If the writers treated Crow fairly, we would've had a friendship with Bommer

That would have been so good. Everyone in the main cast all gained a friend except for Crow.

They would make good friendship. They have a lot in common.

Now I am imagining Crow’s kids all climbing on Bommer like they did Jack.

Sanditon Season 2: pictures and hesitant opinions

We have new men

We have at least one new black character, but based on the casting calls there'll be multiple

We have Charlotte returning with her recast sister Alison

We have Charlotte, now as a companion, still deserving love

Discussion

I am one of the people who is glad for Sanditon to return, if only so I can look at a period drama. I know there's a lot of DRAMA about Sanditon as the show will be returning without the beloved lead. I know everyone has opinions (most discuss them on fb though as that platform is better at organized discussions). But here I want to list mine as a historian, avid Janeite and period drama fan. Feel free to add your own opinions so we can open up the conversation as we prepare for the new season of Sanditon in 2022. Disclaimer: We still haven't seen the show so I am against absolute boycotts and opinions of people who don't even consider watching as we literally don't know how the writers will handle everything. Concerns and disappointments are, of course, welcome.

1) Sidney won't come back. Personally I was not a fan of Sidney as a love interest, but I could take peace in the fact that Charlotte chose him. I'm not a big fan of Wentworth or Edward Ferrars either, so yk, not being fan of the man while still loving the couple is possible. I hope the writers will be careful in the way they write him out of the show. The whole point of season one was that he learned to care for his family. He sacrificed his and Charlotte's love for his family. They need to cut him out in a way that doesn't undo the one thing about him in season one. Have him die at sea, or some other good reason that means he cannot return to Sanditon even though Stupid Tom is still making a mess of things.

2) Babington won't return. This is a worrying thing for me. I know the writers can't help Mark Stanley's availability, but he IS married to Esther. The whole point of Esther's arc was having her independent from the gaslighting deceptive cheating egocentrical shit called Edward. Both Esther and Edward will be returning. I do not want Esther to cheat or go back to him just for DRAMA. That undoes her progress. Also: cheating in the regency era or divorce, for women, is always a no-go. I'm fine with Edward trying to sabotage or blackmail her though, that's realistic.

3) No Stringer, Crowe, Miss Parker or twins. Sad but, in the end, they weren't part of a major storyline. I do wonder how they'll deal with Alexandra leaving the cast though, will the Parker sister be written off as having married?

4) The clothes and hair... Still not sold on it. Loose hair everywhere

5) Charlotte is now a governess. This is clearly a lack of insight into what it means to be a governess in that time. They clearly have a lot of high profile men lined up for Charlotte but that's not possible if she's a governess, a fact the showwriters clearly didn't think about. Governesses are like ghosts. They are too high in status to mix with the working class, but as they work for the elite they were once part of, they are not on equal footing with them either. So if Charlotte is a governess, that puts her way below the men they have in store for her. Want to know more? Check out this video of Ellie Dashwood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFw2QmO8aJU

6) Crystal Clarke's character Georgiana wasn't treated fairly by the writers in season one. The all white ensemble of screenwriters had things planned for Georgiana that were at best patronizing, and at worst stereotypical or racist. Now the cast is more diverse, and diverse writers were hired to make sure that the black characters and storylines were treated with care. Georgiana is the wealthiest character on the show and she'll be coming of age in these seasons, so I do hope she'll be more than the black best friend or plot device of Charlotte.

7) the regiments are coming to town... This one is... well. I love a good military presence in a Jane Austen novel. It's a classic trope and clearly the writers are still into recycling and checking off every JA plot device from the bingo chart. Personally, I don't mind they're going for all the tropes. HOWEVER. Sanditon is a coastal town, and the book was written in 1817. It would make a lot more sense if the navy arrived. Just think about it. 1) What are the regiments doing in a sleepy very small town in the south of England? The regiments kept order and trained for war. But why would they get stationed in such a rural backwater? Think about the possibilities of the navy: A) the navy can dock in Sanditon and make it a naval base like Lyme Regis for attacks during the Napoleontic Wars (always a background theme in Jane Austen's works) so it would make sense if the navy was stationed in a coastal town B) the presence of the navy could mean that a lot of naval families buy property in Sanditon. This would make the city bloom and mean that Sanditon could finally be safe in terms of money, but that Tom could be challenged insofar that he doesn't know how to deal with the amount of people he now has to entertain. It would also mean Sidney has less reason to help as Sanditon is now a growing well-faring town. C) if the city came to be under the attack of the French, that would be epic. Then a love interest of Charlotte could show his love by protecting her. Or Charlotte could show her strength as a character by helping a boat of English naval men that's been attacked and is sinking by saving drowning sailors. Infinite possibilities!

8) Mad, bad and dangerous to know: Edward Denham and Charles Lockhart are both hedonists who are promised to cause ruckus in Sanditon. Which to me is... fine but not enthousiastic. Bad boys causing trouble was already a point in season one but in an Austen-style series I hope the "we need to stop the bad guys from ruining the town" doesn't take center stage. it's about love, it's about perils down the road, it's about overcoming interpersonal conflicts and misunderstandings. The drama is not as important as the relationships.

9) Alexander Colbourne: the main romance hero like Colonel Brandon? Alexander has been described as "thoughtful, cerebral, and antisocial to the point of reclusiveness". That sounds a lot like Sidney Parker. Might be a catch as I wonder whether Charlotte would fall for an emotionally unavailable man again... But on the other hand... He is a mysterious resident with a complex family history who isn't too confident... And he's probably wealthy. We know Charlotte will be a governess but we don't know to whom. However, if I may put 2 and 2 together. If he has a complex family history, and there is a girl Charlotte needs to govern... We might be looking at Charlotte being governess of a "niece"/ "supposed illegitimate child"/ "unknown how they're related relative" of Colbourne. That could give them a lot of time together, and could give Charlotte motivation to figure him out in the same way Charlotte tried to figure Sidney out because she wanted to help him and Georgiana understand each other better. It's a copy of season 1, and perhaps also a nod to Sense&Sensibility where Colonel Brandon is also a shy man with a dark family past and a mysterious female family member. Could Alexander be a Colonel Brandon character that is gentle and wants to love but is caught between ghosts of the past? Could Charlotte be set up for a more broody, gentle man after losing her first dashing whirlwind lover like Marianne Dashwood? I think it might be so.

10) Colonel Francis: the Captain Wentworth copycat? Self-assured war hero Colonel Francis Lennox is also vying for Charlotte's affection. He even looks like the 2007 Captain Wentworth in my opinion. I think he's a replacement for Stringer in that he will clearly be more open and sociable than Colbourne, who is a bit more like Sidney in that he's probably more of a closed book. I think a selfmade man who works very hard is appealing to Charlotte. I think an adventurous husband is also something Charlotte might like, someone who appreciates her clear head and her ambition in her wanting to work for Sanditon. Charlotte is not just a housewife, she's entrepreneurial. After Sidney, she might really want and need a man who is open about his intentions and helps her crawl out of the shell she was clearly in at the end of season one. However, I don't know. I'd need to see more of Sanditon.

11) Charlotte working through grief: I want Charlotte's happiness. As a modern woman in the 21st century I LOATHE the idea that the only good thing is first love, and that everything is lost forever if you lose your first partner. It is cruel to not allow anyone to fall in love again. It is unrealistic and mean to say you hope Charlotte, or anyone else, to ever fall in love again. Bad shit happens, relationships end, sometimes completely out of the control of the people in them, but that doesn't mean the two exes should be miserable forever. Second love can be just as good, or even superior to first love. You know what you want, you know what you don't want, and you're older and more mature. People are allowed to find happiness again. People deserve a second shot at happiness. That's literally the entire plot of Sense&Sensibility. As youngsters we sometimes put our eggs in the wrong basket (Marianne), or make mistakes due to our youth (Anne Elliot), or you're turn from your lover (Colonel Brandon, or Mr. Dashwood from his first wife). All of these people found love again at older age and became happy again. It only took time. I want Charlotte to have the time to sort out her grief, but find peace in that she has the opportunity to fall in love again and that Sidney made this choice for himself and his family. But after that, she must learn to open her heart to new experiences. Because thát is life. You learn to move on. Life doesn't stop at a sad breakup. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

@treppenwitzz​​ asked: i need all the deets about your bellatrix... ALSO ANJI i wanna know more about anji | MEME.

So... this ended up really long and therefore it’s under the cut! I sort of left out the “who they could get along with” part but I also feel like that really just depends on verses and such, so we can totally discuss that sometime  🥺🥺🥺

Bellatrix Lestrange

TW for mentions of alcohol, abuse, death and miscarriage

TROPES/ARCHETYPES: The Champion, Femme Fatale

Bellatrix is the very first muse that I officially wrote on indie, but also a muse that I’ve explored in the many group rps I’ve been in in the years before that. Because of that, she’s been through a lot of changing and tweaking over the years, but I like what I’ve got going for her now.

I’m absolutely a big fan of villain characters and I support the humanizing of them because in my mind, it is all the more terrifying that a villain could like the same things as you, could be like you, but be capable of such terrible things. I think it creates a frightening perspective that’s the quiet sort of terrifying, and it’s what I aim to do with Bella. I wanted to create a villainous woman who is powerful without being sorry for it.

I do want to stress that a villain doesn’t necessarily become worthy or deserving of pity or redemption because their story contains sad aspects. In the end, everyone encounters terrible and sad things in life, and it’s what you do with these experiences that matters. If you become bitter or vengeful, that is a decision, and the consequences of however you decide to treat the world after are not cancelled out because of the reason why you became this way.

On the one hand, she is this terrifyingly powerful witch who, despite her comparatively young age, climbed up the ranks of the death eaters to the position of lieutenant at Voldemort’s side, but on the other she is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s wife. I wanted to explore how these two aspects of her story intertwine, or, in some cases, clash.

My Bella is a bit canon-divergent in that I absolutely refuse to write a woman who’s completely submissive to a man, especially one that doesn’t deserve it. Of course, I don’t want to stray too far from her original arc in that I still believe she’s absolutely starstruck by Voldemort, but she is more interested in his abilities, his mind and his cunning than she is in him as a partner. It’s a different kind of infatuation, where she isn’t all too sure if she wants him or wants to BE him. In time, she settles with neither, and becomes his champion, instead. She’s a knight under his banner, a soldier under his command.

Much of Bella’s arc comes down to a dominant woman living in a society that doesn’t like dominant women. Pureblood circles are catered to the pureblood man, whereas the woman’s job, much like in societies of previous eras, is to bear a husband's children to continue the pureblood line. It’s a crude and sexist thing, and Bella wants none of it. From a young age, she rebels against her father’s firm beliefs in the way things are supposed to be, and rebels against her mother’s attempts to “guide” her back to how she’s supposed to be. She’s the feral child with the holes in her dresses, the scrapes on her legs from climbing trees and running too fast. Her long hair always tangled and messy. She knows that as a girl in the Black family, the highest achievement would have been to become matriarch, but even that wasn’t ever going to be enough for Bella.

When her mother dies, about two years after the birth of Narcissa, the matriarch of the Black family, Walburga, takes over the role for a short amount of time while her father drinks his grief away. After Sirius is born, however, even this steadiness falls away, as their aunt spends her full time caring for him and the second son, Regulus, born a year after. This leaves Bella to assume responsibility for her sisters at the age of 8. Her fights with her father, their temperaments going head to head resulting in situations I don’t really care to divulge about.

Once accepted into Hogwarts is where things start to divert. From one day to the next, her previously always messy hair is neatly combed back into a braid. Her clothes are pristine, not a spot in sight, and her sharp commentary is kept to a minimum. To all those around her, it seemed she had finally heeded her mother’s wishes, and embraced her place in society. But to those who knew her well enough, to her sisters and to her cousins, there was a stubborn fire burning behind those crow-black eyes, burning higher and brighter the more time passed. It was only a matter of time until the fire either consumed her, or consumed those around her.

It was at the age of 17, during her last year at Hogwarts, that Bellatrix was introduced to the Dark Lord. She’d seen him before, of course, but the Black family had stoically kept their stance on the matter of his campaign neutral, although this wouldn’t last. Her fiance-to-be, Rodolphus, who was a few years her senior, had already joined the ranks, and Voldemort’s actions could no longer be brushed off as a mere whim by the family. And Bella, who desired more than the life of a housewife, saw this as an opportunity to lift herself up.

I want to stress that I, as both a Tom Riddle and Bellatrix writer, don’t think their dynamic was of a romantic or lustful nature at all at this point in time, if ever. Voldemort saw the fire and the potential, and decided that he wanted both of these things for himself, for his ranks. She exceeded expectations and he decided that, if anyone was worthy to be his student, it was her. Over the course of the next two years, he trained her in the dark arts, eventually revealing her, at the age of nineteen, to be his new lieutenant. This was met with some resistance, of course. but Bella was quick to silence that. After all, she had risen above her station, and it had taken effort. She was not about to lose that to a bunch of butthurt men.

It’s also around this time that she marries Rodolphus, whom she puts through the ringer for months before and even post-marriage. She hated the idea of being passed from one man (her father) to another (her husband), as if she is nothing more than a possession. The marriage was arranged, and this bothered her, too, considering her lack of choice in the matter. And because she couldn’t exactly fight her father on it, she fought Rodolphus instead. On every turn, hoping he would be turned off and cancel it. After all, a man’s voice, even if he was only an heir, and not patriarch, still sounded louder than a woman’s voice ever would. But it only seemed to invigorate him, pulling closer the more she pushed. As if he were attracted to the fire, wanted to scorch himself just to stand in the light. He never forced her and he never would, even as she refused to let him into their marriage bed for months, even as she taunted him and ridiculed him. The marriage, in time, seemed to grant her a certain freedom that she never had as a daughter of house Black. She could go where she pleased, do as she pleased, pursue her position among the death eaters as she wanted to. She lost her wariness towards him, her anger. And eventually, she learned to love him.

Bellatrix used to be closest to her sister Andromeda. The two of them were, for a long time, practically inseparable, two halves of a whole. It was as if they should have been twins, and what one lacked, the other would possess. Where one went, you could soon expect the other to be. That was, of course, until Andromeda defected. When she did, Bella’s whole world collapsed. Her castle was captured from the inside, by sadness, by grief and by anger at the deceit. Because Andromeda hadn’t chosen her. Had chosen a “filthy mudblood” instead of her own sister, who had always cared for her, always been there for her. If Bella had had a mean streak, before, it was now full blown, a riptide that would destroy everything and everyone that didn’t get out of her way. She was devastated by the loss, and would never quite recover from it. This event had a huge impact on her view on muggleborns. Whereas before she allowed herself a certain tolerance, where she still viewed herself as holier than but limited her disdain to snooty looks and haughty comments, she now was actively hostile, threatening and garnering a reputation among the ranks of the death eaters for her ruthless, cruel actions.

During her marriage, Bella was pregnant exactly 4 times, but all 4 pregnancies ended up miscarriages fairly early on. It’s my belief that her problems stem from the inbreeding within the family and the English pureblood society in general. Contrary to her other beliefs on the woman in pureblood society, she was interested in being a mother and had the motherly instinct to go with it. Her not being capable of bearing children left her feeling devastated and hardened her heart. In AUs where she does have children, whether of her own or adopted, she develops a sort of caution, a knowledge that she isn’t just responsible for herself, but for this child as well. In these AUs, it keeps her out of Azkaban.

Speaking of Azkaban, I usually don’t write about her time there or really post-Azkaban, and this is mostly because I hate the narrative that she’s “crazy”, and I think it’s harmful towards people who have mental health problems. I believe, due to how Azkaban’s dementors suck the happiness out of people and how Azkaban looks like hell on earth, she suffers from a form of PTSD, but she is not “crazy”.

A few loose facts about her:

is bisexual but leans towards men

loves to write poetry, but she never shows it to anyone.

has a very low tolerance for alcohol and barely drinks.

loves coffee and can’t function without drinking it every morning

is obsessed with taking care of her hair. It’s long and dark and very well-maintained

loves to wear red lipstick

forced herself to learn to use her wand with both her left and her right hand

Anji Terryll

TROPES/ARCHETYPES: The Antihero, The Living Legend, The Reluctant Hero

Anji is actually one of my older muses, who doesn’t see the light of day often because I suppose the Skyrim fandom is sort of dead. On top of that, she’s a female oc. i don’t think i’ll need to explain this. Regardless of that and the lack of information I’ve put online about her ( which I actually seek to remedy by writing this ), she’s a quiet favorite who will never disappear from my roster.

I wanted to create a person who fate had been thrusted upon unwillingly. I wanted to create a woman who had never planned to do anything that didn’t benefit herself in life. Anji’s early life consisted of what was barely a life at the orphanage in Riften, where she watched the Thieves Guild lift jewelry from a man’s pocket with the man none the wiser. She never entertained the idea of being an honest worker, because she’d seen how the jarl treated honest workers. Of course, she knew that if she were to be caught thieving, the storm she’d call over herself would be worse, but that was only if she was going to be caught.

So she got herself into the Thieves’ Guild, worked her way up the ranks to Guild Master, before, near the border, she was caught stealing a horse and shipped off to Helgen, where the main story begins.

Anji is, from the start, reluctant about her supposed fate. She never believed in prophecies and rarely in Gods and now, everything was real, everything was true. And she was the main character of a legend. Thrust into a role she doesn’t think fit her. She isn’t who these people deserve, a thieving woman who serves only her own benefit. The people deserved a selfless knight, advocating for the survival of mankind, believing so wholly in oneself that they could overcome a legendary monster like Alduin the World-Eater. Someone who isn’t her. So she rejects her abilities, rejects her destiny, and pretends for months that she isn’t the one the Greybeards are calling from the Throat of the World.

And for a time, it works. For a time she can focus on the physical gain, the money she earns, the reputation. But in the back of her mind, the knowledge scratches at the door she keeps it behind. She sees the destruction the dragons are causing all over Skyrim, the terror of the people. The loss of morale. She tells herself that she decides to see what these Greybeards have to say, if only to tell them they’ll need to find someone else.

But she comes to learn that there is no one else. There is only her and her bow, and her lack of morale, against an ancient dragon.

Anji is the Reluctant Hero, the Unlikely Hero, not the woman you’d expect when one mentions the Dovahkiin. She’s slight and flighty, quick as a whip with her twin blades, relying on speed above strength. She prefers sneaking through the shadows instead of fighting her way through boldly and openly, and she never starts fights she can’t win. This doesn’t mean she won’t kill, and doesn’t mean she won’t use her powers, even for personal gain. She enjoys the power of the Voice and, as lore suggests, overtime grows more and more powerful (think: her voice can at some point burn the ice off a mountain), but she hates the responsibility that comes with it and will never fully accept it. She’s practical and quick-witted, more on the serious side of the spectrum, although she possesses a funny streak that only shows up in intimate settings ( think: close friends/guild/lovers ) or when she’s completely drunk. She observes each angle of a job or mission before proceeding, wanting to be ahead of each trap she might run into.

A few loose facts about her:

is bisexual but leans towards women

has absolutely no interest in bearing children, adopting is fine though

favors her bow over her twin blades

carries two daggers in each boot

In some verses she can be a werewolf for absolutely no other reason other than that i can

in modern verses she owns a martial arts school

Play smart not hard

622: Angels Revenge

I would pay folding money for a half-hour gag reel of all the times Mike swung too hard or in the wrong direction or the wind was wrong and he took off Crow’s head.  It had to happen at least twice.  MST3K was not known for the sturdiness or sophistication of their props and we love them for it.

A fourteen-year-old boy steals some stuff from a drug dealer who looks an awful lot like Ben Murphy.  In revenge, Fake Ben Murphy and Actual Jack Palance beat the shit out of him. This upsets both the kid’s sister, an up-and-coming musician, and his schoolteacher, and they hatch a plot to destroy the drug depot.  They recruit a few friends – a Hollywood stuntwoman, a karate teacher, a model, a cop, and one of the teacher’s students – and steal some ammo from a bunch of neo-Nazis, and then it’s on to beat up the druggies!

I guess the idea behind this movie is fairly sound – a group of women get together to do a job the men aren’t willing to do.  The question of just why the men aren’t willing to do it is an open one.  Do the drug dealers own the police or something?  I dunno.  At the time it came out, Angels Revenge was panned as a ripoff of Charlie’s Angels, which it most unquestionably is, but there’s a reason that was a successful formula: women enjoy movies in which women kick ass, and men enjoy looking at boobs.  In the right hands, it would still have been a ripoff, but it could have been a much better ripoff.  Unfortunately, the grubby hands it got into were those of Greydon Clark.

The opening of this movie is a series of annoying missteps. A group of women we do not know (we’re not even sure how many there are) invade a gas station in the middle of nowhere and start blowing stuff up.  Their names are given in the opening shot but not in a way that makes them memorable. One character apparently dies, the others go on without her, and then she reappears to save the day.  None of this makes much of an impression beyond ‘oh, look, tits’, but we can tell they’re trying to get into the main building.  We get into it just enough that we want to see what’s inside, and then bam. Freeze-frame, narration.

The time for this would have been about five minutes earlier. Seriously, this ‘action opening’, obviously patterned after things like James Bond, goes on for five minutes at least in which we don’t really know what’s happening or who any of these characters are.  If we had just one to focus on that might help, but we’re watching six or seven of them run around doing different things and we don’t even know what their plan is so we can’t tell if it’s going right or wrong.  The whole sequence should have been either massively cut down to just enough to tell us action is happening before it goes into the flashback, or just moved in its entirety to its proper place later in the narrative.

Then when we finally do start meeting the characters, the first one we meet is not the one who began narrating a moment earlier!  It’s the beat-up kid’s sister, the one who so-far looked like she was in charge. Finding out she’s secondary in the whole plot is a bit of whiplash, and as far as I can tell the main purpose of the Vegas sequence (besides showing us her midriff) is to give a cameo to Arthur Godfrey as himself.

From there the rest of the characters are introduced and we finally find out who the hell they all are and what they bring to the table.  April, the teacher, is the mastermind. Michelle, the singer, is the backer. Terry, the stuntwoman, is their engineer.  Keiko, the karate teacher, is the hand-to-hand fighter.  Maria, the model, is a distraction.  Elaine, the cop, is the tactician.  And Trish, the student, is… uh… somebody wanted a kid in this movie. The point is, if you go back and watch the opening sequence after the bit where everybody’s introduced, it’s much more involving and makes infinitely more sense!  They could have had five minutes of action, but they gave us five minutes of boredom just by putting it in the wrong spot!

After some of the movies I’ve see, incidentally, it is a point very much to this movie’s credit that I remember everybody’s names.  Well done, Angels Revenge!

That does not, however, outweigh the many other things the movie does badly.  The actresses are mere eye candy, hired for their looks and not for their talent.  They stand around in ‘sexy’ poses without bras on, and recite their lines like they’re in an eighth-grade play.  Even so, they’re better than the men, who are just as bad at acting but aren’t distractingly nice to look at.  The best actor in the entire movie is Alan Hale Jr and he’s only got about three lines.

Then there are the bits where the movie tries to be funny.  The Neo-Nazis are supposed to be funny, which I’m honestly okay with – Hitler hated being made fun of and so it’s the responsibility of all right-thinking citizens to mock him and his movement whenever possible.  But they aren’t funny, just a bunch of fat clumsy guys with Hitler mustaches.  I don’t know how people who make movies fail to understand that in order to be funny, characters have to do funny things.  Both the Neo-Nazis and other ‘comic’ male characters in the movie are presented simply as ‘lol, men are oafs, right girls?’ without any attempt at an actual punchline.

Another running gag is April, who insists she’s a Very Organized Person, and her over-full purse.  That’s not really funny, but I can’t argue with it.  Two years ago I bought a bag big enough to hold my knitting and I haven’t seen the bottom of it since.  Someday I’ll be rooting around for something, fall in, and end up in Narnia.

The sequence in which they rob the Nazis does provide some action and acts as a trial run to show us the women can work together successfully.  But we already saw that in the out-of-place opening sequence, so it’s not really establishing anything we didn’t already know.  The fact that we’ve also seen what comes after also tells us that they will succeed at this mission with nobody getting hurt (not that these idiots they’re robbing are in any way a threat), and sucks all the suspense out.  Man, the longer I think about it, the more ways in which that opening makes the movie worse!  Whose idea was that anyway?

The characters are stereotypes, boring at best and deeply offensive at worst. The black woman is six feet tall and works on vehicles, because black women are butch!  The Asian girl knows martial arts and uses a katana, because she’s Asian (and although she’s said to be from Vietnam, she has a Japanese name… it’s possible to come up with a backstory for her that incorporates this, but that’s not my job as an audience member)!  The white women are bitches and bimbos, more distinguishable by their hair than by their personalities.  April is presented as ‘the mousy one’ simply by not wearing lipstick on a heist.

I guess by having tough women and weak men, the writers thought they were being feminist, or at least appealing to feminists, but that’s not how feminism works on any level.  Strength and intelligence isn’t pizza – you getting an extra slice doesn’t mean I don’t get one.  Portraying the male antagonists as buffoons is actually deeply misogynistic, because it suggest that women can’t even play unless the men are idiots.  The point of feminism is that women are people just as much as men are, and deserve to be treated as such – by other women, by men, and by screenwriters.

Let me illustrate with an example from the opposite extreme: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility are sisters who each need to get married for the sake of their financial security. That might seem a very sexist premise for a story – and it is, but only because it takes place in a sexist culture. Elinor and Marianne have distinct personalities and different ideas of what makes a happy marriage, and they make decisions as individuals, not simply because they are ‘women’.  Each makes her own mistakes and learns her own life lessons, and the narrative explores what society has taught them to expect out of life versus the less romantic reality.  They are two human beings.  The characters in Angels Revenge, by contrast, are a bunch of pretty props.

It would have been so easy to make something actually enjoyable out of Angels Revenge.  As I noted above, it uses a successful formula and it really could have been a fun little piece of exploitation cinema.  Every decision made along the way, however, seems designed to sabotage it.  It’s badly-written, lifeless, cliched, racist, and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism.  They hired women with no acting experience to play the main characters, and can’t decide which of those characters is our heroine. And of course, they edited it together in the wrong order, confusing and boring us and undermining what should have been important and suspenseful scenes.  This sort of thing just leaves me frustrated and annoyed.  You’re making a movie, people!  Could you not put a little fucking effort in?!

  Halloween is just around the corner and although this episode of My Hero Academia may have seemed fairly cheerful on the surface, there is a darkness brewing that is slowly starting to weigh everything down…

I just hopped right into it there. Whew, must be getting excited. Sorry about that. I had another good but unreasonable busy week. How is it going on your end Crow?

  “Unreasonably busy” is a really good way to put it. Glad we got through it! But I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned a brewing darkness. That last shot… But, we don’t want to get too far ahead! Oh, I’m bold, and yeah, we’ll have spolilers.

So this week, Deku had to secure his working studies program at the Nighteye agency and as we already know, he did not make the greatest first impression. 

Turns out Nighteye is a devoted All-Might fanboy just like Deku though, so they bonded over their shared love of the old no. 1 hero and Deku got a second chance to prove himself in the form of a simple task. All he needed to do was to somehow get Nighteye’s seal from him and his spot would be secure. It’s a pretty meaningless contest all things considered. What do you think Crow?

Let’s talk about how it played out first, but I’ll say this: I was seriously annoyed with Nighteye through this whole sequence. Especially with how it ended! For someone who has such a high opinion of All Might, Nighteye had no qualms about substituting his judgements for the previous number 1 hero. Plus, as we saw with how he treated Bubble Girl, the whole idea of respect just doesn’t seem to occur to Nighteye…

Things went as you would expect. Deku failed, but in the most extra and dedicated way possible and got the internship anyways. Nighteye even admitted that he was always going to give it to him as he had decided as soon as he learned about it (told ya!). That wasn’t the important part. 

The important part or should I say partS were that 1, Nighteye was fully aware that Deku had inherited All For One and no one was surprised by the revelation and 2 Nighteye honestly believes that Mirio is the better candidate.

Interesting dynamic creating a worthy and capable rival in Mirio changes a lot of things. Up until now, Deku had the likes of Todoroki or Baku to contend with, except Todoroki is suffering from PTSD and has to sort himself out before thinking of becoming no 1 hero, while Baku is 50% villain if not more. Mirio is very similar to Deku in many respects. Optimistic, respectful and open, it’s very difficult to root for one above the other which creates a very interesting conflict!

Yes, it does! If it were almost any other student, I don’t think Izuku would be as rattled. All of them are competent, and some of them have potential for greatness, but in terms of being number 1, with the exception of Todoroki, I’m not seeing it.

But Mirio is practically All Might Junior! He’s so obviously heroic and so amazingly powerful that Izuku has to wonder if he measures up

I have to admit, all through the test, I hoped that Deku would be smart enough to add randomization as a test — throwing the papers and books that would move without his decision was a perfect way to test the extent of Nighteye’s powers. I was disappointed that Deku couldn’t manage to get the stamp himself. 

And I think he was disappointed, too. That’s got to eat at his confidence.

After Deku’s personal trial is over, we go back to the school to find out that he’s really the only student to have had any luck so far. Unlike the previous internship, the work studies program puts students directly in the line of danger, and as such, most professional heroes are not willing to take the risk and do not have the insurance for it. 

Nevertheless, it seems no. 3 hero Hawks has put in a request to work with Tokayami (birds of a feather!) while the renowned 3rd years are taking an interest in talking with Kirishima, Tsuyu and Uraraka. I wonder what that’s about!

They seemed afraid to hope — and with Aizawa’s deadpan delivery, it could be anything. I like how this show takes things like liability insurance seriously. It’s a small thing; and maybe I shouldn’t get so excited about it. But it’s the kind of thing that makes the world feel real.

In the closing scene, we find out that it all comes together, in that not only will Deku have to keep an eye on Overhault, but he actually meets him and (ED unicorn girl) Eri in person during the after-credits tag. Exciting things are certainly coming up!

In my notes, I said that scene “felt like doom.” The anguish on Eri’s face as she looked back at Overhaul, the calm glowering power coming from Overhaul himself, and Deku’s usual open expression just seemed to set the stage. I have no idea what’s coming; I’ve not read the manga. But that scene felt momentous. 

Next episode is promising!

As I was listening to Aizawa explain the background considerations of hero internship, it struck me yet again how much I like the core premise. Although My Hero Academia doesn’t beat us over the head with it, but it is stated right from season 1 (and whispered throughout) that in a world of heroes for hire and morals for money, virtue becomes irrelevant. The strength of your character is secondary to the marketability of your skill.

This isn’t a very hopeful message, and you may think I’m way off the mark as the universe of My Hero Academia has always been presented to us through Deku’s rose coloured glasses. But there have been a lot of hints to that effect. I mean the entire character of Endeavour is pretty much a personification of this. And I like this theme. I don’t think it will be pleasant to see Deku run up against these bitter realities, but it’s something I have never seen properly explored in a tale for all audiences and I hope I do get to see it in My Hero Academia.

You have this amazing habit of zeroing in on the heart of the matter. I was thinking about that as I watched Nighteye once again disrespect a character (seriously, I’m really angry with him for how he treated Bubble Girl). It’s the classic “might makes right,” but far from being a cliche, the writers are dramatizing its effects through this whole world. It’s the theme that made Stain such a viscerally powerful villain. I couldn’t bring myself to say he was wrong. His reaction to the problem of heroes not being heroic was extreme, but he was right. 

And so are you.

The reason I still have any respect for heroes is because of individual heroes, like Deku, All Might, Aizawa, and even Mirio. There are others, of course, but even among our cast, as you mentioned, Baku is half villain himself! 

I, too, really hope we see this idea develop during this season. 

Another element I’m basing this impression on is the subtle running theme of “faking it”. It doesn’t matter how weak, scared or defeated you feel, a hero must appear strong and in control. That’s All Might’s entire schtick. Be a “symbol”, inspire the masses! It’s really endearing but it does work both ways.

It doesn’t matter how cruel, greedy or ruthless you are, as long as you LOOK the part, as long as you can give a heartwarming interview, then you two can be a symbol of justice. We heard Nighteye say it again. You can”t let them know you’re worried. Authenticity is a weakness, and weakness is bad….

I actually hurt my neck I was nodding so hard in agreement. Based on the previous, it looks like my idea won’t pan out, but do you think that All Might might have chosen Izuku as the next One for All precisely because he’s different? Precisely because his goodness comes first, literally before his heroism, and everything in him flows from that?

In other words, is All Might trying to change what it means to be a hero? Even if I’m wrong, I love how they’re playing with this idea.

That would be sweet. Mind you I have a feeling All Might isn’t all that great at planning ahead. He never really had to after all. With that quirk, he could power through any situation, and later on, Nighteye would have been there to advise him and he sees the future! We’ve seen All Might get himself in sticky situations a lot because he didn’t consider his health or took things for granted. He’s a bit prone to acting first. I think that may be a factor in why he chose Deku. The boy seemed like a hero in the moment.

After these three episodes I have come to realize something, I much prefer to binge My Hero Academia. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying watching along, a lot in fact. But the momentum of the story just doesn’t suit bite-size in my opinion. I would have watched these last three episodes and probably a few more in a single setting easily, and that would have made a cohesive opening arc. As it is, I’m sort of waiting for the story to get started almost a month in.

I can’t find any flaws in your logic! But as I think back across these three episodes, that last shot of Overhaul, Eri, and Deku keeps coming back to me. If we consider the first three episodes as the tag, maybe things are about to kick into high gear. And I can’t wait!

  My Hero Academia s4 ep66 – Looming Darkness Halloween is just around the corner and although this episode of My Hero Academia may have seemed fairly cheerful on the surface, there is a darkness brewing that is slowly starting to weigh everything down…

Death Battle Review: Raven vs. Twilight Sparkle.

Season 5, Episode 2 (or Battle 89) is starting off with a battle between two characters with mystical abilities, powerful empaths, warriors who originally rejected friendship but eventually found out that it was the key to defeating evil, and Tara Strong voicing them in their respective animated series.

As per usual, spoilers under the cut.

So… Tara Strong vs. Tara Strong, I guess. I honestly was not expecting this. I was expecting something more like… Mortal Kombat’s Blaze vs. Killer Instinct’s Cinder. Regardless, this is a bound to be a strong matchup… Sorry about that.

Elephant in the room that I feel needs to be addressed. Yeah… Twilight Sparkle. Given how… divisive Starscream vs. Rainbow Dash was, and how… zany Deadpool vs. Pinkie Pie was, I can understand the concerns. MLP has yet to suffer a loss, and given how weirdly they seem to treat the show, it can be understood that this isn’t something to be overly excited about. But I don’t understand why people are groaning “Another Pony episode?” - Because only Rainbow Dash and Pinkie have entered the fray. And now that I think about it, there’s never been two pony fights twice in a row in a season. By which I mean there’s never been two seasons in a row that feature a pony fight.

With those out of the way, let’s move on to the review.

Raven’s Preview.

Overall, the math presented here is very impressive. And by utilizing the various form of media that Raven has been present in, the best stats are used. In addition, the pop-up information cards makes their comeback. Quick shoutout to Gerardo (the editor of this particular episode) for making math look cool. It’s kinda hard to make something as mundane as math look interesting, so by using the various graphics, it made me excited to learn about the force that these characters can output.

Going over Raven’s backstory is actually pretty daunting. And the little “Take That” towards the constant retcons is actually a pretty good one. Because seriously! - These writers need to work with what they have.

The fact that there was barely any reference towards TTG seems like a good call here. That show is very polarizing, and I think that it’s a smart call not to open up any old wounds. The only reference being used as a quick joke.

The math seems fairly solid, and the various small jokes do work to the advantage. For example, the line of “As the crow - or the raven in this case,” is a little thing that works exceptionally well. It’s the little details that make the episode shine.

While I would have rather used that badass speech that Raven had for dear old dad in the original Teen Titans cartoon, the line that they used here is actually pretty impressive.

Twilight Sparkle’s preview.

The elephant in the room is tackled immediately here. Overall, instead of dreading the preview, the jokes and math that are used are pretty interesting.

Going over her backstory proves that there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye. 

You can even really go nuts trying to comprehend the crazy spells that Twilight has. From the gravity thing, to the “apple to egg” thing. The commentary points out that she’s got a myriad of spells that could have won the fight.

Actually, the bit about math is a bit misleading. Outside of the mystical shield durability, speed, and telekinetic lift, there’s not really much to work with. The focus seems to be more on the mystical abilities rather than the physical prowess. Appropriate, considering that Twilight doesn’t have a whole lot of physical feats of note to work with from what I recall.

Cheesy end line, but considering the source material… appropriate enough.

The Battle itself.

Similar to how both characters’ most recognized roles are both by Tara Strong, both characters in the fight will be voiced by Kira “Rinachan” Buckland. Animation is being done by Luis Cruz, animator of such impressive battles as Shredder vs. Silver Samurai, Metal Sonic vs. Zero, and Zoro vs. Erza. Music is done by Brandon Yates, and is called Titans of Magic. Sprites are done by Chris Bastin, and the background is made by the talented BonesWolbach from deviantart. And finally, the audio is done by three separate people.

Thanks to our rather talented voice actress, we can actually get a story reason as to why the fight starts, and it’s… weird. Like, I thought that the reason for Yang starting the fight with Tifa was petty, but this just takes it to a whole ‘nother level.

The animation does do a good job of showcasing the mystical destructive capabilities that both combatants have. Though, it feels like it’s a bit lowballed in the beginning.

But then the fight is taken to the field, and we get to see a lot more of the destructive force that can be doled out by these two. And the mystical prowess is actually pretty interesting and astounding. You can see the struggle between versatility and sheer power going head to head.

Then the finishing blow happens.

OH! Before I get into that, you will WANT to have already seen the episode beforehand. Because spoilers comes in 5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Raven’s soul self annihilates Twilight by ramming her at Mach 36! Yeah, a pony lost. Go figure, huh?

Verdict + Explanation.

Clearly, they think that Luna is the best princess… And before you ask, no. I actually typed that out before watching the commentary. Though, it is making me crave a Luna vs… whatever fight. Moons are awesome.

Joking aside, they have a quick card explaining that the number of “Instant-Win” abilities that they had were equal. That’s something I appreciate. I’m not a fan of “Instant-Win” buttons. It just feels… wrong to pull them out to justify a win for a single character.

Overall, it’s apparent that Twilight is outmatched in several ways. She often relies on her friends to get the job done, and it’s obvious that her durability isn’t that strong to endure any killing blow from Raven.

And we also get a look in how DC just basically tosses physics out the window for the sake of “Rule of Cool.” Going over each of their stats, the only real edge that Twilight had was mystical versatility. And that alone isn’t enough to win the day if Mega Man’s fight with Astro Boy is to be believed.

And when they lowball statistics like how they’re doing with Raven’s soul-self, you know that the lowest possible stat far exceeds the opponent. The same applies when highballing a stat (Examples include Batman Beyond vs. Spider-Man 2099 and Naruto vs. Ichigo). When they go for the lowest possible stat that can be calculated for a certain character, it’s a good sign that that character basically stomps. And when doing the opposite, it’s clear that the other character doesn’t stand a chance.

Overall impression.

A very nice 8.3/10. While the verdict and the fight are really great, a lot of jokes can easily fly over someone’s head. Plus, I don’t want to incur any fan’s wrath by giving this a higher score. Maybe in the future, I can give it a higher one, but not today. Not now. The fight is spectacular though, and it’s hard to say that this is a bad fight, but it’s simply one that is not expected to be this good. That expectation is certainly a good one. The fight is fun. But I also feel as if Raven transporting the fight to her own little dimension could have been utilized in the battle. Regardless, the fight is a good one.

Major kudos for making Raven’s soul-self from scratch. Custom sprites are always a major plus, and it’s always fun to see how they mesh with the environment/characters. And when it’s a well-made sprite? - That’s when it becomes spectacular.

I want to also take the time here in the impression section to comment on the meshing of vector art and sprite art. The custom animations are great, and the aesthetics are great. Kudos to Luis, that is some pretty great animation techniques. It certainly shows why he’s one of the best sprite animators that the show has. Sprite battles like these are ones that make a lot of fights look spectacular, and it can even have visuals on par with some 3D animations as well.

Next time…

Well, they did say on the podcast that the next combatants were going to be ones who haven’t appeared before… I just wasn’t expecting this. It’s another Anime vs. Anime fight, and I’d say that’s… interesting. I don’t know a whole lot about these characters, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

Uh… I don’t have a clever name or quip for this one.

The SB fandom is clueless. It's S3 (2) proposals in (3) weeks, and they still think SB has a shot at being endgame? Every single instance that they tout as chemistry is actual mockery by the writers. 307 the KF death kiss is the same episode that Caitlin exclaims, you got Iris..your happy ending. 317 she brings up the karaoke episode which lead to Barry dating Linda, not her. And, it was only moments after Barry had been brought back to life from an AU when he receives Iris' True Love's. #SRSLY

On the one hand, it's true that we don't know what'll happen in future. If the show is on another 4 years, that's a lot of time in TV land and a lot of things could happen.That said. There really hasn't been ANYTHING on the show to indicate that's where they're going at this time, or even in the long run. I've compared it before to both Arrow and Smallville to show the difference.Olicity wasn't planned, but apparently Lauriver wasn't working like the wanted. They brought in Felicity. The chemistry, dynamic, whatever else really appealed to them. They started rethinking plans. From my understanding, they brought the latter to an end fairly quickly (certainly without marriage proposals) and then it was obvious - to casual fans as well as shippers - Olicity was being set up romantically. And then they, you know, went there. Clois on Smallville I've discussed before. Lest I go into a long thing again...nobody really expected to SEE Clois play out until maybe the last season, when Lois came on the show. But they still made it very clear - in interviews and the narrative - that Clark was going to end up with her one day. Things like Lana saying "the best ones always start that way" and Lois making jokes about how she'd probably end up with the most bumbling reporter at the paper. Little asides they put in to be like "yes, we know we're not there now, but this is his future and everyone knows it!"Even in S1, SB wasn't getting that stuff. They got a karaoke thing, after which Barry asked out another girl, she married another guy, and they never even to themselves, let alone each other, went, "Hey, was that a date?" They got a "kiss" that wasn't him (which is for the best as that would put a terrible spin on his character really). Which again nobody mentioned again and was totally forgotten, even by her. We don't even know if he KNOWS about it two years later. So even then, in what is now being treated as the halcyon days of their ship, they weren't getting hints it would happen. They got baiting, which is another thing entirely. They aren't getting it now. Barry is happily with Iris. He's proposed twice. And while some fans want to pick apart every facial expression to find hidden feelings, the narrative has never ONCE indicated he doesn't really love Iris, he's starting to realize he has feelings for Caitlin maybe...he actually HAS feelings for Caitlin maybe. Or - and this is important - that Caitlin has ANY of the above for Barry.So, yeah, in television a lot can happen and it ain't over til its over. But SB clearly isn't something they're thinking about doing NOW. And since they've gotten Barry and Iris engaged - and since it's probable they're wanting to use Bart one day (who rather requires Barry and Iris furthering their relationship) - it seems INCREDIBLY unlikely they're going to change their minds. It certainly seems unlikely they're planning on an endgame other than Westallen.It's in the nature of shippers to hope, though, and as long as the show is on and Caitlin is a character on it, SB fans will hope for things to change. It doesn't seem likely to pay off for them, but if they want to keep hoping...well, it's what fandom does. There's a BIG difference in saying "this is where I wish the story would go, even though it's not going there now or possibly ever. But this is what I wish would happen" and in saying "this is what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING and it's all a big setup and if you look at the way a crow flew overhead when Barry said the word Superstition, it makes it clear it's happening because Crow+Superstition=CS's initials! OBVIOUS ENDGAME!" That's the kind of thing that makes me shake my head.Acknowledging what's being shown and saying you wish it were different is one thing. Completely rewriting the narrative and then attacking people who don't see that narrative as fact is another. An example of this was when SB fans decided Barry and Caitlin HAD to kiss in the Grodd episode for her to freeze him. I watched in real time as it went from "I wonder if this happened" to "it would be great if this happened" to "this totally happened" to "this HAD to be what happened and it couldn't have been anything else" to attacking the people making the show and DEMANDING to know why it was cut.So a lot of what they're complaining about now, they never got to begin with. The show isn't changing its tune; it never hummed that tune to begin with and they just filled in the song they liked best. But any time you're basing your expectations on what will happen off what you wanted to see and not what was actually shown, you're going to be disappointed and keep taking Ls. The writers aren't crafting a story off what you think happened. They're writing it around what actually happened.

Night of the Bloody Apes

I finally got back to this one after being distracted by Night Fright – and Night of the Bloody Apes is an excellent potential MST3K subject.  It’s got Mexican wrestlers, bloodthirsty ape-men, and Rene Cardona, the director of Santa Claus.  There’s a perfect stinger moment, too, when some old abuela comes across a corpse in the street and runs off screaming, oh!  A dead man! A dead man!  A dead man!

A wrestling match goes wrong and one of the contestants, Elena Gomez, hits her head on the concrete floor, leaving her in a long-term coma.  Her opponent, Lucy Osorio, is distraught, blaming herself, and vows to retire from wrestling as soon as her contract is up.  I bet you think that’s gonna be important, don’t you?

The actual plot involves Dr. Krallman and his assistant Goyo kidnapping a gorilla from a zoo so that he can transplant its heart into his dying son Julio (there is an explanation offered for how this will cure his leukemia, but trust me, it’s not worth repeating).  In real life, if a mad scientist gave you a gorilla’s heart your body would reject the organ and you would die – but this is a stupid Luchador movie, so Julio turns into an ape-man and goes on a murderous rampage instead, all in his pajamas and bare feet!  Even having read what I said above, I’m sure you still think Lucy’s gonna have to wrestle him, because where else could her plot possibly be going?  Joke’s on the audience, it’s going fucking nowhere.

In the opening scene, we meet Lucy and her boyfriend Arturo Martinez, see her put on her devil-themed mask, and watch the match in which her opponent is injured.  This still goes on a little longer than it should, but I cannot even express how much more interesting it is than the opening of Racket Girls.  The simple reason why is that we’ve met Lucy.  We know next to nothing about her, but we’ve at least heard her voice, and so we automatically go into the match rooting for her.  Then there’s the unexpected turn when what we anticipated as a moment of victory becomes a tragedy instead.  The music is absurdly overblown but other than that, this sequence is well-written and well-executed.

The rest of the movie is crap.

I’m sure you’re wondering what the subplot about Lucy and her injured friend has to do with the gorilla-man plot.  There are a couple of very thin threads between them.  Dr. Krallman is also treating Elena and eventually decides that he can declare her brain-dead and use her heart to replace the gorilla’s and cure Julio’s pithecanthropy (all the Greek I took in college was totally worth it to be able to coin that word). Arturo is a detective, investigating the murders the gorilla-man commits.  Lucy, however, is irrelevant – she’s just the place where Arturo’s story and Krallman’s happen to meet.  At the end her only role is to declare how sad the whole thing is.

The sound in this film is bizarre.  The voice acting is bland but not awful – the writing is awkward as hell.  When Arturo suggests that the murders are being committed by a beast-man, one of his colleagues declares (and this is word-for-word), “it’s more probable that of late, more and more you’re watching on your television many of those pictures of terror.”  That’s a line the writers of Gamera vs Guiron would have thrown out!  Meanwhile the music, as I already mentioned, is loud and bombastic, with screeching brass and ominous bassoon that sound like something from a melodramatic silent film.

The visuals are not for the weak of stomach. Julio’s heart transplant is represented by stock footage of actual heart surgery, with plenty of blood and bone and an actual human heart still twitching in the doctor’s fingers.  On the one hand, it probably looks way better than anything the film-makers could have managed on their effects budget and is definitely preferable to the Ed Wood Jail Bait approach.  On the other… I wonder who that patient was, and what he would think if he knew his heart operation ended up in Night of the Bloody Apes.  The murder scenes also tend to be gruesome, with lots of blood and some surprisingly graphic effects moments, like an eyeball popping out.  Despite being filmed in loving close-up, shots like the eyeball and a later scalping are stunningly unconvincing, especially with the actual surgery footage there to compare them to.

I’m not sure what this movie thinks about women. Lucy is a character who has goals and conflicts outside of men – Arturo does want her to retire from wrestling and marry him, but her reasons for actually doing so have more to do with Elena’s accident than with him.  Her trauma, the way the people around her dismiss it, and how she attempts to deal with it could have been the core of the movie if anyone had cared.  We don’t meet any of Elena’s other friends and are told that she has no family, so her death is a tragedy in its own right, rather than because of its effect on anybody else.

At the same time, women are something this film very much exploits.  We get a nice look at Lucy’s ass as she gets out of the shower, and Julio spends his gorilla-man rampages murdering and raping random women in long, leering, extremely distasteful shots.  None of these victims have names or backstories.  If we knew them at all, it might be hard to enjoy watching them killed.  I will say that at least they put up good fights – Victim One smashes a lamp over Julio’s head, and Victim Two kicks and thrashes so hard that the stunt guy in the gorilla-man makeup is having a hard time holding her down.  She also has the presence of mind to go seek help not just for herself but for her boyfriend, who she has no idea is already dead.  The grossest moment is when Krallman and Goyo prepare to remove Elena’s heart to transplant into Julio.  This woman is in a coma, and yet the camera lingers on her bare tits rising and falling as she breathes.

Between this stuff and the surgery footage, MST3K would have had no trouble making room for host sketches.  Hopefully one of them would have featured Crow and Servo in luchador masks.

There are several places where Night of the Bloody Apes comes perilously close to meaning something, but it always manages to swerve back into nonsense at the last minute.  For starters, the gorilla-man is supposed to represent Julio devolving into an animal, but like Bela Lugosi’s character in The Ape-Man, his actions are often all too human.  It is human women he seeks out to rape, after all, and killing them afterwards so they can’t tell who did it is a thing only a human being could do.  Too, with some of his later victims gorilla-Julio begins using tools, like knives, in a very human way, and the coroner states that the damage to the victims’ bodies is more characteristic of a human attack than an animal.  As in The Ape-Man, humans are always the most dangerous beast in the jungle.

There’s actually a fairly strong parallel drawn between Elena and Julio.  For the most part we see both of them lying quietly in hospital beds (at least before Julio’s transformation), helpless to do anything about their own situation. Both have a loved one who doesn’t want to give up on them, and both have suffered an injury that leads others to regard them as less than human.  The people the gorilla-man meets on the street see him as nothing but a monster, and Krallman fears he may be shot and killed before he can be cured.  Elena, meanwhile, is unlikely to come out of her coma, and so Krallman sees her as nothing but a potential source of spare parts. When she vanishes, the hospital staff are more worried about their reputation than they are her welfare.

Night of the Bloody Apes may be thought of as a movie about, of all things, informed consent.  We’re not told whether Elena consented to being an organ donor.  Since Goyo says that using her heart would be a crime, I will assume not, and she doesn’t have any family to consent for her.  Julio has no idea what his father plans to do to him to effect a cure and no idea of the possible consequences.  Is it right to take Elena’s heart without her permission if it’ll save Julio?  Is it right to perform an experimental surgery Julio doesn’t even know he needs if it’ll save his life?

The problem with all three of these themes is that the writers never seem to notice any of them!  They’re not interested in examining the line between human and animal violence, it’s just there to lead the police on the right trail.  They don’t see Elena and Julio as alike, nor do they try to confront the problem of medical ethics.  Or even if they did do these things intentionally, they don’t take them anywhere.

Night of the Bloody Apes is another one that would be fairly easy to re-write into a better movie.  For starters, the thing to do would be to set up Lucy and gorilla-Julio as opponents for each other – maybe she sees him attack somebody and tries to intervene, only to have the victim die in a way too close to what happened to Elena, leading her to decide she’s gonna track him down.  Her wrestling skills allow her to beat him, but Krallman begs her not to kill Julio and explains the situation, leading her to suggest using Elena’s heart.  This would allow her a way to come to terms with her friend’s death by knowing some good came out of it, and could get further into the idea of medical consent.  Julio’s final transformation could have come out of ‘how could you do this to me?’ anger at his father.

I wonder if there weren’t some earlier draft of Night of the Bloody Apes that was more like that, because with the movie as it stands I can’t understand why Lucy is the first character we meet when she ultimately does very little.  If I’m right, I guess they changed it because they thought nobody would watch a movie in which a woman does both physically and emotionally heroic things, but in the process they reduced their movie to scraps of what it could be.  In Lucy’s own closing words, it’s unfortunate.  Really sad.

  Hello everyone! Welcome back! I bought a Switch a few days ago and just started Fire Emblem last night. Needless to say I’m tired and eager to go back to it! So far it’s really fun. How are you Crow?

  Wanting a Switch! I use a PC for gaming, and Fire Emblem isn’t available on it. Bummer. Otherwise, I’m fine. It’s about 60 degrees Fahrenheit here (around 15 Celsius), and I don’t know whether to enjoy it or dread what’s coming next — the inevitable tumble! 

Just for the record, I’m bold this week, and there will be spoilers. 

I’ve been hearing grumblings about this season of My Hero Academia. I don’t know the details but I do get it. It’s very different from previous seasons and it sure has been having a great time beating up on our heroes. But you know, this season has had me consistently tearing up. Sure, some of it is crass sentimentality and emotional manipulation, but it’s well paced, expertly crafted crass sentimentality and emotional manipulation. And gosh if I haven’t been enjoying it. If I had binged season 4 (which I still might) I think it would have been even better!

Can confirm. The emotional moments have been more poignant. I think what you described is a huge reason. I think another is that MHA has had 3 seasons before this to make us love these characters.

In any case, we left our heroes in dire straits with nothing but a wounded and exhausted Deku standing between Overhaul and his escape with Eri. A Deku that according to Nighteye was doomed to fail and fall in this battle. And then, the ladies to the rescue.

Episode 76 of my Hero Academia (sheesh, 76 episodes already!) caught up with Froppy, Uraraka and Nejire as they struggle with an overpowered villain under Ryuko’s guidance. It was a quick scene, but the episode was careful to highlight each team member’s determination and drive to save their friends and everyone really. And although it shouldn’t matter at all, I was still a little thrilled that the all ladies team was treated with the same attention and expectation as any other. I fell sort of silly for even bringing it up and that’s truly awesome!

That’s kinda the world we’re in right now. I loved that scene precisely because in the world of MHA, at least among the heroes, it was nothing unusual. Of course those heroes could execute; that’s what heroes do. The only one not to get the memo was the villain Riyaka Katsukame, and Nejire quickly and effectively adjusted his perspective.

As they are all trying to bring everything under control, Deku shows up requesting back up. I remember thinking, when did Deku have the chance to get back outside? This is maybe a bit before the end of last episode but still. Also good on Deku for recognizing when to ask for help. It’s one of his weaknesses so this is great growth….

Yup, wasn’t him…It was Toga again. Manipulating the Heroes and Yakuza in order to have them destroy each other as much as possible. There was also an offshoot of the plan where she and Twice transformed one of his doubles in order to gain Mr. Compress’ abilities for their own purposes. It was a fairly small and straightforward plan but it was brilliant. And it was Toga and Twice who came up with it. Neither are known to be particularly talented strategic thinkers in the league. If this is what their pawns can come up with, I think I may have been underestimating the league drastically. I think maybe everyone has.

Yeah, if Shigaraki had been a better leader, some of their previous encounters might have gone quite different. Also, both Toga and Twice are growing. As they gain experience, they’re levelling up, too. I’ve enjoyed how this series dramatizes that kind of thing without drawing attention to it.

At this point we caught up with the last episode. Ryukyu and her team came crashing through the ceiling to find an injured Deku squaring off with Chiaki (who’s also seen better days) as Eri goes through a painful dilemma.

It’s a horror show. Blood and destruction everywhere. Nighteye unmoving and impaled in the middle of the room. Deku looking so small and obviously in pain. Yet to me, he’s never looked stronger. They got me again!

I’d like to say I was ready for it and was ready to resist. Nah. They got me, too. His look of determination was fantastic!

At this point there’s an extended battle between Deku and Overhaul intercut with a few flashbacks. I’ll talk about those in a bit, but as far as the actual fighting goes I don’t have much to say. It was great to look at as always, but there was more to it and I’m not sure how to explain. At one point Eri realizes that her existence could be more than a simple burden and decides to trust Deku, rushing back to him. The action is slowed and a mournful but very pretty song begins to play. It’s heavy handed. There are tons of moments like this through the latter half of the episode. It’s obvious and cliché. Yet when you put them all together it builds up to a whole that is immeasurably greater than the sum of its parts.

Somewhere through those scenes, and I can’t say exactly when, I remembered that Deku was a hero. Not the commercial hero for hire of the MHA universe, not the generic term for protagonist, but an actual hero. A collection of drives and ideas that Horikoshi wanted to characterise because it brought hope to share with the rest of us. And something that a lot of fans found simple joy in. It’s a lot to ask for a simple fight scene but that’s nonetheless what it did for me.

Since Deku’s subconscious moved his body to save Bakugou all the way back in episode 1. His training layered on the skills he’ll need to fight effectively. He’s learned a lot about self control. But in this episode, as you just pointed out, he acted on his heroic instincts, and it was beautiful to watch!

The flashbacks were both painful and enlightening. They were basic exposition on Eri, her quirk and Chiaki’s past and personality. Chiaki is sort of unflinching. He probably could have been a decent hero, although a tad too rigid. I was always surprised that he managed to fit into the Yakuza framework so well. So I guess the flashback was pretty much what I expected.

On the other hand, Eri’s quirk was not at all.

Eri’s quirk is what I would call a writer’s problem. It’s amazing and opens up so many possibilities but if I understood it right, it also effectively renders all the characters immortal. Because she can only regress life forms, she probably couldn’t bring Mirio’s quirk back, but Nighteye’s gonna be just fine. No worries. So is Kirishima. No one needs to suffer at all here. And that’s a bit of a problem as far as creating lasting stakes go. I wonder how they’ll deal with it.

I think they tried to show it has limits — like her inability to control it. But as Deku said, she was just like he had been when he first got One for All. She’ll learn control. 

All any hero would have to do is have Eri on standby, and if they get too injured, evac them to her or bring her in. Voila! Instant health. And since her Quirk doesn’t seem to erase memories, since Deku was clearly able to remember everything, it is exactly as you suggested: Eri-based immortality. 

Oh and I was super relieved to have confirmation that she is indeed not Chiaki’s daughter. Although kinda and also considering what happened to her dad…. Ok, I’m going to stop thinking about this now.

And what did you think of what Overhaul did to the man who brought him into the Family? Overhaul broke him enough to put him in a coma. And he promised that once his plan succeeded, he would bring the old man back and show him Overhaul had been right. That’s both impressive and messed up!

I really liked this episode. I do hope we finally get that filler next week though. I want to know if Tamaki is o.k…

As long as they have Eri, I’m sure he’ll be as good as new!

My Hero Academia s4 ep76 – The Impossible Hello everyone! Welcome back! I bought a Switch a few days ago and just started Fire Emblem last night.