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amandaklwrites · 3 years

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TV Series Review: Miss Scarlet and the Duke (2019)

Genre: Historical Fiction/Murder Mystery/British Period Drama

Rating: 10/10

TV Show Review:

I. LOVE. THIS SHOW.

Pretty much this review will be me talking about everything I love this series, just a warning. I hope you love it too, so you can enjoy my blabbering and gushing!

I will do this review a bit differently, since it’s still relatively new, especially here in the US. I’ll talk about my general thoughts, and then I’ll do a “keep reading” when it goes down into spoilers for each episode.

So, here, for the spoiler-free part of my review:

Let me start out by saying that these characters make the whole damn show. Yes, the mysteries are great and all, but it’s the characters in this series, for me, that drives the whole thing. Eliza Scarlet is a masterful main character, and I love everything about her—from her determination, her willingness to fight the crowd to be what she wants, how she’s willing to admit some issues, that she still relies so heavily on her father after he passed away. Her humor is so incredible, and I think she’s just someone I wish I could be. Her feistiness is so wonderful. And then our Inspector Detective William “the Duke” Wellington is… one of my favorite leading men, fictional of course. I like that he’s overprotective of her (sometimes, to funny extents), that he does his job well and follows a lot of the right paths, that he doesn’t seem surprised by much of anything, and that he’s willing to fight even when he’s falling apart at the seams. And their relationship! They are so clearly in love with each other (probably have since that “chaste kiss” when they were teens…), they bicker like a married couple, and though they annoy the living hell out of each other, they would die for one another. I like that their relationship isn’t perfect and they take note of that in the show, but it feels real. It’s one of the most real relationships I have ever seen.

Moses and Rupert are such important characters and I LOVE their relationship with Eliza, their friendships that seem so different, but they just fit. I can’t go much into detail about either of them, or it will spoil entire plotlines of mysteries, but I will say that I love what the story does with their characters, how it gives them breaths of their own, that they become some of the most dynamic characters in the show with so much to them and that take a life of their own. That they feel real and important and interesting, and I love the representation. That’s all I’ll say about them in the spoiler-free review.

Now, the mysteries, were incredible. They kept me guessing through every episode, and I would have some feelings about things/people, but I wasn’t sure how it would get there. At times, I thought of the truth, but figured that they were going to trick me with it (my grandpa always told me that I have a brain for a detective, if I had some training, so that’s fun!). But still, they were so innovative and different from other mysteries that I had experienced. And I liked that each episode felt a bit different—we had a taste of ghost story feeling, even an intense thriller. They were really, really good mysteries, to me at least. And I do love me some mysteries.

Okay, so the costumes, sets and music. MY GOD. It was all SO BEAUTIFUL! Eliza’s clothes were magnificent and they had POCKETS!!! William was way too sexy in those clothes (can we bring those back??? We can leave out the discrimination that came with the time period, but let’s bring back the clothes at least!). Everyone had gorgeous clothes. And the sets were beautiful—those dirty, Victorian, coal covered streets… I loved it! (My mom says she’s not sure why I’m so in love with the dark atmosphere of the Victorian era, but I am!). The MUSIC. Can they just upload a damn soundtrack already? I need to listen to this music all the time! It sounds different and cool and I’m just so in love with it.

THE HUMOR! My god, I had never seen a murder mystery show set in another time that does humor so well. I love how they travel between scenes to make it funnier, the lines they say to one another. It makes me feel like these actors absolutely had a blast filming this show. They were so on point, and some of the funny scenes made me laugh harder than any comedy movie I’ve seen.

As you can see, I’m obsessed with this show altogether. I love it, and I want to watch it over and over. The vibe, the love stories, the characters, every. single. thing. is my jam. I know they’re planning a second season and I cannot wait for it. Ugh. My god. It’s wonderful.

So here ends my spoiler-free review. After this, I’m going to talk spoilers. So if you have seen the show and/or want to read the spoiler-y thoughts, please click on the “keep reading.” If not, see you around after your watch the show! It’s well worth it!

Let me start out by explaining more of my thoughts on the relationship between William and Eliza, because I worried that some of what I had said would give away possibly too much. So here’s that part:

The (hilarious) way that William mutters “oh jesus” whenever he finds Eliza waiting in his office, or the fact that Eliza calls herself his wife (or in one instance, something worse, but to save herself) to get what she wants also feels like a sly to personally agitate him. How that he would toss her into jail/into court when she went against things he said she shouldn’t do (though he released her/got her out at some point) never got old and even funnier to me each time. I told my mom, she was like a toddler—he couldn’t keep her in sight, so he had to lock her out. But I liked that she still argued with him despite it. Their back and forth was perfect.

I will say here, that I have seen people’s comments online how they wish that William was more on board with Eliza’s detective dreams and support her 100% much earlier on. And I get that, that he can seem like an ass at times. But honestly, I think he feels more realistic that he’s a little harder about it in the beginning. Trust me, I love this show and the way they play with characters and storylines, and that they are so forward (I mean, Eliza is so forward-thinking and modern, it’s amazing), but to me, if they made EVERYONE, i.e. William especially, it wouldn’t ground me into the time very well. I like that it was more gradual for him, to fully support her. And actually, I think for a man in the Victorian Era, with his position, he supported her as much as he could. Though he fought her on it at times, he eventually gave up trying to stop her. And I do think, in some respect, he was trying to protect her, because he does care for her. He was a man of his time, in his position, and he is changing. Can we at least give him that? Because, in all throughout history, it took a while for things to change. And it was men like William that started to understand, that started to recognize that, that helped make it happen. Plus, Eliza didn’t let him pull shit all the time, and she did fight him on it.

Now, I’m going to comment on each individual episode with my thoughts. I’ve never done this before so yay! Here it goes!

EPISODE ONE: Inheritance

I knew the weird uncle wasn’t the girl’s uncle. I didn’t expect that it was her husband (I should’ve!! We knew he was a cheat and a conartist!!), but I knew it wasn’t her rich uncle. I knew from the moment he came on screen—I remember thinking, this guy looks too young around his eyes. His beard and mustache look fake. So, I was right to an extent.

I can’t be the only one who was horrified to discover what the police did to women who worked as prostitutes or in dance halls—they could be arrested and searched for venereal disease? Seriously??? For men who were so obsessed with wanting their wives to “stay safe” and “be protected,” they sure were fine with flipping the case when it came to women that they would also gladly pay to sleep with? Why don’t they check the male clients who are PAYING for this industry. It was appalling and horrendous, and it made my skin literally crawl as they tried tying Eliza down to the chair.

On the note of that scene, Eliza calling herself William’s favorite whore to save herself is literally one of the funniest (though, darkly) things—especially in the next scene, when you see the two of them sitting in his office in silence and William is mortified, annoyed, and I think amused at the same time.

I loved how Eliza tricked that bastard husband—she set him up, AND she gave him laudanum to make him pass out? This woman knows what’s up!

Instantly from this first episode, I knew I loved this show and these characters. Eliza shows her charm and wit and humor and smarts. She’s skilled and I love her personality so much. Though I can see how she could be aggravating to others. William absolutely adores her. Rupert annoyed me a bit at the beginning, but by the end—when he asked Eliza to not marry him, I knew I would like him. And Moses! A Jamaican man brings in the race question of this dark, old world, but I love that he likes Eliza and finds her interesting. He’s terrifying, but I think he’s a good, decent man, he’s only trapped in this world because no one will let him be anything else. But he’s such a rich, interesting character.

EPISODE TWO: The Woman in Red

This episode brings in the reality of homosexuality in this world. That it has always been there (damn those bastards who think otherwise), but it has been hidden away. That men and women have to fear for their lives, and also marry people they do not want because they want to not be noticed. I loved finding out Rupert was gay—my mom called that one!—and the friendship he develops with Eliza. That he trusts her to tell a secret that could literally have him killed and ruined. And that Eliza doesn’t even blink, that she’s willing to keep his secret to the grave, and I cried when she basically told him that. It’s quite beautiful that Eliza even seemed to be grateful that he trusted her enough to give her that secret.

Which was used in interesting juxtaposition to the gay man, accused of murdering his lover, and his wife. I understand the woman’s hurt, that she loved this man and it turned out he didn’t love her in the same way. But that didn’t mean her willingness to let him die for a crime he didn’t commit was at all good or called for. With Eliza talking her down, to prove that the woman’s husband was innocent, I think proved that though she was hurt beyond reason, she did love that man who was her husband and didn’t want to see her die. It’s really a hard situation, especially during that time, when people were constantly shoved down their throats that homosexuality was bad. Not that I’m giving her a “it’s okay,” but I can understand the pain and confusion she went through. Especially because she pulled through.

Through this whole episode, we thought it was the wife that had murdered the lover (the other man). I was surprised to find out that he had killed himself, cut his own throat (which I had heard wasn’t possible to do—but my grandpa, who had worked as a detective, told me that is a myth people talk about, that it’s really easy to cut your own throat). That was a shock, and it made me so sad. That he was dying because he was unhappy, because he hated what he was, because of damn society telling him so. I actually started crying, because as someone who is bisexual, I would be condemned in this time during for openly being with men and women, though I couldn’t even compare to people who are gay or lesbian, because the situation is not the same. But I could connect, I could understand. And I hated knowing the pain all those people were in, that a man had killed himself because of what he was, and that another man had to live with that. It truly breaks your heart.

William’s response to finding out the dead man was gay was interesting. I thought his comment “in my line of work, nothing surprises you” funny, but also telling. He didn’t act disgusted, he didn’t mistreat the husband when they questioned him afterward. The show didn’t directly say his thoughts on homosexuality, but I got the vibe that he was “whatever” about it. Like he knew it was there, and he wasn’t condemning it publicly. That gives him credit, in my book.

Another great episode that got deep and beautiful.

EPISODE THREE: Deeds Not Words

Is this show just obsessed with getting right down to modern issues that were also faced in this time, but not as strongly discussed? Because I’m all for it! This episode was all about the suffrage movement. But I liked the take they did on it.

Yes, they spoke out about the treatment of women. That men, white men, controlled this whole world. But I also thought it was interesting that they made this main suffragette not the greatest person. It made everything complicated. Like, everything she said to Eliza made sense, and I found myself cheering with her. But she shot a man in cold blood, she was willing to bomb a whole building of men—even though it seems justified because of what their club represents.

I think this episode was discussing the balance. That there can be change, but when you attack the people who you are trying to change, it may not work in your favor. At least, that was the vibe I got. Not to stoop to their levels, to become just as horrible as them. Her ideas and words were great, but her actions were a bit… skeptical.

Eliza and William’s response were interesting as well. Eliza felt a passion for the cause, William thought it a bit extreme. But, to me, by the end of the episode, they had a common understanding, they had reached a comfortable middle. I think, this show was showing that was how change came. People seeing eye to eye, and then it spreading from there. Of course, William has faults, but I think he’s truly trying. Especially with each episode. And the more Eliza and he grow.

EPISODE FOUR: Memento Mori

We got our ghost episode! I wasn’t even expecting it, it was incredible! A ghostly image of a dead wife that had killed herself reappearing in photos? How wild and cool is that idea!

I didn’t know that the Victorians had a thing where they took photos of their dead loved ones, looking like they were alive (y’all, the Victorians were obsessed with death…), but it’s an interesting concept. Maybe even sweet. I get what they were trying to do, even if it did seem morbid. How I feel about it is, if it brings you peace, then go for it (as long as it’s nothing disturbing or harming anyone).

The twist was one I had a hint of but hadn’t expected the whole thing. I knew the daughter had something to do with it (how disturbed is this poor girl??), but I hadn’t expected that the mother had planned this before she killed herself because she knew the woman and her husband were already having an affair. It was interesting and a creepy twist, but I was all for it.

Still, I loved how we had moments of eeriness and the haunting feeling in the house when Eliza stayed over. I felt scared and freaked, and most people that know me know that I do not like horror. But this was the perfect eeriness, which I do love.

That scene from this episode where William screams at the poor telegram young man to give them the message or he’ll break everyone bone in his body and then being like “are you crying?” was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I mean, it’s terrible, but the way it was done was hilarious and amazing.

EPISODE FIVE: Cell 99

This episode was… dark. I liked that it was set in an abandoned prison, and my god, was it creepy as hell. I loved all the shots of William walking through gave me the chills.

This one felt like a thriller to me. How it was filmed, set up, how everything went down. Except for the hilarious scene when they are both so annoyed with each other (Eliza and William, that is) that they both scream in frustration is brilliant. But otherwise, it took a dark tone that made me feel like something was watching my back. Especially as that big, scary guy came walking down the stairs when William and Eliza were trapped, ready to kill them both. I was nearly screaming at the tv in utter horror.

My mom had called it—and I had a feeling—that Eliza’s father had been murdered, not just drinking himself to death and found in the gutter. And there’s a gang now? How interesting!

The masked man was strange, as well as the forger locked away. But he was shot and killed, and it confused me.

I have a strange confession to make: that whole time with William in his dress shirt (without the coat), with his arm covered in blood, was weirdly…. Hot? Please don’t ask me explain. I have weird things to me. But I think it was also hot that though he was hurt and bleeding, he was gearing up to fight that big, scary man to protect himself and Eliza. I like that kind of shit, so much.

This episode was twisted, and it left me with more questions than anything.

EPISODE SIX: The Case of Henry Scarlet

My mom knew William’s boss was in with the gang! I liked that they actually explored the reality of corruptness in the police force (my grandpa had personal experiences himself, and that was why he left), and they laid it all bare. Despite the things that we are learning in this present day, it’s always been there. Which is horrifying and disturbing. That these police who are supposed to protect us are willing to delve into the corrupt world to bring themselves more power and money. Because that’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Powerful men wanting more and more.

I liked that William was okay with the truth unfolding, and not fighting it, trying to prove innocence for his boss. To me, it made me feel like that he knew something was up with that man (just beyond not liking him). For his character, it made me think that he was one of those people that was actually good and good at his job, trying to do the right thing. Even if he got distracted and didn’t give Eliza credit where it was due, and fought some things, he was trying to do what he thought was right. He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t go after anyone specifically. Though him and Moses had some standoffs because he wasn’t sure about the other man, he gave him some thanks and shook his hand. Which is huge for that time period.

I did suspect William’s buddy. I always felt like something was happening with him, and that he would be the perfect bad guy because he knew what was going on at all times. And it was proven right! Though it wasn’t any less terrible, William having to realize that his close friend at Scotland Yard as the bad, bad guy who killed their boss when things were turning ugly.

But Moses to the rescue! I loved that he swooped in, teaming up with Eliza, and taking the guy out! I love Moses so much, he’s one of my other favorites.

And their ending, with a promise of dinner, of love on the horizon was exactly what I needed.

Lasting thoughts:

Besides all the amazing storylines and characters they brought in, besides Eliza and William’s chemistry and relationship, to me, this felt like a story about a daughter and her father. We see flashbacks of Eliza as a child with her father, how he taught her his detective work, when that wasn’t something men did typically in that time, and how she would still talk to him after he had died. That though she had chosen this profession for herself, it was also some way to connect to her father. Something they had shared when she was motherless and only had him, and he gave her these skills and talents, helped her hone in on them. And once he had passed, she fought like hell to keep it, but make it her own. I liked that their relationship wasn’t perfect, but they loved the hell out of each other. She was a grown woman, who believed in herself, but she still turned to him—a ghost, a memory, or whatnot—when she felt at the bottom.

This series is incredible, perfect and just all around so masterful in so many different ways. I knew from the moment I heard about it that I would love it. And it turns out I was right, but even more than I had expected.

Now, I think it’s time for a rewatch.

#miss scarlet and the duke #eliza scarlet #william wellington #i love this damn show #tv series review

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disembodiedapparition · 3 years

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Breaking The Pro-Life Argument Down:

I think it’s hilarious how right wing “facts don’t care about your feelings” activists are almost always pro-life. The argument against abortion as an accessible form of birth control is 100% an emotional appeal, and here’s why:

1. “You have no right to kill your fetus. It’s not your body, the baby is an individual and has the right to life.”:

Of course, all embryos are human individuals, separate from their mothers. They have their own unique DNA composition, and are definitely alive. But do they deserve the right to life, which would make abortion equivalent to murder?

Pro-lifers are largely okay with IVF, an industry that throws away and destroys millions of fertilized embryos every day. In-vitro fertilization is an uncertain science, so couples are advised to fertilize multiple eggs in the labs in case the first few don’t work out. If a couple succeeds and have extra embryos left, they have the option to continue paying to store them in the lab, donate them to medical research, or destroy them.

Anti-abortion bills always have exceptions for IVF clinics. Republican, pro-life lawmakers have literally had children via IVF. If a pro-lifer ever tells you that life begins at conception and that every embryo has the right to life, know that it’s bullshit. They don’t care about an industry that kills more embryos in a day than Planned Parenthood does in a year.

2. There are two possible responses to this.

A) “Fine, let’s ban IVF.” Out of all the conservative groups in America, only one major group explicitly stands against IVF – the Catholic Church. The same organization that condemns sex before marriage, homosexuality, divorce, masturbation/porn, the use of condoms, getting drunk or high, and tattoos. At this point, I’m assuming you understand that the Church’s ideas of morality are regressive, illogical, primitive, and… make life extremely boring. IVF is a wonderful science that brings children to parents who want them all over the world and is in no way a bad thing.

B) “Fine. Maybe not at conception, but at [x] months, it’s a baby.” This is the point where most conservatives start arguing about the point up till you should be allowed to have an abortion. Two weeks? Six weeks? Three months? Unfortunately, there is no scientific way to determine when an embryo is no longer just a clump of cells and now a human being with rights.

Since pro-lifers are okay with IVF, we can assume they don’t believe in the right to life at conception. How about the heartbeat theory? At six weeks, the fetus develops a heartbeat, and proponents argue that it is the point at which the fetus is no longer simply a fetus, but a human being. However, having a heartbeat doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right to life.

Legally, if you are brain dead, you’re… dead. You no longer have the right to life, which is why organ donation is possible. All this while having a heartbeat, so that’s clearly not a viable hallmark of an individual that inherently has the right to life. So while it’s true that at six weeks a baby develops (what is flimsily termed as) a heartbeat, that doesn’t somehow give it rights to life that it did not have before. So far, I haven’t come across any other sensible theories as to “when” an embryo deserves the right to life. It’s a lousy concept to begin with, as blurry as the legal definition of adulthood – not all 18+ year olds are mature and nothing fundamentally changes in a person once the clock strikes midnight. Similarly, embryo development is a process. There’s really no point at which you can logically claim it’s transformed into a human being with rights.

3. Evidently, there are two extremes — life begins at conception, vs life doesn’t begin until birth.

There’s no “scientific backing” for a point in between, but you’ll never find a pro-choice advocate arguing in favor of the latter, because it’s called an extreme for a reason. The best way to deal with the abortion issue at this point is to leave the science and technicalities alone, and think about the people who are actually getting abortions.

4. “Use protection and you won’t get pregnant”:

Protection is never 100% reliable. Plus: if two people are irresponsible enough to have unprotected sex, what makes you think they’re responsible enough to have and raise children? The number of children growing up with unqualified, immature, abusive, or neglectful parents automatically disproves the theory that parenthood beings about a sense of personal responsibility. Being raised by bad parents inflicts often irreparable damage on children. Treating babies as some sort of “divine punishment” for irresponsible sex, instead of human beings who deserve a stable upbringing, is harmful on both an individual and collective scale. The data on irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive childhoods/single parent childhoods speaks for itself. In the quest to punish irresponsible parents, most of the damage is inflicted on their children, which in turn impacts the generation that will lead us forward into the future. It is in our best interests to raise as many mature, healthy, and productive young adults as possible, and while not every child born into these circumstances live lives of mental health/psychological/intimacy issues and criminal behavior, a large majority do. Growing up with bad parents is simply not ideal for an impressionable child’s wellbeing. Quality of life > quantity of life.

5. “Don’t have sex if you don’t want to have children.”:

Unhelpful, unrealistic, and telling of no real desire to solve the problem at hand. People will have sex. What are we going to do to make sure the sex doesn’t lead to unplanned pregnancies?

6. “Okay but what about xyz who had an abortion and has regretted it ever since?”:

Abortion is a result of unplanned and unfortunate circumstances. Whether it’s because the doctor tells you your baby will be stillborn or born with a fatal illness, or if you were raped, or if you had sex with your boyfriend during your first year of college and found yourself pregnant: these are bad situations, and no matter what you do, there’s always a chance you’ll look back and wish you’d done things differently. Kept the baby? Well, maybe you’ll find that the baby brought newfound purpose to your life. But maybe the baby added an additional financial strain to your life and forced you to quit your job, leaving you destitute and homeless with no way to feed it. Alternatively, if you got an abortion, maybe you end up being able to finish college and fulfil all your goals… or maybe you regret that decision for the rest of your life. There’s no way to guarantee that you’re making the right decision, but being informed about your options, and having options available, makes it more likely that you do. That’s why we are advocating for informed choice. Whether they eventually choose to keep the baby or have an abortion, give women the time and resources to truly evaluate their options and do what’s best for them in their own circumstances.

7. “Why kill the baby? Put it up for adoption.”:

The adoption system is known for being isolating, exploitative, and unhealthy for children growing up in it. Being adopted into a great family can create healthy, happy young adults. But far too many kids don’t get that opportunity, and pay the price for it. In 2019, 122,216 children in the US adoption system were waiting to be adopted. Young people who age-out of the foster care system without being adopted are over-represented in rates of incarceration, suicide and substance abuse.

Granted, for some kids it’s a better alternative to the families they would have grew up in, but again: it’s an unideal situation. An unideal situation that can very easily be avoided with abortion. Why would a person choose 9 months of labor, plus all the emotional labor of having to give your child away to a system that more likely than not will eat them alive, knowing they will grow up asking themselves why they weren’t good enough for their birth parents, when the person could… simply not have that baby and not invite all that pain?

To summarize:

It is definitively not in anyone’s best interests to force unwilling and unprepared parents to have an unwanted child. It’s also not a good idea to get too deep into the technicalities of when an embryo is a fetus or when you’re allowed or not allowed to abort it. We need to focus on the women who are actually getting abortions. Having a baby is a huge life adjustment. Keep it, and you’re taking on an 18-year responsibility. You are responsible for another person’s wellbeing, and your life will never be the same.

In three months (about 12 weeks), a potential mother can: find out that they’re pregnant (missing periods is extremely common. A lot of women only find out they’re pregnant at two months, or 8 weeks), think about their financial, professional, social, romantic, or whatever situation and figure out what would be the best course of action, and then actually get the abortion if she chooses to. 12 weeks is enough, 12 weeks is reasonable, 12 weeks is humane. Nobody wants third-trimester abortions unless there are serious, life threatening complications.

The pro-life argument is reduced down to: well, abortion is bad! That’s a little innocent baby. It didn’t hurt anyone. Well, we agree: abortion is bad. It’s not a good thing, it’s not something people want to have to do. Nobody looks forward to giving or receiving an abortion, it’s physically painful and often heart-breaking. But is it as bad as forcing a woman to go through nine months of excruciating, potentially life-threatening labor for a child she doesn’t even want to have? Is it as bad as enforcing serious health, financial, emotional, social, and professional risks on a woman who knows she is in no way ready to give a baby the life it deserves? Is it worse than having to wake up every day with a heavy pit in your stomach because you can’t feed your little girl since you had to drop out of high school to take care of her? Worse than having to give your baby away to an adoption center, where they’re likely to join the hundreds of thousands of unadopted children? There are evils, and then there are greater evils. Abortion may not be ideal, but for some people, it’s the best option out there. When broken down, the pro-life argument is nothing but sad, provocative videos & descriptions of surgical abortions intended to pull at your heartstrings. But they’re sometimes the best option for the mother and her unborn baby. Nobody is pro-abortion — we’re pro-choice.

#prolife #pro choice #pro life #abortion #reproductive rights #opinion #analysis #adoption #parenting #politics #republicans #liberal #conservatives

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autoplaysdigimon · 4 years

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Top Five Villains

HERE WE GO, THE FUN LIST.

#5 Gatomon

Controversial, maybe, to have her be on the Villains list as well, but she was a villainous character for a while.

I’m a real sucker for a good redemption storyline; failing that, at least a turncoat character. While Gatomon didn’t really commit any real atrocities onscreen to atone for later in the story, she still proved a fun villain while she was one. She was no nonsense, efficient, knew exactly what she was doing... if she’d stayed on Myotismon’s side, she could have been a real force to be reckoned with. One of the things that I’d have really liked to have seen explored more in this series was Gatomon’s time with Myotismon, and how much she’s changed since then.

Plus there’s something so weirdly entertaining about a group of creepy, ominous, obviously evil monsters and then a small white kitty cat who’s just as dangerous as them.

#4 Myotismon

This guy.

When this guy came onto the scene, the entire show changed. Devimon’s arc was fun, if a little generic; Etemon’s was very similar with a different villain, and then Demidevimon’s arc came along and we got a fun, goofy villain who can’t Evil properly. Even so, we knew he was following orders from a higher power, and Myotismon’s eventual appearance changed the dynamic from “Team Rocket Fools Children Repeatedly” to “oh shit an actual vampire is going to kill us”. And then the whole Eighth Digidestined thing happened... Plus, that #aesthetic, amirite?

To tie into Gatomon’s thing up there, the Eighth Digidestined arc was one of the best of the season, if not the best. Taking the fight to the Real World made it more, well, real. It was fun as hell watching the parents interact with the Digimon, both good and bad, and finding out exactly what the kids had been up to lately. The kids watching their families getting dragged into the fight was TOP. NOTCH. Plus Myotismon actually knew what he was doing as a villain so.

He knew to go after the one kid without protection. He knew how to cut everything off effectively. He did take a shot at some of the kids when they were on their own, instead of thinking only of killing Kari. Death didn’t stop him the first time. Even when he pulled the classic villain “You Have Outlived Your Use” thing and killed his own minions, it was on Digimon who had already turned against him, like Wizardmon, Pumpkinmon, Gotsumon and (arguably) Darktyrannomon.

(No, wait, they’re still alive because he sent them to his Dungeon, isn’t that RIGHT DUB TEAM.)

(Even though pieces of them were left behind and dissolved on their own.)

(No, I’m still not over that.)

#3 Ogremon

Another redeemed villain! I just like them, okay

Maybe it’s just me, but just the act of Ogremon turning good at the end made me like him. He was a little bit generic in the Devimon arc, though at least he had the feud with Leomon to make him interesting. (Any logical reason to that, by the way? Was it just that we had these two Digimon who could fill in the character roles we’d set out for them? Nothing mythological about lions and ogres hating each other or anything? No? Okay then.)

All Ogremon really did in that first arc was serve as the henchman. He made some... interesting choices, and then he was absorbed into Devimon for power. And then he came out of the back of Devimon’s knee. Sure. When Devimon was defeated, he ran screaming off into the distance, shaking his fist and yelling “NEXT TIME, GADGET. NEXT TIIIIME.” The very act of bringing him back when he wasn’t employed by the Big Bad of the moment made him an interesting character, who had to atone for what he did. I’m a sucker for redemption, like I said, and the best part of it is watching them go soft.

Plus, how great is it to have multiple conflicting alliances within a group? When Leomon returned, even though Ogremon was firmly on the Digidestined side now, he had absolutely no problems with trying to immediately murder Leomon. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? They’re rivals, it’s just natural! He’s also kind of a shithead in general, even still.

Also, Ogremon is incredibly hard to draw. I’d just like to bring that up.

Okay, next!

#2 Etemon

HE’S A MONKEY WHO TALKS LIKE ELVIS, NEXT QUESTION.

But for real, Etemon is such a fucking great villain. Great character all around, I’d love a version where he was an ally or something, but how else would we get the trademark Elvis-laugh-turns-into-villainous-laugh thing that Etemon has going?! Come on, that’s great.

Devimon’s villainous style was one of corruption; he wasn’t all that powerful on his own, but by using the Black Gears he could build his own damn forces and control small areas. He only managed to control a handful of Digimon in the end. He was also taken out by a single Digimon in a single one-on-one, though you could argue that the others had weakened him by that point, they hadn’t really.

Etemon’s style was drastically different - he was far more comical, but far more dangerous. His introduction scene involved him panicking over the Digidestined already being in the area. He sang a lot, he cracked jokes, he threw childish tantrums, and again, he was a monkey who sounded like Elvis. There is nothing not awesome about this guy. And yes, he was deadlier - his main attack can undo Digivolutions and leave the Digimon vulnerable as hell. He ended up taking a couple of episodes to take out, only losing because another villain tried to sabotage him in the end.

And coming back partway through the Dark Masters arc as Metaletemon?! FUCK YEAH. Every pun he made, I laughed at and I don’t apologise for that. Even starting a series-wide tradition, he was stylish until the end.

Also he called Ikkakumon a goat that one time.

#1 Demidevimon

T H E B A S T A R D O R B

Nobody is surprised that he’s my #1, right? It was a close call between him and Etemon, but ultimately I just like Demidevimon’s arc more. We have Devimon and Etemon, as I discussed above. After that wave of villains who are dangerous because they’re powerful, we have one who is dangerous because he’s just a little bastard.

Demidevimon wasn’t strong. Most villains had their huge beatdown happen in the form of a Digimon Digivolving to Champion, Ultimate or Mega for the first time, Demidevimon had his when Patamon reached Rookie level again. In his debut episode. He was never a threat physically once the kids realised that he was not to be trusted. His arc came right after two arcs of the kids being stranded in this strange world together, only briefly separated - and then everyone was torn apart, and he could manipulate them individually.

I’ve argued in the past that Demidevimon was a more effective manipulator than even Puppetmon, one of the Dark Masters, and I stand by it. Puppetmon managed to physically manipulate them with the dolls, sure, and he had Cherrymon convince Matt to attack Tai. But, uh, he didn’t exactly have to twist his arm very hard to get that to happen, and that was Cherrymon’s doing anyway. Plus you could argue that physically manipulating someone isn’t much of a social power as it is more a matter of strength. (also Puppetmon is more of a “play with them like toys” type, but still, being a literal puppetmaster, you’d think that manipulation was more of his domain than a BAT.) Demidevimon, however, managed to:

convince TK that Matt didn’t want him as a brother anymore and to ditch Tokomon

nearly have TK, Tai and Agumon eat poisonous mind-wiping mushrooms

convince Digitamamon to keep Joe and Matt in the restaurant, simultaneously threatening Joe to help keep Matt there and sabotaged them constantly to manipulate them all further

trick Izzy and Tentomon into Vademon’s trap

tell the Gekomon and Otamamon about Mimi’s singing voice, somehow knowing that they’d end up hindering her progress somehow(???)

And, even after knowing that he’s an evil manipulating Digimon, he managed to convince Sora that she’d never manage to activate her crest, causing her to believe it in a self-fulfilling prophecy, even as she worked to sabotage his efforts otherwise.

I mean, apart from all that, I just like Demidevimon as a Digimon. He’s a tiny flying motherfucker and that’s great! He had some of my favourite lines, even his death was kind of tragically funny, and I have a clear bias when it comes to his voice acting, because I just like Derek Stephen Prince. He does it well! I don’t know how Demidevimon closes his eyes like that, though, those appear to be his pupils closing. I don’t even know.

Really, I just find great nostalgia in comical villains. They were all the rage back in the day, especially in children’s media. They’re still around sometimes - Doctor Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, the Rubies from Steven Universe, the Ice King from Adventure Time, even Team Rocket from Pokemon are thriving still. Good, menacing villains are great and all, but where’s the fun?

Honourable Mentions

Scorpiomon, who probably benefited the most from the dub’s style - his constant cried of “hey, stop it, come baaaack” while chasing Joe and Mimi are more remnicient of a kid trying to get his toy back from the bully who just took it away from him than someone trying to murder children, and that’s just fucking hilarious.

Mimi, when she was briefly an antagonist in that one episode. Just as I really like Heel-Face turns, I really like Face-Heel turns, even temporarily, and even as petty as this whole thing was. It was the perfect trap for her, who just craved the comfort of home, and who could be easily confinced to go for more. And it was the perfect trap because she was the jailor and the jailed at the same time, trapped as long as her own selfishness would allow. It was one of my favourite episodes.

Datamon, who had his own agenda and didn’t care that he was stepping on Etemon’s toes to get what he wanted. Just like Leomon and Ogremon had conflicting alliances on the protagonist’s side, Datamon and Etemon were opposing forces on the antagonist’s side, and multiple villains fighting each other are always fun to see.

Actually, Etemon later fought Puppetmon as Metaletemon, didn’t he? Wow, dude just doesn’t get along with other villains.

Gizamon. Give them more lines, you cowards.

The Dark Masters, as a whole. Just as Myotismon changed the entire tone of the show, these guys took the entire first half of the show and murdered every safe thing about it. They immediately started playing with the Digidestined, fully intending to off them all right then and there as a team. They were competent, for the most part - only failing when they were forced to split up, and their dirty tricks could be dismantled one by one. I’ve never seen a more co-operative group of antagonists, who never tried to dethrone each other and take everything for themselves.

And okay, sure, Kokatorimon. Purely for this.

Dishonourable Mention

Apocalymon.

Look, dude, I’m sorry, you’re cool and everything, but where the fuck did you come from? We killed Piedmon, it’s over, no, wait, here’s one last guy, no wait he’s dead, nevermind. What?

The fact that Apocalymon didn’t get any fanfare before being dropped on the Digidestined without warning made him seem like an afterthought, like the writers forgot their own endgame until they got there. Even if there had been a mention of the effect that caused his existence before he showed up - a “hey, did you know that not every Digimon survives Digivolution? Their data just gets deleted or something,” really would have helped, but even then.

Apocalymon’s existence in the show really highlights how disjointed the series as a whole is - Devimon has no relation to Etemon, who has no relation to Myotismon, who has no relation to the Dark Masters, who have no relation to Apocalymon. The kids face a constant load of “okay, so we beat this guy and we can go home, right? ...no, maybe this guy??” where every new villain is dropped on the like a hot potato, making their first appearance in less time after their existence is revealed in less time than it takes to heat up said hot potato. Myotismon is the only one who gets any decent buildup before his first appearance before the children, and he’s often said to be the best villain of the show, so see how that works?

Digimon Adventure is the story of a bunch of kids who were brought to the Digital World to take care of one guy, and hey, while you’re here, we’ve also got some sort of demon on this island causing trouble, and there’s this monkey threatening us, and also a vampire, and then these four have joined together... It was a fun adventure, and I love that it could be part of my childhood and my life, but wow it really needed a more cohesive throughline for the story.

I hate to leave this post on a negative note, because it was full of mostly nice things, so here’s another picture of the bastard orb.

Hahahaha, oh you silly little man.

#digimon #digimon anime #digimon adventure #auto plays digimon #auto watches digimon adventure #character analysis

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addictivegerard · 3 years

Text

why the prolife argument makes no sense

1. “You have no right to kill your fetus. It’s not your body, the baby is an individual and has the right to life.”:

2. There are two possible responses to this.

Legally, if you are brain dead, you’re… dead. You no longer have the right to life, which is why organ donation is possible. All this while having a heartbeat, so that’s clearly not a viable hallmark of an individual that inherently has the right to life. So while it's true that at six weeks a baby develops (what is flimsily termed as) a heartbeat, that doesn't somehow give it rights to life that it did not have before. So far, I haven’t come across any other sensible theories as to “when” an embryo deserves the right to life. It’s a lousy concept to begin with, as blurry as the legal definition of adulthood – not all 18+ year olds are mature and nothing fundamentally changes in a person once the clock strikes midnight. Similarly, embryo development is a process. There’s really no point at which you can logically claim it’s transformed into a human being with rights.

3. Evidently, there are two extremes — life begins at conception, vs life doesn’t begin until birth.

4. “Use protection and you won’t get pregnant”:

Protection is never 100% reliable. Plus: if two people are irresponsible enough to have unprotected sex, what makes you think they’re responsible enough to have and raise children? The number of children growing up with unqualified, immature, abusive, or neglectful parents automatically disproves the theory that parenthood brings about a sense of personal responsibility. Being raised by bad parents inflicts often irreparable damage on children. Treating babies as some sort of “divine punishment” for irresponsible sex, instead of human beings who deserve a stable upbringing, is harmful on both an individual and collective scale. The data on irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive childhoods/single parent childhoods speaks for itself. In the quest to punish irresponsible parents, most of the damage is inflicted on their children, which in turn impacts the generation that will lead us forward into the future. It is in our best interests to raise as many mature, healthy, and productive young adults as possible, and while not every child born into these circumstances live lives of mental health/psychological/intimacy issues and criminal behavior, a large majority do. Growing up with bad parents is simply not ideal for an impressionable child’s wellbeing. Quality of life > quantity of life.

5. “Don’t have sex if you don’t want to have children.”:

Unhelpful, unrealistic, and telling of no real desire to solve the problem at hand. Telling people not to have sex unless they deliberately intend to have children is like telling people not to smoke, drink too much, or eat unhealthily. People will have sex. What are we going to do to make sure the sex doesn’t lead to unplanned pregnancies?

6. “Okay but what about xyz who had an abortion and has regretted it ever since?”:

Abortion is a result of unplanned and unfortunate circumstances. Whether it’s because the doctor tells you your baby will be stillborn or born with a fatal illness, or if you were raped, or if you had sex with your boyfriend during your first year of college and found yourself pregnant: these are bad situations, and no matter what you do, there’s always a chance you’ll look back and wish you’d done things differently. Kept the baby? Well, maybe you’ll find that the baby brought newfound purpose to your life. But maybe the baby added an additional financial strain to your life and forced you to quit your job, leaving you destitute and homeless with no way to feed it. Alternatively, if you got an abortion, maybe you end up being able to finish college and fulfil all your goals... or maybe you regret that decision for the rest of your life. There’s no way to guarantee that you’re making the right decision, but being informed about your options, and having options available, makes it more likely that you do. That’s why we are advocating for informed choice. Whether they eventually choose to keep the baby or have an abortion, give women the time and resources to truly evaluate their options and do what’s best for them in their own circumstances.

7. “Why kill the baby? Put it up for adoption.”:

8. “It doesn’t matter, no one has the right to take another life.”:

Here’s another way of looking at the abortion question: the fetus is in a position where its existence impinges on its mother’s bodily integrity, and it stays in that position until the point of viability (at which it could plausibly survive outside the mother’s body) at about 24 weeks. One person’s bodily integrity will always override another person’s right to life; this is a fundamental truth. Otherwise, we would have mandatory kidney and liver donations. People all over the world are dying due to a lack of kidneys or other organs - why should we be allowed to keep both of ours when one of them could save someone’s life?

Let’s say I caused a car accident that resulted in someone needing a kidney donation. It’s my fault they’re in that position, and I was negligent - should I be legally obligated to give mine up?

If the idea of being forced to donate one of your kidneys sounds violating, you’re closer to understanding why forcing someone to have a baby is such a barbaric thing to do. Even if the risk is small - kidney donations have a death rate of about 0.03% while childbirth is at 0.02% in the US - it’s still wrong to force something so invasive and risky onto someone against their will. Additionally, there are many complications that can arise from pregnancy short of death, just like there can be consequences to living your life with only one kidney down the line.

To summarize:

The pro-life argument is reduced down to: well, abortion is bad! That's a little innocent baby. It didn't hurt anyone. Well, we agree: abortion is bad. It’s not a good thing, it’s not something people want to have to do. Nobody looks forward to giving or receiving an abortion, it’s physically painful and often heart-breaking. But is it as bad as forcing a woman to go through hours of excruciating, potentially life-threatening labor for a child she doesn't even want to have? Is it as bad as enforcing serious health, financial, emotional, social, and professional risks on a woman who knows she is in no way ready to give a baby the life it deserves? Is it worse than having to drop out of school with no way to feed your child? Worse than having to give your baby away to an adoption center, where they’re likely to join the hundreds of thousands of unadopted children? There are evils, and then there are greater evils. Abortion may not be ideal, but for some people, it's the best option out there. When broken down, the pro-life argument is nothing but sad, provocative videos & descriptions of surgical abortions intended to pull at your heartstrings. But they’re sometimes the best option for the mother and her unborn baby. Nobody is pro-abortion — we’re pro-choice.

#abortion #prolife #prochoice #reproductive rights #reproductive health #adoption #sex ed #okay phew #had to get this out of my system

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authenticaussie · 5 years

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What do you think the difference would be in a TMNT/OP fic with different collections of turtles?

oooooooo okay so I should be getting ready for class tomorrow but you have 100% captured me I’m so invested in this

mainly I know 2003, 2012, and Rise - well, at least, they’re my favourites and have the most distinct characterisation tbh bc they’re long-running series - SO I’ll do those guys :DD

THIS GOT LONG (because of course it did, I’ve never made a short post in my LIFE) SO FIRST:

the main difference in fic would be tone!!!!!!!! The turtles are all really affected by the shows they come from so there’d be big differences in how they react to the new situation. Combining OP and 2018, they’re both such loud and bright shows that writing them sad would be kinda….disatisfactory to a reader. 2012 is the one where you could get kinda dark, and go down the genetic experiment and “oh wow these kids need a therapist” and Luffy being >:T wtf why are your lives so Fucked Up route, and 2003 would be hilariously awkward because they’re technically all in the same age range but they act so different wheezes

Second!!! Fun character analysis and Shenanigans under the readmore.

2003

Probably the most responsible on this list, they’re like??? tbh, barely teenagers?? Or at the very least, 18 or 19, and they can be air-heads but 2003 goes feet-first into the whole plot and character and Everything Happens. I mean, literally in season one there’s this whole subplot about how you define monsters and genetic testing and Wild shit like that so they feel Way more adult than the Strawhats get at times. Even though One Piece covers some dark topics it….the characters - the strawhats, in particular, is what I mean - don’t feel like adults the same way the 2003 turtles do. 2003 also doesn’t feel as dark as 2012 gets sometimes, but I feel 2012 is also because they seem really young, and in 2003 at least they get to process their trauma. 2012…..kinda beats them up a lot akhsdg pft.

Sticking them with the Strawhats would be !! Honestly really funny? I feel Mikey would get along with them really well - in every iteration he’s very good at going with the flow, and hey, pirates? and they’re nice? and cool powers? - he’d have the time of his life. Donnie would try and figure out What Was Going On (as the resident “please fix this in case it’s dangerous” guy, that’s probably what his role would Often be) but I can see him being easily distracted by Franky and the whole devil fruits thing. GOD him and Franky is a thought and a half omfg. The level of tech in One Piece is so different when compared to the modern world, and it operates on rules but like, rules that are just ever so slightly different.

Raph would be in debt Immediately. Mainly bc Nami’s manipulative like that but also because he’s just………..Like That. He’d be rude and insulting and if the strawhats were helping them out he’d be the team’s voice of reason. Or, distrust, I suppose. The one who hangs back, who’s prickly, who’s the last to offer his trust because his family needs him to be uncompromised, just in case. I think he and Zoro would clash for a bit, not like, in words but just in gestures, until the crew + turtles had been through their adventures, and gotten to the end of Whatever fic was being written, and then they’d be friends. Not best buds but like, healthy respect for each other.

Leo……….absolutely does Not understand why Luffy is leader. It’s like making Mikey the boss; it doesn’t make sense to him, because Luffy is too trusting and he’s strong but strength doesn’t make a good leader, and in 2003 Leo’s kind of a pushover so he’d stay on the sidelines and watch with Raph. But, as everyone knows, Luffy’s magnetism is Pretty Hard To Deny, and the crew’s respect for him does a lot to show to Leo that he may be missing something but that he doesn’t have to understand.

2012

I always……..feel so bad for TMNT2012 //weeps They’re just kids and they get put through so much like wow I’m only at season two but from spoilers there’s like?? their dad keeps DYING and being bought back to life???/ THAT’S GOTTA FUCK YOU UP!!! Plus all of them have all these different insecurities and they’re kinda mean to each other (Raph….has only given a proper apology for being a dick once so far, and I’m like. mid-way through season two. I’m sorry if this makes me mikey kin @@zali but pLEASE I cannot stand this LET THEM BE NICE TO EACH OTHER ;A; Like they’re still obviously a family but gosh they’re– so prickly)

Honestly depending on how the Strawhats meet them, like holy shit :o they might be Enemies. In 2003 I feel like they’ve been through enough to try and de-escalate a situation first, but 2012 are so Paranoid that unless they had April with them they’d be like WELP this is another mind-control alternate dimension thing, time to ninja vanish. And sure, after they ended up on whatever quest they needed to go on, Luffy would be fascinated by them (2012 definitely pushes the limits of what you can Actually do, in terms of hiding and shit, but I think that makes it fun !!) but I feel the turtles would be pretty paranoid at first. Mikey & Donnie would be the first two to be dragged out of their shells (snickers) because Donnie would be super curious (and also…probably kinda aggravated and confused) about how the one piece world rules work, and Mikey because…friends!! They already have a reindeer mutant on the crew, they’re obviously cool with mutants :D

akhsdg okay I mention that 2003 would hang back and assess Luffy’s leadership still but like 2012 would be such a dick. He never seems to learn the lesson that people have different strengths and different ways of doing things >:T and watching Luffy lead would drive him crazy. I bet he’d try and make plans and be all structured and in control and Luffy would wreck things and/or the strawhats would be like “lol no lmao, you’re not the captain”. Even if he did have a good plan, like….the Strawhats rarely follow plans if Luffy says they’re doing something different snickers. I feel a major part of this could just a nice subplot line of Leo learning to Chill and also like………give the 2012 a fun adventure I’m begging you sobs. Do a Long Long Island filler arc or smth, where it’s dumb and silly and barely dangerous because they’re all competent af.

Also: Mikey constantly trying to find a devil fruit because “dudes, it’s probably not gonna apply when we go back home and think about how SICK superpowers would be!!!!!!!!”

He does not get one, to his disappointment.

2018

These guys are IDIOTS and would fit in with Luffy’s brand of chaos p e r f e c t l y

Okay so yeeeeah I’m probably biased because I think Rise may be my favourite (the family dynamics!! the character designs!! the animation!!! the stupid jokes!!! the sudden flashes of deeper plot!!!!!!!!) BUT. No-one can argue with me that Rise turtles are chaotic as fuck and they’d have the time of their LIVES with Luffy’s crew. Raph would fall in love with Chopper (Chopper would be terrified of him, continuing the terribly sad trend of Raph being Bad With Animals), Donnie would go wild glitter-eyed over the devil fruits and technology and immediately try and do a million mad scientist experiments (and look. SMILES are fucked up. But this boii would totally try and make one/figure out how they worked). He’s….a mad genius and maybe a little bit evil.

Leo would either drive Sanji crazy or be INSTANTLY adopted and taught how to be “cool”, but I can also see Sanji and Zoro lowkey fighting over him SNICKERS. Because Leo has a sword so he’s obviously Zoro’s, but he’s suave and likes fashion so he MUST be Sanji’s, and it’s not an argument persay, until Leo says he thinks both of them are cool and then it’s a battle to the death.

(The end of leo’s sentence was “not as cool as me tho ;P” only they didn’t notice that bit.)

April would absolutely fall in love with Robin. And also Nami?? But I feel mainly Robin like Oh Man Robin is so cool and both of them are hypercompetent??? April’s like teach me how to be a badass assassin and Robin smiles and laughs and absolutely does.

Mikey’s so loud that he almost terrifies Usopp, and terrifying Usopp is kinda a no-no in Luffy’s book, but he likes these guys and Mikey’s just excited to have an artist friend and so both of them bounce around the ship like ping pong balls.

There is………yeah. A lot of paint covering the Sunny after they’re through. I can’t decide if Franky would cry or laugh but I know one (1) single drop of paint got on Nami’s tangerines and she Banished them. Rise turtles probably have a really good time and the crew figures out they’re basically children really quick and make sure nothing bad happens to them. Leo promises to try and get better at portal-making so they can come visit New York sometime, and everyone is like “what the fuck is new york??” at the same time as Donnie says HEY WAIT, I THINK WE’RE ON AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION and they get teleported home :DD

THANKS FOR LETTING ME SPILL ALL MY TURTLE FEELINGS EVERYWHERE

#tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt 2003 #tmnt 2012 #one piece #missjenca #ask aussie #bip bop nari drops #wow I love combining my special interest s aljshdg //BLUSHES #so anyway HERE'S MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS OF POTENTIAL FIC THEMES lajkhsdf sweats pft #I'm..........so weak pft

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zalrb · 6 years

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what's your opinion on the idea that every single relationship on tvd is toxic because it's a vampire show so calling delena 'toxic' isn't really an insult

That it’s a half-baked argument especially since SE is not toxic. I’ve spoken about this many times.

1. What does the fact that TVD is a vampire show (and barely one at that if we’re being honest) have to do with toxic relationships the way that the show portrays them?

Stelena and Forwood are the only couples in which their relationship roadblocks are directly affected by the people in the relationships being supernatural.

Tyler is a werewolf and Caroline is a vampire then Tyler becomes Sired and it causes issues

Stefan being a vampire is intrinsically related to the issues that Stelena face and overcome

But what does Damon being a vampire have to do with the fact that he murdered Jeremy because he was sad she rejected him?

What does Damon being a vampire have to do with the fact that he murdered Aaron because he was sad she thought he wasn’t redeemable? The “monster” aspect has nothing to do with Damon being a vampire period, it has to do with the fact that he’s a sexual predator, rapist, murderer who doesn’t try to do better.

What does Damon being a vampire have to do with kidnapping Jeremy to hurt Elena?

What does Damon being a vampire have to do with him manhandling her all the time and lying to her all the time?

What does Damon being a vampire have to do with him manipulating Elena into partaking in a sexual act that she doesn’t fully understand?

The sexual act itself is vampiric but him being purposefully vague about what it means has nothing to do with vampirism, that’s Damon being a predator

What does Klaus being a hybrid have to do with the fact that he stabbed Caroline with a lamp because she hurt his feelings?

None of this has anything to do with being supernatural, this has to do with male fragility.

The fact that it’s a vampire show is irrelevant when the motivations behind the actions have nothing to do with the fact that they’re vampires.

2. There is no reciprocity.

I’ve spoken about this again and again, if you want to do a dark, consuming, toxic relationship that is entertaining and compelling then reciprocity has to be a factor, it has to be a two-way street.

This example combines both points but in True Blood it is established and re-established and then explored and portrayed that these characters are not human, they do not have human values and it’s shown in more than dialogue. They don’t act like humans, they don’t think like humans, they don’t move like humans or react to things like humans, they have their own laws with their own government

They even cry blood

Nothing about them is human so we don’t apply human rules to themand that causes tensions

and the argument leads to Jessica about to bite him so Jason shoots her in the head

Do you know why this works and why TVD doesn’t? Because it’s proportionate.They’re both being violent here. Jessica is about to bite him so Jason shoots her because it’s proving a point she’s not really going to die because she’s undead and he wasn’t going to die because she wasn’t trying to kill him, they were arguing the way a human and a vampire would.

In TVD, Damon kills Jeremy and Elena … what? You lost me forever? That’s it? Damon kills Aaron, Elena sleeps with him and then they break up? Klaus bites and stabs Caroline, watches her bleed out in front of him before helping her and Caroline …? Same thing with when he apparently falls for her, he lowkey makes her beg for her life on her deathbed and she …? There’s the tit but where’s the tat? It can even be emotional torture.

An example I used before was about Cesare and Lucrezia.

They had sex obviously it’s taboo because duh, incest, but they’re in love and because of that, Lucrezia does not allow her newly-wed husband to sleep with her so her husband’s uncle is like no we need to see the proceedings to ensure that the marriage is consummated (for political purposes) so I’ll watch and someone from your family can watch too.

Cesare tells Lucrezia she has to have sex on display

and she gets her “revenge” by demanding that Cesare has to be the family representative to watch her have sex.

so he’s fucked up about it

but TVD doesn’t have a version of this.

Another example I used was Cookie and Lucious from Empire. They are the epitome of a toxic relationship, they communicate their love for each other through destruction, through how much rage they can inspire in the other

Again, TVD does not do this. The most we get is this

Elena, he kidnapped your brother and gave the go-ahead to suffocate him and he killed Aaron, the problem I had with this scene isn’t even that it led to sex, it’s that they didn’t have the angry, dirty argument that can go from rage to passion because it’s so intense and emotions are running high and everything just bleeds together because it’s toxic.

Admittedly, Klaroline could’ve gone the Cookie and Lucious route except the show was just inherently dishonest about what KC was and could be.

Everyone knows I hate Olitz and I think their narrative got old really quickly and I don’t think they have a good story and they’re exhausting and while I admit to their chemistry I find it uncomfortable but I will still give them their chemistry and their portrayal of a back-and-forth, consuming relationship with high emotion that can lead to passion

There is a scene where they’re literally getting dressed right after they’ve had sex and they’re arguing about Jake, Damon and Elena don’t do this.

The dynamic in TVD that does the reciprocity is Bonkai because they were adversaries. Kai originally wants to work with Bonnie

but Bonnie makes it clear that she’ll be his obstacle

so he siphons her magic to establish power dynamics

so Bonnie kills him

so he shoots her with an arrow

so she sends her magic away

and so on and so forth. This is what opponents do and this is what reciprocity in the context of a dysfunctional relationship looks like. Plus Kai has a thing for Bonnie (pre-merge and post-merge)

And what I find hilarious is when dysfunctional reciprocity is actually portrayed on the show, it gets shit on but when a relationship with no reciprocity is portrayed, the fandom likes to say it’s fine to have toxic relationships.

3. Let’s say that TVD did do reciprocity and did actually link the supernatural to toxic relationships that doesn’t mean that consequences just go out the window. You don’t just portray toxic relationships without any arcs or breakages otherwise what’s the point? And TVD doesn’t do this.

So it’s a stupid argument.

#stelena #forwood #bonkai #the vampire diaries #dobsley #stefan salvatore #elena gilbert #caroline forbes #tyler lockwood #kai parker #bonnie bennett #grahamwood

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years

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If there’s a reason why we’re able to recall the story of Snow White from memory, and why said princess is usually depicted with short hair, a cute bow and surrounded by woodland fauna, look no further than Disney. Their take on the Grimms’ fairy tale is the prime example of pop cultural osmosis. Even if you’ve never watched Disney’s Snow White, it’s easy to recognize when a piece of work is borrowing from it or spoofing it. And I can definitely see why – not only is it going eighty-plus years strong, but its influence on nearly every Disney feature to come after it is a profound one.

The real story of Disney’s Snow White begins in the early 1910’s when a young Walt Disney saw a silent film version of the Grimms’ fairytale starring Marguerite Clark. The movie stuck with him well into adulthood. One night, well after he had established himself as an animation giant the world over, Walt gathered his entire staff of animators and storymen and re-enacted the tale for them in a mesmerizing one-man show. They were enraptured, but what he told them next struck them dumb – they were going to take what he performed and turn it into a full-length film.

In Tony Goldmark’s epic(ally hilarious) retrospective of Epcot, he performs a quick sketch he summed up as “Walt Disney’s entire career in 55 seconds” where Walt presents his career-defining ideas to a myopic businessman capable of only saying “You fool, that’ll never work!”. Considering how animation is everywhere today, it’s easy to forget that an animated film was once seen as an impossible dream. The press hawked Snow White as “Disney’s Folly”, and Hollywood speculated that it would bankrupt the Mouse House. It very nearly did. Miraculously, a private showing of the half-finished feature to a banking firm impressed the investors enough to ensure its completion.

Snow White is touted as the very first animated movie – admittedly something of a lie on Disney’s behalf. Europe and Russia were experimenting with feature-length animation decades before Walt gave it a try. But consider this: most animated films predating Snow White’s conception are either sadly lost to us or barely count as such by just crossing the hour mark. With all the hard work poured into it showing in every scene, with each moment displaying a new breakthrough in the medium, Snow White might as well be the first completely animated movie after all. Hell, it’s the very first movie in the entire history of cinema that was created using STORYBOARDS. A tool used by virtually every single movie put out today. If that’s not groundbreaking enough, I don’t know what is.

But is Snow White really…but why does it…can it…

“You know what? No. I’m not doing this teasing question thing before the review starts proper. OF COURSE Snow White is a masterpiece. OF COURSE most of it holds up. Let’s skip the middleman so I can explain why.”

After the opening credits we get the first of what will be many Disney leather bound books opening themselves to invite us into the world of the story. We’re informed that once upon a time there was a particularly Wicked Queen (nicknamed Grimhilde in promo features and the comics) who had a serious narcissistic personality disorder. Every day she consults her Magic Mirror™ to see who’s the fairest one of all and takes pride in being repeatedly told she holds said title. In the meantime she bullies her younger, prettier stepdaughter, the princess Snow White, and gives her the standard Cinderella treatment in the hopes that endless drudgery will wipe out the competition.

One fateful morning, however, the Mirror informs the Queen that she’s been bumped down to runner-up. She susses out that it’s Snow White who’s taken her place after the Mirror describes the newcomer as having “lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, [and] skin white as snow”, but maybe the Queen is projecting here due to her extreme jealousy. Going by those three traits the Mirror could be describing almost anyone on the planet.

Care to narrow it down a bit, buddy?

Now if you consider yourself a feminist or at the very least have progressive views regarding women, I know what you’re thinking – just another example of the patriarchy pitting shallow female stereotypes against each other, right? Well in a manner of speaking, yes. There’s plenty of evidence that the Brothers Grimm held some odious misogynistic beliefs that stemmed from a bad combination of the era they lived in, outdated religious teachings, and their own experiences with the opposite sex. It shows in their second fairy tale revisions – the heroines are naïve bimbos in need of a man’s rescue, and the villains are evil stepmothers and witches who happen to be hideous 99% of the time – and those views have been reinforced in our society thanks to those particular iterations being passed down to today.

Here’s my way of viewing the central conflict: The Mirror’s news is a wake-up call that Snow White is coming into her own as a woman and princess. That means marriage to a prince and the end of the Wicked Queen’s rule. Snow White will have all the power and adulation while the Queen is forced to step down and become another footnote in ancient royal history. Up until now the Queen has gone out of her way put down her pretty young opponent with petty cruelty because there’s nothing stopping her; but when faced with the inevitable, she unflinchingly opts to take more drastic measures so she can keep the throne.

If it weren’t for the fact the Queen’s unofficial moniker is Grimhilde and her transformation scene reveals a head of black hair, I’d suspect her real name was Cersei Lannister.

You also have to remember that the Queen takes the term “fairest” at face value. The Queen is beautiful, sure, but it’s a glacial beauty – cold, unfeeling, and nothing beneath the surface. All she cares about is looks and power. You’d have to be a pure loving soul or Woody Allen find something worthwhile in her. Snow White is beautiful too, though it’s her kindness and fair treatment of everyone that garners her the title of “fairest one of all”, not her appearance.

Speaking of, we follow that scene with Snow White (Adriana Casselotti) dressed in rags cleaning the castle courtyard. She shows her bird friends her wishing well and sings “I’m Wishing”, where she reveals her wish for her one true love to show up.

Confession time: In childhood the title of my favorite Disney princess was neck and neck between Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. I’ve already discussed at length why I adore Belle, so I suppose I should do the same for Snow.

…turns out it’s more difficult than I thought.

For as long as I could remember, I was surrounded by Snow White paraphernalia – tapes, toys, dolls, music, games, artwork, bed sheets, I can even recall the ice show. Snow White is ingrained into my early years. It more than likely has to do with the timing of its brief return to theaters and first VHS release between 1993 and 1994, right at the peak of the Disney Renaissance, so I experienced Snow White-mania right alongside Lion King-mania, Beauty and the Beast-mania and various other Disneymanias that were rampant at that time.

Even this one, embarrassingly.

As a result, I idolized Snow White as much the other princesses of the time, right down to making her the character I dressed up as the most for Halloween. I suppose what drew me to her was inherent kindness, ability to make friends with everyone, and her voice. Yes, I admit it. I don’t find Snow White’s warbling to be as irritating as everyone says it is. Maybe I’ve listened to it so much that I’ve grown immune. Then again I am that one Disney fan who doesn’t loathe It’s A Small World with every fiber of their being so maybe I should question my own tastes more.

Now as an adult with a critical eye who can put nostalgia behind me when necessary, is there something more to the character of Snow White that’s worth appreciating as much as the more-fleshed out princesses of the Renaissance and current Revival period?

I accept that I’m in the minority on this one, but I firmly say yes.

I know what you’re thinking – all Snow White does is smile and sing while she slaves under the Queen and the dwarfs and dreams of a handsome man to come carry her away, so I should turn in my feminist card for daring to suggest she’s a good character and role model for girls, right? Consider this: like Cinderella after her, Snow White’s happy nature and songs are her ways of coping with her unpleasant situation. It keeps her spirits up and in turn she tries to spread that positivity to others who need it as well. She refuses to let the Queen’s negativity turn her as sour as she is. All the little things Snow White reveals in what she does – her patience, pride in her work, healthy emotional balance, drive to help others, and warmth towards those smaller than her (in both a figurative and literal sense) – are all signs that she is capable of being a far better and beloved ruler and all around person than the Queen is. Plus, her reason for wanting to find love is two-fold: not only is she looking for someone with whom she can share a unique emotional understanding bond – which is something most every human craves – but it’s the also best possible means for her to escape from her stepmother’s abuse. Like I said earlier, once Snow White gets the ring, she gets to rule.

And what’s wrong with having a princess who can run a practical household? One could argue that it’s an example of traditional female roles desired by an oppressive patriarchal society on full display, but you want to know why millennials are called out for being lazy? Because baby boomers have cut out classes that teach things young adults actually need outside of school like how to properly cook and do laundry and pay your taxes since those weren’t seen as “essential enough to education”. So I have to admire a princess who, while not the most “progressive” of the bunch by today’s standards, is willing and able take care of herself and others when it comes to basic everyday needs. I think TheBrutallyHonestMom summed it up best in her post defending Snow White:

When we denigrate what Snow White accomplishes at the dwarfs’ cottage, when we rename her accomplishments to make them sound more impressive, more official, more valuable—management, administration, domestic CEO, sous chef, hospitality specialist—what we are really doing is saying that we don’t value the truly valuable work that she and so many other stay-at-home individuals do. Those words are a microaggression against what have traditionally been feminine roles, an attempt to align them with a patriarchal worldview where only those with the biggest titles and fattest paychecks matter. Snow White is domestic. She is a maid. She is a mother figure. She does take on the womanliest of the womanly roles. To claim that adopting these roles (and being good at them) somehow makes her a poor role model for my daughters is not a failure of Snow White’s imagination. It is a failure of ours.

Then there’s the matter of her actress too, which I can’t stay silent about. A few years ago it was revealed that in order to preserve the illusion of Snow White as a real character (a good many years before the company applied that same logic to their character performers at the theme parks I might add), Disney forced Adriana Casselotti to forego her screen credit and never take on another acting role again, essentially robbing her of a career. She only managed to appear in It’s A Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz because hers were uncredited minute parts. Casselotti had no regrets about choosing Snow White over a promising show business vocation, but I still call bull on the matter. If this kind of thing happened today, people would not stand for it, character illusions or not. There’s also crazy double standards since all the actors who played the dwarfs got to keep on acting; Sneezy’s voice actor was in Fun and Fancy Free for crying out loud! I love ya Walt, but that is one dick move. So if you’re a detractor cheering that you never have to hear Casselotti’s voice beyond this movie, keep in mind that’s all because of one man silencing her for the sake of his business.

So, Snow White. She cooks, cleans, delegates, teaches, loves, domestically kicks ass, and her behind the scenes story makes a strong case for the Time’s Up movement. Any questions?

“Yes. You’re over 2000 words in and we haven’t even gotten to the dwarfs yet. Plan on getting off that soapbox sometime this decade?”

Snow’s singing attracts the attention of a handsome Prince (Harry Stockwell) passing by on his horse. But his forwardness startles the shy girl and sends her sprinting up to her room. He charms her out to her balcony by singing his one song in the feature…”One Song”. You gotta love it when the title matches the tune perfectly.

“Wherefore art thou Prince? Deny thy father and refuse thy name!”

“Sure I’ll gladly refuse my name – if I had one, that is.”

All joking aside, I have a soft spot for this scene. Stockwell’s voice has this old-time Broadway/operetta quality I’ve always liked, the lyrics are unironic purple prose that still feel genuine, Snow’s little excited gestures are adorable, and it’s framed beautifully. This is what got it into my heard early on that the most romantic gesture anyone can make is serenading someone from beneath their balcony.

“Too bad you’re technically in a long distance relationship.”

“I know. Propping up a phone beneath your window just doesn’t have the same effect.”

Snow returns his affections with a kiss delivered via a dove and departs the scene with one hell of a pair of bedroom eyes, especially for a Disney character.

Daaaaaamn, girl! You already got him hooked, no need to gild the lily!

Unbeknownst to either of them, the Queen is watching overhead; Snow catching the eye of Prince Charming is what finally pushes her to take further action. She summons her Huntsman –

– to bring Snow White out into the forest and do away with her. Brief as this scene may be, there are two things I really like about it. First, the gravity. The Huntsman reacts with horror on being told what he must do, foreshadowing his eventual turnaround, yet with an icy hiss of “Silence!” and a short reminder of the price of failure, the Queen goads him back into line. We don’t know what the penalty for insubordination is, but it’s implied to be pretty nasty if she’s able to convince him otherwise with just a few words. Second, the Queen’s other demand. In the original fairytale, the Queen requested Snow White’s liver, lungs and heart so she could eat them and inherit her stepdaughter’s comely attributes.

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But here in the film, she only wants the heart, and not for lunch. The Queen wants to keep it as a trophy. She even has a disturbingly appropriate box for it at the ready.

Proof that she really puts the ‘grim’ in ‘Grimhilde’.

Snow White, now dressed in her iconic yellow and blue dress, goes out flower picking with the Huntsman waiting not far behind. She spies a lost baby bird, and the moment she turns her back to help it, the Huntsman moves in for the kill. It’s framed like the murderer creeping up to their next victim in a scary movie, slowly building up to the moment he confronts her, with tension you could cut with a – well, you know.

Ultimately the Huntsman is moved by the princess’ humanity and can’t go through with the deed. Instead he reveals the Queen’s plot and pleads her to run, run away, Snow, and never return. Terrified, Snow White flees into the forest where her fears magnify her surroundings. Brambles become gnarled outstretched hands, logs are hungry snapping crocodiles, and there are eyes everywhere, always watching, boring into her every place she turns.

I should note that while developing Snow White, the Disney studio became something of an art college with fine arts and film study classes offered to the staff in order to hone their craft. Some of the movies they studied were horror flicks from the pre-Hays Code era, classics directed by the likes of James Whale and F.W. Murnau. The results speak for themselves. Scenes like this and the Queen’s transformation are why I consider Snow White my very first horror movie. The frightening imagery and darker themes all hide beneath a veneer of Disney childhood innocence. Like a proto-Pan’s Labyrinth, the terror as much psychological as it is fantastical.

A young Sam Raimi watched this and vowed one day he’d make those trees even more terrifying and bad-touchy.

This scene is also the source of one of the most famous stories to come out of the film’s creation. During the planning of the part where Snow falls backwards through an open-mouthed cavern into a lake, one of the animators cried out in terror “Won’t that kill her??” And the whole room fell silent. They reached the point where they no longer thought of Snow White as a cartoon but as an actual person, something that had never happened before. That was the moment where they were officially, as Ben Vereen once put it, on the right track.

Overwhelmed, Snow White collapses in tears. She’s brought back to her senses by the usual cuddly forest inhabitants inexplicably drawn to female royalty in need of assistance. Of course, being the ever-thoughtful soul that she is, Snow apologizes for startling them and making a fuss over how afraid she was, once more putting others before herself. She bonds with the animals through the uplifting “With a Smile and a Song”. Then she spends several minutes talking to them and making plans for the future all in rhyme. I confess it’s one of the weaker moments of the movie, showing that the studio’s transition from the Silly Symphonies to full-fledged filmmaking hasn’t completely been made yet.

The critters lead Snow to a quaint cottage in need of a good cleaning service. Assuming the miniature-sized furniture means the inhabitants are orphaned children, she decides to surprise them by sprucing up the joint, hoping her act of kindness will make them forget her breaking and entering and they’ll let her stay. Said cleanup time is underscored by one of the more upbeat tunes in Disney’s songbook, “Whistle While You Work”. Like Mary Poppin’s “A Spoonful of Sugar” it’s all about finding joy in the little things that make the work go by quicker.

“Here’s the last of the underwear, Bambi. And try not leave any ticks in the laundry this time!”

But as we all know, the cottage belongs not to seven children, but seven little people who work as jewel miners, all the while singing that famous mining song –

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“No, the one sung by dwarves.”

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“Seriously?!”

All joking aside, Heigh-Ho is the best song in the movie, no contest. Easily the catchiest tune here if not the entire Disney canon. If it can keep a theater full of gremlins occupied, it’s doing something right.

Sure, they whistle while they work for now. But once they find the Arkenstone it’s all downhill from here.

And let’s not kid ourselves, the dwarfs are the real reason why we keep returning to Snow White. Their quirk-matching names and designs make each one memorable, they’re endlessly entertaining, and they’re the characters that come the closest to having some form of arc. The group is a prime example of the illusion of life that is animation, exaggerated to a degree that they’re still believable in their movements and mannerisms. Dopey especially works well in this regard, a wonder considering much of his character was developed by happy accident. When an actor suitable enough couldn’t be found, they made the decision to simply mute him. Like much of Disney’s favorite animal sidekicks, they based his personality around that of a lovable dog, though I’d be lying if I didn’t see some Harpo Marx in there as well. As a result, his childlike playfulness and comic timing is up there with Chaplin’s Little Tramp. His hitch step was also an unexpected boon; after animator Frank Thomas put it in one of his scenes, Walt liked it so much that he insisted all previously animated footage of Dopey be redone to include that step. Incidentally, Frank’s popularity among the animation staff reached all-time lows after that announcement.

Snow White flops down for a quick nap on the beds upstairs just as the dwarfs return home. What follows is them sneaking about their now suspiciously squeaky-clean cottage and further establishing their personas through a series of finely-tuned gags (Walt paid five dollars for every good joke his guys could come up with, and this was when five dollars could take you out to dinner and a show). Dopey is elected to check the bedroom and he comes to the conclusion that Snow’s sleeping form is a monster. The dwarfs work up their courage to go kill the beast themselves only to realize in the nick of time that it’s just a harmless girl. But Grumpy, the clear-cut misogynist in the group, isn’t keen on having a “wicked-wiled” female refugee in their abode and shamelessly yells “Let ‘er wake up, she don’t belong here no-how!”

Snow wakes up and instantly charms over everyone except Grumpy as they introduce each other. The dwarfs are shocked and terrified to learn the Queen has put a hit out on her. Grumpy in particular declares the Queen is a powerful witch skilled in the black arts, which is true, and it raises a potent question. Is her magic common knowledge throughout the kingdom, or is it mere speculation? If it’s the former, how did that come to be? What happened to Snow White’s father the king anyhow? All this could make for a very interesting –

“You know what, never mind, forget I said it -“

“Too late! Jenkins, write that down! Bob’s gonna love it!”

“Very good, sir. Shall I pre-heat your crack pipe in preparation for the first draft writing session?”

“Does the Academy loathe streaming services? Hop to it, my man!”

“Hey, I thought you left that jerk to go work for Don Bluth.”

“Shh! I jumped ship after A Troll in Central Park and came back under a new identity. I couldn’t pass up the bankroll Disney’s been on since 2009.”

“Mum’s the word.”

Grumpy’s certain that they’ll be in the Queen’s crosshairs once she learns they’ve been harboring Snow White and demands they kick her out at once. But Snow White stands up for herself and says she can take care of the house for them if they let her stay. Just like Belle offering herself in her father’s place, no one corners Snow into the position of housekeeper. She’s the one who puts herself out there, listing all her best qualities like she’s on an interview. It’s only when she does so (and also mentions she can bake a mean gooseberry pie) that the dwarfs overrule Grumpy and declare she’s welcome in their home.

Yet even when all is said and done, Snow makes it clear that if she’s the one doing the work, then the dwarfs must play by her rules. Immediately following their acceptance, she goes into full Team Mom mode, insisting they improve their manners and wash themselves before dinner’s ready. Doc attempts to get around it by saying they cleaned up “recently”, but despite her sweet nature, Snow won’t let them walk all over her. She does a cleanliness inspection that makes the dwarfs almost as bashful as Bashful himself, and even gets a good bit of sarcasm in (“Why Doc, I’m surprised.”) The dwarfs washing themselves is another one of those Silly Symphony-esque filler scenes, but at least it gives us more time for their fun shenanigans; though I have to wonder if dog piling Grumpy and half-drowning him takes it too far.

“Where’s the money, Legrumpski? Where’s the fucking money??” “It’s down there somewhere, lemme take another look.”

Back at the castle, the Queen is showing off her newly acquired bodily organ to the Magic Mirror while demanding he validate her preconceptions of who’s fair and who’s not. Alas, the Mirror tattles on Snow White’s location and reveals that heart belonged to a pig, which I’ve got to say I’m glad they didn’t show how the Huntsman got ahold of.

Infuriated, the Queen storms down to her secret lab (and no, there’s no wrong lever scene. I’m disappointed too). She brews up a potion made up of ingredients like scream of fright, a thunderbolt and partially hydrogenated dimethylpolysiloxane which will completely transform her into a disguise nobody could suspect her in, an aged peddler woman.

Was I afraid of this scene way back when? Of course, but it was one of those rare moments where I didn’t want to look away either. Here we have a woman dangerously obsessed with beauty becoming the very thing she loathes in order to sate her implacable desires. Not only that but in this disguise she’s able to set loose the insanity buried deep beneath her frigid calculating exterior, grinning and cackling like the witch that she is. The Queen never smiles once when she’s in her true form. But once she’s the old Hag and it’s all cackling and gap-toothed smiles, it’s extremely unnerving.

Case in point.

“Anyone else miss the creepy fade to black where the villain’s eyes remain for a few seconds? Disney needs to bring that back.”

Major props to Lucille LaVerne, who gives a bone chilling and utterly unrecognizable performance as BOTH the Queen and the Hag. She made the switch from one role to the next by removing her false teeth between recording sessions. In doing so she gave us one of the great Disney villain performances.

The part where she preps the infamous poisoned apple does undercut some of her menace, however. The Hag is supposed to be sharing her scheming with a cowardly raven, but due to how much she stares directly into the camera while monologuing, it comes off as directly addressing the audience, like we’re watching her in a play. It’s not just the Silly Symphony style of storytelling creeping in, it’s melodramatic semi-vaudevillian theatrics that early Hollywood was moving well away from at this point. And again, what’s with the sudden speaking in rhyme?

At the last moment the Hag looks up a possible antidote to the poison and learns that it’s Love’s First Kiss. However she scoffs at the notion that Snow White can be saved because she’s counting on the dwarfs believing the princess is dead and burying her alive.

“For those of you who claim Disney waters down fairy tales into saccharine pap, I point you to Snow White.”

And it doesn’t end there. As the Hag leaves the dungeons, she passes a cell where a skeleton is sprawled out between the bars, reaching for a water pitcher. It’s bad enough to imagine this poor soul dying of thirst, spending their last moments with salvation just out of their grasp, but the Hag openly mocks the skeleton and kicks the pitcher aside. If that’s not a deciding irredeemably evil factor moment, it comes pretty darn close.

This would have also tied into an important but ultimately scrapped sequence where the Queen kidnaps the Prince, locks him in the dungeon to keep him from saving Snow White and torments him by detailing her elaborate scheme.

This sounds vaguely familiar…

Depending on which pitch you’re reading, the Prince refuses the Queen’s offer of marriage, and she enchants the chained-up skeletons of other scorned suitors to dance in an extremely misguided attempt keep him entertained while she’s out, or floods the dungeon to drown him. He makes a daring escape and rides to the rescue on horseback.

Again, vaguely familiar…

Unfortunately we had to wait twenty-plus years for this to happen because the animators weren’t confident in their abilities to create a believable male character. This is why the Prince appears only in the beginning and the end of the movie (and by extension why the Cinderella’s Prince is barely in that feature as well). When it came to making Snow White look realistic, they subtly incorporated some rotoscoping in a few places (I’d call it cheating but it’s difficult to tell where it begins or ends because she looks that good eighty years later). But I guess it just wasn’t worth the effort to do the same for her love interest, who doesn’t even get the dignity of an official name (fans go back and forth between Florian and Ferdinand). He’s reduced to a deus ex machina – which to be fair is exactly how he was treated in the fairytale. The movie has the slight advantage over that, however, by setting him up before he arrives for that wake-up kiss.

“And now it’s time for Silly Songs With Happy, the part of the review where Happy comes out and sings a silly song. Today’s interlude, appropriately titled “The Silly Song”, features choreography which has gone on to inspire many other Disney musical sequences dating as far ahead as the 70’s.”

“Hold it!! It’s just the exact same movements with the Robin Hood cast grafted over them!”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“Well…no…it’s just a bit distracting when you finally notice it. I mean I love Disney’s Robin Hood, but boy did they take the main character’s attitude towards stealing to heart when it came to the animation.”

And yes, “The Silly Song” itself is fun too. It’s one of the less remembered Disney tunes, though I have fond memories of it due to its inclusion in the Sing-Along video lineup. The decision to have it follow the Hag’s unsettling introduction makes perfect sense; I could imagine audiences experiencing it for the first time needed a bit of a breather after that.

I guess I should mention the musical number we could have had instead of this one, though. “Music in Your Soup” was a similarly lighthearted song that was fully recorded and animated before it was ultimately cut. It was expertly animated, featured more dwarf-Snow White interactions, and it also closed up a plot hole involving a bar of soap Dopey swallowed earlier. Still, it didn’t add much to the story overall and it disrupted the flow, and keeping both that and “The Silly Song” would have been superfluous; so as much as I like “Music In Your Soup” I think they made the right call in sticking with “The Silly Song”.

After the dancing, Snow regales the dwarfs with a love story, though they quickly figure out she’s talking about herself and her prince. She dispenses with the self-insert fanfiction and sings the movie’s eleven o’clock number “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Bawl all you want about setting women’s rights back a decade, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lovely song, even without Casselotti’s vocals. In fact, much of the movie’s soundtrack has been a go-to for jazz artists through the decades ranging from Miles Davis to Dave Brubeck. The pure simplicity of Larry Morey’s lyrics and Frank Churchill’s melodies are ripe for riffing on. Virtually every cover I’ve found succeeds in the impossible task of measuring up to the original in some capacity. The action in the song itself is subtle and restrained, mainly focusing on the dwarfs’ reactions. It’s not only good storytelling, but a clever way to get around showing more of Snow White than the animators could handle; she was already tough enough to animate even with rotoscoping.

Snow realizes how late it’s getting and ushers the dwarfs to bed; however Doc and the others try to behave like gentlemen and allow her to sleep upstairs while they take up whatever space they can fill on the lower floor. It goes to show how much her kindness and politeness has had an influence on them, at least while she’s around. Them taking up whatever sleeping space they can find on the ground floor is an excuse to squeeze more gags in, but I’m fond of how it lets us wind down and take in this cozy atmosphere.

The next morning before they head out the dwarfs warn Snow White to beware of strangers. Even Grumpy can’t help but show concern in his own gruff tsundere way. It’s little touches like this that reveal Snow White’s unwavering compassion is chipping away at his chauvinist attitude and he really does care about her after all –

Hang on, they couldn’t spare ONE dwarf to stick around and keep an eye out in case the Queen does drop by? They’re really think the Queen isn’t going to make another murder attempt as soon as possible? They sadly must, because no sooner do the dwarfs heigh-ho off to work than the Hag creeps up like a meth user turned Jehovah’s Witness.

“Hello, my name is Elder Grim. Would you care to learn more about our lord and savior Chernabog?”

After the animals fail to communicate the obvious danger, they fetch the dwarfs for help. Meanwhile the Hag has convinced Snow White to let her into the cottage and show off her “magic wishing apple”.

Already I can hear the slapping of a thousand facepalms through my screen. I get why, but there’s something about the situation that feels strangely relatable. The Queen is fully aware of Snow White’s gentle, trusting nature and knows how to take full advantage of the girl. Snow isn’t all smiles and open arms though. There’s a split second of regret the moment she divulges she’s by herself, and as the Hag literally corners her into tasting the poison apple her body language gives away how uncomfortable she is. Even the cottage itself grows darker and claustrophobic, mirroring her trapped state. Snow White knows there’s definitely something off about this stranger, but there’s the downside of her kind personality. She can’t bring herself to kick the old lady out no matter how wrong this scenario inherently feels.

“Just keep smiling and slowly reach for the mace.”

Ultimately the Hag coaxes her into tasting the apple. Every breath leading up to it is dramatically intercut with the dwarfs led by Grumpy (further proof Snow White really has gotten through to the old softie) racing back to the cottage.

Do you want to know why the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is considered one of the scariest movies of all time? Because for all its promise of a gory spectacular, the violence is deliberately kept offscreen. Our imaginations fill in the blanks and come up with even worse terrors than they could possibly show. Snow White’s poisoning works on that logic. All we hear is her gasping and groaning as the Hag gleefully looks on, ending with the most cinematic shot of the film.

If you’re still convinced Snow’s a dunce for biting the big apple, trust me, it’s a vast improvement over the original. The Queen showed up in disguise three times to kill Snow White with varying methods: strangulation by laces, a poisoned comb, and of course the apple. This was cut down to the last one for obvious reasons – not only would the story be repetitive and extremely padded if they remained, but it makes Snow White look like an idiot for falling for the same trap thrice in a row. The only time I’ve ever seen the inclusion of all three murder attempts work is in the anime The Legend of Snow White (which despite the laughably bad English dub is worth checking out). By the time the Queen comes around with the apple in that instance, Snow White is well aware of who she’s dealing with. But she plays along because the Queen has turned the kingdom to stone, and the only way to break the curse is by taking the bait and destroying her staff while she thinks she’s down, thus turning what was once an act of naivete into a heroic sacrifice.

The Hag exits the cottage feeling confident in who’s the fairest now just in time for the dwarfs to show up. They chase her through a thunderstorm up a cliff side. Literally trapped between a rock and a hard place, she attempts to dislodge a boulder and crush her pursuers. But Zeus is having none of that and a lightning bolt strikes the cliff, plummeting the Hag to her doom.

To quote Linkara, “Thus the origin for ‘Rocks fall, everybody dies’.”

And in case you’re still thinking she could have survived that drop, even with that boulder tilting over after her, the vultures that have been tailing her since she left the castle begin circling lower and lower over the place where she now lies. A chilling, subtle way to show they’re getting a meal after all.

We fade to a wake the dwarfs are holding for Snow White, complete with organ music and weeping – LOTS of sad, silent, motionless weeping. Poor Grumpy gets the worst of it. One can only imagine the tsunami of emotion he must have felt coming home to see that she was making a pie just for him. Like “Someday My Prince Will Come” it shows how restraint can be an asset in acting for animation. Considering how it’s very much like a real-life wake and just how much everyone believes Snow White is truly dead, this was a tough scene to get through.

The seasons pass and we’re told through title cards that the dwarfs couldn’t find it in themselves to bury Snow White, so they built a glass coffin and kept constant vigil along with the depressed forest animals.

“Clearly the idea of watching her slowly decompose over time never crossed their little minds.”

The funeral on top of the wake keeps piling on the sadness. We’re used to animated features moving us to tears, but you have to remember for audiences back then this was an entirely new experience because no animation dared to get this heavy. Think about it: Shirley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, the best and the brightest of Hollywood who poo-pooed Walt for his ridiculous idea – all moved to tears over Snow White. I can only imagine the satisfaction Walt must have felt hearing their sobbing at the premiere. Again, going back to that animator who felt genuine fear for her safety, the audience developed an emotional bond with the character just as they would for a real human on screen.

The Prince FINALLY shows up again still singing his One Song. Believing the love he has long searched for to be lost to him forever, he says his final farewell by bestowing her with Love’s First Kiss.

“Ah – “

“If you make ONE necrophilia joke, I swear I’ll take all the Adam Sandler movies off the Shelf.”

“Please, no!! I’ll have nothing to fully snark at!!”

The kiss does its work and Snow White awakens none the worse for wear. And since what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she’s immune to all poison ingested via deciduous fruit now. That’ll make ruling the kingdom she’s inherited from her stepmother and disappeared father much easier. And for those of you complaining how a magical kiss is a cop out, trust me, it’s better than how the original fairytale resolved it.

“Somewhere my love lies sleeping, and here she is! I’ll pay you dwarfs anything to let me take her back to my castle and keep her there as a memento of our tragic love.”

“This had better be worth it, she weighs a freaking ton!” “OHH, there goes my hernia!” *BANG*

*HACKHACKCOUGHHACK* “Thanks for the Heimlich, guys, damn apple’s been stuck in my throat for a year!”

“Seriously, I’m not making that up. Plus, they invite the Queen to the wedding and force her to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes.”

Everyone rejoices, Snow White says goodbye to the dwarfs, and the Prince leads her on his horse to his shining palace in the clouds. They all live happily ever after, the end.

And that’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the very first animated Disney movie. Do I believe the American Film Institute’s claims that it’s the best animated film of all time? Well, to be honest, no. The main characters aren’t as developed compared to future Disney protagonists, the animation goes noticeably off model at times, and it’s got one foot stuck in the style of the Silly Symphonies shorts that came before.

Is it the most influential animated film, however? Of course! Without it animation wouldn’t be as mainstream as it is today. While the formula has been updated and subverted through the decades, most animated features follow a similar blueprint – a dastardly villain, fun side characters, memorable music, distinct visual flair, fighting, torture, true love, miracles, you get the picture. We wouldn’t have any of that without Snow White. Once upon a time, this movie was the Star Wars of its era; a groundbreaking, audience-thrilling blockbuster that changed the way people looked at movies. Part of that is because Snow White taps into an emotional simplicity in a manner few films are able to. It relies more on providing an emotional catharsis than logic, inviting us to experience the story as we once did through the eyes of a child, and in doing so captures the essence of a classic fairy tale.

In fact, looking at the ripple effect of how movies can influence one another across the years, Snow White ranks among one of the most influential movies made in general. Apart from Disney you can see its echoes in The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver’s Travels, Citizen Kane, and yes, the original Star Wars. Even Sergei Eisenstein, the man who revolutionized filmmaking with freaking Battleship Potemkin, declared Snow White to be the greatest film ever made.

…So why did Walt Disney come to hate it later on in life?

Every movie that’s met with acclaim and accolades is bound to hit some backlash for one reason or another. Maybe it’s been overhyped, or time hasn’t been that kind to it. For Walt, Snow White leaned into the latter as his artistic prowess grew. No creator likes looking at their past work because it’s easier to notice the flaws when viewing it through a more experienced eye (believe me, I know). That, and no matter what he did, it seemed impossible to escape from Snow White’s shadow. For decades everything he created was inevitably compared to it.

Hmm, the animation and music are an improvement, but what it’s really missing are some dwarfs.

Hmm, the creativity leaps off the charts, but if only the score had lyrics that rhyme with the words “shmeigh shmo”.

Hmm, it’s breathtaking and magical, but it’d be perfect if you could just sit and watch it for eighty minutes without interacting with any of it at all.

Hmm, it’s practically perfect in every way, but…um…uh…more dwarfs, dammit!!

Thankfully Walt’s displeasure mellowed after some time. As for Snow White, she’s still rightfully hailed as the one that started it all. The art is iconic, the characters are unforgettable, and virtually all the songs are Disney gold standards for a reason. Well before Rodgers and Hammerstein changed the face of musical theater by having the score and the book go hand in hand, Snow White did it first in the cinemas. In fact this was the first movie to ever have a commercially released soundtrack, another confounded idea Hollywood wouldn’t understand for quite a while. Though time may temper with modern expectations, Snow White is as much a classic now as it was destined to be eighty years ago, and nothing can touch it. It still is the fairest one of all.

“HA! Try to remake/sequelize THAT, Disney!”

“Excuse me, is it too late to join this review?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Oh, where are my manners? I’m Snow White’s sister, Rose Red.”

“…You sure you’re not just a color-swapped OC clone from Deviantart?”

“Of course I’m not, silly! I’m in the fairytale and everything! Well, not THE fairytale per se, but there is one titled ‘Snow White and Rose Red’ where we’re siblings.”

“Checks out. They’re technically related.”

“Okay, but what are you doing here?”

“I was just wondering when you were going to discuss my upcoming movie!”

“Your…movie?”

“Oh yes! It’s going to be Disney’s Snow White all over again but from MY point of view! Isn’t that exciting?”

“But…but you weren’t even in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

“I know! I was off to the side doing…well, you’ll have to wait and see! The lady who wrote that Gone Girl knockoff that takes place on a train and the Indecent Proposal remake is doing the screenplay and she is just delightful!”

“…Excuse me for one moment.”

“Oh dear. Have I said something wrong?”

“It’s ok. This is just the part of the review where Shelf goes berserk.”

youtube

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Special thanks to Amelia Jones and Gordhan Ranaj for their contributions.

You can vote for what movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

Also, Patreon supporters get extra votes among other perks. If I reach the goal of $100, I can get back to reviewing animated series! I’m at the halfway mark right now, so please consider supporting me if you’re able.

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Most screencaps courtesy of animationscreencaps.com.

February Review: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) If there's a reason why we're able to recall the story of Snow White from memory, and why said princess is usually depicted with short hair, a cute bow and surrounded by woodland fauna, look no further than Disney.

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camsthisky · 6 years

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Batfam Feb (2018) Fic Recs

Sorry for such a long wait. I forgot about January, so to make up for it, this is a little longer than the past rec lists.

Mistakes Were Made by CaramelMachete Words: 7,369 Summary: Nightwing joins Jason as Robin and Batman for a stake-out. When Batman gets called away, Nightwing and Robin are unable to follow Batman's orders. They bite off a little more than they can chew. So, how much first aid training does Robin remember anyway? Jason worries that if he can't handle this, maybe he's not fit to be Robin after all. Comments: This is a great Dick ad Jason bonding fic, and I think I’ve read it before, but I don’t think I’ve rec’d it. The characterization is amazing, and it does a good job juggling the strained dynamics between Jason, Dick, and Bruce. It’s from Jason’s POV as Robin, too, which I don’t think we see enough.

been trying to do it right, been living a lonely life by streetlight_skeletons Words: 2,287 Summary: “Kid, what are you doing out alone?”

Even in the cold, shivering, the boy glared defiantly, the white lenses in his mask pushed up, and pushed out, “I- I’m not alone. Batman’s here”

To his credit, his voice seemed to shake from the cold and not paralysing fear, which Selina had expected. She grinned, looking around her mockingly. “Well, I don’t see him, do you?”

“He’ll- He’ll find you and beat you up if you hurt me,” the boy informed and, of that, Selina had no doubt.

Or,

There's an injured bird, but it wasn't the cat who did it Comments: I need more Robin Dick and Selina interacting. Also the fact that it’s hurt/comfort and Bruce is like an overprotective mother bear? Gold.

Brunch with Bruce by DawnsEternalLight Words: 2,014 Summary: Dick's overworked and exhausted, but he's not going to let that (or a cold) keep him from having lunch with Bruce. Comments: Dawn always manages to hit me right in the feeling with her fics, because sick, overworked, tired Dick and overprotective and worried Bruce is one of my biggest weaknesses.

The Blame Game by DawnsEternalLight Words: 5,669 Summary: While on a case together Jason gets hurt, and Dick realizes he's sicker than he thought he was. Comments: Dick and Jason angst!! This plays off the events of Batman #16 with Bane, and it’s done wonderfully. It was disappointing that we didn’t get the full account of what happened in comics, and this is a great insight into what could have happened! Plus, all of the hurt/comfort and angsting between brothers is amazing.

Scatter the Heavens into Stars by DawnsEternalLight Words: 2,416 Summary: Dick is getting over fear toxin, and finds the best way to do that is work a little and spend time with his dad and little brother. Comments: Cookies!! Dick spending time with his family!!! Cookie Dough!! His family loving him!!! Dick eating the cookie dough!!!!!!! I’ve read this no less than six times since it’s been posted.

Foreign Object by audreycritter Words: 86,122 (37/37) Summary: Bruce Wayne deals with a serious illness, one that threatens the most crucial part of himself. He and the family try to cope with their own fears and expectations about it and then the aftermath. This is written partly as character study, partly as family drama. Originally posted to tumblr. Comments: I’m going to be honest and admit that I had a really hard time starting this fic. I’ve read other things from the Cor Et Cerebrum series, but I hadn’t gotten to this one since it hits so close to home. However, I read this entire fic in one night, and it was absolutely worth it. The characterization is so on point, and there’s a balance of hurt, comfort, angst, fluff, and everything else.

Cold Hard Want by audreycritter Words: 12,310 Summary: “Are you happy?”

“I...I’m getting there.”

A follow-up to DC Rebirth Batman #35, in which Bruce recovers from being stabbed in the back and Damian considers the elusive nature of happiness. Comments: Holy shiitake mushrooms. Okay, so I’ve read this a few times, because it’s so good. Damian’s emotions are so real and present and I feel like I’m riding or dying along with him. It’s like I’m in the story and I’m seeing everything unfold, and my heart hurts for every single one of them. For Bruce, Selina, Dick, and Damian. It’s just so good.

Every Fiber of My Being by scxlias Words: 21,376 (5/5) Summary: As much as Dick and his siblings have argued, Bruce has never budged on his "Keeping Secrets Policy". There's not a person alive outside of the family that knows the secret identity of any of the Bats. Not even Dick's boyfriend. Dick understands the need for some secrets, knows that keeping their identities safe keeps them and their loved ones safe, but when he takes up the cowl, team dynamics aren't the only things that begin to change. Comments: This is a birdflash fic that I absolutely love to death. It’s an AU of the batfamily never telling anyone their identities, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. You can feel how absolutely alone and stressed Dick feels as the weight on his shoulders grows heavier and heavier, until he’s just about to break, and it makes my heart hurt.

Fallen Bird by Croppmar000 Words: 2,887 Summary: Something had happened, something bad. Dick was a wreak. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Batman's birds didn't just die. Comments: A YJ fic that deals with Jason’s death and how Dick reacts to it. I love that it’s Wally and Roy that are there for Dick. I just love their friendship so much.

The Joys of Fatherhood by theragingstorm Words: 2,408 Summary: Young Bruce Wayne has a chance encounter with two small children, while all of them are still ignorant of how important they’ll become to each other. Comments: This is a cute little fic. It’s probably an AU, but it’s still cute nonetheless. It’s a “if Dick and Babs met as small children and hide from their fathers as they go absolutely mad with worry” fic, and it’s the cutest thing. Especially when Bruce comes into it.

Two Dead Birds by InsaneTrollLogic Words: 29,034 (15/15) Summary: There's some lunatic in red helmet running through Jason's territory. He wants to think it's a copy cat.

He's wrong. Comments: A Jason-centric fic. I’m not usually too big on fics that don’t have a lot of Dick in them, but this is a very good fic in my opinion. Jason’s characterization is very well done, and I love Dick when he comes into it as well. Time travel stories are also one of my favorite tropes though, so maybe I just have a weakness for it. The only thing is, it ends in a slightly open-ended way, and I’m not sure if that means there will be a sequel of if it’s just how the fic was meant to end. Either way, it was worth the read.

Catch Me by TantalumCobalt Words: 1,453 Summary: He hates these nights. When he’s stretched thin from chasing leads on three cases, when he’s trying to wrap things up as quickly as possible because he’s hyper conscious of what date is approaching, when a severe thunderstorm has driven him off the streets and back to the Manor. Comments: Again, stressed, overworked, tired Dick is my weakness. And Ren does a really good acknowledging the Blockbuster situation and the effects it has on Dick.

The Bat's Crest by lilylamaire Words: 168,328 (29/?) Summary: Tragedy strikes the hero community when Bruce Wayne commits a crime so heinous even the best start asking for blood. However, as the heroes try to recover from the hit and carry out justice for their friends, a random assortment of people start acting oddly, including the current Speedy Tim Drake, a child hostage in Gotham, and a young man from an unremarkable circus amongst others. All of them seem intent on saving Bruce Wayne from the grasp of the Justice League for no apparent reason, going as far as betraying their previous allegiances.

Unknown to the Justice League, these people are equally confused. Clearly they're stuck in another dimension, but how do they get back? How did they even get here? Who else is stuck in this world? And how long will Tim's patience last? Back home, the Bat was a planetary symbol that struck fear in the hearts of criminals. In this new world, it has no meaning, save for the handful of stranded souls. Comments: Okay, so this fic is Tim-centric, and it has a lot of Damian in it, too. I was a little disappointed because I’d hoped that there would be more Dick Grayson in it, but it makes sense why there isn’t. And it's a very good fic to address the problems of what would happen had Bruce Wayne not become Batman. It kept me on my toes, and when Dick does come in, I definitely think it’s worth the wait.

All your resolve (dissolves) by animegoil Words: 5,424 Summary: Season two: Tim watches Dick fall apart. Comments: Another YJ fic. I think this is one of my favorite topics to read about. Dick was under so much stress during the time while Bruce was on Rimbor, and I don’t think it’s addressed quite enough. This fic is one of my absolute favorites to go to when I think about Dick in season 2, and it does a really good job with Tim’s POV and his helplessness of being unable to properly figure out why Dick’s so stressed. There’s a lot of levels to this fic, and I honestly think it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever read.

The Wayne Family Ghost by pupeez4eva Words: 1,713 Summary: In which Bruce realises that having a legally dead son, who regularly hangs around the family, might be slightly problematic. Comments: This fic is kind of hilarious. I don’t often read funny fics, but Damian getting in trouble for accidentally including Jason Todd in the family and Bruce having to deal with the fallout is always great.

Pixar by ChimaeraKitten Words: 3,076 Summary: Sometimes, favorite movies are influenced less by the movie itself, and more by the people one shared it with. (batfam + Favorite Pixar movies) Comments: This is literally one of the cutest fics out there. It addresses each individual kid with Bruce, and I love that I get emotions about each kid through their favorite movie. Chi does the dynamics between all of them really well, too.

Monkey by ChimaeraKitten Words: 570 Summary: Dick has a new shirt. Comments: Baby Dick is so cute and Bruce is such a good dad in this.

#fic recs #february fic recs #dc #monthly fic recs

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viperbranium · 6 years

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HIIII I am currently following my hero academia but I like pain so was considering starting one piece. Is it good? I'm scared that it's already so long and not sure if the ani is as good as manga or vice versa, although I won't be able to follow manga. Should I? XDDD

Hey nonnie! Sorry for the wait, I couldn’t catch a damn break til now. Okay, so, for the record, I haven’t watched/read my hero academia, so I can’t really draw any comparisons between One Piece and that, and if by “I like pain” you meant you want all the angst, then OP might not really be the greatest option (like, there’s some VERY angsty moments, but overall the show is pretty fun?). If, on the other hand, you meant that as in I KNOW THIS SHOW IS SUPER FUCKING LONG BUT I DON’T CARE BRING IT ON, then, yes, perfect choice! :D

Now, buckle up, cause your questions don’t have an easy answer (except the “is it good?” one, because yes. YES. Yes, it is PRETTY FUCKING GOOD. It is everything), and this is my favorite thing to talk about, so this is going to be rambly and long but also hopefully useful for anyone wondering whether to watch this show or not.

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH/READ ONE PIECE:

I know, I know. A rubber pirate. A talking reindeer. Merpeople. Ridiculousness. Overall, it wouldn’t seem like this show is really anything but funny and silly, but oH BOY IS IT.

Look, yes. It’s fun. It’s LOTS OF FUN. The show never quite stops having a certain lightheartedness to it, but don’t let that fool you. There’s angst. There’s drama. There’s adventure. There’s friendship.

And there’s also a pretty important message of inclusivity and tolerance throughout the show.

This, initially, seems like just a running theme, but as it turned out, it’s actually the main fucking plot point of the entire show. One Piece is an ode to friendship and freedom and adventure, but it’s also a huge critique against racism and bigotry.

It starts, seemingly, as a kids’ show, and then suddenly it’s all about the one-percenters abusing those beneath them, about a corrupt World Government, about segregation and colonialism and slavery, about blatant erasure of actual history by those in power.

And every single episode it takes to get you there is worth it.

The issue with its length:

First of all, yes. Yes, it’s LONG. It’s pretty fucking long. No two ways about it. But it is absolutely worth it, and I don’t mean this as in “by episode 700 they’ll be tugging at your heartstrings and you’ll be thankful you stuck with it for this long” (although that’s also true), but more like: once you get past the introduction, you’ll be HOOKED, and then you’ll pretty much not give a single fuck that you barely just started it and have fucktons of episodes left to watch.

Getting past the intro is the key thing. It’s not that you have to “get past it” because it’s bad or anything, more like, just like with any other show, you have to give them a chance to set the basis for the plot and introduce you to the cast and all. If you started watching and decided to give it, idk, 5 episodes, you’d probably just quit it thinking it’s too childish and “funny” and not very interesting.

And it is, at first, but it’s like when you go back and read Harry Potter. Compared to the rest of the books, book 1, and possibly book 2 as well, have a much lighter tone and simpler plot. This is partially because those books are working on the foundations for what will later on be the actual PLOT, and after those are over, the rest of the books are less auto-conclusive and a lot more intricate and with more plotlines connecting all the books together and creating a bigger and richer whole story (the other part is the story growing a bit alongside its fanbase, which is honestly a wonderful thing).

So essentially, the beginning of One Piece is like books 1 and 2 in the Harry Potter saga. And because it’s such a long show (as I type this, we’re on episode 839), that means a few tenths of episodes. If you’ve watched some of those as a younger kid on TV, then chances are you’ll get past them a lot more easily, because they are fun and nostalgia plays an important part, but if you haven’t, I do get why it can be a bit discouraging (but again, IT’S SO WORTH IT. PINKY PROMISE).

A quick non-spoilery rundown of that first intro part would be:

Episodes 1 to 62: the first crew members meeting each other. These are a few short arcs, all following the same pattern: Captain Luffy gets to an island, finds someone he wants in his crew, they defeat some minor bad guy, person ends up joining Luffy, and they move onto the next island. Even then, they are quite funny, and you inadvertently start hearing stuff mentioned that’s actually SUPER RELEVANT in the context of the grand scheme of things. Also, a bunch of those are filler episodes that you can outright skip, so it’s not THAT MANY EPISODES, and I’d argue that around episode ~30 or so, the whole thing gets a bit more intense too. [MORE ON FILLER EPISODES IN A MINUTE]

On episode 62 they officially get started on their trip for good, and the whole show starts being a bit less childish (not to say the tone changes entirely, it pretty much remains a funny yet exciting story throughout the whole thing, mostly due to the main character’s personality, but still, you can SEE that there’s STUFF GOING ON IN THIS WORLD). From here to episode 92 we’re setting the basis for a pretty big arc:

—> Turning the intensity up a few notches!

Episode 92 to 130: The Alabasta Arc – politics! Intrigue! A big fucking and fascinating villain! This arc is AMAZING.(then we have a bunch of filler episodes, again, totally skippable, and then…)

Episode 144 to 195: The Skypiea Arc – another great one, even touching on some pretty fucking important themes like colonialism and land-theft.

—> Turning the intensity up some more notches!!!

And from post-Skypiea onwards, the show is pretty much AAAAAAAAAASLGHSFLKHHLFGKJLK! nonstop.

(btw, if you ARE interested in watching, just let me know and I’ll compile a quick list like this one for you, letting you know which episodes you can skip and what the best way to watch it would be ^^)

Reading the manga vs Watching the anime:

The One Piece anime pretty much 100% follows the manga, so you can go with whatever option works best for you.

Fights and all are generally a lot more fun to watch than to read, plus one episode covers more than one manga chapter, so my advice usually is: watch the anime til you’re all caught up, and then switch to the manga so you can read everything that hasn’t happened in the anime yet and you won’t get spoiled, and then you can read the manga weekly when it comes out (and continue watching the anime as well, or not).

Because the anime follows the manga to a T, there needs to be filler arcs, since there’s some weeks when the manga takes a break, and also like I said, one episode covers a bit more than one chapter. Without filler arcs, the anime would catch up to the manga pretty quick and then they’d have to start making up stuff, or dividing the show into seasons, and either of those options would be sucky.

So, while it’s a necessity, it’s NOWHERE near as bad as the amount of filler there was in shows like Bleach or Naruto, and some of those arcs are even quite good? (The post-Skypiea filler arc f.e., G-8, is hilarious and super entertaining!). Personally I’d watch everything at least once, for the jokes and the interactions between crew members if nothing else, but you won’t be missing a single thing if you outright skip all of those.

(there’s also an odd episode every now and then that’s not exactly part of any filler arc, but quite literally an AU where the characters all live in a village instead of being pirates. You get one episode like this every once in a while – I think there’s been like, 5 in total? Maybe? –, as well as a few other weird things like a crossover with Dragon Ball or idek. Those I’d just skip entirely – they’re not remotely as fun as “one piece au” makes it sound lmao –, but luckily they aren’t a lot. Just one here and there).

Sooooo I hope all this answers your questions, nonnie, and that it helps you decide whether to give the show a shot or not.

TL;DR: yes, it’s long, but it’s fucking worth it, and you can either read it or watch it because the anime follows the manga 100% accurately.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day

https://ift.tt/3Eu4Xd0

So the new Star Trek: Picard trailer has dropped and among the big plot twists it revealed are the fact that Picard & Co are going to be travelling back to Earth, circa 2022 AD. We’re looking forward to exciting scenes of people from the 24th century being unable to drive cars (despite the pretty lengthy car chase we saw in the last episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks), Q and Picard sparring again, and wondering how Guinan fits into all this. My personal theory is that after her adventures with Picard and Mark Twain in the 19th century, Guinan decided to stick around on Earth, eventually posing as an actor called Whoopi Goldberg.

This is far from the first time Star Trek has travelled back to the present day – even if “present day” is pretty broad for the 55-year-old franchise. We have no way of knowing why the series keeps returning to this setting that doesn’t need the manufacture of any new props, sets or costumes, but it seems like a good time to look at when Star Trek has done this before and ask “Who wore it better?”

6. Assignment: Earth

This episode would prove to be a particularly tricky one for nearly every single time travel episode that has come since, in that it shows time travel for the Federation is so easy and routine that the Enterprise can just nip back to the Cold War to see why we never Great Filtered ourselves out of existence. Unfortunately, in this episode Kirk and Spock don’t get to see much of 20th century Earth, or indeed do much of anything.

‘Assignment: Earth’ was conceived as a backdoor pilot for a new series about Gary Seven, a human bred and raised by aliens to act as a secret agent on Earth and protect us from our own capacity for self-destruction. This means Kirk and Spock’s role is little more than to sit around and say “Wow, this looks like a great idea for a television show!”

Still, I can’t help but wonder about a Star Trek franchise in the parallel universe where its first spin-off was a spy show set in 1968.

5. Carpenter Street

This episode of Star Trek: Enterprise stands out because it is perhaps the only episode on this list where they decided the present day should be filmed any differently from the space future. The lighting, the camera work, the whole episode feels much more like Angel, or a cop show from the period than the Star Trek style that had been uniformly adopted since The Next Generation.

Usually when Star Trek comes back to our time it is to take us on ‘a romp’, where people point out Starfleet uniforms look like pyjamas and the crew go around misunderstanding pop culture references. This, however, feels like Star Trek invading a much grittier show.

Unfortunately, you can tell that this is a network science fiction show trying to show how adult and gritty it is, because within the first ten minutes of the episode we see a sex worker abducted. Maybe one day science fiction shows will find a way to show that they are proper grown-ups without a drive-by or disposable sex worker character appearing in the first ten minutes, but ‘Carpenter Street’ is not that show.

The other thing Star Trek’s forays into our century do is emphasise how far humanity has come, or still has to travel. This is where ‘Carpenter Street’ really falls down. Because this was Enterprise’s dark, post-9/11 Xindi storyline, we see Archer literally beat information out of someone – not for the first time in this season. It’s a scene that highlights everything that’s wrong with this version of Star Trek.

It’s also the bringer of bad news, as at one point T’Pol asks about fossil fuels to be told that “It’s not until 2061 that…”

The sentence is left incomplete, but that sounds like bad news for our 2050 emissions targets.

4. Tomorrow is Yesterday

This is Star Trek’s first trip back to the 20th century, and it sets the rules for so much that comes later. Agonising about changing the future, having modern day characters remark on how silly everything is, Star Trek characters being taken prisoner and taking the piss out of their interrogators. The formula is refined in many ways from here on, but the ingredients are established here.

It also establishes, as ‘Assignment: Earth’ later confirms, that any ordinary warp-capable ship can perform a manoeuvre to travel forward or backward in time at will, a plot device most of the Star Trek canon has heroically stuck its fingers in its ears and shut its eyes to avoid.

The main reason this entry doesn’t rank higher is that the action is almost entirely confined to US military bases, denying us the fun of seeing our favourite Starfleet officers wandering around our day-to-day world as if it’s the Planet of the Week.

Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

By Ed Gross

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is an “Encounter at Farpoint” Sequel

By Ryan Britt

3. Future’s End

This Star Trek: Voyager two-parter, on the other hand, gives us that in spades. It knows what the fans want and it is here to give you a big steaming bowl of it. Neelix and Kes watching daytime soaps? Check. Tuvok having to ensure he wears a beanie at all times? Check. Paris getting his 20th century history and slang hilariously wrong? Check. An oddly jarring turn by a young, pre-comedy stardom Sarah Silverman? Okay, maybe you weren’t asking for that, but check!

It even throws us some subtle continuity porn to argue over. In Sarah Silverman’s office we see a model of the launch configuration of a DY-100 class ship- the ship used by Khan Noonien Singh to escape justice following the Eugenics Wars that were supposed to happen in the mid-nineties.

This is more than just an Easter egg (unlike, we’re assuming, the Talosian action figure on Sarah Silverman’s desk). Over the course of the episode we learn that the entire microprocess revolution that created the world we know and love was the result of stolen 29th century tech.

Does this mean history was changed? That all Star Trek following this episode takes place in a divergent timeline where the Eugenics Wars never happened? This has some fascinating connotations that we will touch upon later in the article, and which I will explain to you at length after precisely one and a half pints.

The episode does have its weak points however – Voyager being seen on national television never seems to go anywhere, and neither does the whole subplot where Chakotay and Torres end up prisoner in a survivalist compound for a bit.

As we’ve already mentioned, there’s also a lot of agonising about how Voyager will get to the present, when we already know that they just need to whip around the sun at warp speed and boom, the series is over.

Oh, and this is an extremely minor gripe, but Janeway tells us she has no idea what her ancestors were doing in this time period – despite subjecting us to the tedium of her story in ‘Millennium Gate’ which was set only four years after this.

2. Past Tense

This episode might be considered a cheat, since at time of broadcast it was technically set in the future. However, since it (along with Irish Reunification) is supposed to take place three years on from now, I think we can say it counts.

This Deep Space Nine story is decidedly not ‘a romp’. Yes people make fun of the characters’ clothes, and Kira and O’Brien’s jaunts through history raise a smile, but more than all but a select number of Star Trek stories, this is about just how far our reality is from the hoped-for future of Star Trek.

Bashir lands some lines that hit quite a bit heavier now than they did in the nineties, from “The 21st century is not one of my strong points – too depressing” to the plaintive “How could they have let things get so bad?” at the story’s conclusion.

And while it is set over twenty years in the future from the perspective of the broadcast date, it wasn’t far off. Stories evocative of the sanctuary districts are easy to find, and as writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe says, “We weren’t being predictive. We were just looking out our windows in the ’90s.”

Only two things really mark this episode out as an anachronism. One, the technology looks painfully 90s – our technology looks far closer to the 24th century than the bulky monitors seen everywhere in this. But then again, this episode was broadcast prior to ‘Future’s End’, so maybe Henry Starling hadn’t kickstarted the microprocessor revolution in this timeline yet.

The other, far grimmer element to have dated is the idea that one innocent black person being shot by police could be enough to cause the sea change this episode says it does.

1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

There wasn’t ever really going to be any debate over this, was there? Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is hands down the one to beat if you’re writing Star Trek characters travelling to the present day. The film itself was something of a departure for the franchise. Rather than Robert Wise’s epic, sombre, proper science fiction in The Motion Picture, or the bombastic action of Nicholas Meyer’s Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home was helmed by a director who would be best known for the cult comedy, Three Men & a Baby.

This 20th century feels far more inhabited than other portrayals, with screen time being given over to casual conversations between bin men, and workplace arguments independent of the former Enterprise crew.

Of course, by now the crew of 1701-no-bloody-A-B-C-or-D should be old hands at Earth in the 20th century. This is their fourth trip here, not counting planets-that-mysteriously-resemble-Earth-in-the-20th-century.

But these fish are never more out of water than they are in this film, and the results are charming. Kirk explaining swearing to Spock, Kirk observing people “still use money”, Chekov standing in the middle of the street asking for directions to the “Nuclear Wessels”, Scotty’s “Hello Computer!” and Kirk Thatcher getting nerve-pinched for listening to his own music on a ghetto blaster. Plus countless more zingers, sight gags and throwaway lines that I’m still finding new ones of after many, many re-watches.

And the cast are clearly having the time of their lives. Shatner’s comic talent was always on display, but in this movie he is really allowed to cut it fully loose giving reaction shots that make you feel bad about every time you mocked his acting.

But no matter how silly it gets, this film knows, more than any other, the point of sending Star Trek characters into the modern day. It is to show us the difference between our ideal selves and where we are – and it does it no less starkly than ‘Past Tense’. With a light comic touch, Kirk and co. encounter capitalism, the spectre of nuclear war, and most of all, the devastating environmental impact we’re having. Even if we reach the ideal Star Trek future, this film says, we could still lose things we can’t replace along the way.

Star Trek: Picard is going to have to work hard if it wants to walk in its footsteps.

Honourable Mentions

While not taking place in the present day, it’d be remiss of this article not to mention ‘City on the Edge of Forever’, which refined ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday’s formula and is just one of the all-out best Star Trek series ever, and ‘Little Green Men’, which twists the usual Starfleet-in-the-20th-century formula by having the Ferengi arrive in the 20th century and find humans far more brutal, greedy and stupid than even they suspected.

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Also, I don’t want to alarm you, but by the end of this decade we’ll be closer to the events of Star Trek: First Contact than we are to the release of Star Trek: First Contact.

The post Star Trek: Ranking the Stories Set in the Present Day appeared first on Den of Geek.

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kaida-beifong · 7 years

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Fun/Not So Fun Facts of Mai and Yin Xiao Long

I did have a hilarious little thing planned with Mai and Yin just shooting horrible faunus related jokes at each other. BUT first I thought you’d guys would like to learn a little more about my babies. Which I will happily share with you all. Again if you have questions or points you’d like to point out. Message me or comment whichever works best for you. Some of these facts may or may not change as I continue to develop them. So enjoy ^^ --------------------------------------- 1. - Yin and Mai (Modern Times AU) love Panic! at the disco, Paramore, ect. 2. - Yin loves Salmon and Mai prefers Halibut both tend to argue over which is better all while insulting the others taste. 3. - Mai loves the water while Yin hates it with a passion. Needless to say visiting there grandparents is tiring when they have to try and drag one of there daughters (Yin) onto the boat. (And she puts up a fight every single time.) 4. - Mai and Yin both attain there own scars as they get older. Mai gets one on the bridge of her nose and Yin gets a part of her right ear torn both hate to admit they get very insecure afterwards. (Though how they get these scars I will not say yet.) 5. - The names Yin and Mai hate the most is Scarface (for Mai) and Hard of Hearing (For Yin) upon getting there scars this is sadly a nickname the two of them end up getting from some rather less then distasteful people. 6. - Yin and Mai are very competitive mostly against each other but half the time no one really wants to face them. Mai is what you'd call a rage gamer and Yin would be best described as a constant combo user. 7. - Yin was originally never going to exist but the idea of Mai having a twin just was too tempting to deny after a few weeks and since Yin's design was technically already done it was impossible for me not to put it to good use. (Thanks again Azerae ) 8. - Mai has a crush upon Keira Arc, and Yin loves to tease and mock her for it even go so far as to jokingly "threaten" her that she'd tell Miss Arc thus leading to some rather awkward fights. 9. - Needless to say Yin doesn't have crushes she more or less has interests. If you interest her she'll let you know when she gets older she tends to have flings but does want to have someone in her life at some point it's just a matter of finding that person. This does change later on though. (So don’t look too into this too much.) 10. - Yin and Mai also play instruments, Both of which enjoy playing Bass/Electric or Simple Guitar but they do sometimes play the drums though it's a rare occurrence they've found there passion more against plucking strings. 11. - On a side note Yin and Mai do tend to sneak off at night and do a little jam session with Jade and Onyx as well as a couple others. They often joke about running away and becoming an awesome kick ass band. But at least Junior lets them play at the club from time to time, in exchange there parents don't break anything. Inside joke?, maybe, maybe not. 12. - Due to them being half faunus and half human they tend to be a bit isolated by both humans and faunus. (Or at least those that represent hate towards humans/faunus) 13. - During there insecure phase Yin and Mai often wore hats or tukes to hide there ears. Often sometimes the two would even wear contacts because there red eyes would often come off as intimidating or terrifying. 14. - Mai's theme or song of choice is Ignorance is your new best friend by Paramore. Yin's theme or song of choice is Renegade by Paramore. During there insecure phase they loved the song New Perspective by Panic! at the disco. Mind you it's just the ones they like. They also go nuts over the song Emperor's new Clothes by Panic! at the disco. (Modern AU.) 15. - Yin is terrified of thunder storms. Hides under her bed, lays with Mai or her parents whenever they get bad. Mai on other hand is once again the opposite. She prefers to sit by the window and watch the lightning flash through the sky as well as the heavy rain. 16. - Yin and Mai are practical jokers and tend to have a rather dirty and dark sense of humor but they're also sometimes a bit too realistic in certain situations. Though tend to make and or crack jokes in serious situations. It's how they handle them best: hard times and even to break the ice when meeting new people. 17. - Yin and Mai happen to share a really close relationship with Ilia and Sun Wukong. Often calling them Aunt Illie and Uncle Sun though people find it a bit weird it doesn't seem to bother there parents too much though a lot of people tend to question Ilia and Sun which tends to get a bit irritating. (From Ilia's stand point anyway.) But despite popular belief Ilia has a soft spot for the little faunus children and refuses to tell them otherwise plus it's not like they'd listen either. 18. - Yin and Mai are horrible flirts. While Mai has standards and does know when to call it quits, But Yin on the other hand. Is much worse, she'll flirt with just about anyone who catches her attention. 19. - They do sometimes call Neptune there uncle as well. Though he is a major part of the reason these two flirt, while many assume Yang is the cause she's actually smartened up over the years due to Blake and her kids. 20. - When Yin and Mai we're younger and Sun couldn't watch them when asked, Neptune would offer to take them and use them as literal chick magnets. That is until Yang and Blake found out that ended rather quickly and needless to say Sun and Neptune never spoke of it much afterwards. 21. - During original creations when Mai was an only child she'd spend a lot of her time with uncle Sun and Uncle Neptune as a way to get away from her parents overprotective nature. 22. - During original creations when I first brought Yin into the picture she was intended to die at birth or so she was said to be but was taken in by Raven and raised. She wasn't evil but she wasn't exactly kind either she had an even darker sense of humor and moral value then she does now. 23. - Mai is a climber, it's something she had gotten use to doing while being watched by Sun, where as Yin just enjoyed tormenting the poor faunus by disappearing and leaving clones in her wake, Mai enjoyed scaring the hell out of him by climbing trees or anything she could get a good grip on. Needless to say the first time Mai climbed a tree her parents nearly had a heart attack. 24. - Mai and Yin tend to make puns more towards Sun who is a literal Monkey's uncle and they never let him forget it. It's now a joke Yang enjoys using too. Even Blake gets a little involved in the joke despite Sun's constant begging to stop. 25. - Raven constantly watches Yin and Mai, After a few years only ones who notices are Great Uncle Qrow, Yang and Yin. Mai is oblivious or just doesn't entirely care. That's still up for debate. 26. - Unlike Lillie and Lotus, Mai and Yin's personalities are a bit too much alike that it causes them to often clash and/or fight. Whether with others or each other is debatable depending on the situation. 27. - Despite popular belief Mai and Yin aren't entirely fond of sushi. They don't hate it but they could go with out it if they wanted raw fish they'd catch it themselves. 28. - Whenever visiting there grandparents (Grandpa Ghira and Grandma Kali) things tend to get really out of hand with Yin and Mai. There are a few faunus rivals/enemies/bullies who like to taunt the two sisters and tend to make them try to prove themselves which involves them nearly getting hurt. They want to prove themselves that they are no different then any other faunus and it bugs them that some even if it's just a few don't see Mai or Yin as what they are. Even with there grandfather being a chief of the island it doesn't always stop the taunts and mockery the two have to endure. 29. - Yin and Mai both suffer from a mental illness as they get older, Both have been confirmed to suffer from both depression and heavy anxiety. It only gets worse when the two are divided for a long period of time. They use each other as an emotional crutch so to speak it does get better a bit as they get older but whether that's due to medication or coming up with new methods on how to handle it is unknown. (This is a possible Fact I may or may not keep I’ll let fans decide) 30. - Yin may also be bi-polar but that is also unknown. Mai possibly might also have claustrophobia but right now it's also unknown (Debating on both of those last ones. Though Mai's is more likely due to her history. ) 31. - Yin actually does have a crush. It's a secret she keeps to herself. Her crush is on a young woman by the name of Aquarius Vasilias. The child of Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasilias. (They used a surrogate before people freak out I have an idea as of who but I also just bought her recently so yeah kind of a last minute addition.) 32. - Yin might hate water but she makes an acception for Aqua still won't go near it but she'll at least watch at a distance. 33. - The reason why Yin doesn't tell anyone about this crush is kinda obvious. She knows her sister, her mom and even her uncles will mock the hell out of her. 34. - Mai has her own secret of course one she only shares with Keira. When they're alone she lets Keira rub her ears something she rarely lets anyone do aside from her parents. She doesn't let Yin near them though and vice versa. 35. - Both Yin and Mai gain there scars due to a form of discriminatory nature. It is slightly different though a mentioned before though it is not from humans they gain these scars but of other Faunus who believe they do not deserve to even be labelled as such. 36. - Mai and Yin don't hate dogs well they hate one but there reasoning behind it is more then understandable. PLUS NEW FACTS: 37. Mai and Yin’s relationship with Ruby is a well hyper one I guess you can say. Ruby is the type to kind of encourage them to be more free willed while it does often backfire on all of them they normally have a lot of fun with Auntie Ruby. 38. Mai and Yin’s relationship with Weiss is about as good as you can expect. They enjoy watching there mom mock the heck outta her when she’s around. Though they will admit that she can be a bit terrifying when her cold exterior comes into play. 39. Yin and Mai fear many things and many people. They have a list from people they fear the most to the least. 40. On the top of that list is actually a good friend known as Pepper, and they have a list of reasons not to piss her off. Bottom of the list is Jaune. Yes even he has a hard time striking fear into these girls even as he gets older and very protective of his own. (If you wish to know the whole list again comment or message and I will post it up some day.) 41. Yin and Mai’s favorite target to mock is there cousin Crystal. She is the easiest to piss off but they sometimes tend to go a bit too far and find themselves frozen from time to time. 42. Grandpa Tai is another they visit often. While Yin doesn’t exactly feel very close to him, Mai tends to get along with him rather well. 43. While it isn’t intentional with Yin looking so much like Raven the whole situation between Yin and Tai kinda distances them and she doesn’t find out why until she’s around the age of fourteen. 44. Mai and Yin both have nicknames for there crushes. For Mai she has a habit of calling Keira either Arc Angel or Warrior Princess neither of which she is very fond of but lets it slide. For Yin she tends to sometimes call Aqua, High Tide or Riptide simply because of her love for the water. Unlike Keira, Aqua does not mind these nicknames. --------------------------------------- A lot of these facts are up for debate. Pick a favorite, or even go in deeper I would love to hear some fans ideas as to how to improve or add more to it. If you want to know some facts about my other Oc’s feel free to ask or message.

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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Beanie Feldstein of Booksmart on Being “Built Happy,” Overcoming Tragedy and (of Course) Llamas

We’re on the patio at one of Beanie Feldstein’s favourite brunch spots. It feels transplanted from Los Angeles—which is to say there is a shocking dearth of deep-fried dishes. But the mechanical roar and shudder from a nearby construction crew, the buildings and the presence of Beanie* herself place us very clearly in New York. Chelsea, to be exact. And when in Chelsea with an impossibly charming actress well on her way to attaining her dream career, you talk about llamas.

* Author’s note: It’s journalistic convention to refer to a subject by his/her last name after his/her first appearance, but it feels wrong to do so with Beanie Feldstein. Beanie—a name her late brother gave her when she was a baby named Elizabeth—fits better. It’s like if Coca-Cola were a person, you wouldn’t call her Cola; it’s too broad and generic. No, you’d call her Coke.

“I loved llamas growing up,” says Beanie. “My second screen name ever, my second email, was pinkllamas12. My favourite colour, my favourite animal, my favourite number.”

As far as conversational tangents go, this isn’t that random. Beanie, whom you’ll recognize from playing the so-loyal-it-hurts best friend in Lady Bird along with the so-loyal-it’s-hilarious best friend in this past summer’s instant high school classic Booksmart, was talking about apartments in New York. This led to talk of dogs. Big dogs, specifically, and how, what with a roommate and all, she can’t get one at the moment. Helpfully, I asked if she had considered llamas. “They’re also quite tall.” Ha ha.

And so we spoke of llamas.

As it turns out, we each have one piece of llama trivia. Mine hasn’t exactly been fact-checked, so I’m concerned that my llama anecdote will contradict hers—and wouldn’t that be awkward? Rule number one of celebrity interviews: Don’t argue with the talent (especially about llamas).

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Peter Butler for TraceyMattingly.com. Makeup, Matin for TraceyMattingly.com/Nars. Manicure, Miss Pop/Zoya Nail Polish. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, Ian Bishop and Alicia Brooks.

“From what I read when I was 11, you have to have at least two llamas,” she says. “Because if a llama doesn’t get attached to another llama, it’s going to get attached to you and then be violent with anyone who comes near you. But if you have two, they’ll get attached to each other.”

My tidbit is that instead of using sheepdogs (or maybe in addition to using sheepdogs…my knowledge of shepherding practices comes almost exclusively from Looney Tunes), shepherds will sometimes put a llama in with their flock. So long as that llama remains singular, it will defend its little woolly cousins against all comers—will literally flatten any coyotes that come sniffing around. But if that llama has a llama friend, it could give a shit about those damn sheep.

The point of both of our anecdotes is the same: Llamas have very powerful feelings. And as such, they provide an imperfect yet apt metaphor for who Beanie is (minus what are clear co-dependency issues on the part of the llama).

“I love deep,” Beanie tells me later. It might be the truest statement anyone has ever made. In the hour we talk, Beanie uses the word “love” approximately 60 times. If she mentions someone—a director or past co-star or anyone—she’ll first list specific reasons why she loves them. And hers isn’t the “Oh, Marty Was Such a Thrill to Work With” kind of talk show praise that celebrities usually dish either. It sounds genuine—like everyone is a friend she met at camp and can’t wait to tell you about.

“It’s very rare for me not to connect with people,” she says. “It’s subconscious: I feel connected or I don’t. Every now and then, I’m wrong. And it hurts. But I think I just sort of know. I just love deeply.”

She just knows herself, too. And I get the sense that, more importantly, she likes herself. That’s a big part of why she can be so positive about pretty much everything. That might sound like she’s a typical millennial, pumped full of untested self-esteem. But it’s not like that. It’s a choice, and it’s one that doesn’t go unchallenged. After all, one assumes that being a plus-size actress in Hollywood comes with certain pressures that can be anathema to self-acceptance.

In a brief essay for Refinery29, she wrote about how precarious and hard-fought self-love can be, at least when it comes to her body. After unintentionally losing weight after a stint on Broadway, she noticed how many comments and compliments she was getting about her looks. “It really messed with my head,” she wrote. “After years of pain, I had finally found such a beautiful peace, one that most people, no matter what size they are, don’t have […]. But here’s the issue: When everyone started telling me I looked smaller, I lost my beautiful mindset that took decades to find.” Her self-acceptance and confidence don’t come from outside; they come from her own self-awareness. She has a healthy understanding of her talents as well as her weaknesses.

“When everyone started telling me I looked smaller, I lost my beautiful mindset that took decades to find.”

Her upcoming film, How to Build a Girl, is based on the novel by Caitlin Moran (“so charismatic and so effervescent and magical”). Beanie plays a girl named Johanna, who is “so different from Caitlin.” The character and Moran do, however, share a pretty similar biography. They are both music critics from the British town of Wolverhampton and speak like it. It’s not an accent that comes naturally to anyone not from Wolverhampton; it’s an accent that even her girlfriend, English film producer Bonnie-Chance Roberts, couldn’t help her with. “It’s not just a British accent,” she says. “Coky [Giedroyc, the director] was like, ‘Even as Londoners, we don’t know how to do that accent.’”

“I’m not an accent savant like some people,” says Beanie. “Saoirse Ronan is brilliant in every way, but her work with accents is so insane. I approached it academically.” She’ll tell you, without self-deprecation or false modesty, that she is neither the most creative nor the most intelligent in her family. But she is the most academic.

“I know the moment I got the part,” she says. “I was Skyping with the producers before I went to London for my audition. And they were like, ‘We looked all around for someone from Wolverhampton to play Johanna.’ But they couldn’t find anyone and so they were looking all over the U.K. I was like, ‘If you’re not casting someone from Wolverhampton, then anyone would be doing an accent.’ And I saw their heads cock, and it was the right thing to say.”

Bold, right? But then she had to work to nail Moran’s accent—which took a three-week immersion in Wolverhampton-ese while embedded in one of the town’s female-run shops. She said it was awkward at first, since she was under orders to speak in the accent well before she had it down, but what’s a little discomfort if it means getting to work with someone like Moran?

“She is everything I would want to be as a woman,” she says. “I just couldn’t believe that they chose a Jewish girl from Los Angeles. And I think in my core they saw something in me that Johanna has, which is like an eternal optimism.”

And like with her character, it’s an optimism that has been tested. As a good sociology grad (Weslyan ’15), she knows that her life has been privileged: raised in Los Angeles by well-off, creative parents; a famous older brother (named Jonah Hill); loads of natural talent and charisma. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t had challenges or faced grief.

Her oldest brother, Jordan, was a manager for Maroon 5, Robin Thicke and Elle King. He died at the end of 2017 from a blood clot in his lung. “It’s unbearable at times,” she says. “But it doesn’t linger in me. I mean, my tragedy lingers in me every day. My grief is something that I am alongside every single day. But it doesn’t present itself as depression or sadness.”

“It’s unbearable at times. But it doesn’t linger in me. I mean, my tragedy lingers in me every day. My grief is something that I am alongside every single day.”

There’s a difference between eternally optimistic and blindly optimistic. She knows that life is hard and things are shitty. And it’s hard to keep a big heart from getting hurt every now and then, but all the pain isn’t pointless. “I found myself unwillingly in a new club,” she wrote in an essay for InStyle. “It is a club full of suffering and questioning but is also a community of people who have a truly broadened perspective on the human experience.”

And while it doesn’t make up for the loss, that kind of perspective is helpful when your job is to inhabit different human experiences. “I think one of the most beautiful lines I got to say in Lady Bird was ‘Some people just aren’t built happy,’” she says. “I was really struck, because I have no words for how much I miss my brother, but I think that I am just built happy.”

After reading all this, you shouldn’t be surprised that Beanie is a theatre person. She fell in love with Funny Girl before she was old enough for kindergarten. She spent most of 2017 on Broadway starring in Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler. (Bet you can’t guess how Beanie feels about her.) Theatre—musical theatre, specifically—might be the only thing she loves more than…all of the other things she loves.

“I think one of the most beautiful lines I got to say in Lady Bird was ‘Some people just aren’t built happy.’ I was really struck, because I have no words for how much I miss my brother, but I think that I am just built happy.”

Considering how many theatre nerds there are around the world, there are relatively few true theatre people in Hollywood, but you know them when you see them: enthusiastic, touchingly game, often improbably good at accents (spoiler alert: Beanie can talk like a native of Wolverhampton now) and probably on the verge of tears (happy or sad) at this very moment. “They are people with the biggest hearts,” she explains. “I’ve never met a more hard-working people than the theatre community. Broadway is a slow burn of commitment.”

Maybe the size of their hearts helps with the required energy as well as her craft. She’s not a method actor. She connects to her characters through empathy, through inherent understanding and love.

One final observation: Beanie’s first breakout role was in Neighbors 2. She played a freshman student who started a wildcat sorority with Chloë Grace Moretz. In her next two major roles, she was a senior in high school. “And, now, in How to Build a Girl I’m 16,” she says. “I’m Benjamin Buttoning, which is funny because I’ve always felt like an old soul.”

Beanie passes as a teenager, of course, especially since we’re used to seeing 25-year-old high-schoolers in pop culture. But I think she keeps getting younger and younger in her roles as a corrective. Even though she’s only in her early twenties, we regret that we didn’t find her sooner, that we weren’t friends with her in high school. So, we’re going to force her back there. We want her in our musicals, films and lives for as long as possible.

Actually, maybe we’re the llamas in this metaphor.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov.

1/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, price upon request, Jonathan Simkhai at Rent the Runway. Earrings, $200, Jennifer Fisher. Rings (worn throughout), Beanie’s own.

2/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, $3,170, and shoes, $1,255, Marc Jacobs.

3/10

Beanie Feldstein

4/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, $2,860, Erdem at The Room. Shoes, $775, Stuart Weitzman.

5/10

Beanie Feldstein

6/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, $3,070, Balenciaga at Saks Fifth Avenue. Shoes, $1,875, Jimmy Choo. Belt, stylist’s own.

7/10

Beanie Feldstein

Top, $750, Versace at Holt Renfrew. Bracelet, Beanie’s own.

8/10

Beanie Feldstein

Top, $750, Versace at Holt Renfrew. Bracelet, Beanie’s own.

9/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, price upon request, Jonathan Simkhai at Rent the Runway. Earrings, $200, Jennifer Fisher. Shoes, $1,250, Gucci.

10/10

Beanie Feldstein

Dress, $170, Rahi at Shopbop. Shoes, price upon request, Salvatore Ferragamo.

The post Beanie Feldstein of <em>Booksmart</em> on Being “Built Happy,” Overcoming Tragedy and (of Course) Llamas appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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