration of the nice man’s writing. Kabir Singh and its Telugu forebear Arjun Reddy should rank among the many most annoying examples of the obsessive stalker hero being glamourised by Indian cinema. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)} ; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '259288058299626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.9&appId=1117108234997285"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

So I just saw a video on Jungle Book and...

Am I really the only person who absolutely hates the live action Jungle Book (2016, not the new one coming out yet) and cannot tell people why because my arguments are based more on portrayal of actors, culture, realism, and that I’ve read the book? No hate for those who liked this movie, I’m just going to be ranting below. If you have any logical defence for this movie, don’t hesitate, maybe I’ll learn something new. 

I have NO problem that this is not like the book and in fact is a remake of the animated Disney one. I really liked that movie! Mostly because there was no effort to make it more than a story that could happen in ANY part of the world, since there was little to no tie to the location. Live action one attempts to mix in some actual Indian Culture(TM) into it. I appreciate the gesture but it’s so lazily done.... And I get that “Oh it’s fiction it doesn’t have to make a lot of sense” but if you’re making all this effort to make it “darker and more real” then maybe...actually do your research? 

In school we had to learn a lot about “feral children”, which is one reason I like the new movie coming out. If you were raised by wolves, you’d not be able to stand perfectly upright, have cut hair, no scars/wounds/markings and MAKE THINGS. Kids learn from observation, so where the FUCK did Mowgli get the idea to make such perfect inventions from? Even the village he’s going to isn’t that advanced! 

I’ve heard that this was added in because he was ‘useless’ in the animated one. Which was sort of the entire point?? Of course he’d understand he needs to go to the village if he can see that he cannot survive alone in the wild because he’s not built for that, and will understand that he needs to be with his own kind. I don’t even know what was up with the ending of the live action one. 

Moving on to the artistic side, it was BEAUTIFUL and I loved it. But like.....do you even know what a sloth bear looks like. You’re calling Baloo a sloth bear but you’ve made him like a brown bear.....

The plot: Other than the ending, no huge issues here. It seemed okay enough, though I really don’t get why Baloo lied about not wanting Mowgli around instead of just saying “Hey remember we had a deal till winter (not that it matters since forests have evergreen trees....)? Yeah, let’s end it short because that tiger that has attacked you several times will kill you.” instead of just “Oh yeah I don’t want you around now go run off into the jungle where anything can try to kill you like the snake I saved you from.”

Finally....the actors....Oh god. Mowgli is fine, and I get that you want famous actors to make people see the movie but.....The jungle book is a classic and just the name and look of the effects is MORE THAN ENOUGH to draw people in! Plus, are you aware of how many Indians live all over the world? And who would die to see this movie, especially if it included famous Indian actors? I’m pretty sure some of them have worked in Hollywood movies (only one off the top of my head is Jurassic World). But okay, fine, for whatever reason you don’t want to take people who are from that region for the animal voices and who can actually make the dialog sound natural. Okay, I’ll accept that. Can you AT LEAST make sure that they know what they’re saying?? They cannot pronounce a single word CLOSE to how it’s supposed to be pronounced, and it doesn’t sound like they’re even TRYING. And before anyone goes “Oh well how can you expect us to speak your language why learn it just for a movie”, hiring Indian actors fixes everything, and besides, you can LEARN. It’s English! I have relatives who were born and brought up in the US, speak with the accent, only know English, parents had the accent, and they’re able to pick it up so fuck you if you think trained voice actors can’t pronounce ‘bander log’ like ‘bun-dur lowg’. I don’t care what the accent is at least it shows you’re TRYING to get the word right instead of going “Oh well, we’ve put in a few words, that’s more than enough!” 

And you know what, maybe the new one coming out will be just as bad. Who knows? I’ve only seen one trailer featuring Mowgli in a cage (yes!!), running around like an animal (yess!) and him enjoying a traditional festival (YESS!!). But I’m willing to give this a chance because at least they’ve done some research. 

I realise I haven’t spoken too much about the ‘feral kids’ thing, so small note about it here based on what I studied; Do not act like people at all, treat humans with distrust, cannot each vegetarian food (if raised by carnivores), cannot speak, wild, long, matted hair, various markings (infections/scars) on the skin, etc. Go look up any story about kids raised by wolves. 

Bushwick Free Full HD watch online & movie trailer

Release Year: 2017

Rating: 5.5/10 ( voted)

Critic's Score: /100

Director: Cary Murnion

Stars: Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Christian Navarro

Storyline BUSHWICK tells the story of twenty-year- old Lucy (Snow) and war veteran Stupe (Bautista). Texas is trying to secede from the U.S., and NYC is being used as a negotiation tool. Lucy meets Stupe after coming up from the subway into the military invasion of Brooklyn. Together they decide to cross the treacherous five blocks of Bushwick – littered with looters, local militias, the invading forces, and one crazy cousin – in order to get home and be reunited with Lucy's grandmother.

Writers: Nick Damici, Graham Reznick, Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Christian Navarro, Dave Bautista, Brittany Snow, Christian Navarro, Arturo Castro, Jeremie Harris, Angelic Zambrana, Jay Hieron, Leo Minaya, Jeff Lima, Alex Breaux, Patrick M. Walsh, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Quincy Chad, Justin L. Wilson, Adrian Matilla, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cast: Dave Bautista –

Stupe

Brittany Snow –

Lucy

Christian Navarro –

Eduardo

Arturo Castro –

Jose

Jeremie Harris –

JP

Angelic Zambrana –

Belinda

Jay Hieron –

Resistance fighter

Leo Minaya –

Hector

Jeff Lima –

Gregory

Alex Breaux –

Lt. Quaid

Patrick M. Walsh –

Bearded Man

Myra Lucretia Taylor –

Ma

Quincy Chad –

Heathcliff

Justin L. Wilson –

Hasidic Soldier

Adrian Matilla –

Driver

Taglines: The New Civil War Has Begun

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 3 Jan 2017

Technical Specs

Runtime: 94 min

Did You Know?

Trivia: Jane Levy was cast in the lead role until Brittany Snow eventually replaced her. See more »

User Review

Author:

Rating: 9/10 I've said many times in past reviews "I wanted to like this film, but I couldn't". This is the first time in my over 250 reviews I'm saying the opposite.

Going into this, I had very low expectations, and from the very start, those expectations were met with the very poor acting and dialog, followed by the start of an outrageous story-line.

As the story continued, I began to notice that the camera angles (poorly aimed in some scenes) were similar to video games like Call of Duty. Then I noticed the background music was similar as well. For a few minutes I thought to myself "oh boy, this movie is gonna be a waste of time", but oddly enough, all those factors started to grow on me, including the bad acting/dialog.

Then I started to notice the directing and cinematography were actually quite good – and those poorly aimed camera angles actually made the scene very realistic, especially for a B-type low budget film with two amateur directors, Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott.

Oddly enough, I also started to look past the poor acting and dialog from Dave Bautista and Brittany Snow and instead, became fond of their characters, and able to relate to them as just 'average Joe's' trying to survive. As I grew up in Brooklyn, I realized it wasn't bad acting/dialog, but instead their characters were spot on Brooklynites! For that matter, Dave Bautista nailed his character as a passive war vet turned janitor who lost his family.

All of a sudden, BOOM, I was engulfed in this film and was really enjoying it. You can't compare a low budget B-type film to the blockbusters, and as such, to review it on it's own merits, this film was outstanding! I really felt like I was right there where all the action and suspense were happening, and was rooting for the Brooklynites.

Sure one could argue about plot holes and an un-realistic story, but this is pure fiction (although it does make you think), and the screenplay was written so well with the pacing spot on, I felt like I was watching a live newscast in a war zone. What I also really liked (and respected) was the fact that there were zero clichés in this film, and it was pretty much unpredictable. Even the ending (not going to give it away) was a shocker and certainly not expected.

It's sad to see such a low IMDb score from people comparing this to blockbuster films, or inserting their political opinions and agendas into the story. This for me was simply a fun ride, a great suspenseful adventure thriller, executed very well from every perspective. It left an impact on me, wanting more, and I do hope a part 2 is considered.

I will watch this again, and it's a well deserved and much respected 9/10 from me… great job to all those involved in the production of this sweet little gem.

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And Now Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith!

This is probably the coolest intro into a Star Wars movie we’ve gotten, heck probably like the best scene of the movie!

Anakin’s hair looks better

The Droids decimated those Clone Pilots, mechanized pilots have distinct advantages, as Obi-Wan says “Flying is for droids”

Don’t see why you’d use buzz droids instead of Bomb droids.

General Grievous, the coolest looking character in this film.

Obi-Wan isn’t having any luck with elevators

I wonder where Dooku was hiding? In a closet with his droids just waiting for the Jedi to pass? Well nothing beats a dramatic entry

Way to shoot yourself in the foot by telling Anakin how to beat you Dooku! (True in the extra novels you learn that he was wanting ani to use his anger so that he would fall to the Darkside and that his master had told him he wouldn’t tell Ani to kill him)

Basically, the Entire Invisible Hand is awesome fun.

“Wait a minute how did this happen we’re smarter than this!” “Apparently not”

The super kicking R2 actually made me laugh out loud

“You're welcome” Battle Droids can use Sarcasm

Killing defenseless pilot droids that are keeping the ship from crashing, good work guys

One of them even had his hands up!

“we lost something”

You know if they weren’t piloting that ship, it could really take out a lot of the city

I wonder how many people were obliterated in that tower...

Any landing you can walk away from.......

Ani and Padma’s scene was very well acted I thought, especially the facial emotions.

I mean the dialog in the romance is kinda cheesy, but it’s really not as bad as people say, I think they are believable. 

Anakin goes to Yoda for help, and all he gets is a “Beware the Dark side” and “If people die, totally it’s cool, and your only option is to not be attached.” Gee, that’s helpful advice YODA! 

“Be careful of Palpatine, but I’m not going to actually tell you why.”

Surprising it took this long to get an envoy from the Republic government on the Council. 

“We’re putting you on the Council, but not making you master, nor are we going to tell you why or anything like that, just blindly trust us.”

“Oh and then we want you to spy on your friend and commit treason against the Republic, covertly. And essentially choose us or him, oh and yeah we know you believe its against the Jedi code as well, but the entire council really wants you to do it.” 

“Do you ever think we might be on the wrong side?” Loving this political stuff, also one more person who Anakin trusts, pushing him towards not trusting the Republic/Jedi, albeit unintentionally. 

The Opera scene, quiet yet, very, very well done. Palpatine, the only one stroking Ani’s Ego. 

Really, this is a good scene, Palpatine tells Ani all the reasons to trust him instead of the council, using the Jedi’s attempt to make Anakin choose them over Palpatine against them.

Putting the idea in Anakin’s head that the Jedi will break the code and try to take over, like how they asked him to break code and spy.

“All who gain power are afraid to lose it, even the Jedi” All the people who think Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side was too quick weren’t paying attention, this entire scene is when the turn began, and when the Tale of the Sith who can prevent those he loves from dying, the hook is baited. 

And then what happens next? Anakin is battle blocked by the Jedi in favor of Obi-Wan, he gets the information and then the Jedi are like “We don’t think you can handle this because you’re not a master.” They’re just setting themselves up for failure, and they can’t even see it.

The start of the battle for Kashyyyk! A nice piece of action to keep your blood pumping for the next set of talking, but really not enough 

Wait, why are you leaving your trenches you hairy fools!

Anakin turns to his father figure, and he gives good advice, unfortunately keeping them apart means that Anakin doesn’t have that calming support for the big decision coming.

Anakin has doubts, his repressed feelings are bubbling up and he has very few options to get help, and especially with his wife who he can’t tell anyone about.

Sneaky Obi with the least covert mount in history

“hello there”

Grievous, coolest lightsaber fighter in the movies, even though he doesn’t win. 

And the Cavalry has arrived, running in without bothering to use cover,

And now the Jedi are planning exactly what Palpatine said they would.

Palpatine once again plays Anakin’s Ego and fears that the Jedi don’t trust him, as well as justifying his dark side knowledge with the reasonable statement that you have to study more than just one side.

Even when Anakin is saying he’s going to turn him in, Palpatine agrees and says it’s a wise move, always soothing his ego and playing up his insecurities. 

Kenobi vs Greivious, no lightsabers just a brawl, 

That moment you kick someone’s leg and they’re made of something harder than you....

RiP Grievous. :(

Anakin arrives and the Jedi are immediately mobilizing to force Palpatine to give up power, from his perspective based on what he’s been told, you got to admit that looks sketchy like they’re using it as an excuse to launch a coup.

Then when Anakin is a good little spy and does it, they leave him behind. They refuse to let him come along, refuse to trust him. Trust is a two-way street and of the people in this movie, who has Trusted Anakin? The Council? No, Windu flat out says he will trust Anakin if this is true, but implies he didn’t trust before. Obi-Wan? yes, but he’s far away. Palpatine? Yes but he’s a Sith.

There’s little dialog, but in this moment Anakin decides he needs Palpatine, and that his only loyalty is to Padme, she’s the only one he can truly trust, and the one he will protect. And for her, he needs Palpatine alive. 

And then the Jedi just barge in and try to arrest the democratically elected leader of the Republic, being rash seems to be a trait in all Jedi apparently.

Choose those who don’t trust you, or save your wife. A hard choice, but then Mace Windu does something, he breaks the code, he says he’s going to kill Palpatine, a man who is currently unarmed, weak, defenseless, and a prisoner. The same dilemma that Anakin had in the Invisible hand. 

“He’s too dangerous to be left alive.” The words that Palpatine, a Sith, told Anakin as reason to kill Dooku, one of the most respected Jedi is now quoting a Sith, about to break the Jedi code that is supposed to be so sacred and is the reason Anakin can’t be with Padme, and about to kill Anakin’s way of saving his wife. Despite both the begging of Palpatine and Anakin telling Windu the very code they both swore to uphold, Windu pulls back to strike. If you take a moment to think about it, what Anakin does next is not very surprising. 

POOOOOOOOWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And with the path of the Jedi closed, Anakin has only one thing left, Padme, and will do anything to save her, anything.

“When the Jedi learn what has happened here, they will kill us, along with all the senators” Palpatine has sold Anakin on the idea of a Jedi plot to take over the Republic, now he adds that Senators will be targeted, so Anakin thinks that exterminating the Jedi will protect his Senator. 

This whole part of the movie makes sense, though sometimes the dialog is a little hammy

Order 66, The Clones marching on the Temple is dang epic.

“Obi-Wan here’s your lightsaber back!” “Execute order 66″ “Well wish you told me that sooner!”

Just noticed that the AT-TE blast had a drop, meaning that it was a projectile weapon. 

Palpy, you should have sent the order for Yoda’s death first.

Who could have known that trusting an army of Clones you got from a Mysterious source and didn’t order, conveniently right when a war was brewing, was a Bad idea....

“No one could have survived that fall!” They said as Obi-Wan is ten feet away.

They didn’t even pick up Grievous's body?  How disrespectful! 

Anakin and Padme scene, once again actually pretty good again, don’t see why so many complained about it.

“he will take care of you” That's a tricky wording. 

And unfortunately, the Separatist leaders learn not to Trust the Sith the hard way.

“So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause” Best political statement in the movies. 

You guys should have teamed up to take them out one by one. Palpatine first.

Gee Obi-Wan, you should have listened to Dooku when he told you this last movie.

“I’ll be alright captain” No you won’t Padme...

Good timing Obi-Wan.... Not.

Yoda time for those guards he has not

Go for the Knees Yoda! They’re what you can easily reach...

Not much to say about the lightsaber battles but that they’re really cool.

Yoda really should have brought back up....

Brave Yoda ran away, bravely ran away, away......

Oooooh, High Ground > Anakin’s Power

Always confirm your kills Obi-Wan....

“For reasons we can’t explain we’re losing her” Bet ya a credit it’s Palpatine sucking the life out of her to save Anakin. 

And it turns out the way to Immortality was in the light side all along! 

Nice to see Alderaan, I hope nothing bad happens to it.... 

Twin suns, a nice bookend

So, all in all, I enjoyed the movie, was it perfect? No. Was some of the dialog cheesy? yes. But was there anything that stopped me from enjoying it? No, I enjoyed it a lot. Good movie I think. Definitely the strongest prequel movie. 

Yes, I Just Sat Through Sharknado 4

Look, I know these movies are supposed to be ridiculous as shit, but I firmly believe that Sharknado: The 4th Awakens is the death knell for the once watchably-schlocky series.

None of these movies are worth scholarly, comprehensive criticism, but the phenomenon of “so-bad-it’s-good” versus “just plain bad” is worth examining.  See, the first film was pretty much like any other high concept SyFy film; yeah it was dumb and unapologetic, but it still basically tried to be a film.  Even though it became this massive “hit,” I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that it was made like any other P.O.S. SyFy movie.  I mean there’s nothing wrong with liking Mega Python vs. Gatoroid or Mansquito but let’s be honest about what they are - high concept schlock made on a shoestring budget.  And that’s all Sharknado was.  Why did it catch on?  It’s hard to say.  

My thought is that it was simply seen by enough people.  All it takes nowadays for something to go viral is a tweet or two from the right influential people, and boom, instant exposure.  It’s very possible these days for a single tweet or like or share to be the difference between “just another random piece of internet fodder” and “next big thing (for 15 minutes - or less).”

Popularity points aside, there are plenty of B-movies better than Sharknado.  It does have a few things going for it though.  The acting, while uneven, isn’t completely awful and the most cringeworthy parts seem to be the result of an unnatural script rather than a failure of acting talent.  Another plus is that it attempts to take itself somewhat seriously.  It’s stupid, but also shameless.  And let me be clear, when it comes to low budget film making, there is a difference between between being fun and shameless, and then being outright self-deprecating.  As the series wears on, it pokes fun at itself with reckless abandon and gets a little too comfortable with the self-referential shit.  What’s worse is that it never really breaks any new ground behind the “sharks falling from the sky” concept, nor does it use its newfound fame to do something like hire a better scriptwriter or spring for some help in the FX department.

Getting back to what specifically makes The 4th Awakens such a travesty captured on celluloid, let’s take a quick look at the plethora of “-nados” featured.  Actually, it might’ve been sortta cool if they’d spent more than 2 seconds on them:

SHARKNADO

SANDSHARKNADO

BOULDERNADO

OILNADO

FIRENADO

LIGHTNING-NADO

LAVANADO

HAILNADO

COWNADO

NUEKNADO

I mean...I just...fuck.

Tommy Davidson plays some kind of corporate mogul science guy in the most annoying way possible, and all the while the film vacillates between portraying him as a sketchy businessman and a courageous do-gooder.  It’s confusing.  Plus he delivers one of the worst lines of the movie.  His advisers are telling him about how the current technology won’t work on he new “-nados” and he blurts out, “We just need a solution!”  Well no shit, Sherlock.   Then someone says some goofy shit like, “we could try adding more isotopes to the base” and he’s all like, “yeah, you go with that” in a tone that reads somewhere between facetiousness and incredulity.  The guy flits and screams in every scene he’s in like some kind of black Adam Sandler.

In the first flick, maybe even the first 2, the actors did a reasonable job of “interacting” with the green screen.  Maybe it’s because the “action” scenes were less ridiculous (hard to believe anything in Sharknado could be described as “less ridiculous” than anything else...), or maybe it’s because they just got lazy...I don’t know.  

Tara Reid - man, how far has she fallen? - delivers another atrocious line; while using her new cyborg powers to save a kid from a car, she claims to be “Iron Man’s wife” in order to comfort the kid and get him to run and find his mom.  First of all, what does being “Iron Man’s wife” have to do with getting the kid to run away and find his mom?  Secondly, where the hell did this line even come from?  It’s just goofy.  It’d be different if a joke - or even a bad joke - followed, but no, it’s just all, “I’m Iron Man’s wife, go find your mommy.”  It’s WEIRD.

Oh and Gilbert Gottfried ups the annoyance factor for good measure...to quote the first film’s tagline, “’nuff said.”

I’ve seen plenty of films from the Asylum (the production company responsible for this type of stuff), but never have I see one with such an inability to properly convey perspective.  We get a long shot of one of the various “-nados,” then our characters standing around with some wind blowing, and all of sudden they’re right next to the damn thing.  It makes very little sense.  I know we can basically chalk it up to the poor FX and CGI, but they could do a better job with the establishing shots.  Also, it can take these ‘nados 15 minutes to move 200 feet or 5 minutes to cut through 4 states.  I’m not even sure what the point is in switching locations every scene.

There is a lot of terrible dialog in the movie - among the worst I’ve ever heard in something proclaiming to be a feature film - but perhaps even more sickening is the film’s heavy-handed and absolutely pointless insertion of references to other films.

Example 1:  Being a horror nut, I found this one particularly egregious.  It actually starts off somewhat subtle and tasteful.  The gang is in Texas (they just magically hop around the country, popping up hundreds of miles away in a matter of minutes) and find themselves in need of a chainsaw.  (I’m not sure why the chainsaw became such a staple of the series; from the get-go it seemed to be directly ripping off Evil Dead’s blatant fascination with the device, and the deal was sealed when April (Reid) had her hand severed and then got some kinda mini-chainsaw robo-attachment.)  So anyway, they end up at a chainsaw shop...in Texas...run by Dog the Bounty Hunter (remember that weird-ass Hulk Hogan-Paul Hogan wannabe?) and some crazy woman.  She makes a comment about how their relative “Gunnar” uses a specific chainsaw to scare off neighborhood children.  Cut to a quick shot of Gunnar to reveal a burly, surly guy with a face etched out of granite.  Now if they’d ended the reference there, I might’ve even gone so far as to call it “clever.”  But no.

Don’t get it?  That’s ok.  References are supposed to be oblique.  I mean it doesn’t really count when they beat you over the head with it.  And that’s exactly what Sharknado 4 proceeds to do.  To explain the original reference, I’m sure most of you have heard of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the main villain, Leatherface.  Although not as well-known as Robert Englund or even Kane Hodder, big horror buffs will know the actor Gunnar Hansen as the actor who played Leatherface in the original 1974 film.  See?  At this point it was a well structured reference.  But...

The whole family ends up outside cutting up sharks with chainsaws while our main character goes and gets in a ditch-digger (it’s supposed to look like a giant chainsaw).  Dog (the Bounty Hunter) shouts, “the saw is family!” in the most unconvincing manner possible, and then the crazy woman goes, “it wouldn’t be Texas...without a chainsaw massacre!”  Ugh.  Infuckingcredible.

Example 2:  This is a crossover which leads into a reference.  Our crew meets up with some guy from SyFy’s Lavalantula movie who gives them a car named “Christine.”  Of course the giveaway (before the name drop) is painfully obvious as the quintessentially 50′s car rolls up playing quintessentially 50′s pop music, you know, those wistful teen tragedy songs.  The guest character makes all these comments about “she knows where to go” and “she’ll know how to find him later,” So what does all this business of the “living car” lead up to?  Nothing.  Literally nothing.  The world’s largest ball of twine is chasing them, but since it’s “coming too fast,” the guy stops the car, everyone gets one, and they all start running...because that’s how you outrun a massive ball of twine propelled by a tornado.  POINTLESS.

Example 3:  Here we have 3 references to the same movie.  Team goes into a house in Kansas, gets picked up by a Sharknado, and travels all the way to Chicago without someone even so much as having a brush with a shark.  Anyway, the house lands on the bitchy major, and we then see her legs, complete with striped socks and red shoes, just before her toes curl up.  Was the major even wearing this shit?  Also, the storm picks up some “yellow bricks” and then trops them, and Fin tells everyone to “follow the yellow brick road.  And then his kid’s all like, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore...”

More Examples:  There’s plenty more that are just stupid and out of place too.  April rescues Fin and says, “Come with me if you want to live.” (Terminator 2)  There’s a stupid, stupid “homage” to Baywatch where some chicks run in slow-mo before getting eaten.  Fin tells someone, “Don’t get cocky, kid.”  The kid pulls a mini-chainsaw out of a rock a la The Sword in the Stone.  Oh god, and then there’s a scene where April is testing out her cyborg features; her dad tells her to “use the force,” whereupon she produces a lightsaber blade from her wrist, and then says, “may the force be with you.”  What in the living hell.

I guess I could keep going on about the nonsensical choices of the characters (for example, they need a large body of water, so they pick the highly-dangerous Niagra Falls instead of like, one of the Great Lakes...or a fucking spot by the goddamn ocean), or the bad acting, or the exceedingly poor CGI, but I think it all boils down to the creative forces behind the film not giving a shit.  Instead of cutting corners due to budget concerns or other practical limitations, it was like they started cutting corners because they “needed” to make a “bad” movie.

Bottom line: this ship has sailed.  One of the things that even the worst movies have going for them is creative envelope pushing, but not here.  The gore has worn a little thin, and there’s only but so many times that it’s fun to watch sharks land on people or pull off these well-coordinated bites while zipping through the air.  The story is just an excuse to throw all these weird “shitnados” into the mix, and while they could’ve been interesting and posed some unique threats, for the most part they’re quickly glossed over.  The “nuclear sharks” are able to generate a few chuckles I suppose, as is Al Roker’s deadpan delivery of stuff like, “technically we saw a sand-sharknado.”  But overall it was just a sloppy, jumpy film that adds nothing to the series.  Besides, the only reason sharks were initially able to survive was because they were contained in waterspouts; there’s never any reason for how they stay alert and aggressive amid a dust devil, hailstorm, or flaming oil. But whatever.  I actually had a little fun watching the first two.  The third one was mildly irritating, but this fourth installment is just aggravating and insulting.

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